Youth Baseball - Pitcher Health

How to Keep Your Pitcher’s Arm Healthy

Are you coaching a youth baseball team and want to make sure you keep your pitcher’s arm healthy?  If you are thinking about it then you are already moving in the right direction.  Since I was a pitcher through college, I thought I knew how to properly take care of an arm, but a lot has changed in 20 years.  Luckily, I know some great Physical Therapists at TheraCORE who have helped me understand how to really take care of a young pitcher’s arm.  It really comes down to just three things.

Warm-up, Workload, Rest

Warm-up - When I played baseball, I always threw a baseball to warm up my arm.  I will talk about total throws next under Workload, but if you don’t want to waste a high percentage of your pitcher’s total throws just to get warmed up, then consider using a dynamic warm-up to get your arm and whole body ready to play.  You can also have your pitchers do band exercises to warm up their arms prior to throwing.

Workload – For a while now, most youth leagues have used pitch counts to limit the workload on a young pitcher’s arm.  I have come to learn limiting the total number of throws a player makes in a game or a practice should be used along with pitch counts in order to maintain a healthy arm.  Youth pitchers should limit their total throws to 125 in a day.  If a 10 year old has a max pitch count of 75, think about how quickly he will get to 125 total throws if you include pre-game warm-up throws, pre-game warm-up pitches, in-between inning warm-up pitches and in-game pitches.  You should also take into consideration the number of throws that will be made if he is playing another position during the same day that he pitches.

Rest – If you are coaching a travel baseball team in the Midwest, then the majority of the games your team plays are in weekend tournaments.  It can be a lot of fun to play 4 to 6 games in 2 days, but it can definitely make it tough for a coach to follow the recommended rest guidelines for a pitcher.  Per the guidelines, if a 7 to 14 year old pitcher throws more than 35 pitches on Saturday, then they should not throw any pitches on Sunday.  Winning a youth baseball tournament should never come before the long term health of a young pitcher’s arm.  Remember, proper rest includes taking at least two months off each year from throwing.  Have your kids play a different sport during this time.  It helps to protect their arm and makes them an overall better athlete.

Recommended pitch count/rest - http://m.mlb.com/pitchsmart/pitching-guidelines/

Brad Goebbert, CFO

TheraCORE, Inc.

ACTIVE AGING

What is active ageing? “Active ageing is the process of optimizing opportunities for health, participation and security in order to enhance quality of life as people age. The goal being to extend peoples healthy life expectancies and quality of life as they get older.”

Active ageing does not just mean physical health, but social, religious, civic and economic as well.

I had some experience with active ageing this past week as I just came back from visiting my parents in Florida. Now, although at 60 years old, I consider my parents young, my dad and I took a few minutes to talk about some concerns he had for my mom and him.

First, he was worried about his balance. He has been doing a lot of reading about how balance decreases as one ages. One thing we talked about was trying out some yoga poses. This doesn’t mean running off to try a yoga class that may at first seem intimidating, but we went over a few basic yoga poses (tree pose, warrior I, and down dog) for him to begin working on. He was amazed at how difficult it was to maintain his balance and how tight he felt in his muscles. But after trying these few simple moves a few times, he already felt more confident in the movement patterns, more flexible into the poses and increased his time he could balance. Starting with a slow yoga flow class is a great way to progress these balance challenges and would also lead into increasing his social circle.

The age of individuals in my parents gated community range from 55 – 90 years old. They come from all over the United States and have had so many different careers! One thing my mom and dad started this “summer” is having a monthly pool party. Unlike my parents, (who are completely enjoying their retirement and go to the pool on a daily basis) many of the residents on their street don’t frequent the pool. But these monthly, themed pool parties were a huge hit! Everyone wanted to be a part of it. They were able to socialize and learn about their past experiences over a simple potluck and some water balloons.

My dad also became a part of his homeowner’s association board. He is the treasurer and attends the regular meetings, taking care of the finances for bills for outside home improvement, social functions, etc. This is a great way for my dad to be an active part of the decision making of his community, and keeps his brain working with maintaining the books!

My mom gets together monthly with the “ladies of the neighborhood” as a social gathering, but they also help put together assistance if a neighbor needs someone to look after their house, a spouse is sick, and organizes day trips to see the sites of Florida.

My parents have done an amazing job staying active physically, socially, and developing their sense of community since they have moved full time to Florida. They definitely give me a goal to aspire to!

So there you go….choose a physical activity you have always wanted to try and give it a go. Get together with some neighbors and organize a fun social event in your city. Attend a community board meeting and see how you can make your neighborhood safer….there are plenty of ways to actively age! Have fun!!

-Jen Bazan, PT, DPT

 

Happy New Year!

 

Do you want to increase your physical activity?

Start drinking less pop? Do you want to lose weight?

Or increase your fruit and vegetable consumption?

 

Well, each year everyone has their own resolution, and I want to help you

achieve yours by giving four tips to remember in 2014!

 

 

If you are trying to eat healthier this year:

     1. Stay motivated by not going cold turkey on your current diet!

• Avoid restricting foods. Instead, start by consuming them less frequently because it’s inevitable that you will want them even more by the end of your day. Remember moderation is key.

     2.  Gradually increase that food into your diet that you want more of!

• If you want to consume more vegetables for example, instead of sitting down with a bowl of raw carrots. Try adding them into a soup, or spicing them up with cinnamon and (a dash of) sugar!

 

If you are trying to increase your physical fitness this year:

      3. If you don’t know how to do something, ASK!

• The last thing you need to start off your new year is to get injured because you thought you knew how to do that one exercise. Easy solution! You can either ask a friend or family member who is knowledgeable, the internet has thousands of resources for every exercise imaginable, or you can find a personal trainer near you!

     4.  If you have experience in exercising, and you’re ready to challenge your body

          to a new level this year remember, you CAN!

• Even though it may make you nervous to try something new, with the right coaching or training from an individual you can totally hit your cardio or weightlifting goals. Maybe you want to run your first 5k? Or accomplish a personal record in lifting? When it comes down to it before you have second thoughts, remind yourself how far you have come, and know that you CAN do it!

 Cheers to a healthy New Year, and You!

Written by Alexis D’Ascenzo, Dietetic Student at University of Illinois at Chicago, CPT



Physical Therapist Does Physical Therapy

Well, I can honestly say that I have a whole new outlook on physical therapy.  I’ve had my share of sports injuries in the past, but recovering from double hip surgery has been as eye opening experience!  Not only did I have to physically slow down and let me body recover, but mentally I had to realize that I could not do everything I used to.   Being a compliant patient is not as easy as I thought!

I had these surgeries to relieve hip pain and lack of motion that had been bothering me for at least 10 years.  As many of you know, I played basketball most of my life and the combination of having a narrow, deep hip socket as well as the repetitive motion of defensive slides led to chronic impingement at my hip.  This caused bony lesions at the joint and basically destroyed my labrum, which is the padding in the hip socket.  The first surgery I had by Dr. Domb was an arthroscopic debridement of the lesions and labrum, and in the second surgery (a week later) my hamstring tendon was used to reconstruct my labrum.

I then spent (almostJ) 6 weeks on crutches with only 20 lbs of weight on my left leg.  I’ve been biking 1-2 hours/ day and attending PT 3x/week.  While our philosophy at TheraCORE is to try not to “share” patients and keep them with their one therapist each visit, I have had the opportunity of working with each one of our PT’s.  I had prehab with Cara at our Westmont facility where she kicked my butt strengthening my core and decreasing tightness in my hip muscles!  I can honestly say I thought I was in shape, but if I did not do those workouts before surgery, my recovery would not have been this quick and painless.   Since surgery, I have worked with Jen, Heather and Ryan at our Lockport facility.  I have truly enjoyed experiencing their various treatment methods and the creativity they have shown in my rehab as patience is not my strong suit!

I am now able to walk without crutches, drive, climb stairs and started back treating patients this week.  It will still be some time before I can run, jump or play basketball.  But, I’m starting to realize that I may not actually be a runner and maybe my basketball days are over.  I think I’ll start practicing what I preach and take up biking, swimming and pilates! 

 

- Amy Goebbert, PT, DPT