With most high school and college fall seasons coming to an end and the spring season starting up in 3-4 months, one of the biggest questions we get as coaches and trainers is “Should I shut down?” Many times, you’ll have coaches give pretty black and white answers to a question with a lot of grey area. You’ll hear that you absolutely need to shut down or you should never shut down. In some cases, both of those answers are true, but in the vast majority of cases it’s somewhere in the middle. If it were as simple as shutting down or not shutting down to keep your arm healthy, there would never be injuries. A coach’s job is to look at each athlete and assess their needs and main goals for the winter offseason. Odds are these goals won’t be obtained by completely shutting down and trying to ramp back up before the season starts up again. Throughout my time spent in college baseball and the development sector, the winter off-season can completely flip a player’s career around. I’ve seen it time and time again with pitchers who struggled in the fall but took a realistic look at their current abilities and came back in the spring to have a huge role on the pitching staff. If you are questioning what role you have this upcoming spring, simple answer to your question of “Should I shut down for the winter?” will be no.
Enter Connected Performance athlete, Nick Foray. One of my former teammates that became one of my players when I coached at Lander. From 2019 to 2021, he had pitched six games with a total of 7.2 innings logged. He was a big lefty with a ton of room to grow. Over the Summer of 2021 he became a lot stronger and in turned gained weight to get into the 200 lb range. He came back in the Fall last season in the mid 80s range topping at 87. Had a decent fall that year, enough to have him in consideration to be a weekend or weekday starter but nothing solidified. As soon as our fall season ended in mid November, we met with the pitching staff and decided to plan out their winter off-season based on their goals for the spring. Nick wanted to be a weekend starter. So we decided on a deload week during Thanksgiving and getting back into throwing immediately would be his best option. We referred him to Connected Performance at the time to put him on a comprehensive plan along with putting him in contact with a few other CP athletes who were already training in the area. After the assessment it was determined that Nick’s main focus that winter would be his mobility specifically improving his back bridge and upper half mobility which would allow him to use his upper half in a more efficient manner. Combining the improved upper half mobility with constraint long toss, Nick saw massive gains that completely changed his role. He came back to campus in the spring sitting upper 80s and solidified himself as a huge arm for the pitching staff.
Here is Nick’s back bridge in his original assessment compared to returning to campus just one month later:
Click the link for his before comparison here
Click the link for his after comparison here
Originally that Spring Nick started out as a back end bullpen arm for the first couple weeks, using him in high leverage situations as well as closing out games. He eventually flipped into a starting role, and a couple weeks into starting he became the Friday night starter and did not
look back. He ran his fastball up to 91 consistently late in the season and was throwing better than he ever has. Finishing off the season with 21 innings pitched while only giving up 1 earned run. He ended up playing for the Savannah Bananas this past Summer finishing with a 1.64 ERA and 16 Ks over 11 innings. Pretty solid for a guy who came into the season with 7.2 innings over the past 3 years. The short winter offseason flipped the direction his season was going in.
So is shutting down right for me? Here are 3 things to consider:
If you're not a consistent pitcher for your team and want to be one of the top performers, you shouldn't shut down. That's like telling a sprinter they need to run faster but tell them not to run for a few months. If you're consistently ahead of your peers you can afford some time off if done correctly. Before shutting down be sure that you've gone back to "baseline." When we refer to the term baseline, we mean completing a recovery day and a moderate intensity day after your latest high intensity outing. This will allow your tissue to be properly recovered for your time off.
If you were a guy who tossed 100+ innings between college and summer: 1. Congratulations, 2. You deserve some time off. If you can withstand that workload over a 6+ month period and not get hurt then you have little mechanical deficiencies to address. Keep doing what you're doing. An active shut down may be the best move for you. Remain throwing in different variations but no high intensity/volume days. However, if you've barely seen the field, it's time to play some catch up. There's a reason you're not out there. Our suggestion would be to address those issues holding you back and work towards where you need to be.
This ties into your performance. If you're not efficient enough to withstand an entire season you may be thinking save my bullets, right? Unfortunately this will do you more harm than good. If you properly address your inefficiencies both physically and mechanically while others shut down you'll be able to withstand a much larger workload for your season. With that, chances are you're probably going to pick up some velocity, as well.
If you are looking for some guidance for this winter offseason, schedule a call with one of our trainers or email training@connected-performance.com and we can lead you in the right direction for this upcoming offseason.