Developing a livelier arm

[ralph]

Recently I have playing around with trying to make my arm more lively. I have going over to my local high school with baseballs and throwing long toss the way I have seen pitchers do as they warm up at pro games. I have also alternated the long toss with throwing a heavy ball. I spoke to an ex pro pitcher who has recently gotten involved with tennis and plays at our club. I asked him if he thought that what I was doing could prove beneficial. He said that he thought that it could. Has anyone tried this? Any members who have a pitching background who have thoughts about this approach?

[stotty]

I am not sure what you mean buy a livelier arm? Do you mean in terms of looseness? A player I thought had a very loose arm was Henri Leconte. Most top players just seem to have a relaxed arm...naturally relaxed. I think if you to make your arm excessively loose balls are likely to end up in the stadium.

Stotty

[ralph]

My point is if professional pitchers can increase the speed of their pitches throwing long toss and throwing a heavy ball can servers also increase their serve speed by doing the same exercises. Serving and throwing seem to have much in common. As I have gotten older I know that I have lost about 10 mph on my serve using basically the same service motion. I guess I am trying to think outside box to get back a bit of speed on my serve. The ex pro pitcher I spoke told me it's worth the try.

[don_budge]

Recently I have playing around with trying to make my arm more lively. I have going over to my local high school with baseballs and throwing long toss the way I have seen pitchers do as they warm up at pro games. I have also alternated the long toss with throwing a heavy ball. I spoke to an ex pro pitcher who has recently gotten involved with tennis and plays at our club. I asked him if he thought that what I was doing could prove beneficial. He said that he thought that it could. Has anyone tried this? Any members who have a pitching background who have thoughts about this approach?

I think its a great idea but be careful not to injure your arm. I have found too, that as I get older I become more conscious of my physical conditioning. Do some other exercises to condition the overall state of your body. This will be perfect for working on the throwing motion as well. Pitchers also do interval training in the outfield as well...at least they used to. 75 meter dash and so forth. At our age it isn't much of a dash but I have found it to be more beneficial than any kind of distance running. Perfect strides at 75 percent for 75 meters. Ten times a day.

I used to pitch...right handed. I play tennis left handed. Ralph...just curious. Where is your local high school?

[ralph]

Don, Thanks for the comment and advice. Additionally, I do other exercises to strengthen my shoulder. I have also tried Mark Kovacs approach emphasizing some stretches and large muscle development. The school close to me is in the southwest suburbs of Chicago.

[faultsnaces]

I'm not an exercise physiologist, but I'm happy to play one here....

Over the years, I've done a lot of reading and self-experimentation on improving speed for a number of pursuits. (In the distant past, I was a high-level triathlete, swimmer and cyclist.) In short, the exercise physiology community knows more about what doesn't work for improving speed than what does.

Improving raw strength of muscles does little to nothing to improve speed, and has occasionally been shown to impair speed; the conclusion drawn has been that speed requires sufficient strength, but is largely a neuro function - achieving sufficient muscle activation.

Workouts that have been shown to improve speed are towed activities: the player is asked to try to keep the muscle (group) under load as an outside force reduces the load (e.g.: sprinter is towed down the track but is tasked with trying to make the towrope go slack). And the opposite: player is loaded with a drag device and asked to deliver a maximal sprint performance (e.g.: sprinter is equipped with a parachute and asked to run a maximal 100 yd dash). These activities are alternated with recovery (no load, no tow) intervals. The research on this is actually quite solid, and as far as I can find, this is the only form of exercise that has been conclusively shown to improve speed. If you read through all the literature on this, you find that these two basic modes (tow and load, both under maximal effort) have been applied for all sorts of activities / movements / muscle groups with great success.

So applying the above to the original question: throwing a weighted ball is a great exercise, provided two things: 1) the throwing action is a close approximation to the actual activity; and 2) the throwing exercise is done at a maximal exertion, trying to throw for maximal distance / pace. The weighted throws should be alternated with unloaded (light weight) throws that attempt to achieve the same goal. Given the strong neuro component, speed training is very movement-specific, and additionally requires acute mental focus during training to derive the training benefit (maximal efforts are required).

In my own case, I have found huge success improving racket head speed by working with a racket weighted up to 390 SW. Yes, it was super heavy to begin with - very challenging to hit with for more than 5 minutes. But after a few months of intermittent workouts, I can play with this racket as if it's down at my usual 320 SW - and I have huge improvement in pace & spin with the 320 SW racket. It's not easy to properly configure a heavy racket like this - can't just lead it up, as you have to get the balance right to make it come around the same way as the lighter racket - but it's been a great experiment / experience. The heavy racket also greatly cleaned up my strokes: I can't wrist this racket around, it has to be guided, so strokes are far more acceleration and momentum oriented.

Again, I'm not an exercise physiologist, so take the above with the typical caution due on the internet.

-frank

[ralph]

Frank,
Please add some details about how you weighted your racquet. Concerning throwing a weighted ball and throwing long toss, I did increase my throwing distance by about 15 yards. I have not checked yet to see if my serve speed has increased yet. Thanks for your input.

[faultsnaces]

Ralph, I would tell you if I could. I experimented with lead tape a bit myself, but quickly discovered that you can't just keep the balance the same as you increase the swing weight; there's some non-obvious relationship between these parameters. The torso-arm-racket system is a complex multi-link system; at some point in your stroke, your hand decelerates a bit - or accelerates less perhaps - and the racket head starts to come around. The balance of the racket is crucial in controlling the point in your swing where this happens, and thus has a large effect on your ability to accurately and precisely control the contact point. Going to a heavy SW really emphasizes this relationship, as the racket becomes far too heavy to be controlled by wristing it around; the heavy SW really teaches the need to set the racket in motion and guide it rather than control it.

I couldn't find the right weight distribution to make the racket at all playable, so I went to Roman at RPNY; he did the customization for me and it was virtually perfect on the first try. (He told me that 390 is pretty much as high as I can go with my current rackets - Head Graphene Prestige - as beyond that the racket can't be configured to play decently.) If you talk to him, tell him Frank with the super heavy Head sent you....

(Beware: if you do experiment with the heavy SW, LISTEN to your body! A lightweight racket hitting late can give you a bit of tennis elbow &c., but tennis elbow is very minor compared to the damage you can inflict on your wrist and shoulder if you try to force a heavy racket around! Start very easy, easy hitting for a short period; only go harder / longer as you feel comfortable.)

-frank