The offseason
During the season there is no time to change anything. You are just trying to get through the next start. The months after the last game are the only stretch of the year where a pitcher can rest the arm, build the body and rebuild the delivery, and most of them waste it by either doing nothing or throwing too hard too soon.
Step one
Pitch Smart, from MLB and USA Baseball, recommends at least four months off from throwing every year, with two to three of those months in a row. Most young pitchers never get close because fall ball runs straight into winter showcases. Time off is not lost time. It is when the arm recovers from everything the season asked of it.
Step two
Rest from throwing is not rest from training. This is the window for strength, mobility and the movement problems that showed up during the season. A pitcher who could not get into a good position in May usually still cannot in November, and the fix is in the weight room and on the table rather than on the mound.
Step three
When throwing starts again it should build in phases: easy catch play, then distance, then intent, then the mound, then live hitters. Each phase earns the next. Every PPL athlete is on a phase based throwing program rather than a fixed calendar, so if the arm is not ready to move on, they do not move on.
How we write it
We start the offseason with a movement assessment from a physical therapist and an assessment bullpen on Trackman and high speed video. That tells us what to build, what to fix and how fast to ramp. The program lives in the PPL app with a video for every drill, so it works whether your athlete trains in our building or from home on PPL Remote.
Questions parents ask
Pitch Smart recommends at least four months off from throwing every year, with two to three of those months taken in a row. Many young pitchers get far less because their seasons overlap, which is one of the most common things we change.
Once the arm has had real time off and the strength and movement work is underway. The start date matters less than how throwing comes back: easy catch play first, then building in phases toward the mound, without skipping steps.
Some of it is fine, but stacking every season back to back is how pitchers end up with no time off at all. We help families look at the whole year and decide where the rest goes before the calendar decides for them.
The offseason is when most real velocity gains are built, because it is the only time a pitcher can get stronger and change how they move without a game every few days. The gains come from the body and the delivery, not from throwing harder sooner.
Yes. PPL Remote gives athletes anywhere the same phase based program, with every drill on video in the app and a coach reviewing their throwing film.
The free assessment shows where your athlete is right now, so the offseason is built around what they actually need instead of what everybody else is doing.
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