Some of the most debilitating sports injuries occur without much fanfare. We’re talking about baseball players who execute overhand throwing day in and day out and stress their shoulders beyond capacity.
Professional and world-class athletes who experience debilitating shoulder injuries seek out the caring providers at The Woodlands Sports Medicine Centre in Conroe and The Woodlands, Texas to get relief.
They have treated thousands of sports injuries, including the shoulder conditions that tend to plague baseball players. Whether you’re a pitcher or a position player, here’s what our team wants you to know about how playing baseball affects your shoulder.
The mechanics of pitching a baseball put your shoulder at high risk for injury. In order to hurl a fastball, you need to sling your arm, fully cocked and extended, from an unnatural position behind your body. As your hand arcs overhead, your shoulder joint rotates, and the head of your humerus shifts forward, placing extreme stress on your ligaments in the front of your shoulder.
The end of your pitch poses some problems as well. During your follow through, your tendons and ligaments in the back of your shoulder decelerate the motion and keep the humeral head in place. Over time, these ligaments stretch and loosen, which gives you more speed, but the trade-off is greater instability that often leads to a shoulder injury and time on the DL (now called the IL, or Injured List).
The act of throwing a baseball makes you susceptible to a long lineup of potential shoulder problems. Here are the most common types we see in baseball players.
The ring of cartilage inside your shoulder socket, called the glenohumeral labrum, keeps the head of your humerus stable inside the socket. If you dislocate your shoulder or use rapid and forceful movement, such as throwing a baseball, you can tear the labrum. SLAP tears affect the top of the socket, and Bankart tears affect the bottom front portion of the socket.
Your rotator cuff is a group of tendons, muscles, and ligaments in your shoulder joint that form a space for the head of your humerus. There a number of things that can go wrong here:
Rotator cuff injuries are painful and limit your mobility and stability.
If you dislocate your shoulder — when your humerus bone pops out of your shoulder socket — it loosens the structure of your shoulder and becomes unstable. Constant pitching and throwing can produce the same effect over time. Chronic shoulder instability decreases the velocity of your throw and often leads to dead arm syndrome.
Deep inside your shoulder joint, called the glenoid cavity, you have a shock-absorbing ligament called the glenoid labrum. We mentioned what happens when you get a SLAP tear, meaning the ligament tears in the front and the back at the point where the biceps tendon attaches. But a chronic sprain of this glenohumeral ligament can lead to long-term pain, reduced range of motion, and catching or locking in the shoulder, significantly limiting your ability to throw a baseball.
Next to “play ball” and “you’re out,” one of the most common phrases you’ll hear on a baseball field is “have you done your Jobes today?” That’s because seasoned baseball players know that the shoulder exercises endorsed by the late Dr. Frank Jobe — who pioneered the now infamous Tommy John surgery that’s helped many MLB pitchers like Dodger Orel Hershiser return from a severe elbow injury — are the best way to keep your shoulder in elite throwing condition.
Jobes exercises to prevent rotator cuff and other shoulder injuries are simple flexions and extensions, shrugs, and rotations performed with low-weight dumbbells (3-5 pounds).
These routine exercises stabilize your shoulder joint and allow for maximum range of motion.
If your throwing arm is in pain, you’ve lost your fastball, and you’re riding the bench wondering what happened and what can be done, our team can get you back in the game. From conservative treatments, such as OTC pain medications, physical therapy, and injections, to regenerative medicine (stem cell therapy) and surgery, our experience and expertise can treat your shoulder injury, reduce your pain, and get you off the bench.
To learn more about shoulder injuries or to schedule an appointment, call us at either location or contact us online today.
