Why Long Toss Ruins Pitching Mechanics And Increases Arm Injuries

Long toss does not improve pitching velocity, arm strength or reduce the risk of arm injuries. Long toss instead encourages pitchers to waste time on an activity that clearly has no real benefit to improving pitching performance.

The video above demonstrates and compares four critical positions that a pitcher must get his body into if he expects to maximize his velocity and control while reducing the risk of injury. Long toss does not allow a pitcher to get into these important positions because the pitcher must release the ball in an upward trajectory…an action that a pitcher never does while pitching from the mound.

Long toss actually encourages pitchers to use their arm more while getting very little energy of the throw from their body. Thus long toss is clearly a more stressful way of throwing that can only encourage poor throwing mechanics for pitchers while increasing the risk of injury.

This is completely counter to what baseball professional baseball believes because baseball coaches are not reading the latest sports science research…that proves why pitching velocity must come from the body and not the arm.

On January 25, 2009 I spoke at the 27th annual American Sports Medicine Institutes Course On Baseball Injuries. My topic was about why long toss had no benefit to pitching, why it did not improve arm strength or pitching velocity but actually adds more stress to the throwing arm while encouraging pitchers to develop poor throwing mechanics.

Why Ranger’s President Nolan Ryan Should Rethink His Beliefs About The Value Of Long Toss

In a recent article in Baseball America magazine http://tinyurl.com/cjxpvz Texas Ranger’s President Nolan Ryan is advising that his pitchers increase their long toss distances in order to build more arm strength and reduce their risk of injury.

Unfortunately Nolan Ryan also believes that long toss has benefits for pitching when it is quite clear it has none.

I would suggest to Nolan Ryan that he will actually be making things worse for all Ranger’s pitchers by spending time doing more or longer distance long toss. Long toss can only reduce a pitcher’s ability to pitch more with better mechanics and less risk of injury.

I would suggest to Nolan Ryan that he advise Rangers’ pitchers to do more mound pitching which will improve pitching mechanics as well as command of all their pitches…which will help improve their overall performance while reducing the risk of arm injuries.

By pitching more from the mound, allowing the body to do the work not the arm, using a higher volume of pitches than is normally recommended, pitchers will be able to increaase their body’s ability to stay more fit to pitch thus reducing their overall risk of injury.