We get a lot of questions on Twitter, YouTube, and in our gym about the differences between weighted baseballs and PlyoCare balls. Considering that many pitching coaches use TAP Balls or PlyoCare balls and refer to them as “weighted balls,” it’s pretty clear that there is an opportunity to be confused. To us, it’s very obvious what the differences are and why we developed two separate lines of products that appear to be similar, but we’ve never detailed exactly why they’re so unique. Let’s rectify that! Weighted Baseballs are for Velocity Development Our line of Driveline Elite Weighted Baseballs were developed because we were unsatisfied with the existing products on the market, and specific weights kept going in and out of stock, something that we couldn’t control. We’ve been writing about weighted baseball training for years on the site, and most of the work revolved around 3 oz – 11 oz weighted baseballs, even though we used 2-6 lb plyometric balls on a regular basis for arm care exercises. Weighted baseballs are not meant to have a conscious mechanical component to them. They exist almost exclusively to drive arm strength, arm speed, and velocity generation – that’s it. Yes, mechanical changes will come about by using overload/underload implements, including these weighted baseballs, but we do not use them in constraint drills or anything but 100% maximum effort throws, usually in run-and-guns (though we do use them sometimes for flat ground command work, a post that’s reserved for another day). There is no component of using weighted baseballs where you’re thinking about anything but throwing the ball directly through the net in front of you. We radar these throws fairly often to complete ballistic profiles on our pitchers, […]
↧
