Baseball and Weightlifting

[Allen M.]

Hello Sensei Glasheen:

Dad and I got into the subject of weightlifting at lunch and he suggested I start weightlifting to strengthen my pitching arm. This is what I said:

The motions for lifting weights and the motion of throwing are not complementary, and a pitcher would experience tendonitis, like one of the pitchers did last year on my team. That other kid told me that the weightlifting messed up his pitching motions and enabled him to throw correctly. His therapist came up with a pretty good idea with a kind of weighted rope pulley strengthening device. One end has a baseball tied to a strong string and the other with a weighted object. One end of the string goes one one side of a door and over on the other side is the weighted object while the string goes over the door. He uses the device to simulate the pitching motion of his arm while strengthening it. I also hurt my elbow pitching last summer and went for therapy too.

Dad was going to ask your opinion of weightlifting for pitchers and what you think about the above, but as he started typing I came into the room then he passed me the keyboard.

Chris Moulton

[Allen M.]

prevented, not enabled

[Bill Glasheen]

This is a really good point to ponder. I can share information that was passed on to me back in the eighties, right when weight training finally broke out of its shakles and into the mainstream of sports.

I had two good mentors on this subject: the first was John Gamble, and the second was a Dr. Dan Kulund. John Gamble was once world champion in heavyweight powerlifting, and was strength coach at University of Virginia. Last I heard, he had the same role at the Miami Dolphins. Dan Kulund is an orthopedic surgeon who was also a professor at the University. He wrote a book titled The Injured Athlete which was used as a text for the graduate program in sports medicine.

Here's the short of it. If you want to practice your sport, practice your sport. If you want to condition your body and get strong, then do weight training and other conditioning exercises. Don't try to mix the two up. What happens when you hybridize is that you unwittingly create strength imbalances in your body and actually increase your risk of injury.

In order for a body to perform any sport at maximum potential, it needs a balance of extensor vs flexor strength, and upper body vs lower body strength. Many novices to the field of kinesiology are unaware of how the WHOLE body contributes to even the most simple motions when done to maximum of potential. You only need to injure a muscle in some odd place and see how it throws everything off to appreciate this. And any CONTROLLED motion has the antagonistic muscles working in a very subtle fashion to create the precise motion necessary for an exacting outcome. Certainly pitching is an activity that requires control. One needs to learn - in a very general sense - how to get the various muscles to work together to achieve an end.

Furthermore, repeating the exact motion you do all the time with weights can....give you a repetitive motion injury. Talk about defeating the purpose of what you are trying to do! Cross training is often all about asking the body to use the same muscles, but in a different way. It gives you a break from a particular way of doing things that can cause harm past a certain point. In baseball, there's a good reason why they count pitches in a game! Why add to that stress by doing more of the same with weights?

I wish there were one really good book I could recommend now. Unfortunately most of them out in the bookstore are about bodybuilding and not about weight training. But if you buy enough of them, you can get a general picture of what you need to do. Basically you need to have an off season where you train hard with the weights. Then during the season, you lighten up a bit and use weights just to maintain the strength you gained during the off season. In general any good program is built around free weight exercises that work multiple muscle groups. The machines are brought in to finish up on certain muscles (like hamstrings) that are difficult to do any other way.

And when training for pitching, don't forget the legs, the abdominals, and the forearms/wrists.

I hope this helps. Ask more questions if you have them.

Bill

[Bill Glasheen]

Oh, I almost forgot.

Any good weight training program needs to be done in conjunction with a good flexibility regime. Any muscle that is contracted must be stretched - both upper and lower body. There are a lot of good books out on the market that can help you on this.

And I personally recommend PNF stretching. This is relatively new, but there are articles out there on it now. And a really good coach (properly trained) can help you with all this.

Bill

[maurice richard libby]

Chris,

I can't add much to what Bill said. (and when did lack of anything to say ever stop me?), except to point out that Nolan Ryan was pretty dedicated to weight training, from what I heard and attributed his longevity to his conditioning.

You might want to check out www.myodynamics.com and www. mesomorphosis.com for some information about the differences between weight training for sports and for bodybuilding.

If you want, email me and I can recommend a few books and web sites that might help.
mori@interlog.com is my email address.


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maurice richard libby
toronto/moose jaw

[This message has been edited by maurice richard libby (edited 03-15-99).]

[This message has been edited by maurice richard libby (edited 03-15-99).]

[Bill Glasheen]

Maurice

I read Nolan Ryan's biography. What you say is true. But when he was young, all the coaches were telling him to stay out of the weight room. Good thing he was smart enough to think for himself. As I recall, he pitched his last no-hitter at age 44, and in that game he AVERAGED a pitch speed of 89 mph. When you consider that he had a great change-of-pace pitch....

Bill

[RACastanet]

One of baseballs last 30 game winners, Dizzy Dean, ruined his arm after being struck on the big toe by a line drive. He altered his delivery to protect his toe, hurt his arm, and was out of baseball shortly thereafter. This is to Bill's point - many muscle actions go into any athletic endeavor. Any imbalance can have a ruinous effect.
Rich

[Allen M.]

Chris was looking to find out if Bill could help him with an exercise program to help him strengthen his arm for pitching.

It may be a few more days or longer before we can get together in the evening for him to sit and ask, and I'd rather have ask then me do it for him.

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Allen - uechi@ici.net - http://www.uechi-ryu.org