A Great Visit From a Pitching Pioneer

Have you ever wondered where our modern-day weighted ball training concepts come from? 

Weighted ball training was heavily researched in the 1990s and early 2000s by Coop DeRenne, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.  A list of his research publications can be found here.  Prior to empirical research, legends in throwing training such as Mike Marshall and Tom House integrated weighted ball training in their programs as a method to increase arm strength and sequential coordination.  

Out of all people in the baseball industry, no one has contributed to more advancement regarding throwing training than Tom House.  Every training concept we see today that has been popularized by current industry leaders has spawned from Tom’s work.  Tom is a former MLB pitcher and MLB pitching coach who later became the pitching coach at USC which graduated some of the best pitchers in MLB’s draft class during his time.  He is a credentialed Ph.D. in Sports Psychology and has developed a comprehensive development plan through the National Pitching Association. 

Our resident Director of Pitching Performance, Jordan Oseguera was an athlete for Tom and later became a coaching apprentice for him, collecting 3D data and a host of physiologic tests on elite-level athletes.  Although not published, Tom House is arguably the only person in the field of biomechanics to have a database of 3D motion capture on Cy Young Winners, essentially the best pitchers to ever play the game.

Tom had come on our podcast to discuss some historical elements in his coaching background, key performance indicators, training theory, and a vision to intertwine our ArmCare.com platform with his current technology, Mustard, a single camera motion capture application that assesses a pitcher’s delivery and compares him or her to existing artificial intelligence that had been derived from Tom’s 3D motion capture data and coaching principles. 

In the accompanying blog, we dive into a key training concept, called weighted ball holds that were examined with Jordan at the helm in professional baseball with the Los Angeles Angels. 

Weighted ball holds were a vision that came to life through Tom in his work with tennis players, as he had diversified his offering to other overhand sports and saw the deceleration strength benefits of not letting go of the racquet.  Through this breakthrough, strength gains have occurred at a faster rate in throwing athletes and Jordan breaks down what he had seen in remediating deficiencies in implementing the weighted ball hold training strategy in this week’s blog.  

With ArmCare.com, we now have a technology to feasibly evaluate athletes' strength profiles as they go through weighted ball programs and can be more precise in identifying what ball weights lead to the greatest strength returns and performance. 

Some athletes need light balls for arm speed, others heavy balls for arm strength, yet the spectrum between extremes in ball weight needs to be further evaluated.  Trust the ArmCare App to ensure your athletes are conditioned well for the demands of velocity enhancement. 

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Have a great week!

Ryan