Off-Season Baseball Training Plan: 12 Weeks, by Position and Age

This is a 12-week plan for a baseball team that just finished its season. It is written for the coach who has to hand it out in October and find out in January whether anyone did it. Three days a week, 30 to 45 minutes a session, split by position group, tiered for 12U, 14U, and 16U and up. It starts with a real shutdown from throwing, builds the arm back on a schedule instead of a guess, and ends with pitchers throwing a short bullpen at game intent the week before tryouts. The calendar is below; print it or send the link.

If you also run a softball team, the softball version of this plan is built the same way for a different arm.

How the plan is built

Twelve weeks in three blocks. Shut it down. Build it back. Sharpen.

• Recover, weeks 1 to 3. No throwing. None. Players move three times a week, hit off a tee from week 2, and do the mobility and movement work that got skipped all summer. The goal is that every arm on the roster gets a real break and every player stays in the habit of showing up.
• Build, weeks 4 to 9. The return-to-throw progression starts at 45 feet and climbs one step a week. Hitting gets structured. Position work starts. Conditioning goes in, bodyweight and bands first. Pitchers get back on flat ground late in the block and touch a mound only at the end of it.
• Sharpen, weeks 10 to 12. Volume comes down, intent goes up. Game-speed reps, situational work, one short bullpen a week for pitchers, and the transition into pre-season practice.

Every session is 30 to 45 minutes and follows the same shape: a five-minute warm-up, one skill block, one position block, and, from week 4, a conditioning block. Short and frequent beats long and rare at this age. A 90-minute Saturday session that half the roster skips is worth less than three 35-minute sessions most of them finish.

Why the plan starts with no throwing

MLB and USA Baseball's Pitch Smart guidelines recommend that youth and adolescent pitchers take at least four months off from competitive pitching every year, including at least two to three continuous months off from all overhead throwing. That is a longer shutdown than most travel calendars allow, and it is the reason this plan does not pick up a ball for three weeks and does not put a pitcher on a mound until week 9 at the earliest.

Where your team sits on the calendar changes how you use the Recover block. If your last game was in July and you are starting this plan in October, the arms have had their break; run Recover as written. If you finished a fall-ball schedule last weekend, weeks 1 to 3 are the start of the shutdown, not the whole thing. Extend Recover for pitchers and catchers rather than compressing it, and start their throwing progression a few weeks behind the position players. A plan that starts late is fine. A plan that starts throwing early is not the plan.

What changes by age tier

A note on the numbers. Pitch Smart publishes age-based daily pitch maximums and required rest days between outings. Those tables describe game limits, and the bullpen counts in this plan sit far below them on purpose; check the current table on the Pitch Smart site for your age group before the season starts. The throw counts and distances here are conservative for each tier. If a player reports arm pain, the answer is to stop throwing and talk to his parents, not to modify the progression.

Week-by-week calendar

Three sessions per week. Day 1 and Day 3 are skill days, Day 2 is a position-plus-conditioning day. Throwing happens on Day 1 and Day 3 only, and adds Day 2 for 14U and up once long toss goes in. Rest days are on the calendar because they are part of it.

Throw counts are per session and include warm-up throws but not the band circuit. Bullpen pitches sit on top of the day's catch, which is why bullpen days carry the lower throw count. Swing counts are quality swings, not total contact; a player who takes 50 lazy swings did not do the session.

Throwing progression

Every page on this topic mentions long toss. None of them schedule it. Here is the schedule.

Shutdown, weeks 1 to 3. No throwing of any kind. Not catch in the yard, not a pitching lesson, not a showcase. The band circuit and the movement prep are the arm's only work. This is the piece of Pitch Smart that fall calendars quietly delete, and it is the piece this plan refuses to.

Return to throw, weeks 4 to 5. Twenty-five throws at 45 feet in week 4, extending to 60 feet once the arm is loose and the throws are on line. Everything is easy: crow-hop optional, arm slot natural, no radar gun. Week 5 extends to 90 feet at the end of the session for 14U and up. Two throwing days a week, never back to back.

Long toss build, weeks 6 to 9. Distance steps up once a week: 120 feet in week 6, 150 in week 7 for 14U and up, 180 in week 8 for 16U and up. 12U tops out between 90 and 120 feet and adds throws, not distance, from there. The pattern on a long-toss day is out on an arc and back in on a line: extend to the day's max distance over 10 to 15 throws, then pull back in over 8 to 10 throws that stay flat and firm from 90 feet and closer. The extension is where the count is; the pull-down is where the intent is. 14U gets one long-toss day a week from week 6, 16U and up two from week 9. Long toss is the outfielder's conditioning as much as the pitcher's.

Bullpen intro, weeks 8 to 12, pitchers only. 16U and up throw their first flat-ground bullpen in week 8: 15 pitches, fastballs only, at 60 to 70 percent effort. 14U and up get on a mound in week 9 for 15 to 20 pitches, still fastballs. From week 10, one bullpen a week of 20 to 25 pitches, adding the change-up in week 11 and, for 16U and up only, a breaking ball. Week 12 is 25 to 30 pitches at game intent, which is the whole point of the block: a pitcher arrives at tryouts having thrown a real bullpen the week before. 12U pitchers stay on flat ground the whole way and throw fastball and change-up only, which follows Pitch Smart's guidance for younger pitchers to develop those two pitches first.

Band circuit, every throwing day. Five minutes before the first throw: external and internal rotation, scap retraction, forward and reverse flies, ten to fifteen reps each with a light band. This is the arm's warm-up and it is not optional. It is also not a strength program, and this plan does not claim it does anything beyond getting a player ready to throw.

Two more rules that fit inside this plan. Pitch Smart's rest-day tables mean a youth pitcher never pitches on consecutive days, so bullpens here are at least two days apart, always. And a player who is pitching this off-season does not also catch. If your best catcher is also your best arm, he picks one for these twelve weeks.

Position-specific work

The position block starts in week 4 and runs 10 to 15 minutes. Split the roster into these groups and give each a short card.

Pitchers

Recover block is the band circuit and lower-half work: split squats, single-leg bridges, hip mobility. Nothing off a mound and nothing overhand. From week 4, pitchers run the same return-to-throw progression as everyone else with one addition: a two-minute towel drill or dry-mechanics set at the end of the catch, working the delivery without a ball. Flat-ground work starts in week 8 for 16U and up, the mound in week 9 for 14U and up, and the Sharpen block is one bullpen a week that climbs from 20 to 30 pitches. Write down the pitch count on every bullpen. Not because the number is impressive, but because the number is the plan. This page does not promise velocity and neither should you; the promise is that a pitcher arrives at tryouts with his arm built up on a schedule and his pitches where he left them.

Catchers

Receiving from week 4: a partner front-tossing to the glove side, 30 to 40 catches, working the low strike. Blocking from week 6: 15 to 20 reps, on a mat, tennis or soft balls first, then baseballs in Sharpen. Throwing to second is a rep count in Build, 8 to 10 throws at the end of the catch, and a timed drill only in Sharpen; the time is for his own reference, not a number you post. Catchers throw more than anyone on the field once the season starts, so keep their off-season counts at the low end of every range and hold them a week behind the pitchers on the distance progression.

Infield

Footwork and glove work with a partner or a wall: forehand, backhand, short hop, 40 to 60 reps, no throw until week 4 and short throws until week 6. Build adds the throw and then the exchange: field, transfer, throw, at increasing tempo. Sharpen is double-play feeds and turns, slow rollers, and situational reps with a live runner if you can get two players together. A middle infielder's throwing count on a heavy glove day comes down; it does not stack on top of the day's catch.

Outfield

Drop steps and first-step reads off a partner's toss, then routes: straight back, over each shoulder, the do-or-die charge. Long toss is the outfielder's conditioning; 14U and up get one long-toss day a week in Build and 16U outfielders two from week 9, and outfielders are the group that should sit at the top of the distance range for their tier. Crow-hop and one-hop throws to a target in Sharpen, and communication reps if players can pair up.

Conditioning that fits baseball

Baseball is rotational power, a first step from a lead, and a lot of time on one leg. The conditioning block reflects that and needs no gym.

• Rotational power. Medicine-ball throws against a wall or with a partner, both sides, scoop and shot-put patterns. Bodyweight versions: standing rotations, half-kneeling chops with a band.
• Sprint work. Ten to twenty-yard sprints from a primary lead, walk-back recovery, six to ten reps. Change-of-direction shuttles and a first-step-and-stop in Sharpen.
• Single-leg strength. Split squats, step-ups onto a stair, single-leg hip bridges, lateral lunges. Two to three sets of eight to twelve.
• Trunk. Dead bugs, side planks, bird dogs, Pallof presses with a band. Short holds, clean form.

For 12U, cut this block in half and make it a game where you can. For 16U and up, external load is fine only if a qualified strength coach is programming it; nothing in this plan requires it. This is workload management for a youth roster, not a strength program, and it is not medical advice.

How to keep players training in the off-season

Here is the part the other pages on this topic leave out. The plan is not the hard part. In four weeks, without something watching, roughly half the roster will have done nothing, and you will find out in January when the first long-toss day looks like week 4. Four things move that number.

1. Keep sessions short. A 35-minute session gets done on a school night. A 90-minute one waits for a weekend that never comes.
2. Set a team check-in cadence. One message a week, same day, same time. Not a lecture. "Week 6. Long toss goes in this week. Who is on it?"
3. Build the rest day in. A plan that assumes seven days gets abandoned on day eight. Four rest days a week is the plan, not a failure of it.
4. Make completion visible. This is the one that actually works, and the one that is hardest to do with a group text and a PDF.

That fourth one is what Next Athletix does for a baseball coach. You create the team, assign the plan, and each athlete logs his sessions in the app. Your dashboard shows who did the work this week, who is on a streak, and who has gone quiet. Athletes see their teammates' consistency too, which does most of the motivating for you. Getting the roster on takes one practice: show the team QR code on your phone, everyone scans it, and they are on the plan before they leave the field.

Be honest with parents about what this is. The app assigns and tracks the work; it does not replace you, and it is not a recruiting service. A free athlete account gets one sample session a week; the full plan runs on the Training plan, which is per athlete with a 7-day free trial. Pricing is here and a coach account costs nothing.

Rest and recovery weeks

Every week in this plan has four rest days, and the Recover block exists so nobody starts the off-season throwing on an arm that never got a break. Recovery is training. A player who takes the rest days and completes three sessions a week for twelve weeks is far ahead of one who trains six days for three weeks and disappears. Keep it that way: if a player is doubling throwing days to catch up on the progression, stop him. The progression does not compress. He starts where he is and steps up one week at a time.

Download the plan

The calendar above is the plan. Print this page, or send players the link; there is no email gate and nothing to sign up for to read it. If you want the plan assigned and tracked, that is what the coach account is for.