What is the amount of time off from baseball that you recommend for a youth athlete?

What is the amount of time off from baseball that you recommend for a youth athlete?

There is a large body of evidence that confirms that taking the necessary amount of time off from overhead throwing is imperative to the long-term development of youth athletes for a multitude of different reasons. In reviewing survey and comparisons of both healthy and injured populations of youth athletes, it is clear that those who throw year-round are much more susceptible to higher rates of injury, burn-out, and fatigue. For this reason, we feel that a good rule of thumb for youth athletes is to take 3-4 months off from overhead throwing per calendar year.

By taking the requisite amount of time off from baseball to play a different sport, it has been found that youth athletes can learn flexible movement solutions and develop skills in different social settings to lead to further growth. From a general adaptation perspective, taking the requisite time off for recovery is absolutely necessary for athletes to reach higher levels of performance and enters level of supercompensation.

For more specific recommendations, we highly encourage you to look at the MLB PitchSmart guidelines. Based on the work of several different studies looking at usage rates and their association with injury, complying with MLB PitchSmart guidelines is a great way to manage athlete workload and build out a healthy long-term approach to training youth athletes.

All of our youth programs are designed to incorporate a healthy and safe protocol to help youth athletes develop efficient movement patterns organically while having fun in the process. Please visit our youth training FAQ or reach out to us via email at support@drivelinebaseball.com for more information.

    • Related Articles

    • Can a youth athlete benefit from throwing weighted balls?

      While it is highly probable that a youth athlete could experience some performance gains by throwing weighted balls, we do not program them into a training program for youth athletes under 14 years old for a few of reasons. Firstly, because there is ...

    • Do you recommend playing other sports throughout the calendar year?

      This is a topic that we have touched upon both the past and present, as the common narrative regarding sport specialization is probably a bit misleading in terms of what evidence is presented against specialization. The issue at hand is that better ...

    • Is there a minimum age that you recommend starting up with Driveline's program?

      We recommend athletes be at least 9 years old before starting up a specific throwing program such as the ones provided within Hacking the Kinetic Chain Youth or Online Baseball Development. At 9 years old, we believe that the body has developed the ...

    • Getting started with PULSE - Athlete

      Welcome to the Driveline Family via the PULSE Workload Management Sensor! As an athlete, this Get Started Guide is here to take you step by step to getting your account set up, sensor connected, and collecting throw data. Setting up your account ...

    • Can I delete throws or data from an athlete account?

      There are two ways to delete throwing data that is uploaded to an athlete’s account.  First, you can go to the PULSE Throw app home dashboard and scroll to the bottom of the page to find the Throwing Data Graph. Click on a single throw from the graph ...