10 Steps To Avoid Tommy John Surgery

The name Tommy John is all too common in the baseball world, and for the wrong reasons. Most know “Tommy John” as the scary elbow surgery that plagues so many pitchers at every level. Some know that the real Tommy John was the first Major League Baseball player to successfully undergo and come back from the reconstruction of the ulnar collateral ligament. And even fewer people know that Tommy John played 26 years in the Major Leagues and compiled 288 wins. To say it was an impressive career is an understatement!

 

I was fortunate enough to meet Tommy John and what a pleasant man he is. Even more fortunate am I that I never met Tommy John in the physical aspect related to a compromised elbow. Now keep in mind that though I say you can avoid this surgery, it is impossible to completely eliminate the possibility of this occurring. But there are steps you can take to boost your chances of side stepping this all too common injury, surgery, and potential career and dream ender. Let’s dive right in.

 

Stop throwing weighted balls. You do not need weighted balls to reach your maximal velocity. It can be done in a much safer manner. So if they aren’t the ONLY solution for velocity gain and you can gain velocity without the increased added risk, then why take the chance? Here it is in its simplest form: Throwing baseballs is an unnatural motion that causes stress and trauma to the elbow. From the time a kid starts throwing a baseball they have always used baseballs with a consistent weight. Their arm has developed under that consistency and grown accustomed to it as much as it can with an unnatural motion. The elbow has also grown accustomed to the tension, angle and force that it endures as the arm accelerates forward to throw. Keep in mind this is damaging even minutely regardless of how used to it we are. Now we decide to increase that angle, stress, and tension with a heavier ball and drastically push the range that the elbow is used to and expect our ligaments to instantly accept? Throw on top the fact that most kids that start using weighted balls are still growing and we know that tendons and ligaments grow slower than muscle. We know that growing bodies are more fragile and susceptible to injury from high stress. Even if there isn’t an instant injury or a slowly increasing amount of pain, you do much more damage every single time you throw. Long term this adds up and will come back to haunt you in a major injury or your arm reaching its last throw earlier than it should have been. Don’t add major stress and trauma to an already stressful movement. Don’t buy in to the marketing of weighted balls and the hype surrounding them by popular pitching programs. What they never tell you is how many careers they have ended while taking millions of dollars.

 

Stop playing winter ball and be selective with fall ball. Why are growing kids throwing competitively year round? Professionals don’t even do this. A professional pitcher finishes their season at the end of September or October depending on what level they are at. The select few see playoffs and go in to November. Even fewer play fall or winter leagues and most of those are ones that need innings for specific reasons. A pro finishes their season, shuts the arm down for often up to a month in the fall. Then lightly begins a progressive throwing program. Winter is for strength gain, arm recovery and preparation for the coming year. Grown men need rest so kids need even more rest! If rest and recovery alone were not good enough reasons to stop playing winter ball, then think of it as lost time to gain physical strength, to be long tossing and build arm strength. This is a setback in the lifespan of a career and goals will not be met. And if even those were not good enough reasons, competitive throwing year round with no rest will lead to injury almost guaranteed. Most parents if not all will agree with me on this one. The problem now lies with coaches and teams making winter ball mandatory. Do not give in on this one, your kids’ future is at stake. The easy solution is to politely communicate that your young pitcher is shut down for the winter and they will only participate as a hitter and position player. When asked why the arm is shut down, say that their physio or doctor has recommended this. Any good physio or doctor will agree with you and protect the fragile arm of a young pitcher.

 

Arm care cannot be taken lightly. This includes proper warm up of the whole body and arm, proper cool down and recovery, and a continued arm strengthening and mobility program. These are easy to find and even easier to follow. We provide in depth programming for all of the above. This is so easy yet almost every pitcher skips out or lacks consistency throughout the year. Be diligent, establish a program, put it on a calendar, check boxes and follow to a tee.

 

Decelerator muscles must be focused on and strengthened appropriately. In a throw, the chest accelerates, back decelerates. Front shoulder accelleration, back deceleration, triceps accelleration, bicep deceleration etc. Add forearms, low back and you have a whole lot of muscle groups that need strategic attention. Super simple answer, do a 3-2 or 4-2 ratio. Meaning, if you do dumbbell bench for 2×10 then do pull ups 3 or 4×10 or do pull ups 2×10 and add rows 2×10. This strengthens the muscles required to slow down the arm and protect the joints, relieving them of much of the trauma they will face. This applies for a strength program as well as arm care.

 

Stop skipping core work or cutting it short. Train your core like a boxer. Rectus/transverse abs, inner/outer obliques, serratus, low back. There are thousands of exercises out there. The core transitions power through the body and strengthens/stabilizes the body. A weak core means the arm works harder and the body isn’t working efficiently. This causes more stress to the pitching arm/