Injury Study

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sluggers

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May 26, 2008
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Dallas, Texas
I am going to have to disagree on the conclusion being valid- more garbage in garbage out if they do not break out the style of pitching- would you say the same if it was a study on cars and they just included cars and did not tell you if there were electric and gas cars in the study?

Pitching injuries are repetitive stress injuries--that is, doing the same thing over and over and over again. Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most well known of these types of injuries.

Whether a pitcher uses IR or HE doesn't matter--it's the repetition of the motion that causes the damage. (IR is a more efficient way to pitch...but it still involves accelerating the hand to 60+ mile per hour over and over and over again.)

There is a risk to children from over-pitching. The fastpitch community at all levels--HS, TB, and college--prefer to ignore the risk.
 
Nov 18, 2022
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I am not saying there are not injuries just that I see a ton more in HE pitchers and hear about them from the trainers- I see them out for months with issues like tendinitis or shoulder/back. Rarely do I see a top end IR out for these types of injuries


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Jul 14, 2018
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i still see at high level tourneys in the SE- they are not the easily spotted perfect form HE that you think of but they are still pushing the ball …my daughters old pitching coach all they teach is HE and have girls doing it that are committed to D1 bigger schools!

This is surprising, I assumed as uncdrew said that by the time you’re at this level there are very few HE pitchers left. My first reaction was, ‘Meh, high school pitchers, could be anyone (including the TB F5’s who are forced to pitch because there’s nobody else).’ But a couple of things made me think that they probably got a pretty good sample of decent pitchers:

• 25 play HS & travel
• They averaged between 3-4 games per week
• Respondents included athletes from Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Places that kill us when we see them in tournaments
• They averaged 4.6 types of pitches. Okay, maybe that’s an HE thing…

While there are still many coaches who instruct HE mechanics, it’s important to remember that almost nobody was taught IR before 2005 or so. Yet you see Abbott, Osterman, Scarborough, Finch — they all figured it out.


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May 13, 2021
643
93
Pitching injuries are repetitive stress injuries--that is, doing the same thing over and over and over again. Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most well known of these types of injuries.

Whether a pitcher uses IR or HE doesn't matter--it's the repetition of the motion that causes the damage. (IR is a more efficient way to pitch...but it still involves accelerating the hand to 60+ mile per hour over and over and over again.)

There is a risk to children from over-pitching. The fastpitch community at all levels--HS, TB, and college--prefer to ignore the risk.
Not just arm, and shoulder injuries either. Knee and hip injuries also that are caused not by what they did but how many times they did it.
 
Jul 14, 2018
982
93
My point exactly if they don't have to leave the game pitch count means nothing and the league can say "hey look we are looking out for the kids"


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I know in Babe Ruth they cap pitchers at nine innings over two days. It’s enforced at Districts and playoffs, but it’s all honor system during the regular season. GameChanger integrates pitch counts for groups that use their league feature.

I have, unfortunately, seen my share of coaches at the 10U-12U level who don’t have the patience to let pitchers learn. They’ll ride that one girl who can get outs all weekend. If the choice was taken away from them, I believe more girls would get the reps they need and stick with it longer.


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Nov 18, 2022
100
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Not just arm, and shoulder injuries either. Knee and hip injuries also that are caused not by what they did but how many times they did it.

Typically the knees I see are from twisting maybe on a bad mound- not normally repetitive injury- now catchers knees are another story- maybe they need a limit


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May 13, 2021
643
93
If it were only a matter of reps that was the issue. It is not. Pitch counts would not help. Every pitcher is not the same.
Overuse injuries are by nature caused by to many reps, of whatever movement caused the injury. Pitch counts would 100% stop the ignorant coach and parents allowing a girl to pitch 300-400 pitches in one day. Why do people do this? Because they are told windmill pitching is a natural motion and overuse is not possible. There is nothing natural about it, if it was it would not be so hard to learn and just about anyone could do it.
 
Jan 28, 2017
1,661
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Typically the knees I see are from twisting maybe on a bad mound- not normally repetitive injury- now catchers knees are another story- maybe they need a limit


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Landing at 90 for 8 years 4x a week will get your knees sooner or later most of the time.
 

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