Do Weighted Ball Throwing Programs Develop Velocity? Are They Safe?

I wanted to share what I think is a fantastic blog piece from earlier this year from Kyle Boddy, of Driveline Baseball. If you are not familiar with Driveline Baseball (and its founder Kyle) they are a data-driven research facility that implements high output throwing programs. At the heart of these programs is their ground-breaking utilization of weighted ball throws.

Fast approaching my 13 th year co-founder of Infiniti Sports Performance (Bellport, NY) I have heard more than a fair share of powerful opinions regarding dozens of training programs. Sadly, these coaches and parents often subscribe to these opinions without doing their due diligence of research. All too often many of their opinions and takeaways are the result of a late night Google search yielding a plethora of thoughts and criticisms of a given training protocol. As many of us know, just because something appears on the first page of an internet search does not necessarily deem the source to be credible.CONSIDER THE SOURCE, AS WELL AS THOSE WITH DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES AND NOT JUST WHAT YOU WANT TO BELIEVE! Even more difficult and puzzling for me to process are the “old schoolers” whose training beliefs are fixed simply because “that’s the way we always did it” or “it worked for _____”(insert athletes name here). Geez…are we seriously going to subscribe to this school of thought? Are we really going to absolutely dismiss and ignore focused data accumulation, its outcomes? Anyway, in this blog I think Kyle does a great job in debunking the criticisms of weighted ball throwing programs. Naturally, he supports his positions with the outcomes of years of quality, focused research. If nothing else I hope you gain two takeaways from this read…

1. Poor weighted ball programs do exist in content as well as delivery. However, “demonizing a tool and closing off an avenue to an athlete’s improvement simply because someone, somewhere did it incorrectly” would be wrong.

2. A weighted ball throwing program in and of itself is not effective. It must be supported by a proper warmup, a comprehensive recovery protocol, and a functional strength program.