March 22 – Good, not sore

March 24 – Good, not sore

March 26 – 7 months – Good, not sore

March 28 – 15 Changeups; good, but not perfect

March 30 – 10 changeups, discomfort on 1/3 of them

April 1 – 3/4 speed; no changes, no pain, 66-71 mph. felt ok, not perfect next day

April 3 – felt good, not perfect; 45 pitches @ 3/4 (speed)

April 6 – 1st two digits had pain when pressure applied

April 9 – mid to upper 70s, little pain; felt good after 4 days off prior

April 17 – no pain! 65 pitches at 3/4

April 19 – long tossed to 240 no pain

April 21 – felt good. into low 80s maybe

April 23 – gun read 75-77. TIRED! but no pain

April 25 – 8 months – Hit 81, consistent 76-79 50/30 pitches

April 28 – long toss to 270, 45 pitches at 85%

April 30 – 30 + 45 vs hitters. 82-84. Felt good

May 2 – VERY tired from April 30.  Arm achy and slight pain, very dead. threw 70 at 2/3 speed

May 4 – flat ground, 15 curves at 50 ft. pain still, arm not recovered from previous.

May 7 – Hard pen, felt good. 80 pitches at 90%

May 9 – good long toss, felt great.

May 11 – 100% from mound, 100% changes, 50% curves (15). felt good, no pain, but knotted up on forearm after.

May 14 – 100% fast + cu, no curves. Still knot in forearm but no pain

May 16 – 45 fast-curve-change, 75-75-50% respectively. less tightness, no knot next day.

May 18 – Light pen, 30 curves

May 20 – In game, 28 pitches. 30 curves beforehand. Bicep Dead, big knot afterward.  No throw 21-24.

May 25 – In game 35 pitches, no knot after, felt good

May 27 – 70 pitch pen, 30 90% curves, felt good, bicep better

May 29 – 50 pitch, 70%, curves getting sharper!

May 31 – 60 in game; arm felt slow, but great after. 55 fb/ 5 curves. No tightness at all.

June 2 – Long toss, hard but not too many throws. Need to get intensity up and let go. Felt good next morning.

June 4 – Bullpen 20 max effort, 85-90.  Arm felt achy, some occasional pain twinges, and very dead.  Decent next day. Fatigue in bicep/tricep still, but not terrible.

Thats the whole log.  Wish I had done more of that during it all, but I was more interested in getting after it than writing it all down.  Hindsight…

The Phases

As an athlete, the period after completing a competitive season is known as the active recovery period.  This is the time when one doesn’t perform specified training, but rather keeps his or her body in motion by recreational activities, done at a low intensity.  Playing pick up basketball twice a week would be an appropriate activity for this phase.

Once active recovery is complete (generally just a couple of weeks, depending on season length), one moves into the hypertrophy phase.  In this phase the goal to replace the muscle size that was lost during the season.  The athlete needs to restore his body mass by resistance training at a high volume.

One ideal body mass is achieved, the strength phase is next.  This is typified by lower volume but higher intensity resistance training, designed to develop increased muscle strength, but not to pack on any more size.  Lifting for size and lifting for strength differ in the rep schemes and loads used.  Naturally, the strength phase will use lower rep sets with near-maximal loads.

Get As Big As You Need To BE

The final phase of the off-season is the competition phase, which takes all the size and strength the athlete has built and peaks it for maximum performance right as the season starts.  In powerlifting, this would mean training at 95-100% of one’s max lifting ability, yet for other sports this would vary.  The competition phase for high-velocity, low-load sports like tennis, baseball, softball, lacrosse, etc. would consist of high-velocity, low-load activities like plyometrics and other dynamic, ballistic exercises.

Then Make all that muscle DO things

Once your body peaks and the season starts, you enter a maintenance phase, in which you lift only to keep your off-season gains, which means not trying to build more strength.  Attempting to make gains in the weight room during the season would detract from in-game performance.  Game performance is the ultimate goal, after all, so nothing should be done during the season to negatively impact it.

——————-

This model discussed above is the linear model of periodization, meaning that phase progression follows uniformly.  There are other methods as well, such as the undulating model, in which one might perform one day of each phase each week. The type of periodization used is subject to the athlete’s physical makeup, time constraints, abilities, etc.

The simplest way of thinking about periodization is this: Rest after your season, then get back to work.  Build muscle, make that muscle strong, then make that muscle move fast.  Once the season starts, maintain what you worked hard for, then repeat. Sensible, right?

As I was in there, it suddenly dawned on me: Pitchers are just unlike everyone else in the sense that what they do is so physically violent, that they have to do what is called “prehab” just to reduce the likelihood (or in reality, delay) injury.  

Its pretty much a fact that if a pitcher doesn’t do regular rotator cuff, scapula, and forearm work (basically the whole pitching arm), he is doomed to inevitable, catastrophic arm injury.  Doing prehab doesn’t guarantee health by any means, as tons of diligent pitchers still injure themselves regularly, but its our insurance policy, and at the very least gives us a better chance of not being injured.Other athletes don’t do this.  Soccer players play soccer, and when they get hurt, they do rehab and return to action.  Lacrosse, football, tennis, you name it, these sports all allow their athletes to play, with nothing intrinsic in the sport that injures them.  Sure, football and martial arts are violent and injurious, but the injuries are general and not caused by any specific physical act.

Baseball position players are also allowed to play.  Sure, they come down with the occasional arm problem, but with not nearly the regularity as the pitchers. 

No, pitchers are the only athletes that aren’t just allowed to just play their sport.  They simply can’t show up at the ballpark and leave when they are done.  They have to spend extra time strengthening and stretching their throwing arm just so it’s less likely to rip itself out of the socket.  Ever seen a pitcher’s arm lay back, parallel to the ground in external rotation?  Try replicating that in your living room, and you’ll start to understand…

The pitching motion is just ungodly stressful and unnatural for the human body.  Its  interesting how in the entire athletic community, this one position in one sport is so different from the rest.  Sure, all athletes have to strengthen their bodies to compete at a high level, but none but the pitcher are at such an injury risk where they must go above and beyond just to have a chance at longevity, and even then it’s often a losing battle.  

The only other trends like this are in knees of female athletes and football linemen.  Women are predisposed to ACL injury due to their natural body shape and unique biomechanics, and have an ACL injury rate something like 10x that of men.  A good friend of mine just tore hers for the second time.  Football linemen are so heavy and get pushed around so much that they suffer a similar fate.  

I, for one, am ready for titanium ligament replacements.  Maybe one day that will be possible.  I’ll gladly call myself a cyborg if it allows me 20 more good years.  

The most painful part of coming back from my experience with Tommy John was restoring my range of motion. I was removed from a semi hard cast at two weeks post op., and the next day I started range of motion exercises.  It took me about 5 weeks to get full range of motion with my therapist moving my arm and almost 8 weeks to get full range of motion on my own. I literally thought my elbow would explode some days- it hurt so bad.  Of all the people I know who underwent Tommy John, I seem to have had the most pain. I think maybe it was because I had a lot of scar tissue, or maybe I am just a sissy (just kidding!).

Full range of motion for me, using my left arm as a guide, was 0-147 degrees. I think the first day I reached 20-88°. We tried to increase the ROM about 10° a week. I got full extension pretty quick, within about 3 weeks, but I made shorter strides in gaining flexion.

For TJ patients, I recommend making sure you keep it moving outside of rehab because if not you won’t progress as quickly. For the first week or two I was so sore that I would just keep my arm immobile on non-rehab days. Eventually I realized I needed to move it, even if just a little, to keep it from stiffening up.

I just want those who think they are hurting a lot while trying to reach full ROM just to know you aren’t the only one, and to grind it out.

The only thing I really dislike about chin-ups (aside from everyone in the gym doing them half-assed) is that they feel stressful on the elbow, due in part because of the way the arm articulates as the body ascends.  The hands tend to want to pronate on the ascent, which is rendered impossible by holding a straight bar.  Is this catastrophic? No, but I prefer individual, free holds for each arm to allow my joints to move comfortably in whatever path they choose.

The Rock Ring

These are made for climbers to functionally train for their sport.  What do climbers have that everyone else does not?  Crazy strong backs, forearms and fingers.  We could all use a little more of that…

These hanging holds have 4 features(descending from the top, increasing in difficulty):

-a sloper (type of open palm hold)

-4 finger deep edge

-4 finger shallow edge

-3 finger 3/4 inch pocket (very, very tough to do chins with)

Metolius Rock Ring

The first thing you’ll notice about using these is that you can’t do very many of them.  Join the club.  I can bang out 10 perfect, dead hang chins on a bar, but only about 8 of these on the deep edge or sloper.  I can do 6 right now on the medium edge, and about 4 on the 3 finger edge.  All about the fingers…

Gripping the "sloper" hold

Gripping the 3-finger pocket

Yeah, try pulling up your bodyweight on the tips of only 6 fingers.  Not easy and not for beginners, or people with current injuries.

But Rock Rings are a really great training tool if you’re healthy and into grip strength. My forearms get blasted from doing 4 sets of these, and it makes regular chins a breeze in comparison.  It’s a nice little grip drop set to go to failure on the rock rings, then jump up to the straight bar and finish out until your lats are done.

Finger strength is one of those things that is crucially important to a pitcher and there just aren’t that many ways of building it.  I’ve gotten into climbing for the finger strength (and fun). But if you don’t climb, try to swing the 30 bucks for a set – I love and definitely recommend them.  Check out the video for some more possible uses…

I hadn’t done much of it recently, but felt motivated to get back into it.  And having experienced good things with it in the past, I made some time after a workout.

Bad move.  Well, good for the body, but bad for my pain receptors.  Man, that stuff is super painful in some areas.  My calves, lateral quads and IT band (outside of each thigh) hurt so bad.  Me and my buddy Andrew laughed at each other as we made various whimpers and cries of pain as we foam rolled following our workout.  

I felt great after it was over, and most of the pain is just due to the fact that I haven’t done any foam rolling in a while.  Once you do it consistently for maybe a week, you loosen up and the pain becomes a pleasant massaging sensation.  So, if you can suck it up for about a week, foam rolling will really increase your soft tissue quality and your flexibility.  On the other hand, they are spawned from the devil himself.  Tough call.

Out of sling: 2 days

Stopped taking painkillers: 1 day

Started forearm rehab: 1 week

Full Range of motion: 3 weeksIncision closed: 3 weeks

Forearm stopped being sore while performing rehab: 2 weeks

Surgical elbow moved like it used to: 8 weeks

No swelling: 3-4 weeks

Start strength training: 6 weeks

Start shoulder prehab: 4 weeks

Start running: 3 weeks

Do full pushup: 8 weeks

Full Chin-up (without soreness): 7 months

Could hold a 50lb dumbbell without any soreness: 16 weeks

Start throwing: 12 weeks

Throw off mound: 6 months

70mph: 7 months

80mph: 7.5 months

90mph: 9.5 month

Full-out long toss: 8.5 months

Start changeups: 7 months

Start curveballs: 8.5 months

100% fastballs: 8.5 months

100% changeups: 8.5 months

100% curveballs: 9.5 months

Curveball actually starts to break: 10 months

Pitched in game: 9.5 months

Cleared by doctor forever: 10 months

Threw back-to-back days: 10 months

Velocity all back: 11.5 months

Easy In-Home Strengthening

In this post we will go into some of the immediate and easy things one can do at home to start developing stronger hands and fingers.  Grip strength can be developed in a tremendous amount of ways, but we will just focus on a few today that worked for me and will get you started in the right direction.

5 Fingertip Planks

I found that fingertip pushups were too difficult for me to start with (I feared every one of my fingers was going to snap off), so I started with sets of fingertip holds in the pushup (plank) position.  I started with 2 or 3 sets of 10-15 seconds and worked up to 3 sets of 30+ seconds.

Fingertip Planks - All 5 fingers

Fingertip Arm Shuffles

After I could comfortably hold the 5 finger plank for long periods of time comfortably, I progressed to arm shuffles, which gives brief moments of being on only one hand while switching positions, thus increasing the load on the fingertips.  I couldn’t get a good video up, but performing shuffles is easy.  All you do is start in the plank position, and move one hand closer in, then the other.  Then you return each hand to it’s starting position one at a time.  So it will be right in, left in, right out, left out.  Kind of like the hokey pokey.

3 Fingertip Planks

After I was pretty comfortable with arm shuffles, I was ready to try fingertip planks with just my thumb, index and middle finger.  One can eventually go to just 2 fingers as strength increases, though I don’t think I would recommend that.

3 Fingertip Plank

Hand Grippers

There are tons of handheld grippers on the market, and chances are you have used one of those cheap plastic ones found at the local sporting goods store.  Strongmen love Captains of Crush grippers, as they take a lot of strength to close.  I don’t like them because they aren’t adjustable.  The gripper of choice for me is the Super Gripper, which I got at Iron Woody Fitness.  It’s finely adjustable and a pretty neat device, though bulky.  

Super Gripper

I also like this gel-like gripper that a friend gave me, which gives more of an isometric palm-gripped workout.  It’s different, very portable, and nice to squeeze while sitting around or in the car.

Gel Gripper

The Gripper Antagonists

Humans are kind of like lobsters.  We all know that lobsters have tremendous pinching force, but are rendered helpless by a rubber band.  Why? Because the muscles that open the claw are never subjected to the same forces as those that close.  The same is true of us, where we squeeze things but never open our hands under tension.  When strengthening the grip it is important the work the antagonist muscles (the ones that open the hand) as well.  This is easily done with a rubber band around the fingers, or a Thera-Band as I like to use (pictured).

Start with band draped over fingers

Finish by spreading fingers against band

The Thera-Band is nice because you can adjust the tension not only by using different thickness bands, but also by pulling the band tighter against the fingers with the other hand.

Gyros

If you haven’t seen the Dynaflex gyros, they are pretty neat devices.  They rotate at up to 18,000 rpms in your hand and you just have to keep them going and hold on.  They definitely strengthen your hands and give a nice little pump to your whole forearm.  It’s not enough in itself, but I use it as a supplement and its also kind of fun to do. Only problem is that some people have difficulty getting and keeping the gyro going.  I can start it with a thumb flick and keep it going easily, but a lot of my well-coordinated friends just can’t seem to master it.  Its one of those things that you may or may not figure out.  You can hold it like a baseball (pictured) or any way you like.  Holding it on the fingertips is a serious challenge.

Dynaflex Gyro

There’s More

These are just a few exercises to get started on.  There are a ton of other grip exercises, many of which are more easily done in a gym.  The next installment will cover some of the more strength-training oriented movements, and ways of adapting regular exercises to gain additional grip strength benefits.