Coming Back From Injury - Unconditioned Pitching Arm

My starting pitcher hasn't been able to play for the last 3 weeks due to a wrist injury on her throwing side. Total injury time was about 5 weeks. No fracture. She's been practicing with the team the whole time but most throwing and all swing away was shut down till she had no pain.

This past Sunday she pitched 2 innings with no pain during and after the game. Today she is complaining of the bicep and shoulder being fatigued due to not pitching in a while. She also mentioned her hip was bruised slightly due to trying to get Brush Interference lol.

We have a double header this coming Sunday and then tournament starting next Monday with 4 games guaranteed. Two placement games and then double elimination games.

We practice Tues, Weds, Thurs. Tues/Thurs I try to keep the pitches down to 50 or less working mainly adjustments to posture, arm circle, sequence.

We're an older 12u team and will be heading into 14u in a couple weeks. All advice appreciated on how you would ease her back in and/or spread out her game time to save her stamina as much as possible for the eliminations.

I've been a helper and assisting coaching for almost 7 years, but this is my first year head coaching so I'm new to a lot of decisions and gaining much experience.

I don't have experience with softball pitching specifically but I will say bands have helped me a ton. stretching and warming up to actual rehab.

Two videos with exercises for bands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCLJhliwBa4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK6C-iiv5m4

I don't see it on his website at the moment, but Austin Wasserman has had a free e-book on High Level Throwing warm-ups.

https://www.highlevelthrowing.com/

Hawk_ said:

I don't have experience with softball pitching specifically but I will say bands have helped me a ton. stretching and warming up to actual rehab.

Click to expand...

She has a set of the jaeger bands that I know aren't being used. She's supposed to be using them prior and post practices/games but I haven't been on top of that lately. Thanks for the reminder on that to help along with the rehab.

Dabears17 said:

Two videos with exercises for bands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCLJhliwBa4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FK6C-iiv5m4

I don't see it on his website at the moment, but Austin Wasserman has had a free e-book on High Level Throwing warm-ups.

https://www.highlevelthrowing.com/

Click to expand...

Thank you for the video links!

I have the $99 version of the softball throwing book. Funny thing is I also have a bag full of 1/3 filled water bottles in my trunk that got used a few times but the girls seem very disinterested in the water bottle drill.

Thank you for the reminder to dust off Wasserman's books - they're really good stuff. Especially the paid version I remember there's good videos in there too on the sequence and pattern. Looks like I'll be up late the next few weeks watching and taking notes.