Physical Therapy Programs, Degrees, and Schools

Is your son wasting valuable time on practice activities or baseball pitching workouts that may actually be detrimental…like scapula loading, long toss, flat ground pitching, towel drills, Strike Out Strippz, or other nonsense that have not proven to increase their pitching performance…and may actually be dangerous? Don’t let foolish or unproven pitching beliefs ruin your son. The only thing that can ruin your son's chances of reaching his full God-given pitching potential is listening to misguided coaches, instructors or online hype that is all based on belief. It doesn't have to happen when you have access to the latest fully researched pitching information.

Thousands of pitchers are being ruined right now because their instructors or coaches are not following evidence based or proven sports science researched pitching information. Many instructors, even former professionals and pitching gurus are giving out dangerous pitching advice or running baseball pitching drills that could literally ruin your son's chances of ever reaching his full God-given pitching potential… or could ruin his arm. These coaches may mean well but that is no consolation if your son gets ruined because a coach believes in certain activities that have no real proof of working. Many kids, even Little Leaguers, are having arm surgeries at an alarming rate because parents are listening to hyped up information from some website run even by former professional players.

In January of 2004, I posted an article about the study proving that stretching before pitching not only reduces velocity but also increases the risk of injuries to not only the shoulder and elbow but also to the hips and lower body. And yet coaches at all levels continue to have pitchers (and position players) stretch before games and practice… even at the big league levels. They, too, are not well informed. Here is a similar article on stretching from the NY Times that was posted on our Member's Forums Nov. 3, 2008: http://tinyurl.com/6nzv9c

Momentum Pitching - A New Style Ideal For Youth And Little League Pitchers

Most parents want to know how they can help their son build a strong foundation in pitching mechanics in order to maximize velocity and create better control while reducing the risk of arm injuries. The latest sports science research suggests that today's pitching instruction is actually counterproductive for attaining that goal because it is creating slow and robotic pitchers whose velocity potential will continue to suffer while pitching arm injuries continue to skyrocket.

For the Little League player, the ideal pitching delivery is Momentum Pitching because it is simple to learn. The total focus of both Momentum Pitching or Explosive Pitching is to move explosively from the back leg to the front leg using maximum momentum. Momentum Pitching allows pitchers to use more natural movements rather than being over-coached in little steps which also create over-thinking pitchers who believe pitching is a bunch of small steps. Momentum Pitching removes the idea of slow and controlled and allows the pitcher to move more explosively, thus not only improving velocity but also reducing stress to the arm since velocity is produced by the body. Use these pitching workouts ideas and more from our site to improve your son's performance this season.

What is the concept behind sports physical therapy? It's actually all about sports medicine and physical therapy combined to ensure the good functioning of sportspeople, diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and cure of the possible injuries and conditions in sportspeople. To understand sports physical therapy you first must know and understand what sports medicine and sports medicine specialists focus on.

Sports medicine deals with preventing, diagnosing and treating the injuries caused by participation in sports activities. The accidents occurring in such activities harm joints, muscles and bones. This is why sports medicine is so much interrelated with physical therapy. Actually the sports medicine team is formed of physicians and surgeons, athletic trainers, coaches, and very important physical therapists, beside the sportsmen themselves. Sports physical therapy contributes greatly to the innovations in the field and this is because of the rapidity in the nature of sports.

There is a pressure, due to the competition, which influences the style of work in sports physical therapy. The fast recovery of patients is essential in sports physical therapy. Sports medicine is quite difficult to define and categorize because it comprises more than one specialty. So far there has been a misunderstanding in perceiving sports medicine. People considered it only dealt with the physical injuries; as a matter of fact, it is a wider area that also involves fields and factors of psychological, environmental and physiological nature along with those related to the musculoskeletal system and orthopedic treatment.

Sports physical therapy involves a lot of other medical specialties and specialized workers such as: cardiology, pulmonology, dermatology, traumatology, ophthalmology, orthopedic surgery, podiatry, dentistry, biomechanics, rehabilitation medicine, etc. Sports physical therapy in the USA employs sports medicine specialists, either orthopedists or primary-care medicine specialists, who are usually the leaders of the medical team. The other components of the sports physical therapy team are physicians, surgeon specialists, physiologists, trainers, physical therapists, coaches and other personnel.

If you're a doctor interested to specialize in the field of sports physical therapy you'll have to start with a basic residency program in family practice, emergency medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, or physical medicine and rehabilitation. The next step will be to obtain another 1 or 2 years of additional training in accredited fellowship sub-specialty programs in sports medicine. There are additional forums you can attend to get expertise as a sports medicine specialist. Sports medicine, and implicitly, sports physical therapy, has been accepted as a subspecialty of the American Board of Medical Specialties only recently (the late 80s).