Resistance band work (also known as “tubing”) seemingly makes up the core component of any pitcher’s exercise routine – from the high school athlete right up to the professional big league hurler. Programs like ASMI’s Thrower’s Ten get tons of praise for preventing and rehabbing throwing-related injuries to the shoulder and elbow. It’s often called a “strengthening” program to help your rotator cuff withstand the high forces involved in throwing a baseball, and more importantly, decelerating the pitching arm muscles in a safe manner.
But is resistance band work overrated? That’s a really scary question to ask, and many people (perhaps including you) will have the same kneejerk response: Heck no! I want to make it clear that I believe that resistance band work makes up a lot of what we do at Driveline Baseball – especially with regards to scapular stabilization and mobilization work. An exercise that every athlete does on my program are band pull-aparts:
Eric Cressey recently posted a very interesting article that served as the catalyst for my post – Clearing up the Rotator Cuff Controversy. In it, he said:
1. The true function of the rotator cuff is to stabilize the humeral head on the glenoid (shoulder socket). While external rotation is important for deceleration of the crazy internal rotation velocity seen with throwing, it’s stabilization that we’re really after. As you can see, the humeral head is too large to allow for great surface area contact with the glenoid.
My feeling is that the bigger muscles – particularly scapular stabilizers, the core, and the lower half - will decelerate the crazy velocities we see as long as mechanics are effective and the deceleration arc is long enough.
2. The shoulder internally rotates at over 7,000°/s during acceleration; that’s the fastest motion in all of sports. There’s no way that the rotator cuff muscles alone with their small cross-sectional area can decelerate it. And, to take it a step further, there isn’t much that some rubber tubing is going to do to help the cause…
(emphasis mine)
I absolutely agree with Eric, especially the bolded parts. The rotator cuff is very important, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle. That’s why it astounds me when my clients come to me saying that they do a lot of light dumbbell work and pull tons of resistance bands every day, but haven’t done a squat or deadlift in their entire life! Pitchers need to build maximum strength in their lower half and their back; while they can skimp out on pressing movements (and likely should avoid straight bar pressing or overhead presses of any kind during the season), they need to prioritize squats, deadlifts, rows, and pulling variants to develop musculature that will help support the deceleration phase of pitching in addition to adding a few miles per hour onto that fastball!
So, in short, yes, I do think that resistance band / rotator cuff work is overrated. While baseball is coming around to the idea that maximum strength training (with appropriate modifications, of course) is useful, youth athletes typically suffer from their high school coaches’ ignorance of the benefits of training for strength and power. Too many HS athletes go into the season with instructions to pull tubes, throw light medicine balls, and run long distances, and when they break down in-season or even get injured, the coaches just say that they didn’t work hard enough on conditioning!
I’ll say it again: Maximum strength training MUST be prioritized in the months leading up to the baseball season, and pitchers should seek to maintain strength levels as best as possible in-season while switching over to a more injury-preventative program to reduce stress and load during competition.
