By Ben Brewster Weighted baseballs can be controversial. I get it. If throwing a regulation 5oz ball leads to insane injury rates amongst pitchers, even at the highest levels of the game, it stands to reason, then, that heavier balls must equal more stress, stress is BAD, and injury rates would be higher. Furthermore, there is a fear that weighted implements might actually screw up a pitcher’s movement patterns, since they have become accustomed to throwing a regulation ball their whole life. Unfortunately, these interpretations fail to understand both the basic mechanism of adaptation to stressors and the actual biomechanical outcome of throwing weighted implements. A misinterpretation of stress as being bad: We need progressively increased but intelligently managed stress over time to drive our bodies to continue adapting and strengthening. This is called the SAID principle in exercise physiology, which stands for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. Your body will adapt to the specific stressors / stimuli being applied to it – if a stressor stays exactly the same, week after week, month after month, adaptation comes to a halt. This intuitively makes sense – you wouldn’t lift the same weight every week and expect to keep getting stronger without needing to add weight or reps. The Common Approach to Stress Adaptation in Baseball We also acknowledge this fact when it comes to throwing regulation baseballs – progressively trying to long toss further (increase intensity) or gradually do more daily throws in bullpens, games, etc (increase volume). Most coaches accept the fact that we need more stress to build arm strength. Arms take time to “get into shape” and we are okay with overloading the tissues progressively via increased intent and/or volume. Increasing the load, […]
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