Preventing Injuries in Soffball Pitchers

[BT3100]

Just looking at the board and social media sites you see more and more about pitchers with injuries. These girls work hard and push themselves to their limit.
We visited our Othro a few weeks back, he is a nationally recognized Doctor who treats athletes exclusively. He shared that the future of his practice is injury prevention. As it relates to pitching he spent time looking into the motion and is convinced that our pitchers need to over work their opposing side of the body to prevent injury. Right handed pitchers need to dedicate more time to their left side to create balance. I asked him about multi sport athletes and he shared his point of view that no matter how many sports a child plays if they pitch they will most likely have an imbalance due to the repetitive nature of the motion. He recommended pitching from the left side for 15 minutes after each session. In addition he recommended that pitchers stay lazer focused on hamstrings and insuring that they are not tight on landing leg. His point was hamstrings control the pelvis and once tight they will create a pelvic imbalance that causes all sorts of back issues.
He will be sharing more info with me soon and I will post.
Just some food for thought and mostly common sense.

 

[uncdrew]

Following.

thanks for sharing with us.

 

[inumpire]

http://www.ortho.ufl.edu/sites/ortho.ufl.edu/files/handouts/Softball-Injury-Prevention.pdf

 

[Fury_Mike]

Most of my high level pitchers also are regulars at the Chiropractor to address their hips when out of alignment. This has done preventative wonders for avoiding back issues

 

[Traps71]

http://www.ortho.ufl.edu/sites/ortho.ufl.edu/files/handouts/Softball-Injury-Prevention.pdf

A useful guide and I've seen others like them. As my DD moved through 10U, 12U, and now 14U, we've done pretty well not pitching a third day in a row (though, in 12U, that was very challenging because our LL games tended to be Mondays and Fridays with tournaments about every other weekend). There were certainly times that we definitely pushed too hard or too far--and she answered the bell for the team--but thankfully it wasn't very often. That said, between warm up pitches and pitches in games, there is no way we ever adhered to those suggested pitch limits. Even if the game is only 5 innings, you need to be pitching pretty efficiently to stay at or under 80 pitches/game.

This is all gets back to the discussion of pitching depth. If you don't have three competent or better pitchers, it is very difficult to get through a competitive tournament while also balancing what is best for your pitchers' health and longevity. As others have pointed out, most teams are lucky to have one strong pitcher let alone two. And you can almost forget about having three.

 

[grmerrill]

Most of my high level pitchers also are regulars at the Chiropractor to address their hips when out of alignment. This has done preventative wonders for avoiding back issues

Daily core stretches have greatly reduced the number of visits without any adverse problems.

 

[Fury_Mike]

Daily core stretches have greatly reduced the number of visits without any adverse problems.

What do you do for core stretches?