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General | Blog | 7/16/2024

Wolforth Throwing Mentorship: Article 42

Ron Wolforth

The Canary in The Coal Mine for Pitchers:
The Real Show Stopper for Many Pitchers Is
Extra Unnecessary Stress on Soft Tissue

Throwing a baseball at high intensity is inherently stressful. Period. Full stop.

If one’s soft tissue is not prepared for the volume and/or intensity of that stress, performance is almost always compromised. Shutdown, injury, and even surgical intervention can be the very real results of that lack of stress mitigation.

Paying close attention to—and then addressing—the extra unnecessary stress often added to already traumatized tissue due to inefficient and counterproductive movement patterns is often missed.

The baseball community—in conjunction with physical therapists, athletic trainers, strength coaches, dietitians, instructors, and coaches—has worked diligently over the last 25 years to increase the quality of performance while reducing the incidence of injury.

As a collective group, we have succeeded magnificently on the performance side of that equation but have failed just as profoundly on the health and durability side. Injuries to pitching athletes are at an all-time high, and nearly everyone has their opinions as to why this is the case.

My late father was very fond of saying, “He who is good with a hammer often thinks everything is a nail.” Like most such wisdom, the saying didn’t originate with our fathers. They heard it from others they respected and then passed it on to their family and friends as a lesson.

The quote, "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail," is often attributed to Mark Twain, but it's actually a paraphrase of a statement by psychologist Abraham Maslow. He originally said, "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail." This expression comes from Maslow's concept known as the "Law of the Instrument," which highlights the over-reliance on familiar tools or methods.

That phenomenon is so very true and, in my opinion, especially apropos on this topic of performance, preparation, arm care, injury reduction, and recovery.

Who knew Maslow was such a great pitching coach?

The TRADITIONAL Center of the Injury Prevention Universe

Let’s start with what I consider the traditional center of the injury prevention universe, including insights from a vast majority of strength coaches, physical therapists, and athletic trainers. The following key elements routinely

Strength and Conditioning: Develop a well-rounded strength program targeting the entire body, with special emphasis on the core, shoulders, and legs. Incorporate skill specific strength programming that strengthens the rotator cuff and enhances scapular stability (crucial for shoulder and elbow health).

Flexibility and Mobility: Maintain and improve flexibility and joint mobility, particularly in the ankle, hips, thoracic spine, and shoulder. Implement routines that include dynamic stretching and mobility exercises to ensure pitchers maintain a healthy range of motion.

Load Management and Rest: Monitor pitch counts and innings to prevent overuse injuries. Ensure pitchers have adequate rest between outings and seasons, allowing the body to recover and reducing the risk of cumulative stress injuries.

Warm-up and Cool-down Routines: Establish effective warm-up and cool-down protocols that prepare the muscles for the stresses of pitching and aid in recovery. These routines should include cardiovascular exercises, dynamic stretches, and sport-specific activities.

Early Symptom Recognition and Management: Educate pitchers on recognizing early signs of discomfort and stress the importance of timely communication. Address symptoms early with appropriate interventions, including rest and physical therapy techniques.

Cross-training and Off-season Training: Encourage activities outside of pitching to maintain general fitness and reduce repetitive stress. These might include swimming, cardiovascular training, and resistance exercises focusing on non-pitching body parts.

Nutritional Support and Hydration: Provide guidance on proper nutrition and hydration to support intense physical activity and recovery. Collaborate with dietitians to tailor nutritional plans that meet the specific energy needs and recovery processes of pitchers.

Psychological Support: Recognize and address the mental and emotional demands of pitching. Provide support for stress management and mental resilience, which can indirectly impact physical health and susceptibility to injury.

Comprehensive Health Monitoring: Regularly assess pitchers' physical and mental health, making adjustments to training, recovery programs, and workload as needed.

A Different Perspective and A New Frontier

When we also consider… which I believe we absolutely should… the divergent thoughts of new contributors such as Eugene Bleeker (a noted expert in baseball pitching mechanics and the author of "Old School vs. New School: The Application of Data and Technology into Baseball”), a new, more complete picture begins to take shape.

Bleeker places a significant emphasis on the role of fascia in athletic performance. Fascia—connective tissue surrounding and integrating muscles, nerves, and organs—plays a critical role in movement and biomechanics.

Bleeker highlights that fascia is not just a passive structure; it's actively involved in force transmission and muscular coordination. In his work, he discusses how understanding the properties of fascia and its role in kinetic chains can enhance athletic performance. This understanding is particularly valuable in baseball, where the integration of entire body movements into actions like pitching is crucial.

According to Bleeker, improving fascial health and functionality can lead to better movement efficiency, reduced injury risk, and enhanced performance. This involves:

Dynamic Stretching and Mobility Exercises: These help maintain fascial elasticity and flexibility, which are essential for optimal movement.

Hydration: Proper hydration is vital since fascia is a connective tissue that relies on water content to maintain its supple nature.

Training That Emphasizes Whole-body Movements: Such training enhances the fascial connections across muscles, improving overall movement efficiency and force transmission.

Bleeker's approach to training and performance enhancement often focuses on these aspects, advocating for a holistic view of the athlete's body where fascia is considered a central element in the biomechanical model. This perspective not only informs training methods but also underpins a more integrated approach to physical conditioning and rehabilitation in sports.

An Original Ranch Paradigm: Starting with The Pain and Mechanical Efficiency

At the Texas Baseball Ranch®, we take all of these previous paradigms and processes and add a component that, in our opinion, directly impacts an athlete's health, durability, and recovery… mechanical inefficiency.

The less efficient an athlete's movements are, the more unnecessary stress tends to be placed on their soft tissues, especially during high-intensity activities. This specific phenomenon, which we at the Ranch have come to refer to as “added excess unnecessary stress,” is so often overlooked in today’s conversations and, therefore, rarely addressed.

However anecdotal our conclusions may appear to some, I observe the rather obvious effects of excess unnecessary stress almost daily. These manifest most commonly as acute discomfort, premature fatigue, and chronic difficulties with recovery on schedule.

In fact, I maintain that all the other areas I previously mentioned combined do not match the direct impact mechanical inefficiency has on the health and recovery of the typical amateur baseball thrower. Excess unnecessary stress created by inefficient movement patterns is undoubtedly a complex matter and very difficult to define concisely or express simply.

I believe primarily because of its complexity in addressing and its difficulty in application, “mechanics” has become more of a catch-all phrase and a punch line instead of a serious line of training inquiry and application.

In my opinion, we, as a baseball training community for 25+ years, have often misinterpreted and misapplied what mechanical efficiency really entails and how it manifests itself in health, durability, and recovery.

We have often attempted to simplify it, to express it universally as a one-size-fits-all model. Unfortunately, mechanical efficiency is, in fact, quite complex, often subtle, and frequently very nuanced.

Let us begin with what I believe mechanical efficiency is not. Mechanical efficiency is NOT a personal style nor a personal movement signature.

Mechanical efficiency is NOT a position in time and space. In spite of the truly naive calls to the contrary, there is no one universal way to efficiently throw a baseball.

Human beings are far, far too complex and varied to condense movement down to a universal ideal choreography. Mechanical efficiency is not a yes-no, true-false, good-bad checklist.

The good news is that, in our opinion, there is no limit to the possible variations that could provide health, durability, and high performance. The challenge is to avoid movement patterns that place additional and unproductive stress on soft tissue… especially at high intensity.

Make no mistake, that challenge is very real and laborious, and unfortunately, it is rarely discussed with curiosity, openness, and candor. In my opinion (and in my journey as a pitching athlete developer for the last 35 years), the biggest rub in training elite throwing athletes is this: Personal freedom, choice, and autonomy are critically important, but so is eliminating movement patterns that add extra unnecessary stress to soft tissue.

In my 30 years of experience in training throwers, mechanical inefficiency has stunted and/or stopped more pitchers from moving on to their next level of competition than any other single element.

Mechanical inefficiency most often involves movement that is mistimed/out of sequence/lacking synergy, coordination, and/or motor control. Mechanical inefficiency, at its essence, is connective tissue being placed at increased valgus (a deformity involving oblique displacement of part of a limb away from the midline) and/or varus (toward the midline) force.

In future articles, I will give specific examples of inefficient movement patterns and their possible consequences on trauma to soft tissue. For now, it is imperative that each pitching athlete pay very close attention to the health and robustness of his arm. Each athlete’s ability to reduce and mitigate trauma and eliminate unnecessary stress to his soft tissue has an incredible downstream impact on velocity, command, the development of effective secondary offerings, and his ability to bounce back to full functionality after an outing.

In fact, I consider this specific attention to detail the equivalent of the “canary in the coal mine” for pitchers. It offers the “all clear” or important alarm bells going off. Disregard it at your own peril.

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