Post ACL Surgery Pitching Drills

[uncdrew]

I might need to curtain rec basketball for my little one. She's not the most coordinated and we're really only doing basketball for her to get more exercise. Plenty of ways to do that. Our hitting coach tells us a ton of his girls get injured during basketball season.

Perhaps volleyball...

 

[Lemond]

I think that most/all sports are healthy to pursue. Only after DD's friend tore her ACL (out 10 mos from FP) did I learn that girls were more susceptible to this injury. I have heard that soccer is worse than basketball. There is a class (I think it was on NFHS web site, but not sure) that gave good tips on training to prevent ACL injuries, with emphasis on girls. Problem I see these days is that NO one want to go through warm ups any more. Part of the millennial mindset that drives me nuts!

 

[BT3100]

Basketball is a massacre
More knee injuries.... I know of 5 girls with ACLs from basketball.

 

[uncdrew]

Basketball is a massacre
More knee injuries.... I know of 5 girls with ACLs from basketball.

Yeah.

I haven't seen any real stats on it, but all the injuries to girls I see are coming from basketball.

 

[_MIA_]

I tore my ACL playing pickup baseball when I would have been playing basketball had I not left the HS team
That said I know a poor kid who lives down the street from us who tore her ACL playing basketball 3 times within 3 years (twice on the same leg).

 

[Lemond]

Not trying to prove anything (really), but this was from a quick google search out of curiosity. In fact not sure how valid the data in this article is.

ACL Injuries in Young Athletes

As pre-teens enter into puberty and grow taller and heavier, their risk of ACL injury increases – beginning at age 12 for girls, and age 14 for boys. Girls are at higher risk of ACL injury because after puberty, as their body size increases, girls do usually not develop more muscle power. Learn...

www.healthychildren.org

Are some children at a greater risk of injury?
As pre-teens enter into puberty and grow taller and heavier, their risk of ACL injury increases – beginning at age 12 for girls, and age 14 for boys. Girls are at higher risk of ACL injury because after puberty, as their body size increases, girls do usually not develop more muscle power.

In fact, female athletes between 15 and 20 years old account for the largest number of ACL injuries. At the high school level, girls soccer has the most ACL injuries, followed by boys football, girls basketball, girls gymnastics, and boys and girls lacrosse. Among high school and college athletes, females have two to six times higher ACL injury rates than males in similar sports. Compared with boys, girls are more likely to have surgery and less likely to return to sports after an ACL injury.


BTW: This article has links to some of the ACL injury prevention training/drills that I mentioned a while back.

 

[Lemond]

Was thinking that maybe soccer had higher numbers of ACl injuries vs basketball having a higher percentage of players having ACL tears, so looked a little deeper.

In this article: https://williamsterett.com/blog-dr-william-sterett/2016/12/2/which-sport-has-the-most-acl-tears they reference a 2013 study of HS athletes with ACL injuries with the following notes:

According to the 2013 Study referenced earlier, entitled "A Multi-sport Epidemiologic Comparison of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injuries in High School Athletics", we see the following stats:

• about 5.5% of ACL injuries to male high school athletes occurred on the basketball court.
• About 26.5% of ACL injuries to female high school athletes occurred on the basketball court.

And

• For the young men, soccer was the sport second-most likely to result in an ACL tear, at 17.2%.
• For the young ladies, soccer is the top offender. A whopping 53.2% of injuries to the ACL in high school female athletes occurred playing soccer.

Interestingly, the article notes that most of the basketball injuries occur during games vs practice.

To round out the list, here is the stat for softball:

• Among young female high school athletes, 11.4% tore their ACL playing softball.
• Among young female high school athletes, 8.8% tore their ACL playing volleyball.

I had no idea that it would be that disparate.

I guess that still didn't answer my question that perhaps basketball has a higher percentage of players injured with ACL tears, but would need to know the population of both sports, and I'm too tired to look right now.

 

[Oaktree33]

DD tore her ACL in her plant leg playing basketball this winter. She is 3 weeks post injury and 2 weeks post surgery. She just completed her first week of physical therapy and should be off crutches next week. She is allowed to walk without them around the house now and is slowly getting strength back in her leg.

She is starting to get antsy and wanting to do as much as she can in terms of softball so I wanted to reach out to the group here and see what drills or exercises you all would recommend while she was recovering in terms of pitching? I know spins are something she can still do and she will be working with arm bands as much as possible but are there other things we should be looking into over the next few weeks?

so my daughter tore her ACL 2 weeks ago playing basketball, her surgery is scheduled for next month. This season catching is sidelined for her. My question to you is, did your daughter do any "softball" exercises to keep her skills up? Thanks

 

[MightyMO]

so my daughter tore her ACL 2 weeks ago playing basketball, her surgery is scheduled for next month. This season catching is sidelined for her. My question to you is, did your daughter do any "softball" exercises to keep her skills up? Thanks

We didn't do a lot until she was able to be up walking on her own. She did some spin work while she recovered and when her PT told her she could, we started playing some light catch. She had the surgery where they used part of her hamstring for the ACL replacement. That meant she had to rehab her hamstrings quite a bit too.

It killed her to not be able to practice and play but that drove her to work harder at therapy. She ended up missing the summer travel season but was released for full speed participation (including pitching) the week before fall HS practice started. She didn't miss a game and even pitched most of them that year.

A couple of notes for you as you and your DD work through this process. Find a good PT who knows how to rehab these injuries for athletes. As I said in my earlier posts, I was lucky to know pretty much all of them in our area and pick the one I wanted her to work with. He had worked with division one baseball and softball teams in the past and also a lot of athletes in our area. Also, keep in mind that this is a scary process for your DD. It will be tough for her to trust her knee as she starts therapy and even after she is released. I was lucky enough to be able to take my DD to most of her therapy appointments and the videos I have of her doing leg presses or running on the treadmill for the first time are still some of my favorites. You can see how proud she is of the hard work she has put in.

Even after she was released it was hard for her to go full speed mentally. The first year her surgeon wanted her wearing a custom brace for any athletic activity (basically the same ones a lot of offensive linemen wear playing football). After that he told her it was up to her. She still wears a smaller brace after we discussed it. I think it helps her to feel a little more protected. She still has some scary things happen. She slid into home during a tournament last summer and collided with the catcher. She got up and left the field fine, but by the time that game got over it started hurting her. She didn't play the rest of the weekend. We talked to her PT about it and he gave us some things to do and she was back playing the next tournament.

All that being said, we couldn't have asked for a better overall outcome. DD signed and will be pitching in college next year (graduating from HS in May) and the whole process made her realize she had a passion for healthcare and specifically PT. She will be pursuing her undergrad and then going on to get her doctorate in PT after that.

 

[Dabears17]

Wasserman wrote an article on why females are more likely to tear their ACLs and some training they can do the lessen the chances. Basically females tend to land when jumping differently than males, in a way that stresses their knees.

Female Strength Training Programs: What's the difference? - Wasserman Strength -

The Big Question Why train female athlete’s differently? What is so structurally different in females that will cause a Strength Coach to implement different exercises? Why are female athletes more prone to knee injuries, specifically the ACL, than men? According to Timothy Hewett, the director...

www.wassermanstrength.com