Pre season exercise recommendations for baseball and other throwing athletes

Given the subzero temperatures and 2+ feet of snow on the ground, many of us are dreaming of 80 degree sunny days at the ballpark in July.  For those of you with a history of shoulder or elbow pain with throwing activities, or anyone who wants to prevent missing out on a perfect game day in 3-4 months, the time is now to get your arm ready for the season.

With the relatively short baseball/softball season that our Minnesota weather allows, it is important that we do our preseason preparation to have our arms ready for the season during times when being outside playing catch is the furthest thing from our minds.  Thankfully the basic preventative shoulder exercises require very little space, and minimal equipment.

Overuse and under-preparation for throwing activities is the #1 factor that brings baseball/softball players into PT clinics in the spring and summer.  Typically these injuries are 100% preventable by only a 10-15 minute exercise routine 3-4 times per week and some common sense about how much throwing we do early in the season.  It is important to note though, those preventative exercises must start 6-8 weeks prior to the onset of throwing activities.  With the typical season starting in mid-late April, that start date is now.

The two important sites for throwers to strengthen in the preseason are the rotator cuff and the small muscles around the elbow.  A simple program of 4 rotator cuff exercises and 3 elbow exercises are a great starting block for throwing athletes.

The 4 rotator cuff exercises are sidelying ER, scaption, shoulder extension and shoulder horizontal abduction.   The elbow exercises are pronation/supination, wrist curls, and radial deviation.  The pictures below show the 7 exercises, with both starting and ending positions.  It is important to do the exercises with correct form as shown, with low weights (1-2 lbs max) and high repetitions (we often recommend 3 sets of 30).

sidelying ER

scaption

shoulder extension

shoulder horizontal abduction

radial deviation

wrist curls

pronation/supination

 If you have pain with these exercises, or note pain with throwing there may be a more serious injury and we recommend consulting with a health professional.  At OSR, we offer free injury screenings and can guide you in what is the correct next step for your thrower’s shoulder or elbow pain.

This article was written by Ryan Koepp, DPT. He is the clinic director and treats patients at our Eden Prairie location. 

Curling

Have you ever been interested in learning more about the sport of curling or how to even curl?

Robyn Farm at our Chanhassen location is part of the Dakota Curling Club and they are putting on a Learn To Curl event at the Burnsville Ice Arena.

It is Saturday Feb 22.  The cost is $25 per person and each participant must be 13 years old.

For more information about the event please check out:
http://dakotacurlingclub.org/l2c/

Sport Specific Warm up

Recently there has been increased research into having a sport specific warm-up attempting to reduce the amount of injuries that happen through a sport season.  Another article just came out looking at a D1 collegiate soccer team stating a sport specific warm up that helped reduce injuries suffered throughout the year.  There have been many studies similar to this one, begging the question why doesn’t every team perform one of these warm-ups?  They often take the same amount of time that a traditional warm-up does, do not require much or any extra equipment and can be run by the teams’ athletic trainer or coach.  

These warm-ups are not only for collegiate athletes, but for everyone of all ages. Dr. Heather Bergeson spoke to OSR's staff on adolescent overuse injuries today. One key point as part of injury prevention was to include dynamic warm ups. 

Here is a link to the article with an example soccer specific warm-up. 

The goals of these warm-ups are to reduce common injuries in a sport by performing prehab, or preventative rehabilitation.  For soccer this could be ankle sprains or ACL injuries.  From here the Athletic Trainer can create a sport specific warm-up with rehab exercises.  By training the muscle properly from the beginning they will be able to work properly and help reduce the amount of injuries over multiple seasons.  

The key to the warm-up is that it needs to be easy to perform and continually progressive.  If the athletes are not continually pushed they will not make gains and will plateau.  The progressions will also help reduce any boredom that can occur when exercises become repetitive.  

The first half of this video can be used as a baseline to start your dynamic warm up for any sport:

If you are interested in having a sport specific warm-up for your team please contact OSR and we can help you out!

This article was written by Andrew Ernst, ATR at our Eden Prairie location.