Baseball injuries continue to rise at an alarming rate. Over the years, we have seen the development of more advanced training velocity programs and pitchers that are focused on enhancing their performance during the offseason.
This has led to a variety of development programs being performed over the offseason, which takes away from downtime and allows the body to heal after a long competitive season.
In this episode, we talk about some of the science behind why you should take time off from throwing, and perhaps how long you should take off during the offseason.
To view more episodes, subscribe, and ask your questions, go to mikereinold.com/askmikereinold.
#AskMikeReinold Episode 377: How Much Time Off Should You Take From Throwing After the Baseball Season
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Show Notes
• Become a baseball rehabilitation specialist
Transcript
Emmett Flood:
All right. So Dustin from Oklahoma and Susan from Nebraska are asking, “What does the current literature say about throwing during the offseason for baseball players with regards to UCL laxity and recovery from the season? I know there are a lot of variables to consider, but I would love all your insights.”
Mike Reinold:
Good job, Emmett. Man, we actually got two of almost the same exact questions, and it’s the baseball offseason right now. So I think this is very timely here, but it was actually crazy how close these two questions were from Dustin and Susan. So, appreciate these questions. I think I used Dustin’s almost word for word, but Susan’s was the same. But yeah, Dustin, I feel like you really set us up for this one because there’s some research that says this, but why don’t we start with this? Because Lenny’s here, Mike’s here, Anthony’s here, Diwesh is here, everybody’s here. Why don’t we talk about this first?
In the last, let’s say, five plus years, what are people doing in the offseason now, and how has that evolved a little bit? Because maybe we start with that, because the answer to this question is actually fairly simple. There’s a good study that came out a few years ago that I can talk about in a little bit, no big deal. But let’s talk about what are people doing and what are we seeing in the evolution of that before we talk about the science. And then maybe we can kind of break that down. But I don’t know, who wants to jump in? Mike, Anthony, Diwesh, who wants to jump in? Mike?
Mike Scaduto:
Yeah. I mean, are you asking specifically about what they’re doing for throwing in the offseason or what they’re doing for training or all…
Mike Reinold:
Yeah, no, healthy people throwing, because the question is how much time should they take off?
Mike Scaduto:
Right.
Mike Reinold:
So it’s like, what are we seeing?
Mike Scaduto:
I would say my experience… Well, one, they’re throwing too much in the offseason, so they’re not taking, necessarily, a dedicated amount of time off from throwing. I think that’s the first battle that we’re trying to fight, is educating them on the benefits of taking time off from throwing. I would say, in our experience, we see people that are trying to add in a weighted ball program in the offseason, trying to increase velocity, or they’re doing a long toss base program, trying to increase velocity in the offseason. So that’s a big point that we’re talking to our athletes about, is how do we build… Yes, we want to increase performance over the offseason, but what’s the safest way to do that, and what’s the most effective way to do that? I think if we’re adding, throwing workload into the offseason, I’m sure we’ll get to the answer about how much time people should take off, but it seems like we need to build in a good chunk of off time before we start adding those things back into the program.
Mike Reinold:
Yeah. And I like how you identify… You identified the issue. Everybody’s pushing. Everybody’s pushing. Everybody wants to try to gain velocity. Everybody wants to try to get a little bit better, a little bit more talent or ability to maybe get drafted, I guess, is what people are shooting for. So I get the desire, why everybody’s like, “Go, go, go.” We’re with that, with our hobbies, with what we do. You don’t ever want to take a break because you’re taking time away from getting better, potentially. I get that. And that’s why I think, Mike, to your point, I think we always start the education process with all of our people when we meet them with, “Throwing a baseball is bad for you.” We start with that. We say, “It is stressful. It’s more stressful than the structural integrity of the ligament, so you need to have good capacity of your body to be able to handle that.”
So once you understand that, it kind of grows a little bit. But, Diwesh, in our pro guys… So, we have a lot of pro guys coming in. We have pro guys from, I don’t know, tons of organizations. I don’t want to say every, but we’ve probably touched every organization over the years. What are we seeing from organizations? Because we know, to Mike’s point, they’re pushing. The players want to push, the players want to do something. What are organizations doing? Are you seeing a difference over the last five years?
Diwesh Poudyal:
Yeah, I would say that rest period is getting shorter and shorter. I think guys are starting their throwing programs earlier. Guys will come to us in early October, and by that second or third week of October, they’re already running three, four times a week. And then some of these guys are starting bullpens in November.
Mike Reinold:
Many bullpens on social media this week. That’s crazy.
Diwesh Poudyal:
Yeah. And spring planning’s so far away. They don’t need to be ready until mid-February. They don’t report until the second week of February for the most part. But I think guys are just experiencing that stress on their arm and elbows so early, and they just keep maintaining that. And then that stress only gets higher and higher as they start having more intentional throws where it’s more meaningful because they’re on the mound in game situations, but they’ve already accumulated so much elbow stress and shoulder stress in the offseason that I think it’s just too much cumulative stress over the course of time.
And then, not to mention some of these long toss progressions, and Mike mentioned the weight of balls and stuff, but I think the total stress has become so high with the addition of long toss up to 300 feet. That’s so much stress. And there’s no reason to air it out that far and do all these crazy pull downs with weighted balls and underweight or overweight balls. And yeah, I think it’s too much with too much intensity with not enough weight.
Mike Reinold:
To me, I think you really said it well, Diwesh, there. It’s not just about, to Mike’s point, how much they’re throwing, how intense they’re throwing, what they’re doing for throwing. It’s also about the amount of time off. And it goes back to the original question that we’re answering: it’s the time off. So they’re not having that.
Len, but walk us back through history. You’re the historian. I like this. You can even bring this back through history. 25 years ago, we started doing studies in youth athletes, and we started showing the number one factor for youth athletes is overuse. We try to blame…
Lenny Macrina:
Fatigue.
Mike Reinold:
Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. Which is hand in hand.
Lenny Macrina:
Which is overuse, yes.
Mike Reinold:
Yeah, but they do too much. And if you look at the stats, they pitch too many innings, too many pitches per inning, too many games, too many games a week, too many games a month, too many games a season, too many leagues a season, blah, blah, blah. It all goes back to the same thing. So, in your perspective, you and I have been through this. We saw that wave where people were pitching all year round, especially in the South. And then this information came out, and we kind of saw everybody adjust. And we had this little brief period where I think it got better, but then this new wave of training came on. And then from your perspective, what are the kids doing now? Is it really taking a break if they’re not pitching? That’s the thing that blows my mind, is we taught them not to pitch, but are they really taking a break?
Lenny Macrina:
Right. Yeah. I mean, no, the Olsen study was eye opening, back in 2006 or whatever it was, that showed a 36 times increased risk of injury if you pitch fatigued. And other studies have shown if you don’t have enough off time or if you pitch too much in a season, you have eight times increased risk of issues. And there’s so many different studies that show that overuse and throwing too much will lead to fatigue, and then that fatigue will lead to an injury risk. So get at least one or two months off. November, December. In our area, they don’t have to be ready ‘til April. And so we have time. And I think the kids that I’m seeing are starting to get it. They’re understanding that, but I’m seeing them because they’re already hurt. They already had Tommy John surgery. So I think they’ve already realized what they’ve done has not worked, and it’s too late at that point. They’ve had the surgery or they’ve had an internal brace.
And so now it’s up to us to… They get to buy into us. I think it’s easier when you get hurt trying to do what you’ve done the past few years. So I don’t know. I think we sound like old men yelling from the tops of mountains, and the social media world is saying something else. They’re saying, “You got to throw more, you need to do more long toss, you need to do more higher effort throws. That’s how you’re going to acclimate your body.” But there are studies that show the ligament changes over the season. The ligament gets thicker, bigger. That doesn’t mean it’s more stable. It means it’s less stable. And so that ligament needs time to relax and needs a chill period for the ligament to go back to its normal property. And so there’s little things like that that people don’t talk about, but I think if we can keep talking about it and showing that relative rest helps, strength training helps, arm care helps, then the word will slowly get out.
It slowly is. We help the weighted ball world. And I think it’s slowly getting out with this, but there’s still a whole world out there that we’re trying to work through that we sound like old men, and it’s not resonating with the youth that are looking to throw 98 or 102.
Mike Reinold:
Because doing less is never appealing.
Lenny Macrina:
Right. Absolutely.
Mike Reinold:
Certainly via marketing, especially if you just invested in the ability to do more. But Dave, what do you think?
Lenny Macrina:
And it’s just a small period. We just want a small period of time where they just don’t throw. That’s it. It’s not like we’re looking for months and months and months. Even our pro athletes aren’t throwing right now. Very rarely they’re throwing in our gym. They’re working out.
Dave Tilley:
I was just going to say, as the resident non-baseball person, I think this is an issue that we struggle with in youth sports everywhere. And the joke is that 10 years ago, when Mike and I first started, I was going so hard trying to help gymnastics. And he’s like, “Oh, just you wait. Just you wait to try hard for five years.” And we made progress, but I’m curious what you two think, like, is the psychology behind why they can’t take two months off and strength train and just put the ball down… Is it like social media influence? Is it a personal thing? Is it because they want to look cool in front of their friends?
Lenny Macrina:
You’re not getting better. You ended the season. I know for me, with my golf obsession, I want to keep swinging a golf club and keep trying to tinker with something and get a feel, and I can be a little bit better. It’s going to be the same thing. Or I have a big year coming up. I’m only throwing 82. I need to throw 88. I need to throw 91. I need to throw 95 now.
Dave Tilley:
Got it.
Lenny Macrina:
And that’s it. You got to keep pushing and pushing and pushing yourself to get that D3, D1, or whatever you’re trying to get to offer. And I get it, I completely get it, but your body needs rest. It really does.
Dave Tilley:
Got it.
Mike Reinold:
Anthony.
Anthony Videtto:
Yeah, just to add to that, I think a lot of kids these days are specializing in their sport a lot earlier and they’re not playing basketball, football, whatever it may be in the offseason. And then, now they’re playing or they’re participating in college camps in the offseason because they feel like they need extra exposure, so now they need to keep throwing year-round. Baseball has not just become a summer sport or a spring sport. It’s become a year-round sport for these kids to try to get exposure, try to get recruited. So I think they’re just trying to find every opportunity they can to get some exposure to college coaches as well. That’s what I’m seeing at the high school level anyway.
Mike Reinold:
Yeah. Mike?
Mike Scaduto:
Yeah, I mean, totally agree. It’s become a year-round sport. I think some of these college showcases are in December and January, which you couldn’t pick a worse time to do a showcase in terms of getting a pitcher healthy and keeping them healthy, not throwing anyone under the bus.
And then the study that Lenny referenced about the changes in the UCL over the course of the season… I’ve heard multiple kids come in and tell me that their coach has read that study and misconstrued the inclusion of the study to say that your UCL shrinks when you don’t throw, which is an overall negative for the health of your ligament. So I think there’s conflicting information coming from the coach and coming from the PT. I think we might like to think that we have a lot of influence over people, but if their coaches in their area of practice are saying the opposite of what we’re telling them, I think sometimes that outweighs what we’re telling them because it’s more directly related to if they’re going to play or not.
Mike Reinold:
It makes it work. And that’s what the internet’s saying. The internet’s arguing that. So, all right, let’s get to the answer. So, the study we’re talking about is a study by Peter Chalmers and his group. It was published about, I don’t know, about four years ago or so now at this point. I think it might be one of the most influential papers for baseball sports medicine in the last decade or two. But essentially, what they showed is they looked at the UCL before the season, after the season, and then before the next season. And what they showed was on ultrasound, essentially that over the course of the season, the UCL got thicker and looser. And then over the course of the offseason, it got thinner and tighter. And again, to Mike’s point, the world started to say like, “Oh, well, thick is good. It’s hypertrophy.”
Now, remember, we’re talking about a ligament. Even Lenny talked about his golf obsession. We’re talking about doing something at maximum failure versus not maximum failure. Lenny can swing all year. He’s not working a ligament to maximum failure, although oftentimes he is, maybe, but that’s a different story. But in terms of that, we’re talking about a ligament that has a finite tensile strength. So a lot of people that I was very disappointed with thought that thicker was better. Thicker for a ligament, people, especially over the course of a season, like if you sprain your ankle right now, your ATFL will be thicker because it becomes swollen and has interstitial damage and becomes swollen, interstitial fluid. So that’s the thickness that we’re seeing because it was also looser, and that’s not necessarily what we want.
But what we learned was that over the course of the winter, with taking some time off, it actually heals. And to me, that is the most important thing of the study. It was amazing. Now, people say, “We have to throw more because we want to get that ligament to hypertrophy,” but this is not a muscle. It’s not a tendon. It’s a ligament. And that’s the difference. You cannot work this to failure. And in pushing it to failure to get it to be able to absorb more stress does not work like it does for a muscle or a tendon or even a bone. It’s different. This is a ligament. So I actually… I had Zoom calls with muscle physiologists, like scientists, like a bunch of weird people that were way smarter than me. And we went through this article, and I’m like, “Tell me what I’m missing right here.” So if you misconstrue that article to say that thick is good and hypertrophy, that’s wrong. It’s damage because it’s also loose, so we have to be really careful.
So, Dustin, Susan, what’s the answer? We don’t know. I don’t know the answer. There isn’t a magic amount of time you need, but I can tell you there’s such a thing as throwing too much. We know that, and you need some time to heal. Now, the studies that were performed said anything more than eight months of pitching had a five times increase in your injury risk. Eight months of pitching. Now, remember, your body doesn’t care if you’re pitching, long tossing, doing weighted balls, anything like that. That’s all just as stressful as pitching. So, is four months off too much? Maybe. Maybe that’s excessive, but maybe that’s appropriate for skeletally mature. I don’t think we know, but I think the two concepts I try to get across to the players is, one, we need time. That’s definitive. We learn that scientifically.
And I would say probably the more time, the better. So I always count backwards, and I kind of barter with them. I say, “Okay, how much time do you actually need to get ready?” And some of the people are amazing. I have a high school kid right now. It’s early November where we’re filming this thing, and he’s worried about his changeup right now. And I said, “Look, first off, you live in New England, where you have a foot of snow on the ground the first week of April, you’re not pitching until April 15th. It’s mid-November, and you’re worried about your changeup. Pump the brakes, let’s focus on that.” So, again, do we know the answer? No, there’s no definitive answer, but I can tell you definitively that we’re doing too much. And that’s why injury rates continue to skyrocket.
And even Major League Baseball released those statements, and we changed some rules this winter. There’s a blackout period for scouting. To Mike’s point on these showcases that happen in the winter, there’s now a blackout period for Major League Baseball scouting. It’s not the best yet. There’s going to be some revisions to that, but it’s a good start, and I think that’s the future. So I’d throw it back to you guys, and I’d barter with the people. I say, “Let’s count backward and say, ‘When do you need to get ready and what do we need to do?’” And I’ll say, “I’m not always conservative.” So, Lenny’s like old man on the mountain concept. I’m not always conservative. With Northeastern baseball, we sit down with the coaching staff, and we bucket the players. We say, “What do we need? Does this player need to work on biomechanics? Does this player need to work on velocity or pitch design, or does this player need to work on just preparing for the season?” And they will start throwing at different times.
So, again, you have to individualize it, but I think the main take home from this episode we get, and obviously we’re passionate about this, that’s why this episode’s run a little long, for me is that people have misconstrued probably one of the most important scientific articles I think for Tommy John research in the last decade or two and people misconstrued it. So disappointing. So, hopefully now we set the record straight. Tweet this, you won’t, probably won’t. People argue with you, so you won’t, but whatever, get the information out, but to us, we need to do a better job. Make sense? So, Dustin, Susan, good luck. It’s not a definitive answer, but hopefully some of the science can help educate, and then you can have a better experience with your people. Cool? Awesome.
All right. Thank you so much. If you have a question like that, we can answer it on a future episode. Just head to mikereinold.com, click on that podcast link, and ask away. And please, subscribe, give us some nice reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. We’ll see you on the next episode.
