Holiday training away from home

The relatives came to us. My kids didn’t miss any workouts. The skiing son skied day trips.

@RJM posted:

The relatives came to us. My kids didn’t miss any workouts. The skiing son skied day trips.

Exactly.  Holidays and family were never a distraction because they came to us while kids continued to work their normal workout  and throwing schedules.  Tryouts were in early to mid-February.   They had down time from mid-October through mid-December which is when we planned any family/relative travel.  It worked for us.

My son was home from college during this winter break. We went to Disney World for 10 days while he was home. We booked a hotel where he could work out in the evenings or early mornings before heading out to the parks for the day. While finding a place to throw a bullpen was tough, he kept up with throwing and strengthening his arm by ways of throwing a football while we were there. We would come back to the hotel during the day and find an open area in the parking lot and throw the football for about a half an hour. I did pack the TAP training sock in case he wanted to throw around the baseball in the hotel room, but football was a better option. He went back to school right after vacation and said his arm feels really good right now.

Hey, @TexasLefty, don't be so hard on yourself; your player should be the one coming up with the workout plan! We found that there is usually a way to reach out to a local training facility or to a nearby college campus (even as a high school player) to find a catcher or long toss partner.  Sometimes it takes a few phone calls and a little cash for the catcher (now that's probably on you, lol), but you can usually find some local baseball team/facility/pitching coach to help you out.  My son also used the football method in a pinch!

You could play catch with him.  They do long toss and you do long bounce/roll.  I'm good to about 120. Embarrassing but effective. Or buy a bucket of used balls and just catch what they throw.  Maintaining arm strength is much easier than improving it.

I gave up on catching bullpens when they topped 80.

Son handles this. He has one cousin who plays high school baseball and he'll ask him to find him a throwing partner or a gym where he can throw if that's on the agenda. We have just googled baseball facilities or the local high school or colleges might be an option. I feel like the higher level you are, the easier it is to get someone to let you use their facilities.

We got 10 inches of snow a couple of weeks ago. Son came to stay with us before the storm because we're literally crawling distance from a gym, whereas staying at his house would have meant driving several miles to a place to work out. I was kind of impressed with his thinking ahead.

@JETSR71 posted:

You could play catch with him.  They do long toss and you do long bounce/roll.  I'm good to about 120. Embarrassing but effective. Or buy a bucket of used balls and just catch what they throw.  Maintaining arm strength is much easier than improving it.

I gave up on catching bullpens when they topped 80.

Ha ha ha, play long bounce and roll.  Im good to 120 as well.  After that, son takes the bucket with him and I just catch and set the ball aside.  I hate playing catch with my son when he throws hard.  I dont trust myself anymore.

I devolved into to the guy retrieves ball from the pop up net back to son. I like what's left of my teeth too much to risk losing them playing catch.

Yeah, we did the family Florida trip my son's freshman year, as my younger son was there for HS Band at Disney.  It was just for 5 days, so we thought, no big deal.  My son did his workouts at the hotel, then everyone got sick on nearly the last day (FLU).  Got home and it continued for more than 2 weeks.  He didn't get to do any of his throwing routine, lost close to 10lbs and he suffered for it when he got back to school.   Never again.  If we do anything, he will stay home.

This year the local training facility where he played his last year of travel ball has a college program for anyone who wants to work out during their winter break, he did that and was able to do his full plan all break.