The offseason is a time where athletes utilize their training to improve upon the abilities they already possess. Whether the goal is to throw harder, get faster or stronger, or gain weight, in order to accomplish these, the athlete must be healthy. For one of our athletes Rafi White, he came into the offseason a little banged up coming off his summer season.

In September at the beginning of the offseason we talked about a few goals that he would like to achieve. Obviously gaining throwing velocity was the main one. However, as a 15 year old sophomore, there were a few other things we needed to address before that was possible.

With his body weight sitting at 171 lbs, and an arm care score of 81%, those were the main two things we set out to address early on in the offseason. When creating Rafi’s plan, we decided to put off throwing a bit longer than most of the other athletes so we could focus that much more on nutrition and weight training. This was a crucial moment for him and required a lot of faith and trust in the program to get him where he wanted to be. Instead of looking for 1 drill that was going to make him potentially throw harder, we took a route that was going to solve the crux of his arm pain issues and ultimately get him to throw harder and without pain.

From the beginning of September, to the holiday break in December which is about the halfway point in the offseason, we saw Rafi’s body weight rise from 171 lbs all the way to 183 lbs, and his arm care score rose from an 81%, to 93%. During this time, his main focus was on his nutrition and weight training while going through his volume build of throwing. In addition to his body weight and arm care scores going up, we saw a 6% increase in his power output, and a 24% increase in his force output which was monitored by our force plate testing!

After a deload during that holiday break he began to ramp up some intensity. We went through a modified pulldown progression before working to the mound. His training during this time transitioned more into a power oriented structure to continue getting his body acclimated to moving faster. He followed this progression throughout January and February, and when March rolled around, it allowed for him to have a few weeks where he could expose himself to live outings prior to the season.

At this point, we had seen his body weight rise to 187 lbs, and his arm care score had risen as high as 100%! Additionally, we saw another 5% increase in his power output, as well as another 11% increase in his force output! These massive gains are a true testament to how much work and effort Rafi put into each day, week, and month of his offseason.

Setting himself up for success, he was ready to start competition. His first test was a PBR showcase in the first week of March which culminated with him hitting a PR of 85 mph on the mound on his last pitch! As someone who has had a chance to work with Rafi closely for several years at this point, I couldn’t have been more excited and happy for him in this moment!

Rafi’s story is a great example of an athlete who reaped enormous benefits from putting in a ton of offseason work the right way. We set out several goals at the beginning of the offseason, and selected an optimal approach to achieve them all.

The best part of his story is that we were able to take a young athlete who was experiencing pain, eliminated that, and then was able to experience large growth at the same time!

Our goal at VeloU is to create as many stories similar to Rafi’s to help as many young athletes maximize their potential in a healthy manner!

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