Built to Throw:
A Blueprint For Healthy Athletes
Built To Throw: A Blueprint For Healthy Athletes is a comprehensive guide for throwing athletes who want to build, maintain, and protect a healthy arm over the long term. It brings together the key pillars of arm health—workload management, strength and conditioning, targeted arm care, and effective recovery—into one clear, practical framework.
Readers will learn how to balance throwing volume and intensity to avoid overuse, incorporate an effective strength and conditioning program, and implement arm care routines that enhance durability without adding unnecessary fatigue. The book also emphasizes the often-overlooked role of recovery, including sleep, nutrition, and smart scheduling, showing how these elements interact to drive adaptation and reduce injury risk.
Designed for athletes, coaches, and parents alike, it translates science and best practices into actionable strategies that can be applied in-season and off-season, helping throwers perform at their highest level while keeping their arm resilient.
Included is exclusive video access to my most commonly prescribed arm care exercises.
Table of Contents
Introduction 2
The Injury Equation 3
Management of The Throwing Schedule 7
Strength Training 14
Arm Care 24
Throwing Mechanics 28
Recovery 32
Putting It All Together 37
Arm Care Exercise Index 41
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"Dr. Terry Phillips does a great job describing what holistically goes into optimizing arm health for throwers. As someone who had years taken off their career from arm injuries, I’ve found this book very impactful. It provides an important framework, along with routines, practical applications, and recommendations to maximize arm health and performance. Most importantly, Dr. Phillips backs his recommendations with evidence and research. I would recommend this book to any throwing athlete, pitching coach, performance coach or parent invested in their athlete’s career" - Anthony Adams, TCU Strength Coach.
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"This book is a must-read for anyone involved in developing young throwers. In today's training environment, far too many parents and coaches for young athletes are in search of novel shortcuts to take their young baseball or softball player to the next level. Building healthy and robust throwers comes by taking care of the foundational aspects of physical preparation to set the athlete up for success in the long haul. In his book, Terry lays out the road map to do just that by establishing the principles and layering in simple, actionable processes to build out a holistic development program. No matter where you or your athletes are in your athletic development, the information in this book is easily digestible and applicable to ball players of all ages" - Joe Murray, University of Washington Strength Coach
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"This book encapsulates everything you need as a pitcher to optimize your training and development. It goes into depth on lifting, throwing schedule, mechanics, armcare, and recovery but in a simplified way that's easy to implement into your own training. The emphasis on creating a balance between rest and training, as well as showing what that actually looks like, is a huge separator that not many other people bring awareness to but is the most contributing factor to preventing injury. If you are looking to level-up your game and don’t know where to start this book is a great first step of action." - Logan Anderson, College Baseball Player; Owner - Purely Performance
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“Terry’s book is something I wish I could go back in time and give to my younger self. It’s knowledge that I will constantly recommend to future athletes and parents looking for a healthy career with longevity. Easy to understand and efficient to apply and implement into anyone anywhere” - Anthony Casciola, Owner - Casciola Performance
