When talking about arm care and workload we can get different responses depending on who you ask. So I asked a AAA Pitching Coach for his advice for today’s amateur pitchers.

Question 1: What is your biggest advice to youth players on arm care?

Answer: “Biggest advice is that there is no right way to do arm care but it needs to be at the forefront of your minds on a daily basis because it’s that important. If you’re not taking arm care seriously you’re putting yourself at a higher risk for injury.”

Arm care doesn’t necessarily keep you from injury but it can minimize the level of risk. As he mentions there is not exactly a one method to arm care, but doing nothing for arm care is putting players at a higher risk and not taking arm care seriously can create greater damage than good.

Question 2: Knowing what you know now what if anything would you have changed about your playing days when it comes to workload?

Answer: “I would have looked at pitching from a better workload standpoint. You can’t throw at high intensities everyday but you also can’t treat everyday like a recovery day and just “save up” your high intensity days for games only. Each pitcher is different but there are ways to try and optimize a balance which is something I would have fully bought into.”

To conclude, given what we know now about workload, days rest, and training in high intensity settings, it is understandable to conclude that in game stress pitches need to be replicated with high intensity in training so the body is not shocked when it comes to in game performance.