Let’s talk about muscles. Muscles are the motors of the body. They are the components that generate movement. They can also absorb dangerous forces to protect more vulnerable tissues, like ligaments, and this is especially important for baseball pitchers. Before I dive in, if you missed part one or two of the three part introduction to my views on the biomechanics of pitching, here’s a short summary. I disagree with using the total elbow load as an approximation of the load on the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL). Therefore, I believe using the total load as an indicator of elbow injury risk is flawed. One of the biggest drawbacks to using the total joint load is that it provides no information about the underlying muscles. This is why I account for the muscles, in addition to the ligaments and bones, when I analyze the biomechanics of a pitching motion using computational modeling techniques. Now that you’re caught up, let’s focus on the muscles. A muscle originates on one part of the body, at a location called its origin. It then crosses one or more joints and inserts on a different body part, at a location called its insertion. The body part of origin is typically the larger body part. When a muscle is excited by the nervous system, it contracts and attempts to shorten. In doing so, it exerts a pulling force at the origin and insertion. The pulling force causes the connected body parts to attempt to rotate about the encompassed joints in directions that shorten the muscle. One of the most vital properties of muscle is the force-velocity property. Due to this property, the pulling force exerted by a muscle depends on the speed […]
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