Long toss: What's most important -- distance or frequency?

You already know that as a pitcher you generally have to throw every day in order to get better. There's really just no other significant way to develop the arm stamina and durability that's needed of today's pitchers. It also will enable you to develop that most-talked about attribute of pitching -- velocity.

Most pitchers, however, don't throw enough -- even when they think they are throwing enough.

What's "enough"?

For starters, it's daily and for at least 10 minutes.

In the Chicago Cubs organization where I pitched professionally, we long tossed daily, regardless of the other types of throwing that we might have done on a particular day. So even if we had a bullpen to throw, we'd long toss beforehand. If we were warming up to pitch in a game, we'd use a long toss to get loose.

The distances of the long tossing varied, of course. But generally, our daily routine consisted of a 10 minute long toss throwing program to a minimum distance of 120 feet. That's 3 min. at 60 ft.; 3 min. at 90 ft.; 3 min. at 120 ft.; and 1 min. back at 60 ft. again, to work on spins. A couple times a week, we'd push the distance beyond 120 feet.

Throwing at these distances was individual. My throwing partner and I usually would back it up to distances of about 300 feet. Other pitchers kept it in closer at the 250-foot range. Ultimately though, it didn't matter how "far" we threw. What mattered most was that we were throwing every day. 

In my opinion, "frequency" of throwing (it should be daily) is far more important than the actual "distance" of your throwing. Don't get hung up on "how far" you should throw. Just throw. Just throw. Just throw!

(Tomorrow, I'll post a weekly long toss and bullpen routine for starting pitchers that's used by a current college pitcher at Indiana State University.)