Young Pitchers- Arm Injuries

Submitted by P Burke on Tue, 05/26/2009 - 19:23.

I wonder if any readers or their kids have experienced arm injuries due to overuse. It is a situation that is becoming more common ( or well documented anyway) among young baseball players, most notably pitchers. One such condition, dubbed " Little League Elbow," is appearing with greater frequency. We have seen it in our work with some young athletes at Reddy-Care Physical Therapy in Great Neck, New York. Our practice hopes to conduct additional study of the phenomenon, and welcomes any firsthand experiences readers might want to share.

5
Average: 5 (1 vote)
Time to quit sports? ›

Pitching/ Conditioning

Submitted by John Dee on Fri, 05/29/2009 - 16:53.

P. Burke, it's my opinion that this is overblown due to the attention it receives. Yes, there are some arm injuries due to overuse. But more common are kids who get a sore arm because they aren't conditioned to throw. You don't have runners go out and run a 5 mile race on the first day of practice? Kids will throw 60 pitches two times a week and complain because their arm hurts. Of course it does when you don't pick up a ball the other 5 days a week?
In the 1960's and 1970's, pro baseball pitchers routinely threw 250-300 innings per year, year after year. Today the "better conditioned" may throw 200 innings a year. Many rarely throw more than 5-6 innings per start. Why is this?
Several years ago, some kids were probably overused and permanantly hurt their arms, and everyone over reacted and put in pitch counts across the board and we've slowly developed a couple of generations of kids with little stamina when it comes to throwing. And example would be to restrict kids running to only 1/2 mile daily. After 10-20 years of that, No one would ever be able to run a marathon.
I'm not saying that kids don't hurt their arms, but in most cases, the kid, parent or coach will do what's in the best interest of the kid. We don't need to regulate everything is kids lives.

Our little league coach

Submitted by Kathy Banks, Ms. on Tue, 02/09/2010 - 23:42.

Our little league coach won't allow our pitchers to learn how to throw curve balls. He explained to us that the twisiting of the wrist can damage young kids' arms. I personally believe it and respect coaches putting winning aside for the health of our children.

While I agree that young

Submitted by John Dee on Tue, 02/16/2010 - 22:01.

While I agree that young pitchers can hurt their arms throwing curve balls, with proper technique and monitoring, it's not all inclusive.  Again, the arm needs to be conditioned to throw, I would say for a 12 year old kid, in  a20-30 pitch inning, only 3-4 curve balls should be thrown.  Not 50-75% of their pitches.  An effective pitch for kids is the change up.