Why Your Off-Season Needs Time Off From Throwing

Fall ball, winter showcases, indoor lessons and spring season can now connect into twelve straight months of throwing. That pattern is one of the best-documented risk factors for arm injuries in young pitchers.

What the guidelines say

Pitch Smart, the workload program from MLB and USA Baseball, recommends time away from throwing every year. For ages 9–12 the guidance is at least four months off per year, with two to three of those months in a row. The guidelines by age give the recommendation for older pitchers.

MLB's own injury study named year-round training and early specialization among the contributors to rising injuries. Coaches interviewed in Associated Press coverage raised the same concern about teenagers throwing at maximum effort in November, a time when many professionals are resting.

Why rest works

Throwing causes small amounts of stress to the tissues of the shoulder and elbow. With rest, they recover and adapt. Without it, the stress adds up. Bones and growth plates in younger pitchers are especially sensitive to this. A break also restores range of motion that tightens over a long season.

A shutdown is not time off from training

This is the part pitchers miss. The months without throwing are the best time of year to:

• Get stronger. Heavy lower-body and trunk work is easier to recover from when you are not also pitching.
• Fix mobility. Hips, thoracic spine and shoulders.
• Put on useful weight. Many high school pitchers are simply underweight for the velocity they want.
• Play something else. Another sport builds general athleticism and gives the arm a different job.

Pitchers who use the shutdown well usually come back throwing harder than when they stopped.

Planning it

• Count backward from your first important game. Leave six to eight weeks to build back up properly.
• Put the shutdown before that. For most high school pitchers this lands in the fall.
• Decide in advance which fall events you will skip. It is easier to say no in August than in October.

About fall showcases

A showcase in October can matter for recruiting. If you attend one, plan for it: stay built up to it, throw it, then begin the shutdown. What hurts pitchers is a showcase thrown at max effort after several weeks of rest and no preparation.

Rest is part of training, and it is the part that costs nothing.