No, the only way to make your arm go faster is to throw. Throwing for distance requires faster arm speed. Throw for distance.

i dont see how your arm will get faster without some sort of load or resistance. I mean if you've never thrown hard before you will gain natural arm strength just like if you've never jumped before you will start to jump higher. I just don't understand why you can improve the explosiveness of other muscles in your body through plyometrics and resistance, but you can't with your arm? why are those muscles different?

Throwing is a very complex action and involves the interplay of a lot of muscles. Strengthening individual muscles, especially arm muscles has limited effect. On the other hand, the faster you throw a baseball the more load you put on your arm, so throwing with max effort tends to build up your arm.

yea but eventually you will hit a max where your body will adapt to the load and no more progress will be made.

I already do leg presses, squats, power cleans, and rotational and core exercises to get my body to be more explosive. I was just wondering if there was anyting that can be done for the arm too besides long toss and throwing hard. Because i try to throw 100%+ everytime I throw a bullpen or longtoss.

Roy Hobbs you have a PM

Technique + protein

Two more things.. a solid plyometric program and band work. The arm can go as fast as it can stop, and band work stabilizes the shoulder thereby helping the arm to decelerate.

Want to know WHAT makes you throw with more velocity?

Ask and ye shall find!

Read this

How does Tim do it?!

I guess what struck me the most in the video was how far his right foot is off the rubber when he releases the ball. That's a mile or two an hour more on his fastball.

Strengthening your arm makes you pitch faster? Really?

While many things Lincecum does are worth emulating, most pitchers will get in trouble if they try to "be like Tim". Lincecum has an incredibly long stride which is good for him because he also has the flexibility to get his hips around despite the long stride. Many pitchers would lock up their hips with such a long stride. Long strides tend to be good for velocity but there's a limit for each pitcher.

Delaying his arm so long adds both deception and velocity to his pitches. Although many pitchers could benefit from delaying the arm to a degree, very few if any have the fast twitch fibers to delay it as long as Lincecum does and would potentially put their arm at risk and throw their timing off if they were to delay as long as Lincecum does.

I am curious where Mdon is right now....he posted this in August. What have you done and where are you now as far as improvements?

As far as Nhball's questions, explosive, core workouts improve the body’s capability to throw harder, LT improves arm speed, bands/similar workouts improve shoulder stability and stamina.

The other key issue is mechanics and from what I have seen with my son is that there are tremendous gains in velocity with getting mechanics in order from proper glove side positioning, and core/body loading around footstrike (which Lincecome does better than anyone).

You can also get into over/under load training (ie weighted/underweighted balls), but I think the core and mechanics issues need to be addressed as well as a LT program to develop "arm strength" (which is really a misnomer) first.

BOF,

Quick update on my situation:

I've been working on core exercises and band training 3 days/week.

For the last 5 weeks I've been working with a Pitching Coach. To this point, we've concentrated almost solely on mechanics. Based on correcting my mechanics alone he see's opportunity to increase velocity considerably. We've done some video analysis and I'm now incorporating the changes into my delivery. We're working on lengthening my stride to approximate my height and focusing on keeping everything in alignment towards the plate.

I'm very encouraged how things are progressing and hope to post updates periodically.

Great stuff, keep working hard!

Also remember in your workouts...legs, legs, legs, they are the key.

Good luck!

Just a quick update on my velocity progress.

In August, my velocity was 73-75. Continuing to work on core training and long toss program, my velocity increased slightly to 76 on October 24.

Since early November, I've been working with a Pitching coach. We've worked primarily on my mechanics in conjunction with core training, band exercises and bullpens. On December 15th, my velocity reached 80. I think it's important to note that the velocity increase I've achieved so far has a great deal to do with correcting my mechanics. While strengthening and conditioning play a major role in increasing velocity you can't overlook proper mechanics.

My goal was to reach 80 by the start of my HS Junior season so things are going as planned. I'll continue working hard the next few months until the start of the season and post updates periodically.

Sounds like you are doing all the right things, MDdon. Big jumps in velocity can definitely happen between the sophomore and junior seasons, and to a lesser degree the junior and senior seasons. Bum, Jr. gained 8 MPH so-jr and 3 MPH jr-sr. He gained 2 MPH between sr-1st year of college.