should a 16 year old player be using overweight underweight training and what will it do for him?

by John
(San Francisco)

John asked: My nephew is trying to get back into baseball after being out of it for 7 years.

He has trained for about two years now in preparation to get onto his high school team this year. He is training as an Infielder, specificaly second base.

We think he throws in the 60's- 70's but we have not used a radar gun. About a year ago he used a baseball with a radar gun in it and it said he was throwing 45- 50 mph.

Since then we have noticed he has thrown much harder. To help him velocity wise, he uses 10 throws with a tennis ball, ten with a softball, and 10 with a reg. baseball for about 3- 4 rounds.

Should he keep this up and if so what are the benefits of this type of training?


Rick answered: John, thank you for your question.

I would recommend that you do a Google Search for, overweight underweight training for baseball.

You will find numerous articles and studies as it pertains to this type of program.

There are some very credible orthopedic doctors who have researched this and it would be beneficial to see what they have determined thus far.

I am by no means an expert in this area. I tend to lean on improving throwing mechanics as a means to improving velocity. Through it all, no matter what path you take, you want to increase velocity and accuracy. One without the other is incomplete. They need to go hand in hand.

Yours in baseball,

Rick