Company Mission

Our mission at ThrowHeat is to design, develop, manufacture and market innovative and effective training aids that maximize pitching performance.

Company History

I had been trying on-and-off for a decade to find an effective pitching training aid for my two sons. An engineer by profession, it’s simply my nature to try and invent a device that could shortcut the traditional training process and give a significant edge to the user. When I invented the Aerothrow™, I finally achieved my goal to develop a pitching training aid that could truly improve the strength and coordination needed to be a successful pitcher.

Over the years I had built a number of training aids that worked with varying degrees of success. My earliest design consisted of a pulley attached to a wall. Passing over the pulley was a cord that had a baseball at one end and a spherical weight at the other end. Another device I built was simply an elastic band with one end secured to wall and a ball attached to the other end.

I quickly realized these devices could be used for strengthening, but not technique improvement. Their training motion was too unlike actual pitching. Additionally they failed to produce significant resistance throughout the entire training motion. Halfway through the motion, the rope or rubber band no longer lengthens. The result is that little resistance is produced during the last half of the training motion, a major flaw considering how crucial the follow-through stage of delivery is.

I then turned my attention to the weighted baseball. The weighted baseball allows resistance throughout the entire pitching motion. However, someone or something is needed at the other end willing to catch or stop it. I also had concerns about wear and tear to the muscular-skeletal structure from repetitive use especially if ones mechanics are flawed. See the “Discussion and Links” page for further information.

Finally I began to envision a training aid that was entirely hand-held and could produce resistance throughout the entire, natural pitching motion. Such a training aid would create a resistive force that not only strengthened muscles specific to throwing but could improve mechanics. I realized aerodynamic resistance might provide a solution and prototyped a few concepts using this principle. Unfortunately there was either too little resistance generated or the weight of the device produced a centrifigal pull that was unacceptable.

One day at work I came across a design group using a high-end, high-tech foam for a product being developed. The material had rather stringent requirements for being very lightweight, rigid and durable. Picking up a piece I found that it was unusually lightweight, surprisingly firm and tough, unlike any other foam I had ever come across. I immediately thought this might be the ideal material to design a pitching training aid utilizing aerodynamic resistance. All I needed was a concept that would produce sufficient air resistance and be small enough in size to be practical. The design of the Aerothrow emerged to satisfy the design goals.

During this time, my oldest son Brian was attending Princeton University where as a pitcher he helped his baseball team win three Ivy League championships. He was named Captain his senior year, all the while using the Aerothrow himself and testing the various prototypes with his teammates.

Having perfected a pitching training aid that effectively provided all of the benefits we were looking for, Brian and I decided to share our revolutionary device with the rest of the baseball world. We founded ThrowHeat in 2005 as an enterprise to manufacture and market the Aerothrow. We will continue to develop other innovative and effective pitching training products in the coming months so check back frequently.

Jim and Brian Biegen