Matt Hank

As I mentioned in my last post, I attended an amazing training conference this past weekend.  One of the presentations (by Eric Cressey) was specifically about baseball players and screening for dysfunction in their shoulder.  He started off by citing some interesting studies that show most elite pitchers (professional and college) have “abnormal labrum features”.  His point was that many athletes have structural damage or joint dysfunction but do not have any signs or symptoms so they continue to pitch.

The part of the presentation I wanted to get into though is the idea of screening your baseball athletes (especially pitchers) to find imbalances.  The most obvious imbalance would be the difference in range of motion between the throwing arm (specifically shoulder) and the non-throwing arm.  If you were to measure the internal range of motion of the throwing shoulder and compared it to the non-throwing shoulder, you would come up with a number that represents the Glenohumeral Internal Rotation Deficit (GIRD).  The significance behind this number is that as pitcher you do not want to have a large GIRD in your throwing shoulder.  High school athletes should have a GIRD below 12 degrees and college athletes want to stay below about 15 degrees.

Every time a pitcher throws the baseball, the muscles in the back of the shoulder (specifically rotator cuff) have to decelerate (slow down) the arm after the ball is released.  After an entire pitching performance you could image that the muscles in the back of the shoulder become over-used and stiffen up.  If you’re not actively stretching the rotator cuff muscle and other posterior shoulder muscles it leads to less range of motion in the shoulder (higher GIRD).  Pitchers with a high GIRD are more likely to have shoulder and elbow problems as their pitching career continues.

Observe how the arm is rotating downward and inward – the muscles of the posterior shoulder are working to deccelerate the arm at the end of this motion.

You are less likely to see huge abnormalities in youth pitchers because many of them are not throwing enough to develop these imbalances in their throwing arm.  Also, many youth athletes are extremely lax in the joints because they are still growing and developing.  I would be more concerned with pitching mechanics for youth baseball players as opposed to a sophisticated training program( like older athletes starting a  7-8 grade and older – include college and pros).

Bottom line – if you screen your pitchers, you can find valuable information to help design a training program (including flexibility and strength training) that may prevent elbow and shoulder injuries down the road.

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