Now's the time of year when pitchers are starting to wear out and yet they still want to practice. Your challenge is how to keep them sharp without wearing them out or hurting their arm. Instead of having your pitchers throw their regular workout, try this modified workout that still improves your pitcher without wearing her out or hurting her arm.

Pitchers should be getting better from practice and not worse and one thing that can make a pitcher worse is either injury or fatigue. While pitchers don't try to injure or fatigue themselves in practice they often accomplish it because they only know one way, one speed, and one length to practice no matter how sore or tired they are. Well, a tired or sore pitcher might need to practice to either improve a specific issue she's having right then, or to keep up her confidence, but she doesn't need to further tire or hurt herself in the process.

So, how can she do both - practice and rest? Simple - limit the length and velocity of the practice by shortening the time of her practice, the distance of her pitching and the velocity. So, after she warms up, she should throw half-distance at half-speed for no more than 30 pitches. Then move back to 3/4 distance and throw 3/4 speed for no more than 30 pitches. That's a max of 60 pitches WITHOUT counting her warm-up pitches where pitchers can often throw a TON of needless pitches. 60 pitches is enough to really help a pitcher fix whatever problem she's having and get in a good workout without hurting or tiring her arm.

So try this workout whenever your pitchers are too tired or too sore or both:

1. Warmup pitching no more than 20-30 pitches
2. Half-pitching distance at half-speed for 30 pitches
3. 3/4 distance at 3/4 speed for 30 pitches
4. Done

That's it! That's 80-90 pitches and while it seems like no practice at all, it's the quantity of pitches that a pitcher will often throw in the course of a game.