Q: I recently opened up my own place to train athletes, and wanted to thank you for all of the knowledge you have passed along, as it has been a big factor in designing my own training philosophy. The majority of my athletes are baseball and football players in the high school and collegiate level, and I had question for you regarding my baseball players specifically.Nearly every player I work with (and for the most part every pitcher I have worked with), has tight shoulders due to over-use, being imbalanced, and weak. I have them performing a ton of upper back work in comparison to pressing movements, rotator cuff work, sleeper stretches, and myofascial release. It helps greatly, but they still seem to never get back to a full range of motion or an actual natural throwing motion. Because of this, I was wondering what you thought about adding in shoulder dislocations using a dowel rod or broomstick to help with shoulder mobility.Because the players I work with are either in college because of their ability to play baseball, or have a chance at being drafted or getting a good college scholarship from their arms, I want to make sure that everything I do makes them better instead of hurting them in the long run for what looks like a quick fix when they are with me.I'd love to hear any thoughts you might have on helping increase shoulder mobility and the shoulder dislocation exercise, in particular.
A: First off, thank you very much for your kind words and continued support.
Unfortunately, to be blunt, I think it would be a terrible idea and you would undoubtedly make a lot of shoulders (and potentially elbows) worse.
Most pitchers will have increased external rotation (ER) on their dominant side, and as such, increased anterior instability. If you just crank them into external rotation and/or horizontal abduction, you will exacerbate that anterior instability. Think about what happens in the apprehension-relocation test at the shoulder; the relocation posteriorly pushes the humerus to relieve symptoms by taking away anterior instability.
We are extremely careful with who we select for exercises to increase external rotation, and it is in the small minority. Most pitchers gain ~5 degrees of external rotation over the course of the competitive season, as it is. If we are going to have them do mobilizations to increase ER, it's only after we've measured their total motion (IR+ER) as asymmetrical and determined that they need ER (a sign is ER that is less on the dominant shoulder). And, any exercises we provide on this front are done in conjunction with concurrent scapular stabilization and thoracic spine extension/rotation - as you'd see in a side-lying extension-rotation drill.
Here, you've got supination of the forearm, external rotation of the shoulder, scapular retraction/posterior tilt, and thoracic spine extension/rotation occurring simultaneously on the "lay back" component. And, the opposite occurs as the athlete returns to the starting position. Again, to reiterate, this is NOT a drill that is appropriate for a large chunk of throwing shoulders who already have crazy external rotation; it's just one we use with specific cases of guys we discover need to gain it.
With the broomstick dislocation, you're going to be throwing a lot of valgus stress on the elbow - and as I noted in my recent six-part series on elbow pain, pitchers already get enough of that. To read a bit more, check out Part 3: Throwing Injuries.
While we're on the topic, be careful about universally recommending sleeper stretches. There is going to be a decent chunk of your baseball players that don't need it at all. In particular, if you have a congenitally lax (ultra hypermobile) athlete (high score on Beighton laxity test), a sleeper stretch will really irritate the anterior shoulder capsule and/or biceps tendon.
These players don't really need to be stretched into IR; they just need loads of stability training. You'll find that these guys become more and more common at higher levels, as congenital laxity serves as a sort of "natural selection" to succeed for some people. So, universally prescribing the sleeper stretch becomes more and more of a problem as you deal with more and more advanced players and could be jacking up multi-million dollar arms. You'll even find guys who can gain 10-20 degrees of internal rotation in a matter of 30 seconds - without any shoulder mobilizations - just with the appropriate breathing patterns. It just doesn't work for everyone. Honestly, the only way to know is to assess; each pitcher is unique.
The obvious question then becomes "why are you seeing shoulder "tightness.?" Is it postural? Is it an actual range of motion you've assessed? Is it guarding/apprehension in certain positions? And, what is a "natural throwing motion?" They said Mark Prior had "perfect mechanics" and he has been injured his entire career.
What is "natural" is not what is "effective" in many cases, so you have to appreciate that throwing is an unnatural motion that may be necessary for generating velocity, creating deception, and optimizing movement on a certain pitch.
It might seem like shameless self-promotion, but I would highly recommend that you pick up the DVD set Mike Reinold and I recently released: Optimal Shoulder Performance.
It covers all of this information in great detail, plus a ton more. Baseball players - and particularly pitchers - are a unique population as a whole, and within that population, each one is unique.
I'd also strongly encourage you to check out Mike Reinold's webinar, "Assessing Asymmetry in Overhead Athletes: Does Asymmetry Mean Pathology?" It's available through the Advanced CEU online store.
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
In just the past few days, I've had two separate conversations with some really knowledgeable CP "dads" who also happen to have a ton of experience with coaching youth baseball players, particularly hitters. In both conversations, a (paraphrased) line that stood out was "improving as a hitter in the teenage years is largely about learning to use the hips."
In contrast, have the same hitting conversation with just about any professional baseball player, and he'll tell you "I hit with my hands."
So who is right? Do professional players not use their hips? Or, do kids not use their hands?
Actually, both parties are right. You don't get to professional baseball in the first place if you don't use your hips well when hitting. And, you don't succeed (and stick around) in professional baseball unless you use your hands efficiently and have remarkable hand-eye coordination. It's just multiple levels of natural selection that set the best apart - and they may sometimes forgot about the early stages of progress.
Need proof? Watch a little league batting practice session, and then go to a big-league game to watch their batting practice. The young players all pull the ball on every pitch, whereas the big-leaguers usually spray the ball all over the field, moving from the opposite field to the pull side. They do this with their hands and wrists, all the while taking the hips for granted.
Think about this: how many more TFCC (wrist) injuries and hamate (hand) fractures do we see in professionals when compared to teenagers? There are a lot more - because this area gets used a ton more. Kids, on the other hand, get stress fractures if they misuse their hips. It's no surprise, given the crazy rotational velocities and ranges of motion we see in hitters (outlined in my old articles, Oblique Strains and Rotational Power and Oblique Strains in Baseball: A 2011 Update).
What is a surprise, though, is that nobody has caught on to the ramifications of what this means for the youth baseball player who is learning to hit.
If a kid wanted to be a NASCAR driver, would we start him with a few 200mph laps at the Speedway amongst dozens of other drivers? Of course not.
Why, then, do we have kids playing 180-200 games per year between school teams, AAU, fall ball, and even winter ball? Where is the opportunity to learn how to hit in a controlled environment (closed loop), as opposed to trying to learn how to hit in live situations off of kids with no control (open loop). Don't get me wrong; many programs do a tremendous job with instruction and really do build outstanding technical hitters - but as much as I hate to say it, the occupation of "hitting coach" seems to be a dying profession. Why?
1. Schools are starting to put batting cages on campus for year-round hitting, and some kids don't appreciate that they need to learn to hit.
2. Some people see more money in AAU programs than individual instruction. If a hitting lesson is personal training, running a team practice is semi-private training: more money in less time (and it's usually cheaper for the players). This strategy can work if it's executed properly with sufficient coaching on-hand and the right demographic in mind; I have seen some AAU programs that are run with outstanding organization and excellent individual instruction at crucial parts of the year.
What is the right demographic? I can't say for sure - but I can tell you that we need to be really careful in dealing with kids in the 11-17 year-old range. They're learning to use their hips in an incredibly technically precise motion while their bodies are changing rapidly thanks to growth spurts and the fact that they spend 20 hours a day on their cans, thanks to sleeping, sitting at school desks, and playing around on Facebook and Instant Messenger. We're giving more physically demanding challenges to less physically prepared (and, many times, less motivated) kids.
It was a fun day at Cressey Performance yesterday with the MLB draft taking place. Just wanted to send out a quick congratulations to four Cressey Performance athletes who were selected yesterday: Ryan O'Rourke (13th Round - Twins), Chris McKenzie (13th Round - Nationals), Travis Dean (14th Round - Yankees), and Ryan Rodebaugh (15th Round - Rangers). Nice work, fellas; lots of hard work rewarded!
Noticeably absent from the draft, however, was CP Matt Blake. We caught up with him during what amounted to a rough day in his professional career:
Today, I'm going to wrap up this six-part series entirely devoted to the elbow. In case you missed the first five, check them out:
Part 1: Functional AnatomyPart 2: PathologyPart 3: Throwing InjuriesPart 4: Protecting PitchersPart 5: The Truth About Tennis Elbow
In this final installment, I'm going to discuss elbow issues as they pertain to a strength training population. Even though some of the treatments for these injuries/conditioning may be very similar or even identical to what we see in a throwing population, I separate lifters because their problems are almost always soft tissue in nature. While we may see stress fractures, ulnar nerve issues, and ulnar collateral ligament tears in throwers, we are virtually always dealing with problems with muscles and tendons in folks who are avid lifters. What gives?
Well, it's very simple: they grip stuff a lot more than normal folks, and also perform a ton of repetitive movements at the elbows and wrists. This difference also makes you appreciate why we often see elbow issues in those who work on factory lines, performing the same task for hours on-end.
Why is it that all these issues present at the elbow? You see, many of the muscles involved in gripping originate at the superomedial aspect of the forearm, particularly on the medial epicondyle:
When these structures get overused, they shorten - and as we discussed in Part 1, the zones of convergence (where tendons bunch up and create friction with one another) are where we develop some nasty soft tissue adhesions.
However, this doesn't just happen from gripping. Think about what happens when you put the bar in this position to back squat:
That bar wants to roll off his back, and while the majority of the weight is compressive loading, a good chunk of it becomes valgus stress that must be resisted by the flexors and pronators that attach at the medial aspect of the forearm/elbow. It's not a whole lot different than the stress we see here; we just trade off the velocity and extreme range of motion in the throwing motion for prolonged loading in the lifting example:
As a general rule of thumb, the narrower the squatting grip, the more stress on the elbow. Unfortunately, the wider the grip, the more shoulder problems we tend to see, as this position can chew up the biceps tendon. The solution is to maintain as much specificity as possible with respect to one's chosen endeavor, but find breaks from the repetition of these squatting positions by plugging in options like front squats, giant cambered bar squats, and safety squat bar squats.
For these reasons, I also look at soft tissue work on the forearms - and particularly the medial aspect - as a form of preventative maintenance. Regardless of the soft tissue modality you select, get some work done every few months and stay on top of your stretching in the area to maintain adequate length of these tissues.
We'll also see a fair amount of "underside" elbow pain in lifters, in most cases where the three heads of the triceps join up as a common tendon (another zone of convergence; does anyone see a pattern here?) to attach to the olecranon process. The smaller anconeus - a weak elbow extensor - also comes in here.
Almost universally, the lifters who present with overuse injuries posteriorly are the ones who use loads of elbow-only extension movements like skullcrushers/nosebreakers/French presses/triceps extensions. As a random aside to this, how can these movements have four different names, and not one of them begins with some Eastern European nationality? "French" just doesn't get it done when we have Russian good mornings, Bulgarian split squats, Romanian Deadlifts.
Anyway, we vilify leg extensions and leg curls as being non-functional and overly stressful at the knee. The knee is the joint most similar to the elbow, yet it's much bigger than the elbow, yet nobody contraindicates 4-5 elbow extension-only exercises per week in many routines as being inappropriate - or even excessive. If you want to build big legs, you squat, deadlift, and lunge. If you want to build big triceps, you bench, do weighted push-ups, overhead press, and do dips. The absolute load is higher, but the stress is shared over multiple joints.
In just about every instance, when you drop the direct elbow extension work from someone's program, their elbow issues resolve very quickly and they don't miss a beat with training.
So, as you probably inferred, it's very rarely a lack of strength that causes elbow pain in lifters. Rather, it's generally poor tissue quality, a lack of flexibility, and overuse of a collection of muscles that have "congested" insertion points. Simply changing the program around, getting some soft tissue work done, and following it up with some stretching can go a long way to both prevent and address these issues. That said, there will be cases where elbow pain may originate further up at the cervical spine or shoulder or - as I learned from a reader in the comments section of Part 5 - from an abducted ulna. So, there is definitely no one-size-fits-all approach.
That wraps up this series. Hopefully, you've gained insights into some of what's rattling around inside my brain with respect to elbows. Thanks for putting up with me for all six installments!
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Q: I've been going through some research, and your articles about training between starts, and I was wondering what kind of approach you take with college pitchers who are playing summer ball. Do you treat them as in-season and try to keep them fresh for their starts, or are you more aggressive with them since it's not their primary season?
A: My answer is - as always - it depends.
If you have a younger player who is weak, scrawny, and altogether physically unprepared, he is going to train hard. The long-term benefits of that training far outweigh any short term decrements in performance (which, as I'll note in a second, can easily be attenuated markedly).
If we are talking about a more advanced player for whom summer ball performance may be extremely important (e.g., an unsigned draft pick in the Cape Cod League during the summer after his junior year who is trying to get his signing bonus up), you have to treat things quite a bit differently. And, within this category, we manage starters and relievers differently.
For starters, it's pretty easy, as they generally have predictable seven-day rotations. I outlined my thoughts with the 7-day rotation component of A New Model for Training Between Starts: Part 2. Here it is:
Day 0: pitch
Day 1: challenging lower body lift, light cuff work
Day 2: movement training only, focused on 10-15yd starts, agility work, and some top speed work (50-60 yds); upper body lift
Day 3: low-Intensity resistance training (<30% of 1RM) circuits, extended dynamic flexibility circuits
Day 4: full-body lift
Day 5: movement training only, focused on 10-15yd starts, agility work, and some top speed work (50-60 yds)
Day 6: low-intensity dynamic flexibility circuits only (or off altogether)
Day 7: pitch again
I treat relief pitchers as if they are position players - but if we know that there is a good chance that they'll throw in the next 24-36 hours, we'll markedly drop the volume and intensity and just focus on them leaving the gym feeling "refreshed." If they have a longer outing (more than an inning), we'll get some really good weight-room work in the next day, as we know they won't have to pitch that night. If it's a shorter outing and they may be expected to throw two days in a row, we'll go easier (potentially even pushing things back a day).
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
This is Part 4 of a series specifically devoted to elbow pain in athletes. Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 if you haven't already.
As I presented in Part 3 of this series, there is absolutely nothing healthy about throwing a baseball, as the body is being contorted to extreme positions as the arm accelerates in the fastest motion ever recorded in sports. These outrageous demands warrant a multi-faceted approach to protecting pitchers from injury. In my eyes, this approach consists of four categories, and that's what I'll cover today.
1. Avoiding Injurious Pitching Mechanics
Let me preface this section by saying that I do not believe there is a single mechanical model that governs how one should pitch. Everyone is different, and those unique traits have to be taken into consideration in determining what is or isn't considered potentially harmful. For instance, only a tiny fraction of the population could ever even dream about pitching like Tim Lincecum because of ideal blend of congenital laxity and reactive ability he possesses.
I've trained Blue Jays left-handed pitching prospect Tim Collins for the past three seasons. At a Double-A game earlier this year, Tim introduced me to his good buddy Trystan Magnuson, a right-handed pitching prospect who is also in the Jays system. While Tim was a whopping 5-5, 131 pounds when he was signed right out of high school (now 5-7, 170), Trystan stands 6-7. Check out this picture I recently came across from spring training:
Anyone who thinks these two are going to throw a baseball with velocity and safety via the same mechanics is out of his mind. As an aside, if you're interested in watching both of them throw, there is some decent warm-up footage of both HERE.
While we can never expect all pitcher to fit the same mechanical model, we can look to the research (a great 2002 study from Werner et al. is an excellent place to start) to educate us about certain factors that predispose pitchers to increased elbow stress. To start, leading with the elbow too much increases valgus stress by about 2.5N per degree of horizontal adduction that the arm must travel. The problem with this is that every successful pitcher you'll ever see leads with the elbow to some degree, so it becomes an issue of "how much" and "when."
Getting to maximal external rotation too early also increases valgus stress on the elbow. According to Fleisig et al. (1995), the typical thrower is going to have about 67 degrees of shoulder external rotation at stride foot contact. The more external rotation there is, the more elbow stress you'll see. Unfortunately, this is one contributing factor to one's velocity, so these results must be intepreted cautiously. If you take away that external rotation, you may take away a few miles per hour. Again, the same goes for horizontal abduction.
Lower extremity sequencing problems can also wreak havoc on an elbow. Pitchers who fly open early tend to let their arm lag behind their body, increasing valgus stress in the process and making it harder to get good contribution from the lower half.
Likewise, guys who stay closed and throw across their body can wind up with medial elbow issues. If a pitcher maxes out his shoulder internal rotation and scapular protraction in coming across his body, the only choice to continue getting that range of motion is the elbow. If you create more range of motion, you have to slow down more range of motion.
This last point kicks off a brief, but important discussion. Many pitchers stay closed to improve deception. Others use it to help them get movement on sinkers.
Changing these mechanics could take away everything that makes these pitches successful, so you have to look to the other three factors to prepare them physically and protect them from these stresses. It's like making sure you give a guy a helmet if he is going to be banging his head against a wall!
All that said, finding the right mechanics is important for little leaguers and professionals alike - and it's the first step in protecting the elbow in a throwing situation. As we realize that the very issues that increase elbow stress happen to be the same ones that a) increase velocity and b) are often demonstrated by elite pitchers, we appreciate once again just how unnatural an act throwing a baseball really is!
2. Avoiding Acute and Chronic Overuse
One of our high school kids threw 188 pitches in a game last week. I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at what I do, but nothing I can do to keep a kid healthy if his coach asks him to do that time and time again.
Acutely, fatigued pitchers put more stress on their arms. There is less trunk tilt at ball release as the lower body gets more tired. And, the usually elbow drops. "The next thing you know, there's money missing off the dresser, and your daughter's knocked up. I've seen it a hundred times."
Gold star to those of you who caught that movie reference, but kidding aside, just about every case of elbow pain we see who comes through our door has been mismanaged in terms of pitch count - either acutely, chronically, or both. They think they can pitch year-round. They blow money on showcases. They play on three teams team at a time. They throw bullpens with their teams and with their private pitching instructors. The research is out there and the answer is very clear: there is only so much stress an arm - especially a skeletally immature arm - can take.
3. Being Chronically Physically Prepared to Pitch
This is the topic of which I've written the most on this site, and it encompasses everything I've written with respect to strength training for pitchers and targeted flexibility work, not to mention my absolute hatred for distance running for pitchers. Long story short, throwing a baseball is an action that takes its toll on the body; if you aren't functionally fit to pitch, you're just asking for an injury.
4. Being Acutely Physically Prepared to Pitch
This is a very overlooked component of not only staying healthy, but also performing at a high level. I'm amazed at how many young pitchers just "show and go" when it comes to pitching. That is, they get to the field and just go right to throwing. In other words, they throw to warm up.
We teach our athletes, "You warm up to throw; you don't throw to warm up." I've spent the last 57 paragraphs (give or take a few) outlining how incredibly stressful the throwing motion is, yet some kids can't wait to jump right into it before getting their body temperature up, optimizing joint range-of-motion, activating key neuromuscular connections, or doing anything that even vaguely resembles an appropriate "rest to exercise" transition. We encourage athletes to go through 8-10 dynamic flexibility drills followed by some easy sprinting progressions before they ever pick up a ball.
It's not just about what you do before an outing, either. It's also about what you do in the 24 hours after an appearance that determines how you'll bounce back in your subsequent outing. While the schmucks out there are doing "flush runs," the #1 thing I am worried about after a start is regaining lost range of motion. Reinold et al. found that pitchers lost both shoulder internal rotation and elbow extension range-of-motion during a competitive season when an adequate stretching routine was not implemented. It's no surprise, when you consider the overwhelmingly high eccentric stress that's placed on the shoulder external rotators and elbow flexors as they try to decelerate the crazy velocities we see with pitching. As such, following an outing, the first thing we want our guys to do is get back their shoulder and elbow ROM (and get the hips loosened up). There are some athletes who don't need to be stretched into internal rotation, so be careful about using this as a blanket recommendation (more on that in our Optimal Shoulder Performance DVD set).
In closing, an important note I should make is that pitchers rarely get hurt because of just one of these factors; it's usually a combination of all of them. So, when evaluating a pitcher's health and performance, be sure to broad perspective.
We've got four down and two to go in this elbow series. Stay tuned for more!
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In case you missed them, check out Part 1 (Functional Anatomy) and Part 2 (Pathology) of this series from last week. With that housekeeping out of the way, let's move forward to today's focus: elbow injuries in throwing athletes. I work with a ton of baseball players and I know we have a lot of not only players, but parents of up-and-coming baseball stars that read this blog - so it's a topic that is near and dear to my heart. While my primary focus within the paragraphs that follow will be baseball, keep in mind that the many these issues can also be seen in other overhead athletes. They just tend to be more prevalent and magnified in a baseball population.
Obviously, in dealing with loads of baseball guys, I see a lot of elbow issues come through my door. The overwhelming majority of those folks are medial elbow pain, but we also see a fair amount of lateral elbow pain. What's interesting, though, is that in a baseball population, most of these issues are purely mechanical pain; that is, the discomfort is usually only present with throwing, as it is tough to reproduce the velocities and joint positions present during overhead (or sidearm/submarine) throwing.
The question, logically, is why do some throwers break down medially while others break down laterally, or even posteriorly?
In other to understand why, we first have to appreciate the demands of throwing. And, that appreciation pretty much always leads back to the valgus and extension forces (termed valgus-extension overload by many) that combine to wreak havoc on an elbow during throwing.
At late cocking - where maximal external rotation (or "lay-back") occurs - there is a tremendous valgus force of 64Nm on the elbow, according to Fleisig et al.
As Morrey et al. determined, the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) "takes on" approximately 54% of this valgus force - meaning that it's assuming about 35Nm of force on each pitch. This is all well and good - until you realize that in cadaveric models, the UCL fails at 32Nm.
If the valgus forces are so crazy that they actually exceed the UCL's tolerance for loading, why don't we just rip that sucker to shreds on every pitch?
It's because the UCL doesn't work alone. Rather, we've got soft tissue structures (namely, the flexor carpi ulnaris and radialis) that can protect it. This is why cadavers don't usually pitch in the big leagues. The closest thing I've seen is 84-pound Willie McGee, but he was an outfielder.
Keep in mind that it isn't just the UCL that's stressed in this lay-back position. Obviously, the flexor-pronator mass takes a ton of abuse in transitioning from cocking to acceleration. It's also a tremendously vulnerable position for the ulnar nerve as it tracks through some tricky territory. That just speaks to the medial side of things; there is more to consider laterally.
You see, the same valgus force that can wreak havoc medially also applies approximately 500N on the radioulnar joint during the late cocking phase of throwing; that's about one-third of the total stress on the elbow. In this case, a picture is worth a thousand words:
So, the same forces can cause a thrower to break down in multiple areas both medially and laterally! What usually separate the medial from the lateral folks?
Let me ask you this: when was the last time you saw an 8-year old rupture his ACL? Never.
Now, when was the last time you saw an 8-year-old break a bone? Happens all the time.
This same line of reasoning can be applied to the pitching elbow. The path of least resistance - or the area of incomplete development - will generally break down first. As such, in a younger population, we generally see more lateral, compression-type injuries to the bones. These are your growth plate issues and Little League Elbows, usually.
As athletes mature and the bones become sturdier, we get more muscle/tendon, ligament, and nerve issues on the medial side.
This isn't always the case, of course; you'll see young kids with medial elbow pain, and experienced throwers with lateral issues as well. It generally holds pretty true, though.
The issues at the cocking-to-acceleration transition would be bad enough by themselves, but there is actually another important injury mechanism to consider: elbow extension.
This lateral area also takes on about 800N of force at the moment arm deceleration begins with elbow extended out in front as posteromedial impingement occurs between the ulna and the olecranon fossa of the humerus. This bone-on-bone contact at high velocities (greater than 2,000 degrees/second) can lead to fractures and loose bodies within the joint.
This wraps up the causative factors with respect to elbow pain in throwers - but I need to now go into further detail on the specific physical preparation and mechanical factors one needs to consider to avoid allowing these issues to come to fruition. Stay tuned for Part 4.
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About this time last year, I attended and spoke at at big sports medicine conference organized by Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School. Given that it was baseball season, and the event's organizers were all also on staff with the Boston Red Sox, a big focus of the event was the diagnosis, treatment, and causes of throwing injuries to the elbow and shoulder.
One of the organizers happened to be my good friend Mike Reinold, who is the head athletic trainer and rehabilitation coordinator for the Red Sox. As you probably know, we collaborated on the Optimal Shoulder Performance DVD set as well.
One of the resounding themes of Mike's talks was that throwing hard is not the single-most important factor in being a successful pitcher. Rather, success is all about changing speeds and hitting spots. The point is an important one - and it's backed up by the success of the likes of Jamie Moyer, Tom Glavine, and Greg Maddux.
Why is it so important for youth pitchers and parents to understand this? It's because it demonstrates that long-term success is not about dominating in little league; it's about acquiring skills that allow for future improvements.
Youth pitches should focus on commanding their fastballs with consistent repetition of their mechanics early-on - not just throwing hard. If you think you have the fastball mastered at age 9 and simply learn a curveball so that you can dominate little league hitters, you're skipping steps and trying to ride too many horses with one saddle. It's not that the curveball is inherently more stressful than any other pitch; it's just that - as the saying goes - "if you chase two rabbits, both will escape."
While kids need variety, they shouldn't try to master too many different complex skills at once. Step 1 is to have command of your fastball - not just to throw it hard.
Step 2 is to learn a good change-up to start creating the separation to which Mike is referring. Breaking pitches can come later.
Need proof? I recently saw some statistics that demonstrated that the MLB average against off-speed pitches has decline each of the past three years. Meanwhile, not surprisingly, the average MLB fastball velocity has increased by about 1mph. Throwing harder made all those off-speed pitches more effective by creating more separation. So, yes, throwing the crap out of the ball is still important - but only if you know where it's going - otherwise the average fastball velocity wouldn't be higher in Low A ball than it is in the big leagues.
Oh, and in case you need further proof of how MLB general managers perceive the importance of off-speed pitches, Phillies First Baseman Ryan Howard gave you $125 worth when he signed a new five-year contract last month. While the MLB average against off-speed pitches has steadily declined over the past three seasons, Howard has gotten better.
The take-home message is that youth pitchers need to develop the mechanical efficiency and physical abilities that will eventually make them able to throw hard in conjunction with a solid assortment of off-speed pitches. They don't need to light up radar guns and showcase curveballs when they're still regulars at Chuck 'E Cheese.
Here are some reading recommendations for the week:
Q&A: Partial Knee Meniscectomy - Here is a great blog from Mike Robertson about training modifications for those who have had a portion of the meniscus removed. Mike's a brilliant knee guy (definitely check out Bulletproof Knees if you haven't already). Stick around Mike's site and read a bit; he's been kicking out some great content lately.
Are You Inflamed? - This is a good one on the nutrition side of things from Mike Roussell.
What Makes Roy Run? - This was an awesome article about Roy Halladay from a few weeks ago in Sports Illustrated. To be blunt, a ton of professional baseball pitchers are lazy, one-trick ponies who rely on natural talent and don't work hard to fulfill their potential. Halladay is an exception to that rule: a guy who has worked incredibly hard to become arguably the best pitcher in the game. This is a tremendously well-written and entertaining piece about the path he took and how he deserves every bit of success that comes his way. Phillies fans are lucky to have him.
