3-4 days per week minimum, and best advice I can give you to save your knees-and rest of the body when they start brining it-is to try and get the teams catcher or some other catcher you know to catch for them.
My daughter began pitching at the age of nine yrs old taking lessons. Her dad reinforced what she was being taught in addition to researching the position. He would emphasize...location and mechanis first telling her the speed will come. She used to write out what pitches she would work on which days. Once puberty hit the velocity on the ball increased. When she was in middle school, conference competition was so weak, she had difficulty with the jump start of the season until travel ball started. When we reached high school, we changed districts into a magnet school that has educational path for her future. At that time, she was identified by a pitching instructor trained out of Club K in TN (founder Cheri Kempf). I contacted Marc about the reputation of Club K and he endorsed it. It is based on biomechanics. He has been working with her through the summer. She is one of the two pitchers on the varsity team. When first asked about playing varsity by the coach she said, "Coach, I don't care which team I'm on, I just want to play."
it is an entirely different stage of development for her. She is intrinsically motivated and gets up before anyone in the house to condition three times per week. She goes to pitching instructor once a week, starts one/two games a week and throws with her dad once a week to reinforce what pitching instructor has taught. Travel ball begins in three weeks, so stay tuned...choose to have a great day, we will only experience today once : )
My daughter is 14 and has pitched for 3 years. She hurls 5 days a week with Fridays and Sundays off until tourney time. Pitching sessions are 100-120 pitches.
Just want to make everyone aware that overuse injuries don't show up until later........Much later in some cases. The body is an amazing machine. It WILL do what you ask it to do......And it will continue to do what you ask it to do even though wear and tear begining to set in.......
My DD's overuse injury didn't show up until her sophomore year in college. She was the number one pitcher on our travel team for 8 years. Threw every inning of every game in high school for 4 years....... And was the number one pitcher at her now Pac 10 school. She threw almost 500 innings her freshman year in college......Tore a labrim in the first 4 weeks of her sophomore year.......
Just a work of advise to anyone who believes their kid may get tons of innings in their career........Wear and tear now will take it's toll down the road.......
3-4 days a week minimum
The day before a lesson
The day after a lesson
A day or two off after a weekend of pitching.
A couple of weeks after a season
Lay off 2 days in a row, the next practice session will be to get timing back only.
Sessions don't have to be 60 minute marathons. For young pitchers,to me it is more important that they pitch a number of days and not the number of pitches in the session as they lose their timing with 2 day plus layoffs. A third of the sessions can be 20-30 minutes with just drills and spins.
Just once a week plus her pitching lesson, which is only 30 minutes. Quality not quantity is my rule. I make my kid pitch 30 strikes to me before we are done ( she is 9). I ask for a location and pitch she must hit it and make it move or we keep going. It is up to her when we are done.
Very well known pitching coach who has been coaching for 30+ years told me to always take a day off between throwing...at least for the 10U group in the offseason. Didn't specifically ask about season, but I know he is big on not overusing the young kids in summer tournaments. My daughter is 8 and attended 2 of his camps this winter. He recommended 100 arm circles (no ball) per day when not throwing. We do that and throw 3-4 times a week. Probably 100-130 pitches each time. In 4 months she went from having to throw from 27' to get it there to throwing around 40 mph from 35'.