How to prevent pitching Injuries Essay Example for Free

How to prevent pitching Injuries Essay Throwing a baseball is one of the most strenuous motions a person can put their body through. When you throw a baseball it puts large amounts of pressure on your arm which can cause very serious injury over an amount of time. The shoulder and elbow joint were not designed to throw a ball overhand. The natural way to throw a ball would be to throw it underhand. If you are going to be a pitcher, you need to be aware of the effects that throwing a baseball can have on your shoulder and elbow. You also need to know what you can do to prevent these injuries from happening. If your arm is going to withstand the strain that throwing has on your arm, you are going to need to know the stretches and exercises that will strengthen the arm muscles so that your arm is strong enough to take the pressure. Before you pick up the baseball you have to be absolutely sure that youre arm is thoroughly stretched out. The amount of time a person needs to stretch is going to vary, so you will have to be the judge about when you are good and stretched. When you are beginning to stretch you want to focus on getting the blood to penetrate to the arm. You accomplish this by moving your arms in a circular motion. You are going to want to rotate your arms fifteen times forward and fifteen times backward. Once you have gotten the blood flowing to the arms you are ready to begin throwing the baseball. When you first start out throwing you want to throw at a short distance, and gradually work your way back as your arm begins to get loose. When warming up you never want to start throwing as hard as you can right from the beginning. The arm needs time to get loose before you can start throwing at full speed. Now that you have warmed up, and your arm is ready to throw in a game, you need to too put a long sleeve jacket or sweatshirt on so that your arm stays warm. If you do not do this the blood that has rushed to your arm will begin to leave, which will prevent your arm from staying warm. Now that you know what to do when you are warming up, now we will go over on what to do when youre done pitching so that your arm will recover faster. After a pitcher has thrown, the joints and muscles in the arm have gone through a great deal of wear. The muscle tissue in the arm has actually started to bruise, which eventually creates lactic acid. This is a chemical in your body that helps heal these bruises, but it does not heal the arm very quickly. Instead of these acids helping your body to re-cooperate the pitcher is going to ice his shoulder and elbow (which are the main points of wear). This will help the swelling in the muscles because this ice will cause the swelling to go down. After you are done icing the pitcher is going to go on a long distance run. This long distance run helps to get the blood flowing back through the arm which causes the lactic acids that are still in your arm, to get washed out of the elbow and shoulder. For your arm to recover from pitching as quickly as possible, you are also going to need to do arm exercises until the next time that you are going to be pitching again. These exercises are also going to help prevent major injuries to your elbow and shoulder. The exercises that the pitcher will do will be done with a three foot piece of surgical tubing. With this piece of tubing you are going to strengthen the small muscles that hold your rotator cuff together and the tendons in your elbow. The tubing will be tied to an object such as a fence, and the pitcher is going to pull the tubing away from the fence creating resistance against the small muscles and tendons. These arm exercises are vital if your arm is going to withstand the pressure of throwing the baseball. Pitchers put there shoulder and elbow in a situation to have major injury. If a pitcher is going to survive through the strains of throwing a baseball he is going to need to do everything he can to try to prevent these injuries from arising. Even by doing the stretches and exercises covered in this essay, you may still go through a serious arm injury, but at least you know that you did everything that you could to try to prevent serious injury.