Weighted Baseballs

Did you mean pitching or throwing? I would totally avoid pitching with weighted balls.

As for your question I don't have any experience with weighted balls but believe in the right program could be beneficial. Sorry I can't offer more help.

my son's and i experimented a bit with weighted balls. crazy throwing a real ball after the weighted ball.

i wouldn't do it without some knowledge. you can probably find a ton of info on the net, or seach it here.
i'm not sure if the link came through. talking with Dr. Bagonzi was/is very enlightning. hope this helps.

http://pitchingprofessor.com/

Do a thorough search on it on the internet and you will find all kinds of stuff on them. Steve Ellis has some information on it on his website also. I believe he has a plan with light and weighted balls. (more on this later) I believe AMSI is doing a study on them also.

In general they should only be used for mature players who already have a good long toss program in place and have very good coaching as far as mechanics. So we are talking about HS Seniors and above who are mature both physically and mechanically (pitching wise).

There is evidence that you should do these in a set with heavy and light balls so you get the overspeed effect (like speed training) from the light ball. They should never done daily and the programs I have seen are typically done 2-3x’s per week, only on flat ground not off a mound.

Readers Digest Version: Don’t bother until your players are older more experienced, have already done extensive conditioning, long toss and have their mechanics fine-tuned. There is no magic bullet.

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Originally posted by BOF:
Don’t bother until your players are older more experienced, have already done extensive conditioning, long toss and have their mechanics fine-tuned.

Throwing heavier balls at slower delivery speeds to improve velocity and distance, is akin to running marathons to improve your 60yd time!

quote:

Throwing heavier balls at slower delivery speeds to improve velocity and distance, is akin to running marathons to improve your 60yd time!

Actually this analogy is not quite true. There is evidence that they do increase velocity.
I don't know all of the kinesiology, but new research indicates that a regime of light and heavy provide superior results. Which supports your point. Still holds true that there are lots of other things to do before moving to heavy balls.

We used an overload-underload approach this fall with an arm strength program with good results (average 4.88 mph gain in seven weeks.) We only 6 oz balls for the overload and 4 oz balls for underload. (We use similar techniques to improve bat speed.) I participated a bit too and its crazy how much one ounce makes.

Heavy balls (8 oz or more) will create extreme amounts of stress on the shoulder and elbow if you throw these with any velocity, intensity or distance. (Plus they will blow out the laces of your glove.) Markwort, the manufacturer of most of the heavy balls even puts disclaimer on the website (and a paper inside their packaging) about using with caution, supervision, and instruction.

http://www.markwort.com/featured/weightballs.asp

Last but not least, I agree entirely about using with older, more experienced players.

quote:

Actually this analogy is not quite true. There is evidence that they do increase velocity.

Again, probably dealing with semantics here but IMO; throwing weighted baseballs(that means heavier than 5 ounce ball) won't, in and of itself, increase release velocity anymore than using a "donut" on the bat, increases swing velocity. This has been studied (video on You-tube) and results are less distance off the bat. The principles of "Specificity" in training is a sound concept.

Mixing lighter, heavier with long toss programs and other maximum throwing endeavors, would be expected to show positive results. In that case, you can't say throwing the "weighted" ball resulted in the improvements.

We pretty much agree, however there are older studies that showed an increase. Dr. Bagonzi did studies, as part of his Phd on weighted baseballs, and they did in fact increase velocity. We are well beyond this now and I think everyone agrees that overload/underload training to be effective as BT pointed out work. You just need to be cautious.

Actually DeRenne's studies showed velocity improvement with just heavier balls. There was a bit more improvement with lighter balls and with a mix of heavier and lighter balls. My guess is that the DeRenne studies showed more of an average improvement with the mixed approach simply because more people benefitted from one or the other thereby improving the average result.

The appropriate approach probably varies from individual to individual. Some people benefit from being forced to put more effort into the throwing (heavier balls) and some benefit from learning how to move the arm faster (lighter balls). The principles of overload/underload training are long established.

Using the "donut" study is very misleading because that simply shows that tiring oneself out by swinging a heavier bat immediately before swinging a regulation bat doesn't increase bat speed. Duh-oh! BTW, the confidence gained because the bat feels a bit lighter is probably more than worth the impact of tiring oneself out slightly in a competitive situation.

JMO, without scientific backup, but I believe that in general throwing the lighter ball is riskier than throwing the heavier ball simply because moving the arm faster puts more stress on the arm, especially the decellerators.

One of the interesting things about the Bagonzi studies that we also found was the almost immediate increase in velocity when using weighted balls. This was something that certainly couldn't be attributed to increased arm strength, so the heavy ball results were probably more due to learning how to put more effort into the throw. Our uncontrolled 9 week study showed an intitial jump followed by a plateau and then a very gradual increase from there.

I like and have winter clinics doing both underload and overload approach and for both hitting and pitching.

However I do like the Weighted Gloves (and I am not referring to the weighted boxing gloves) for hitting (1 to 5 oz) and sparingly for pitching (1 oz).

I do not like having the teenager practice pitching throwing shotputs! Throwing a baseball to spots for strikes is challenging enough for these teenagers.

Thanks for the info from the various studies. You can't always be sure what works best so you keep doing a smorgasboard training agenda to get faster, or stronger. I'm was one of those kids who for years, wore the ankle weights all day during school basketball season because we were told that we would be able to jump higher ....(no, doesn't work)!

We've worked with weighted/lighter balls along this journey, with mixed results. Finally, settled on throwing 10lb iron balls (shot put), throwing exercises with fitted wrist weights (all intended to build bone density, strengthen ligaments and tendons to prevent arm injury), coupled with maximum velocity baseball throwing/long toss (to gain velocity). If you want to throw hard, you have to get out and actually practice throwing hard! It's worked for him and (God, please forgive me for saying this), he's never had even a sore arm, while averaging 70 games a year.

for what it's worth, i remember puting your throwing elbow in the pocket of your glove and just moving ( like a catpult) the forearm to toss the ball to your partner. 4 or 5 tosses with the weighted ball, then 4 or 5 with a reg. ball. i think the water logged balls we played with as kids were heavier.

i know this is another debate but we found off season swimming to help with velocity.

I know of several college programs who have their kids swimming in the off season. (not optional)