Lower back maintenance - A question to you cagey veterans of pitching out there.

If he would have used IR with the head slap, it probably would have taken.

Update - So after some deeper investigation by all parties involved it appears all the great medical minds want to blame the roll-over drop as the cause of the tilted pelvis and resulting balled-up lower back muscles.

Ring a bell with anyone?

Bottom line is DD is going to slowly go back at it this time without the roll-over.

To be continued.....

Never seen your daughter throw one obviously, but I've seen A LOT of girls try to steer the rollover drop with their backs and shoulders. Just like any pitch it shouldn't cause pain, but it's a very easy pitch to get horribly wrong. I would not be surprised if that was the culprit, if your daughter was putting too much of her back into it.

rubber, I think you should write to Bill Hillhouse. He has chronic back issues and even said recently that he may be retiring from pitching due to it. I would think he could offer some advice.

CG

Pitchers need to work out and strengthen both sides of their body equally. Pitching only causes one side to develop more than the other and puts undue stress on them.

smddad said:

Pitchers need to work out and strengthen both sides of their body equally. Pitching only causes one side to develop more than the other and puts undue stress on them.

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Note to the other pitcher dad's out there => I NEVER thought that my DD was going to have issues relative to any kind of muscle weakness. She has been called a "beast" by others as she works her butt off in the gym.

BUT she was missing one specific area of the core here that induced back-badness.

To other pitching dad's & their DD's => work pelvic-tilts until you are blue in the face!!!!!

We took our dd to the chiropractor and learned a lot about decompression of the spine. Some times simple things like quality of foot wear and mattress can cause the back to hurt. The act of pitching made it worse for my dd, because she was too stiff with her plant foot. Pinched nerves work in funny ways and my dd goes to chiro. about every 3 months and gets on our inversion table. We are firm believers in inversion tables.

splinterpicker said:

We took our dd to the chiropractor and learned a lot about decompression of the spine. Some times simple things like quality of foot wear and mattress can cause the back to hurt. The act of pitching made it worse for my dd, because she was too stiff with her plant foot. Pinched nerves work in funny ways and my dd goes to chiro. about every 3 months and gets on our inversion table. We are firm believers in inversion tables.

Click to expand...

Cool to hear about inversion tables - I was playing around on Amazon and picked one up the other day. For the investment we have put into pitching so far it was a MINOR addition.

smddad said:

Pitchers need to work out and strengthen both sides of their body equally. Pitching only causes one side to develop more than the other and puts undue stress on them.

Click to expand...

Very true. When itcomes to sgoulders and backs, the same things can be said about pitching with unsafe mechanics.

Update here for those interested:

After the first bad back spasms we got her to ramp up to throw again.

At the Ortho doc she said "don't be a hero" but ramp back up at a gradual pace.

We thought two weeks was enough to get her into the game - she felt good.

Second pitch of the 7th inning (working a 10K 1 hit gem with an insanely tight strike zone) and BAM,....out she goes with an immediate back spasm attack once again... (second time now).

Note that this is AFTER we did get the scans and the skeletal results were Negative on any bone issue or anything wrong with the spine.

This is what gave us confidence with the quick comeback plan - ALONG with the below part of the story that I would like to bounce off y'all:

I specifically asked the Ortho doc "what is the best plan for DD to be the healthiest for this coming TB season (even putting aside HS if she has to). The response I got from this Ortho was that in this specific case my DD has that the plan for being the healthiest for TB is about the same as the plan for getting her back in the circle right away for HS. (I was expecting the usual "take x to y weeks/months off" as a standard response). Does this seem right to you guys who have some insights? Is a suspected muscle imbalance situation best treated by getting back in the circle at the same time doing the PT/core work?

Again, any and all thoughts appreciated.