4 Exercises All Baseball Players Should Be Doing But Probably Aren’t!!!
Engineered Athlete Where Knowledge is Turned into Power
Are you doing the right exercises this off season to make yourself the best possible player and more importantly, prevent injury? With baseball season quickly approaching, players are no doubt preparing both physically and mentally. This may include self guided or professionally guided strength training programs. As players continue to become bigger and throw faster, there is also a growing number of shoulder and elbow injuries. These injuries are increasing from the professional level all the way down to Little League. With the overwhelming increases in knowledge and technology having to do with sports science, injuries should be decreasing with increasing athletic performance. However this is not the case. This begs the questions… 1. WHY? 2. HOW do we PREVENT these injuries? 3. Is it possible to prevent injury while increasing athletic performance?
From my experience as a physical therapist, one issue that is always present with throwing injuries is muscle imbalance. There is a very common pattern to these imbalances, which is also supported in the published scientific journals. These imbalances are primarily due to players are not training all of the proper muscles in the off season. Most training programs focus on core, legs, and upper body. Some advanced programs will include sport specific training and plyometrics. Most, if not all, of these programs miss or under utilize some very important muscles. In order to understand how to prevent throwing injuries, it is important to first understand why they occur. The two most commonly injured joints injured, with throwing, are the shoulder and the elbow.
Shoulder Injury
Elbow Injury
The elbow is injured with excessive valgus forces. The most common injuries occur at the medial or inside part of the elbow. The most recognizable result of these injuries is “Tommy John” surgery. There are several studies that have pointed to certain weaknesses demonstrated by a large number of players with these injuries. See below for exercises to help reduce risk of these elbow injuries.
Michael DiLella, PT, MSPT
Michael graduated from Thomas Jefferson University in 2005, where he received the Dean’s scholarship. He has been practicing physical therapy for over ten years, specializing in orthopedic and sports physical therapy. Michael is proficient in several adjunctive PT skills such as kinesiotaping, instrument assisted soft tissue scraping, and trigger point dry needling.