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In This Issue...
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Health
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Play Ball! But Avoid Little League Injuries
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Play Ball! But Avoid Little League Injuries
By Barbara MacFarlane, MD
Lifesport & Wellness Center
Spring is finally acting like spring and the baseball fields are teeming with Little League baseball hopefuls. The best scenario is to play ball and not have injuries. There are over 8 million children between the ages of six and 17 who play baseball each year, about half in Little League. Among them are more than 100,000 injuries each year. It is best to understand what injuries typically occur so that you can help your son or daughter avoid them.
Who Gets Injured?
About one fifth of all injuries are associated with base runners. The next highest number of injuries is with infielders, then batters, then outfielders, catchers and pitchers. Injuries even occur in warm-up activities.
With Big League teams, up to 5 percent of injuries are during warm-up or in the on-deck circle. With the elimination of the on-deck circle in Little League, that has also eliminated some injuries.
Prevention Guidelines
The biggest factors that help prevent injuries in baseball are good fitness and conditioning, proper mechanics and skill for the sport, specific rules for pitching frequency and safety equipment.
When all these factors are attended to, there are fewer injuries during the play of Little League baseball and less potential for further problems later in life.
Good Fitness and Conditioning
The basics of good health habits are essential in growing children who play sports. Getting the right nutrition and sleep are very important.
Training specifically for strength and endurance allows for better performance. The 10 percent rule applies to children just as it does to adults. This means the amount of training and the frequency of the training should not increase more than 10 percent per week in order to prevent injuries.
Youthful exuberance often encourages coaches to push children more, but this only sets the players up for overuse injuries as the season proceeds. Even if baseball is not played or practiced on a certain day, a daily regimen of warm-ups and stretching should be encouraged.
This should be done prior to practice or games as well. To improve strength, lifting of weights can begin after age ten if the child can follow instructions well, the weight lifting is supervised, proper technique is used and it is not viewed as a competition with older, stronger athletes.
Proper Mechanics and Skill
Any sport that requires a high degree of skill can cause injuries just through a lack of that skill. Baseball requires specific skills for hitting, running, throwing, catching and pitching. Pitching skills are reserved for pitchers; however all other skills are necessary for every position of play. Time should be devoted in practice to learning and developing all the specific skills to give each player a depth of skill ability that can be relied on during play.
Rules Specific to Pitching
The best pitchers with the longest professional careers are ones who did not overuse their arms while they were growing up. Therefore, a child who has interest and prowess for pitching should be guarded from pitching too often at a young age.
Arm strength and endurance should be trained and pitching should be very limited in the pre-season and early season. For a good pitch and also protection of injury of the arm, it is necessary to develop good leg and trunk strength as well as leg and trunk flexibility. A good pitch gets its force from the power and flexibility of a pitcher’s legs and trunk.
Pitching before age eight should be avoided. Overhead pitches cause less injury; fastballs and changeups are best for children under age 14. No curve balls should be thrown before age 14. The number of pitches should be limited as well.
In Little League, six innings per week should be maximum, and this should be combined with pitchers 14 and under limiting the total number of pitches to fewer than 100 per week. Between pitching games, throwing should be limited and not with all-out force.
Safety Equipment
Mouth guards, helmets, shin guards, eye shields and breakaway bases have all been developed for baseball and should be used. It has been estimated that about one third of all baseball injuries could be avoided if all such safety equipment were used routinely. The biggest difference in injury rate is with the use of breakaway bases.
Some studies have shown an 80 percent decrease in sliding injuries. This is a huge reduction in injuries, since 60 percent of all injuries of base runners are due to sliding injuries.
Recognizing Overuse Injury
When a player has an abrupt specific injury it is easy to recognize, but an overuse injury comes on more slowly and is more difficult to recognize. An enthusiastic player may also try to avoid talking about an overuse injury.
Therefore coaches and parents should be looking for overuse injuries to help prevent them from worsening.
The most common warning signs of overuse injuries specific to the arm are arm fatigue, arm soreness that persists longer than a day, persistent shoulder and elbow stiffness or soreness that makes it difficult to loosen up for a practice or game, and poor throwing or batting performance.
Baseball is the American pastime, but it should be played with care. Preventing baseball injuries during the Little League season is essential for enjoyment by the player, success of the team and longevity of the player as well. A commonsense approach using the guidelines above can make for a successful season
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