Coach Bill Thurston, Amherst College Pitching Consultant, ASMI

MECHANICAL FAULTS COMMON TO HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE PITCHERS

A nine year Injury Surveillance Study conducted by the NCAA specific to college baseball indicates that the throwing mechanism (shoulder, elbow, forearm, and wrist) suffers the highest rate of injury of any body part. The specific breakdown states that the specific body part most often Injured in baseball has been:

• #1 Injury - Shoulder, every year.
• #2 Injury - Elbow, 3 yrs, ; Ankle, 3 yrs.; Upper Leg, 3 yrs.
• #3 Injury - Ankle, 4 yrs.. Upper Leg, 3 yrs.; Elbow, 1 yr.

Each year the pitcher is the most often injured player, nearly twice as often as the number two injured position, a base runner. The type of Injury most often sustained was muscle-tendon strains. The average loss of practice time was 7-10 days.

Since the throwing mechanism suffers the highest rate of Injury at the college level, let's look at the various causes of throwing arm Injuries and how to attempt to prevent them from occurring.

I believe we can divide the causes of arm injury into 3 categories:

A. Conditioning Factors

1. Fatigue, Overuse, or Overload
2. Mechanical Throwing Faults
3. Conditioning Factors;
4. Lack of being properly conditioned; lack of total body fitness; lack of a sound progressive throwing program.
5. Lack of long term throwing program.
6. Improper strength or weight training program.
7. Over-stretching the shoulder joint - too much laxity.
8. Lack of a proper warm-up and stretching program.
9. Experimenting with new pitches, new techniques at full velocity or at full distance.
10. Pitching competitively too soon.

B. Fatigue, Overuse, or Overload Factors

1. Throwing too many pitches during one outing.
2. Throwing when fatigued or not loose.
3. Lack of adequate rest and recovery time.
4. Lack of an active in-season maintenance Program.
5. Playing (or practicing) at other positions between pitching turns.
6. Strength work too strenuous between pitching turns.

C. Fatigue Mechanical Faults (General)

My topic is Common Pitching Faults observed in High School and College Pitchers, but to make this presentation relevant to physicians, bio-mechanists, and therapists, I will attempt to demonstrate how many of these mechanical faults can add unnecessary stress to the arm and may cause arm injury as well as inconsistent performance.

Because I have only 20 minutes to make this presentation, I am going to limit it to one segment of the pitching motion which is a great check point when analyzing via video. Being in the proper position at stride foot plant can help the pitcher prevent arm injury and be more efficient and consistent with control and velocity.

STRIDE FOOT PLANT - COCKED POSITION

The function of the windup is to set the body in motion and get it into a well balanced, stable and properly aligned position to generate tremendous forces to create arm, hand and ball velocity. The motion should be a smooth, rhythmic, and sequential activity. When the pitching motion is thoroughly analyzed via high speed video, it is obvious that very little force or power has been generated until the pitcher explodes out of the cocked position—The foot plant stabilizes the body. The trunk and arm cocking position loads up the body for extremely high rotational forces and then transfer of weight forward.

We should recognize though, that improper techniques early in the motion can put a pitcher out of position to generate proper forces and this often causes unnecessary stress, early fatigue, and arm injury to the throwing mechanism. It is necessary for the coach or bio-mechanist to retrace the pitcher's motion to learn which action or technique is the original cause of the problem and then make a proper adjustment. This takes a thorough understanding of pitching mechanics and fault recognition.