Overhead windup injury risk?

[howellhandmade]

I've been following this forum for a few months, and today for the first time read the opinion (Screwball and Amy in AZ) that an overhead windup can contribute to shoulder injury. The thread in which this was stated was closed, for reasons which I must assume are unrelated to this topic. I hope to provoke further discussion, and generate a larger sample size. Does anyone else see a higher incidence of injury with this windup? What pitchers (Michele Smith, for instance) have used it without injury, and which are injured and cite it as the cause?

 

[halskinner]

I am not familiar with the thread you refer to. I will assume you are talking about the pre-motion of bringing the hands up and overhead, possibly even going a little farther than that and bringing the hands behind the back overhead.

That added motion is simply more work for the shoulder, arm, elbow and everything involved. That extra motion will cause the muscles to tire out sooner than if that extra motion was not there in the wind up.

When the muscles tire, to continue pitching after that point is placing EVERYTHING INVOLVED at risk. The muscles are what protects the joint, ligamates and tendons from getting too much stress and an injury.

This will be argueable. Bringing the hands up together, over head or a little beyond, may or may not cause an injury to a pitcher. I have never heard that motion directly blamed to causing an injury myself.

The energy spent doing that can /does cause the muscles to tire sooner and that MOST CERTAINLY DOES contribute to pitcher arm / shoulder injuries.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

Yeah, Cat was injured in her last game and went down in a heap in the circle. She gave her diagnosis on her facebook page, but I don't know what it was. She uses a lot of trainers and kinesiology tape to keep her going. I know that it was Cat that my own daughter was imitating, when she got hurt. But Caitlin bends her elbows and looks through her forearms. My daughter was swinging her arms up high and hyper extending the shoulders, every pitch.

My DD has terrible posture and it was made worse as she matured and lost her boyish figure. I don't see many pitchers that are battling the breasts issue, but she was.

We tried PT and a private kinesiologist, but her heart wasn't in rehabbing, at age 16. Her diagnosis was muscle impingement. The nurse practitioner, said that she could pitch 2 more years with cortisone injections, but the sports doc wrote us a letter, saying that he would not condone injecting her for softball (spoil sport.) She was done and moved to OF and 1st base.

 

[Bugoozi]

Jordan Taylor from the University of Michigan (now with the Pride) has a very high overhead windup. We will see her in two weeks for a clinic and I will ask her about her shoulders then.

 

[chinamigarden]

the more moving parts the more things that can go wrong. Even if there is no injury risk, the big windup is just one more thing that needs to be just so in order to pitch. When you consider it does not actually benefit the pitch, it should be taken out. My DD used to have that motion and we spent her 12th winter working it out of her motion. She still brings her pitching hand back quite far, but she is reluctant to work that out of her motion.

 

[Dave D]

This has been a topic I've been really interested in this past year. DD (15 y.o. soph) learned to pitch from an old school, "hello elbow", windup instructor. She used to have a pretty dramatic backswing on her motion that several people on this forum commented on as not doing her any good. We have been tweaking her motion over the past couple of years, a little piece at a time. Last summer, she reduced her backswing dramatically, without losing anything off her pitches. (Hillhouse-style takeaway, but with a little added backswing) This fall, she has taken the backswing out entirely, and has been working on starting her motion right from her hip. Her velocity and motion are actually up some. Her motion is so much more simple, and her TB catcher says it SEEMS a lot faster coming out, because the ball gets out so quickly after she starts her motion. Watching her, I feel as though her balance is better, and she is more able to keep herself on line and moving forward to her target throughout her motion. Most important, the wear and tear on her shoulder seems less, and she has more energy at the end of her pitching sessions. I haven't really heard a good explanation for why a backswing windup is a good idea, other than it's what everybody seems to do. If anybody out there can make a case for the backswing, I'm interested.

Back in the old days, baseball pitchers would "wind up," using a windmill motion on the mound. While I can't argue with Satchel Paige's success, I don't see anybody doing that any more. Did everybody just come to the conclusion that it didn't help, and actually may have hurt their arms over time?

 

[howellhandmade]

Thanks, Hal, Amy, Screwball, et al. The thread I was referring to is the "16yo Pitcher." My dd started an overhead windup this past summer; she watched the Michele Smith video and saw some other pitchers doing it, and just picked it up. I wasn't wild about it from the start, but she said she was more comfortable and that it helped her rhythm, so I let it go. When she started taking lessons from Bill Hillhouse she changed a number of things about her motion but clung to that overhead windup like a teddy bear. Tonight in her lesson Bill said for the fiftieth time that he wasn't wild about the overhead windup but she could keep it if she did a few things to make it work. After that, she took a break, during which I mentioned that there was a thread on this forum where some coaches had said that there might be a risk of injury with the overhead windup, that all the extra motion added up over time just like that many more pitches and that she might want to save her shoulder for actually throwing the ball. I've never seen a quicker kibosh on anything -- by the time the words "risk of injury" had finished bouncing off the concrete floor, the windup was gone. I think she went back to it twice in the rest of the lesson when she was concentrating on something else. If only it were all that easy.

 

[SoftSocDad]

the more moving parts the more things that can go wrong. Even if there is no injury risk, the big windup is just one more thing that needs to be just so in order to pitch. When you consider it does not actually benefit the pitch, it should be taken out. My DD used to have that motion and we spent her 12th winter working it out of her motion. She still brings her pitching hand back quite far, but she is reluctant to work that out of her motion.

Each pitcher has her own comfort zone. The mental component of pitching should not be overlooked, as far as routines are concerned. When taking a free throw in basketball, dribbling the ball some number of times at the foul line does nothing to benefit the shot, yet even the best foul shooters generally do it.

I don't see this as a black-and-white issue at all. It's potentially harmful to some players, but not to others. It's potentially beneficial to some players, but not to others.

 

[howellhandmade]

I have not seen Michele Smith use an overhead wind up...please show me.

Michele Smith Teaches Advanced Pitching Promo - YouTube

About 13 seconds in. It's not dramatic and other pitchers do it more, but in her first DVD she recommends that beginners start with the "small circle" but when she demonstrates throwing full speed she does it like that quite a bit, if I recall correctly.

 

[howellhandmade]

Each pitcher has her own comfort zone. The mental component of pitching should not be overlooked, as far as routines are concerned. When taking a free throw in basketball, dribbling the ball some number of times at the foul line does nothing to benefit the shot, yet even the best foul shooters generally do it.

I don't see this as a black-and-white issue at all. It's potentially harmful to some players, but not to others. It's potentially beneficial to some players, but not to others.

Sure. The tough part is not knowing which one your 11yo is.