How do we increase someone’s throwing speed in a safe fashion?

It’s a combination of technical refinement, physical conditioning and a few special drills. One of these special drills is the long toss.

Two fielders play “throw and catch” with each other starting close to each other before slowly working their way apart.

Stretching out phase

The fielders only increase the distance of the throw when their arms tell them that they are ready to move.

Good throwers learn to “listen to their arms” rather than hurling the ball until an injury starts to occur.

The two fielders throw the ball on an arc, or loop, as they work their way apart from each other. The fielders are not throwing hard; they are throwing in a “loose and easy” fashion even though they are throwing the ball a good distance.

This is called the stretching out phase: The fielders move apart until they feel that they are at their “loose and easy” maximum distance.

Pulldown or strengthening phase

At this point fielders then start to throw “flat” on their way back in. This stage is really testing out the capacity of the arm.

This is where sparks start to fly off the back of the ball!

After six pulldown throws they have moved from boundary to inner ring territory and with practice, can throw perfectly flat from 30 yards (27.43m) into each other’s catching mits.

The Alan Jaeger video

Have a look at this awesome video of baseball pitchers, yes, pitchers undertaking the drill.

Note how Alan Jaeger uses tubing in his warming up to throw programme (rather than throwing to warm up) ahead of actually letting the ball go in anger.

This process is based on sound scientific research and monitoring.

Surgical tubing exercises are brilliant. They are one of the best habits that all aspiring Jonty Rhodes should develop ahead of throwing based work.

Notice that the fielders start slow and easy as they work their way back to 360 feet (or 110 meters) in the stretching out phase of the drill.

Once the throwers have reached their easy throwing limit they then start throwing flat in the pulldown phase as they move back together.

Alan Jaeger has established that someone who can throw an “arc” ball to his mate 110 metres away has the strength in both his arm and his throwing action to deliver a flat ball over 18.44 metres at 97mph!

Now that’s a decent lick!

Our own long toss drill

2016 was the start of the Millfield throwing programme which included our version of the long toss drill.

Some of the U14 players were “arcing” 65 metre throws with relative ease by the end of the summer term.

We are now seeing throwing speeds in this group of 73 to 75mph. This is pretty impressive in players so young.

Cricketers can presently only dream about throwing at baseball velocities. Maybe with a bit more long toss practice we will see cricket fielders of the future running out batters with 90mph+ throws.

Now that would represent massive progress within our game: Possibly the biggest gain net gain ever seen in the history of cricket!

The biggest bonus is that the drill takes no more than 10 minutes from start to finish and can be done independently by teammates around a squad net practice. How cool is that!

Give it a go with a friend for a few weeks and see how your throw picks up velocity as well as your arm becoming increasingly robust and strong.