Sorry for the delay. We are traveling to California this week to take on the Bears. Today’s article features Oliver et al (2018) Upper Extremity Pain and Pitching Mechanics in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Softball. The authors measured 55 collegiate softball players in 2 groups: with and without upper extremity pain. They found:
- Pitchers with upper extremity pain exhibited significantly greater shoulder horizontal abduction at foot contact compared to pain-free pitchers.
- Those with pain demonstrated less trunk lateral flexion toward the throwing side at ball release.
- The pain group experienced higher shoulder distraction forces at ball release.
Implications: The analysis run was a Mann-Whitney U (non-parametric test for correlations) so understand that these findings are NOT causal, meaning that just because there is a trend, it doesn’t mean that these moves caused their pain. That said, previous studies found that lateral trunk flexion correlated with lower ERA, which means that pitchers with pain may be compensating inappropriately for performance. Greater horizontal shoulder abduction means that the arm path may be affected, and although this study didn’t specify, we could speculate that greater horizontal abduction may also lead to greater shoulder distraction (the body fighting to keep the shoulder in its socket). Shoulder distraction has been reported to correlate with greater pitch velocity. Moreover, other studies have theorized that greater shoulder abduction leads to greater performance. This has been reported in baseball. The jury is still out on whether these are helpful or detrimental to performance and injury.
People to Follow
Not all of you are involved in strength and conditioning but I am sure some of you are. I think it’s imperative to try to understand how the body functions especially under a load. Here is a great post by Connor Harris explaining how ankle immobility can affect everything else up the chain.
