Thursday, April 7, 2011

Addressing Injuries on the Baseball Field

By Dusty Mattingly, Batting Coach


There is a fine line between being soar and having an injury. Unfortunately, many players and coaches do not distinguish between the two until it's already to late. The worst part is, most of the time baseball injuries can be avoided with proper communication. Being product of the baseball system myself, there is an interesting dynamic between baseball players, their teammates, and their coaches.

At the end of the day, no one wants to miss an opportunity for playing time, and no one wants to catch riff for not playing through a little pain. Put the two together, and the lines of communication are closed before anyone ever says a word. With baseball injuries, you never receive answers to questions you don't ask, and you never build trust if you don't show you care! Baseball players, will never heal if no one knows what's wrong and you could be causing permanent damage to you body making your injury worse than it really has to be!

For example, I had the privilege of meeting with a 15 year old player I had never seen play before. He had been experience arm trouble, and at the request of someone close to me I happily took the time to help the young baseball player. Now, I am the first to say I am not a doctor, but there is a reason why you speak in mostly questions at the doctor's office. To get all the answers, you must ask all of the questions.

If you arm is bothering you, let him know what you are planning do for rehab and let him know your going to focus twice as hard on using your legs in the drills for the day. Also ask him what you can do to help work around the current injury. Chances are that your baseball coach will give you suggestion and work with you to get you healthy again. If he doesn't and he seems bothered by your injury, it's time to find a new team and new coach to play for. At the end of the day, if you can't perform your baseball training drills correctly, then you training in the wrong direction!

Obviously this type of issues doesn't completely resolve itself overnight, but you can take preventive measures moving forward to correct the issues and get back to full strength. There are plenty of batting training, pitching training, and fielding training drills to pull from. All it takes is a quick modification and small amount of though to design a game plan to help players avoid further injury while still participating in a quality baseball training session.

As for the young player, we were able to figure out the root of his pain and establish a game plan for improvement with a quick 5 minute conversation. His baseball pitching mechanics were a bit unorthodox putting a tremendous amount of strain on his shoulder. I still have never seen him throw a ball! Through questions and quick explanations of proper mechanics, we targeted the issue and he is on the road to recovery.

If you are in pain or you are struggling with something mentally, open the lines of communication and let the healing begin!




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