“Bend your back more!”

“Follow through!”

“Reach out more!”

“Use your legs!”

“Get on top of the ball!”

Let’s all be honest here… we have heard these words of “encouragement” conveyed to baseball pitchers many times. I would venture to say quite a few of US (I am including myself) have even spoken these words. I am all for encouraging our athletes but can I let you in on a little secret? Many of those pitchers that we are “encouraging” simply cannot do these things that we are telling them to do.

I have come to realize there are two primary reasons our baseball players cannot do these things:

1. They are not physically able to place their bodies in these positions. I call this not being fit to pitch.
2. They don’t cognitively understand what we mean by these words.

Not Fit to Pitch

I have pitchers come to me for a pitching lesson for me to look at their mechanics to see why their arm is hurting. It only takes a handful of throws to realize they are trying to perform a high level athletic movement without the required physical strength or mobility.

I had one recent pitcher and his father do the exact thing above. They have taken pitching lessons from another instructor for a while but this pitcher’s arm began to hurt. After four or five throws it was evident that the pitcher did not possess the mobility in the back of his shoulder, spine, and opposite hip to complete a full follow through. Guess when his arm hurt – after ball release going into the deceleration or follow through phase.

This pitcher did not need more pitching lessons. He needed some athletic rehabilitation and arm care instruction.

Not Understanding the Words

If you have followed me for any length of time you are well aware that I claim to be a “student of pitching”. What I mean by that is I am on a journey of learning. I want to know more tomorrow than I do today. So at this point of my 25+ years of being a “student of pitching” I have come to the conclusion that pitchers need to feel more and think less. Those of us who are instructors have to be able to convey feel versus reciting pitching mantras that we have heard over the years. At the risk of becoming unpopular I must make this comment – I am not completely convinced that we has a baseball pitching instructor industry fully understand what some of these mantras actually mean.

Let me encourage you, whether you are a pitcher or a parent, to make sure you understand and can FEEL what we are asking you to do.

If I can ever be of service to you for your Baseball Health and Performance needs, please let me know.

Parents will often ask for my opinion on certain “programs” they hear about or read about. I recently was asked by a parent when his son should start the “thrower’s ten” program. (For those who may not be familiar with this specific program, it is a set of exercises utilized by rehabilitation professionals to help overhead athletes recover from injury.)

Our conversation took the direction of discussing arm care in general as it relates to younger pitchers. The main point that was made was simply that “arm care” in and of itself isn’t enough. A baseball pitcher must be able to recruit many different body parts to effectively and efficiently pitch.

To build on this point the pitcher was placed face down on a table. The pitcher was asked to raise his throwing arm towards the sky. The father’s hand was placed on the pitcher’s shoulder. The father could feel how the pitcher was using his shoulder to raise his arm. Isn’t that what is suppose to happen Joe? The shoulder is a part of the process but if it (shoulder) is the only thing working then it (shoulder) will be absorbing all of the stress.

To further illustrate this point of how if the shoulder is the predominant body part being utilized, a light weight was placed in the pitcher’s hand. He was then again instructed to raise his arm towards the sky. The result this time was his low back caved in and his opposite leg came off of the table. In other words the athlete had no stability / foundation over which to raise his arm.

After some instruction on how to recruit the other components of the kinetic chain the pitcher once again was asked to raise his arm towards the sky. The father placed his hand on the pitcher’s shoulder again and was able to immediately feel how the shoulder was the least active body part.

What is the point of this post? Simply to say that there are many options for “do it yourself” conditioning or strengthening. Just make sure you are training your body to dissipate the stress away from the smaller body parts. If you need any help with this, contact me here.

Wishing you health and success,

Joe

As a student of pitching who tries to help those who still have the dream and as an Athletic Trainer who treats overhead athletes, one of the most common issues I see with pitchers is significant loss of mobility. The areas of mobility loss I see the most involve the throwing shoulder’s ability to internally rotate (follow through) and the plant leg hip to internally rotate (trunk finish over front knee).

We know from numerous research studies that pitchers lose mobility from pitch one to their last pitch during a practice or a game. This is a natural occurrence. The issue becomes when the pitcher doesn’t purposefully restore / reset / rebalance that mobility. Tightness from a mid week bullpen sets in and is then added to the tightness from the weekend game which is then added to the second game of the weekend which is then added… See where I am going with this?

What does this look like? How does a pitcher know if he is losing mobility?

A couple of simple tests I use to help pitchers (parents and coaches also) see their motion loss include:

• After having pitcher lay on his belly with his knees bent and the bottom of his feet pointed towards the sky, I will then gently rotate his hips by separating his ankles away from each other. If the plant leg hip doesn’t rotate as much as the opposite hip, I then know there is a loss of hip internal rotation.
• For shoulder tightness I will simply have the pitcher place his throwing arm behind his back as far as he can. If he has a “hitch” getting his arm behind and up his back and / or his shoulder blade tilts forward (bottom of the shoulder blade sticks out), I then know that the back of his shoulder is tight.

One of two reasons usually brings the pitcher to see me…

1. The pitcher (or parent) begins to notice that he begins losing control of his pitches. Upon questioning the pitcher (and parent) it is further revealed that the pitcher is missing high and in the later innings.
2. The pitcher begins having front, top, and / or side of the throwing shoulder pain during the transition from the cock phase into the acceleration phase or back of the throwing shoulder pain during the follow through phase.

Break the cycle by purposefully restoring / resetting / rebalancing your hip and shoulder mobility.

Wishing you health and success,
Joe

In a recent segment on MLB.com there was a great breakdown of the “Tommy John Epidemic”. Look at this graphic that was used on the segment…

These numbers are alarming to say the least. To imagine that between the years of 2007 – 2011 nearly 6 out of every 10 Tommy John surgeries was on a teenager is staggering to me.

As someone who desires to “help those who still have the dream”, I feel it is my obligation as a healthcare provider and as a pitching instructor to assist those who have what has been documented by ASMI as injury predictors for Tommy John.

Here is a list of mechanical flaws identified / areas to evaluate by ASMI that are consistent with increased elbow stress:

1. Arm Position at Foot Plant
2. Palm Down / High Elbow
3. Direction to Home Plate
4. Collapsed Front Knee at Ball Release

Arm Position at Foot Plant

To avoid increased medial elbow stress a pitcher needs to have his forearm somewhere between 12 o’clock and 2 o’clock as looking from second base / center field for right-handed pitchers and between 10 o’clock and 12 o’clock for left-handed pitchers.

In this still frame of Mark Prior you can see his forearm is pointing at an approximate 3 o’clock position at foot plant. As he proceeds towards home plate, due to timing, his elbow will have increased stressed.

Palm Down / High Elbow

Increased torque and stress occurs at the medial elbow when a pitcher’s palm is facing the ground and / or the pitching side elbow is above the shoulder at foot plant. This is often related to a timing issue of the arm being a little late (see above).

In the still frame of Adam Wainwright below you can see how his elbow is lifted higher towards the sky than his shoulder.

Direction to the Plate

Striding towards home plate (versus right-handed batter’s box for right-handed pitchers and left-handed batter’s box for left-handed pitchers) allows the pitcher to maximize hip rotation torque and transfer it to the ball. When a pitcher’s front leg lands closed, the twisting (rotational) torque is transmitted at higher levels to the elbow whereas landing more in line with home plate allows the “building blocks” of a pitcher to properly sequence without additional elbow stress occurring. Optimized sequencing is optimized timing.

Jered Weaver demonstrates a “throwing across your body” pattern in the still frame below. When he lands closed, the elbow receives higher stress levels. Notice his forearm being more between 12 o’clock and 2 o’clock as compared to the above pictures.

Collapsed Front Knee at Ball Release

When the front knee of a pitcher collapses at / near ball release, the torso and arm will innately want to try to contribute more due to not having a pivot point for the forward movement / momentum to continue towards home plate. There is already enough that the pitcher’s arm has to do. We don’t need to add more to its work load.

It is obvious that professional pitchers can be successful using the above movement patterns. But that success doesn’t negate that they are still demonstrating increased risk of medial elbow stress and potential injury.

The more injured baseball players I see as a healthcare provider and the more pitchers I see as an instructor I am becoming more and more convinced that there is a lack of “pitching fitness” among amateur pitchers. Often times there is an attempt to emulate a professional pitcher’s mechanics by younger amateurs who simply do not possess the needed “mobility / stability balance” required to optimize performance and minimize injury.