A few years back, at a TBR Coaches Boot Camp, I had the pleasure of meeting Frans Bosch, a motor learning and biomechanics expert from The Kingdom of The Netherlands. At the time, the Dutch were 10-20 years ahead of the rest of the world in this area and Frans was considered the best of the best.
It wasn’t long before Chien became the talk of the town in Surprise, AZ with eye-popping velocities reaching 96.7 mph With characteristic humility and class, Chien acknowledged his work at The ARMory in the off-season as the key to his new success. The day he mentioned it to reporters, the entire country of Taiwan visited and crashed our website. We doubled the bandwidth and after his next outing, it crashed again.
Late Life. It’s the perfect title for a documentary by filmmaker, Frank Chen on rise, fall and resurgence of ex-Yankee Ace, Chien Ming Wang. It premier’s in LA on May 9th. I am honored to be a part of it.
I said it - "there is no such thing as overuse! Injuries come from incorrect use over a long period of time". I got nuked on social media. But then Orthopedic Surgeons across the country came to our defense by agreeing and endorsing our process at the The Florida Baseball ARMory.
Throwing at a superior level is about being “connected”. When a delivery is connected all the body parts are acting in timing and synergy with one another. Every part is playing its proper role and performing in concert with all the other body parts…and those parts are operating around a stable spine.
Coaches at our baseball training camps know that, when you have a soft tissue injury (UCL, labrum, rotor cuff) that doesn’t result in catastrophic failure, it’s very important during the rehab process that you provide controlled stress to organize the healing tissue along the line of resistance.
And here we go again. The long toss and weighted ball police are back at it. The study from 2011 "Max Distance Throwing Changes Mechanics and Puts More Stress On The Arm.” The longstanding argument against long toss is as follows: 1) It increases joint stress in the elbow and the shoulder, and 2) throwing mechanics change with increased distance of throws. Both are true…And that is exactly why I like long toss… as a training tool.
At the Florida Baseball ARMory and in my physical therapy practice, not a week goes by that I don’t see an injured thrower who’s parents report that he had thrown very little prior to getting hurt. “I don’t how this happened,” they say. “He hasn’t pitched very much at all.” Does that sound like a workload problem to you?
The preponderance of the evidence leaves me with only one possible conclusion. Cody Martin is unknockoutable! Way to go Cody! Keep getting back up kid! Keep fighting!
Any time a pitcher complains of pain on the inside of the elbow, you worry about damage to the UCL — the dreaded Tommy John surgery. But sometimes it’s not the Tommy John ligament at all. Here is a rudimentary field test to see if you might have damage to the UCL. It’s called “The milking test.”
