Research

Baseball enthusiasts love to watch the clock that shows how fast the pitch was delivered. But those speeds of up to 100 miles per hour can come at a cost for the pitcher. Stress, force, and load on the shoulder and elbow can cause injuries. And for the injured athlete, these forces can add stress to a healing injury that may compromise the player's return to play.What can be done to prevent throwing injuries and/or protect the healing tissues in an injured player? That is the topic of a study do...

Imagine throwing a baseball so fast your elbow moves 2300 degrees per second. Now do that over and over and imagine the shear force placed on the medial (side closest to the body) structures of the elbow. For throwing athletes, microtrauma to the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) from repetitive throwing causes pain, loss of throwing speed, decreased accuracy, and weakness. Ultimately, when the forces placed on the UCL are greater than its tensile strength, something's got to give. And that someth...

The average baseball pitch takes less than five seconds. To the outside observer, the actions occur so quickly, it's impossible to see much more than a flurry of activity. The leg comes up, the pitcher strides forward as the pitching arm cranks back, the trunk tilts forward, and the ball is released. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But the accuracy and speed of the pitch depend on many, many actions such as the foot position and orientation (turned out/turned in), shoulder and pelvis rotation, knee e...

There's a simple way to avoid shoulder injuries in Little League pitchers. In this article, sports medicine specialists present a few tips to help in this area. There are known guidelines for injury prevention. The first is: don't overdo it. Second, players, parents, and coaches must work together to keep track of the number of pitches a pitcher throws per practice, per game, per week, and per season.

Shoulder problems in the throwing athlete are common but very complex. It can be a real challenge to identify the specific cause of the problem and treat it quickly and easily. Many throwing athletes don't allow enough time to rest the shoulder between games and especially after an injury. The authors of this article provide a review of the causes and mechanisms of shoulder throwing injuries. They describe how the anatomy of the shoulder changes with repetitive throwing. And they offer suggestio...

There are many possible causes of shoulder pain in the overhead-throwing athlete. With six phases of the baseball pitch (wind up, early cocking, late cocking, acceleration, deceleration, and follow-through), there are many places where the neurovascular structures (nerves and blood vessels) can get pinched or compressed.

Rookies entering the minor leagues run a greater risk of injury than veteran players, according to this study. The authors say that rookies may not be prepared physically for the new demands of higher levels of play. Playing at such a high level requires the tissues of the body to adapt over a longer period of time. Rookies simply haven't made these adaptations, which could account for their higher injury rates.