Working at a serious baseball academy is giving me the opportunity to run these things through a gauntlet of tests, and I already have high school, college and pro guys lined up as willing participants. Phantom won best in show at the Dallas ABCA convention this past January, so there is a lot of buzz about them in the baseball world right now.

So, If you haven’t heard of Phantom yet, here is what I have in my possession:

• Weighted Full Arm Sleeves
• Weighted Forearm Sleeves
• Weighted Calf Sleeves

From L to R: Full Arm, Forearm, Calf Sleeve

Now, what is a weighted sleeve, and what does it do?

As a strength coach, pitching instructor and pitcher, I like the premise of this product. It is different than other velocity training modalities because of a few factors:

• The weight isn’t overly heavy (1/4 to 1/2 lb max), so throwing mechanics are unlikely to be affected.
• The weight STAYS WITH YOU during follow through, providing an increased muscle stimulus to the decelerating muscles of the throwing arm. This is a big advantage over weighted ball training, which provide only concentric (acceleration) loading of the arm, and no eccentric (deceleration) loading.
• The weights are distributed evenly over the arm, and are centered around the elbow, thus decreasing torque compared to a weighted ball, which would have all the weight at the fingertips.

Throwing is one of the best uses for the weighted full arm and forearm sleeves. The forearm sleeves would be perfect for hitting, and the calf sleeves for any number of lower body sprinting, jumping, plyometric, or baseball mechanics drills using the lower half.  I’m going to be working as well to see what kind of arm care exercises and mechanics drills might be enhanced by a weighted sleeve. Blackburns and scapula stabilization exercises quickly come to mind.

Full arm sleeve (note the author's pasty white arm)

A First Glance

Construction

-All black neoprene construction, with flat-seamed stitching. The stitching looks very sturdy, and overall they look like the will hold up well.  We shall put this to the test…

-Each sleeve has two elastic velcro bands used for tightening.

Fit and Sizing

Prior to trying these on, I took the time to measure my arm. I have big forearms and wide palms, which makes me a little weird with things like this. I size out to be an XL in all three sleeves. The Large forearm sleeve would not even make it past my hands, and the Large full arm sleeve made it halfway up my arm before it became too small.  My arm is sized as follows:

• Hands: 4″ from pinky to index finger
• Forearms: 13″ circumference
• Biceps: 14 3/4 circumference
• Calves: 15 3/4 circumference

You can talk to the people at Phantom about sizing, but from my own fit testing, if your forearms are 12″ or greater, go for XL. The XL forearm and full sleeve were snug but not constrictive. The XL calf sleeve fit perfect as perfect can be.

The Weights

The weights are slid into place in sewn-in pockets on the interior of each sleeve. They are made of a grey rubber which appears to be mixed with some kind of additive, maybe a metal powder, to give it extra mass.  The weight will flex and move with you, which is a good thing.

What Lies Ahead

These sleeves are going to take some serious punishment in our cages and on our mounds here at the BATT Academy in Glen Burnie, MD. There is much more to come on these products, and time will tell whether or not they can deliver on all of the hype. Because the premise behind them is good, my hunch is that they will, but we shall let the results speak for themselves. Stay tuned, as we will have a bunch of videos and write ups, and we will see what kind of velocity increases we can get out of some of our pitchers.

Step 1: Identify The Clutter

Ask yourself these questions:

• What have I been doing?
• Why have I been doing it?
• Have I gotten the results I had been training for?
• How do I currently feel?

This seems really basic and obvious, but you would be surprised how few people actually take the time to examine their daily routines (after all, a routine is by definition minimally variable).  Those who are hungry for new results overhaul their lives when things stop progressing.  As time passes and an athlete gets closer or farther from their season, training methodology must change.  If one never takes time to make sure his goals and training are congruent, then hard work will be in vain – working hard AND SMART is what world-class athletes do.

Step 2: Compare to the Past

• How do I feel compared to when I used to do things differently? Do I feel better or worse?
• Has my body changed in positive ways?
• Have I performed better as a result of new techniques?

Step 3: Test New Variables

Nothing works for everyone, and results vary from person to person.  If you feel more fatigue, aren’t enhancing your performance, or have reached a plateau, then shame on you if you don’t try something new.  Your body will always become more efficient at any given exercise or program over time, resulting in diminishing returns.  Ever see those folks who go to the gym and perform the same routine for years? Of course you have; those are the folks who never get new results.

Even when you are being diligent with a set routine of arm care given to you by a therapist, team, or strength coach, for example, your body will still adapt to it over time.  How do you combat this? You ask? Changing your angle of pull is one of the easiest ways.

Take Blackburns, for example.  The 6 exercise Blackburn series is an incredible routine to increase scapular stability.  Yet, you’ll plateau at these just like any other exercise.  By changing the angle of pull, you can created a new stimulus for your muscles with a very simple tweak.

Y Raise on a Flat Bench

Y Raise on a 45 Degree Bench

Performing Blackburns, for example, at a 45 degree angle will change the muscle recruitment on the rotator cuff when compared with performing them on a flat bench, thus giving your muscles a new stimulus.  More scapular depression is achieved and the rhomboids are more strongly recruited when you use a steeper angle for prone rotator cuff and stabilizer work.  You could use any angle from 0-45, but any higher than that would start getting away from the rotator cuff and the scapula stabilizers that we want to hit using Blackburns.  Simple tweaks like these can be the push you need to get through a plateau and keep making progress.

There are lots of ways to vary your training which I will highlight in more depth in an upcoming article.

Step 4: Throw Out That Which Isn’t Working

I’ll give you an example of a recent change I made using steps 1-4, just on the hunch that it might be holding me back: I had been using 4lb weights for my standing and prone shoulder circuit for the past 2 years now, but I had only moved up to that weight when a friend of mine told me that 4lb was the “healthy pro” standard for his organization.  I was happily using 2lb weights (and throwing harder than I ever had), until he told me that 2lbs was the weight only rehab guys were using for their shoulder work.  So, I graduated to the heavier weight, and never threw as hard again as I did that fall.  Was it the extra 2lbs? I couldn’t say.

So just recently, suffering through a few week bout of dead-arm, I decided to go lighter.  I am plenty strong in my shoulder, with no popping, clicking or instability to speak of (it didn’t used to be that way), so I figured I could maintain that level of strength by changing my rep and weight scheme.

I used to do this:

• (3x/week) 2×12-15 with 4lb

Now I do this:

• (3x/week)  1×5 w/5lb ; 2×15 w/2lb

Why did I do this? The short set of 5 reps with the 5lb weights will make sure I maintain maximal strength, but don’t tire myself out, while the 2 sets of 15 will give me a lower workload while still giving my muscles endurance and therapeutic work.  I never felt fatigued using 4lb weights, but my velocity wasn’t as high as I felt it should be, so I made a choice to change it up and see how it goes, to see if there was something actually holding me back. So far, I still feel strong, stable, bounce back quickly and feel fresh. Cool.

Step 5: Restock Your Shelves With Fresh Methods

If you’re plateaued, fatigued, or underperforming, get some fresh training in your life!  As we have been discussing, you can get new stimuli to your muscles in a variety of ways…

If you’re fatigued, plateaued or underperforming (or suspect you might be):

• Change training volume
• Change weight
• Change both
• Try new variations
• Switch exercises altogether
• Try a week of active rest (if you’ve been going very hard for at least a few weeks)
• Enter a new training phase (more on periodization here)
• Get more sleep
• Re-examine your nutrition

If your performance is increasing:

Keep doing what you’re doing!  But, don’t forget to be introspective about it and be open to new methods because nothing works forever!

In an upcoming article I’ll share with you some easy tweaks for your shoulder work, forearm work and the sleeper stretch.

Weighted Baseball Training: The Theory

Before we take even one step forward, I want everyone to understand one extremely important fact about the weight of a regulation baseball: ITS ARBITRARY.

People get so caught up on believing that throwing a regulation 5oz baseball is the safest, no matter what.  Many say that throwing a weighted ball (heavier than regulation) is going to hurt your arm.  But guess what? Doctors didn’t choose the weight of a regulation baseball back in the 1880s based on it’s impact on the human body, and I think people forget this.  Rather, our bodies just adapt to throwing the 50z ball, because it’s “normal” to our throwing arms.  Anything higher or lower than this normal ball just means stressing the arm in a different, but not necessarily injurious, way.  If baseballs were traditionally 9 ounces, our arms would consider that normal as well.  So, don’t consider a weighted ball evil just because it’s different than what is traditional.  After all, javelin throwers throw a javelin weighing several pounds and don’t suffer more injuries than baseball pitchers.  That said, lets get going…

The Basics

Weighted balls are made anywhere from 6-12 ounces in traditional baseball form, and go even heavier as sand filled mini-medicine balls.  Ron Wolforth, at his Texas Baseball Ranch, uses some of the sand filled balls for drills with his pitchers.

Yet, the protocol for building velocity that is now held as the gold standard appears to be the overweight-underweight throwing program.  This involved throwing a 6oz ball, a regulation 5oz ball, and an underweight 4oz ball in a 2:1 ratio of underweight/overweight to regulation.  This means if you threw 60 pitches in the program one day, you would throw 20 heavy, 20 regulation, and 20 underweight.

Why overweight and underweight? It builds on the theory that your muscles need both strength and speed stimuli to learn to consistently move an object faster.  Throwing the 6oz ball makes the arm move slower (after all, it weighs 20% more), but with more force.  The underweight ball allows the arm to move faster but with less force.  So, combine the two, and your arm gets a combination of strength and speed stimuli.

This overweight/underweight program has shown to be successful in sprinters using hills.  Flat ground is regulation, and uphill and downhill are the novel stimuli.  By making a sprinter go uphill at top speed, he must apply more force to the ground to get where he is going.  He can’t move as fast, but builds strength in the process.  Send that same sprinter at top speed downhill, and his legs are forced to turn over much faster than normal, thus helping increase his stride frequency. Sounds reasonable right?

It is.  A 20% change in stimulus has been said not to be overly stressful on the body, and is optimal for performance.  Who says this and where did they get their data? I’m not sure, so let’s not become convinced just yet…

Are Weighted Balls More Dangerous?

Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to this question.  However, lets go back and think about what we have already discussed on the matter:

1. The traditional 5oz baseball is a bodily stimulus that was chosen for our arms arbitrarily.  Javelins weigh several pounds, and aren’t shown to be more injurious.
2. The body adapts to stress.  Bones become more dense from weight training, and connective tissue becomes thicker and more resilient.  There is no reason to think this phenomenon is not present in baseball throwing.
3. A weighted ball cannot be thrown as hard, so stresses on body tissue MAY not be greater than that of a regulation or underweight ball.  Stress on the arm is a product of weight and arm speed, so a heavier object moving slower MIGHT NOT produce increased force.  Do I have data on this? No, but it’s simple physics.
4. There are no studies out there proving that weighted balls are more dangerous.  It’s unfortunately incredibly hard to nail down exactly the variables at work when dealing with the human body.  If a player tears a ligament throwing a weighted ball, how can we validly infer that it was the weighted ball, and not his poor mechanics COMBINED with the weighted ball that caused it. Or maybe his ligament was already deteriorated to the point where ANY throwing was going to cause the final tear.  It’s difficult to know.

What Can They Do For Me (And What Can’t They)?

They can stimulate your throwing muscles in a new way, there is no doubt about that.  If you squat 100 pounds every day, then suddenly throw 200 pounds on the bar, your body WILL feel a new stimulus and adapt – It’s just the way we work.

Most notably, weighted balls will stimulate the concentric phase of throwing, which is the acceleration phase.  Yet, because the arm is moving slower with a weighted ball, the decelerators will not have to work as hard, and as such will be faced with LESS of a stimulus than a regular ball thrown with more velocity.

What’s the problem with this? Your body needs to have equal strength to both accelerate and decelerate the arm, or any body part for that matter.  Your body will not let you throw your arm out the socket, which is more or less what would happen if it allowed you to throw a ball 90mph without the strength to slow a 90mph down to zero.

This is, however, where the underweight ball tends to shine; because your arm is moving faster than it otherwise would, it has to learn to slow a faster moving arm down in the same amount of time. Yet, I would hypothesize that this action, throwing a lighter ball faster, would be potentially more injurious than a weighted ball, simply because your arm might not know how to deal with the increased speed.  Is there research behind this? Again, no. Strengthening the rotator cuff in a ballistic manner to accompany weighted ball training would be ideal, and maybe allow for more gains from it.

And on the subject of gains…any gains made will take time, and will vary depending on the thrower.  Untrained athletes make the biggest gains in the least time, and highly trained athletes fight for just a few percentage points of increased performance.  This is called (drumroll, please) diminishing returns.  Rest assured, that ANY type of training, weighted ball included, takes time to work.  Expect any gains to take at least 4-8 weeks, if your body makes gains from them at all.  You wouldn’t expect to squat 400 pounds overnight, so don’t expect a magic bullet with this type of training either.

To summarize what overweighted balls can and can’t do for you, based on their fundamental principles:

• CAN provide a strengthening stimulus to the arm in the concentric phase of throwing
• CANNOT provide strengthening in the eccentric (decelerating) phase of throwing
• CAN increase load and stress on soft tissues IF (a big if!) thrown with enough velocity to surpass the total load provided by a regulation baseball
• CAN potentially make your arm more powerful, but slower moving, if not coupled with higher velocity, such as underweight, training.
• CANNOT increase permanent velocity increases overnight

So, hopefully we have now have a decent understanding of what weighted balls can and cannot do for you.  Weighted balls, in theory, have some good application, but also have limitations, mostly in their lack of ability to increase decelerating strength.  Their role in arm injury is anecdotal at best, so it is best to do your homework and use them under proper supervision, if you feel they are appropriate for you.  Individual results vary according to the protocols used, but I know that some swear by them and others swear at them, making it again, a personal choice that should be based on some solid research.

To Throw or Not to Throw? Good Question. Feel free to comment with your thoughts…