Arm Care is About More Than Just the Arm

What comes to mind when you hear “arm care”? Most baseball and softball players probably think about rotator cuff exercises using resistance bands and light dumbbells, external rotations, the Thrower’s 10, or shoulder mobility. But throwing isn’t just a movement of the shoulder; it involves the entire body.

I like to think about throwing like cracking a whip. The crack doesn’t come from the very end of the whip alone - it comes from energy being transferred from the handle, through the entire length of the whip. Throwing works much in the same way. Throwing starts with the legs pushing off the ground and driving the body forward, then turns into rotation with the hips and torso transferring energy up through the body. The shoulder and arm are the last links with the arm unwinding and the wrist providing the last flick.

While most of the attention when it comes to throwers is on the shoulder and elbow due to the tremendous forces on these joints (and rightfully so), we should also think about arm care in a more global sense as well. Arm care isn’t just about strengthening the shoulder - it’s about building a body that’s prepared to tolerate the demands of throwing.

• Build a stronger athlete: Throwing starts from the ground up, so arm care shouldn’t stop at the shoulder. Developing strength through the legs, hips, and trunk helps create and transfer force through the body. We also shouldn’t overlook general upper body strength. Compound exercises like rows, presses, and pull-ups don’t just strengthen the larger muscles - they also challenge the rotator cuff while allowing us to use heavier loads than isolated exercises alone. Isolation exercises still have an important place, but they should complement, not replace, a well-rounded strength program.

• Build work capacity: Arm care is about maintaining the quality of your throws throughout a practice, game, or tournament. As fatigue builds, movement quality can change, and recovery between innings or games becomes more important. Good aerobic fitness won’t make you throw harder, but it helps you recover between bouts of high-intensity effort so you can continue performing throughout the day.

• Build throwing capacity: As mentioned in last week’s blog, throwing is a skill of its own and a unique demand on the body. Therefore, it needs to be developed and progressed on its own. Being a strong athlete with good conditioning provides the foundation, but it doesn’t automatically prepare your arm for throwing. Having a progressive throwing program that manages your workload is just as important to arm care as the strengthening exercises. Nothing can replace throwing.

• Recovery: I’ve talked about recovery before, but it is an often overlooked aspect. We tend to focus on all of the things we add to get better (e.g. resistance training, long toss, weighted balls), while overlooking the things that actually allow our body to adapt to training; and even then, we tend to focus on fancy gadgets rather than the low-hanging fruit of sleep, nutrition, hydration, and managing stress.

As a baseball and softball player, you are more than just an arm, shoulder, or elbow. You are an athlete, and while the arm is the bread and butter, you need to remember that the rest of your body is just as important to throwing. If you want a more resilient throwing arm, stop thinking only about your arm and start preparing your whole body.

The Gym Prepares You to Throw. It Doesn't Replace Throwing.

Many baseball players spend the off-season getting stronger in the gym, hoping it will improve their throwing performance and prepare their arm for baseball season. But when the first few throwing sessions arrive, it’s common for their arm to feel sore, heavy, or just not ready at the start. It’s easy to wonder, “I’ve been training all winter - why doesn’t my arm feel ready?” The answer is simple: the gym prepares you to throw, but it doesn’t replace throwing.

Why Strength Isn’t Enough

Don’t get me wrong, the gym is fantastic when it comes to training for baseball players. The gym builds muscular strength and power, muscle mass, and even improves the strength of tendons and bones. These adaptations raise your physical capacity and prepare your body to better tolerate the demands of baseball. Overall, this increases your ability to produce force and perform.

‍ ‍But throwing isn’t just about strength - its a skill with physical demands that can only be developed by throwing.

Why Throwing Is Different

Throwing a baseball is a very unique and specific skill. It involves the fastest rotational speeds in sport and enormous eccentric forces as the body rapidly decelerates the arm after ball release. This involves not just strength, but efficient mechanics with proper timing, coordination, and sequencing of the entire body. No gym exercise reproduces all of those simultaneously. I love using medicine ball throws, explosive movements, plyometrics, and heavy eccentrics as part of my rehab programming for baseball players. These exercises help bridge the gap because they expose the body to high forces and fast movements. But they still don’t reproduce the unique demands of throwing.

‍ ‍No exercise recreates throwing as well as throwing itself. Think of the gym and throwing as two separate forms of training. The gym develops the physical qualities that support throwing, while throwing develops the specific movement patterns and tissue adaptations required to throw. They’re complementary, but neither replaces the other.

Our bodies adapt specifically to the stresses we place on them. If we squat regularly, our lower body will certainly get stronger, but we’ll also get really good and efficient at squatting. If you train for 100m sprints, you’re going to get really good at short-distance sprinting, but this won’t translate to being able to run a marathon. So when you throw consistently, your arm gradually adapts to tolerate the unique speeds and forces experienced with throwing. These adaptations cannot be fully developed any other way.

This is the reason players often feel sore when they first begin throwing after an off-season despite working out in the gym. You may be physically stronger coming into the season, but your arm hasn’t experienced the unique forces of throwing for months. Even players who continue throwing during the off-season often see a rapid increase in throwing volume and intensity once preseason begins. Your arm simply needs time to adapt to the demands of throwing.

The Gym and Throwing Work Together

By all means, continue to work out in the gym. Lift heavy weights, build strength, build power, and incorporate your lower body and core to really get the most out of your throwing. But don’t expect the gym to completely prepare your arm for game demands. A gradual throwing progression is what teaches your arm to tolerate the unique demands of throwing.

‍ ‍The gym builds the qualities that support throwing. Throwing builds the specific adaptations required to throw.

What Should a Healthy Throwing Arm Feel Like?

We often assume that a healthy throwing arm should feel perfect. No soreness, tightness, or stiffness. So when our shoulder or elbow starts to ache after throwing, it’s easy to wonder if something is wrong. But that expectation isn’t realistic. A healthy throwing arm isn’t always a pain-free throwing arm.

First, it is important to realize that throwing a baseball, especially when pitching, is stressful on the arm. Humans evolved to throw, but not necessarily to throw a 5oz baseball at nearly 100 mph, 100 times every few days. Every throw places tremendous forces on the shoulder and elbow that are unique to throwing, making it hard to adapt to this outside of actual throwing.

Think about Usain Bolt and sprinting. We can’t expect someone trying to run as fast as humanly possible to finish every training session feeling completely fresh. Pitching is no different. Pitching places enormous stress on the arm, so some soreness is a normal consequence of asking your body to perform at such a high level.

The key question then becomes, is this behaving like normal throwing soreness? I touched upon this before but a general feeling of soreness or fatigue without a clear onset that settles within a day or two is what we’re looking for. This soreness is thought to come from fatigue in the muscles that repeatedly absorb and produce the high forces required for throwing. Once you’re done throwing and given the opportunity to rest, the soreness subsides as you recover. Your arm can be entirely healthy and prepared for the demands of throwing and still have some degree of soreness.

There is going to be some variability in how our arm feels game-to-game due to the many factors that can affect performance. Healthy throwing arms are going to have good days where everything feels smooth and effortless, and healthy throwing arms are going to have bad days. Healthy throwing arms can get sore or feel tight and stiff.

‍ ‍Healthy throwing arms recover.

Setting the right expectations is one of the best ways to avoid unnecessary worry. A healthy throwing arm isn’t one that never gets sore - it’s one that tolerates throwing, recovers well, and is ready to do it again. Don’t judge your arm by how it feels immediately after one outing. Judge it by how it responds over the next day or two, and by the overall trend across weeks of throwing. If your arm isn’t recovering the way you’d expect - or you’re unsure whether what you’re feeling is normal - then that’s a good time to book an assessment. The goal isn’t just to diagnose an injury, but to help you understand what’s normal, what’s not, and how to keep throwing with confidence.

What I’ve Changed My Mind About: Strength and Pain

          Muscular strength is one of the biggest themes in rehab. Weak muscles are often blamed for pain - weak glutes or core for low back pain, and weak shoulder muscles for neck pain or poor posture. The logic seems straightforward: if weakness causes pain, then getting stronger should fix it.

          That’s certainly what I believed early in my career. I assumed strength was the main driver of recovery. But over time, and after reading more research, I changed my mind. People often improve while doing strengthening exercises, but those improvements aren’t consistently explained by increases in strength. If it isn’t strength that’s making people feel better, what else is changing?

          Strengthening exercises are prescribed for many painful conditions, and they often work. But the literature has repeatedly found that improvements in pain don’t always line up with improvements in strength. For example, tendinopathies of the Achilles, knee, and shoulder often see improvements without meaningful changes in tendon structure or strength. Those with either general knee pain or knee osteoarthritis can see improvements in their pain and function without the surrounding muscles drastically improving. This growing body of evidence has led me to change my wording around the use of strengthening exercises - often people get better with strengthening, but it’s not necessary in order to get better.

          Exercise changes much more than muscle strength. It can reduce tissue sensitivity, improve confidence in movement, reduce fear around pain, improve cardiovascular fitness, improve sleep and overall health, and gradually expose the body to the demands you’re returning to. Strength is just one adaptation among many.

          It’s important though to make the distinction between rehab for pain and rehab for physical performance and return to sport. Strength still matters in injury rehab. Following ACL reconstruction, the research suggests that quadriceps strength needs to be at least 90% compared to the unaffected side; otherwise, the risk of re-tear increases. For baseball players, there are a couple of different metrics in shoulder strength to aim for in order to maintain a healthy arm. Strength is important in this context, but rehab for pain is not the same as rehab for performance; pain cannot be reduced to just, “get stronger.”

          I still want my patients to get stronger. I just no longer assume that getting stronger is the reason they improve, or even needed to improve. I used to present exercise as the way to get stronger in order to get out of pain. Now I present exercise in a much broader sense. Exercise is a way to stay active despite injury and pain, increase activity tolerance, reduce fears around movement and pain, and restore confidence to return to sport and activity. This doesn’t mean strength doesn’t matter. It just means that pain is more complicated than strength alone. Strength gains are often one of the outcomes of good rehab, but not necessarily the reason it worked.

Reference:
Powell J, Wood L, Cashin AG, Lewis JS. It is not all about strength: rethinking mechanistic assumptions in exercise-based rehabilitation for musculoskeletal pain relief. Br J Sports Med. 2026 Mar 17;60(6):407-409.

When Pain Doesn’t Mean You Need to Change Everything

Whenever something starts hurting, our first instinct is usually to do something about it. We look for different strengthening, stretching, or self-massage exercises, try to figure out what’s going on, and modify activity or stop altogether until it settles. This is a completely understandable reaction, and something I’ve done for my numerous injuries. But over the past few months, I’ve been doing almost the opposite with my own ankle.

I started to develop some pain on the outside of my left ankle throughout the course of my first baseball game this year back in March. I noticed it every time I got into my defensive position, but I was still able to run. After the game, I would get this painful stretching feeling whenever I would point my toes down and inward. I was a bit worried about continuing my running because one of my teammates had what sounded like a similar issue and couldn’t run because of it. However, because I was still able to run in the game without pain, I figured I’d give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised when it didn’t get worse with running; I could feel it throughout the run, but I think it actually felt better by the end. Walking around and doing all of my other exercises had no impact; it was literally just getting into my ready position in baseball that aggravated.

I played around with some exercises at home to try and load it like I do with most injuries, but nothing was really working for me— I knew I was loading the muscles, but just not in the direct way I like to during injury rehab. In looking at my running program and baseball schedule, I thought, “what is this actually stopping me from doing?” There wasn’t really anything, so I decided the best plan was to just keep monitoring it rather than overhaul everything. Here’s why.

1. It wasn’t getting progressively worse. Despite playing double-headerd and some intense weekly training, my ankle wouldn’t feel any worse during play or after. Overall, day-to-day it wasn’t becoming more painful. Even climbing down the steep hills of Mount Zeus in Greece, which was painful at the time, did not make it worse afterwards.

2. There were only two movements that aggravated it. The pain only appeared in two situations: getting into my defensive ready position in baseball, and actively pointing my toes down and in while sitting or lying down. Everything else - including running, hitting, lifting, and walking - was pain-free.

3. It wasn’t affecting what I could do. Pain isn’t the only thing that matters - function does too. My ankle wasn’t limiting any of my athletic and daily activities.

4. It was still being loaded. Even though I couldn’t find a good exercise that I felt was directly targeting the painful area, I wasn’t avoiding loading it. I was still running, playing baseball, strength training, and walking daily. This meant my ankle was still experiencing regular loading.

5. No obvious red flags. Nothing stood out as something that needed immediate attention - no acute mechanism, swelling, redness, heat, numbness, night pain or inability to weight-bear.

6. Time is part of rehab whether we like it or not. Whether I exercised it specifically or not, healing still happens. A big part of recovery, even with good rehab, is the body’s natural healing process, which takes time. Tendons especially (which is what I think this is) are notorious for taking weeks or months to be pain-free, so I’ve had to manage expectations.

It’s important to emphasize that this should not be the default approach to every injury. This decision was based on how my symptoms behaved over time. If the pain had become more limiting, progressively worsened, or stopped improving, I would have changed course by reducing my activity and adding more targeted rehab. This wasn’t a case of me avoiding rehab, but rather matching my approach to how my symptoms were responding.

We often assume every painful body part needs a sophisticated rehab plan. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it simply needs appropriate loading, time, and careful monitoring. The key for me was not panicking or worrying about my ankle, continuing to use it as much as I could, and being prepared to modify if something changed. Good rehab isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what’s necessary, and knowing when nothing more is needed.

Pain Relief is Not the Finish Line

When pain starts to settle, it’s normal to think that you’re ready to get back to physical activity and sports. Reducing pain is one of the first goals we focus on in early rehab given the unpleasantness of pain - it’s uncomfortable, limits movement, and can negatively affect how we view our injury. That’s why, when pain does start to improve, it feels like a big win. We can start to move more comfortably again, and we’re able to return to various activities. We can feel like we’re ready to jump back into sports, but this is usually a false sense of security. For many injuries, pain relief is the beginning of the next rehab phase, not the end of rehab.

Why Less Pain Doesn’t Always Mean You’re Ready

Unfortunately, pain doesn’t tell us the whole story. Pain reflects sensitivity, not just tissue damage, and can be influenced by many factors beyond the injury itself. A runner may have less knee pain but still lack the mileage needed to return to full training. A baseball pitcher may throw pain-free but still not have the velocity or volume needed for competition. In both cases, pain has improved, but there is still a gap between feeling better and being prepared.

The Gap Between Feeling Better and Performing Better

Pain relief and performance are not the same thing. While reducing pain is often the first goal, it’s not the only goal. A good rehab program should be built around increasing your ability to handle the demands of your sport or physical activity. This includes strength, mobility, endurance, conditioning, skill, and confidence. Many people will either rest their aches and pain until they feel better, or do some rehab until the pain goes away, and then jump straight back into their activity. But focusing on just pain can often lead to flare-ups, setbacks, and regressions in rehab because they mistake feeling better for being prepared to return to sport. Unfortunately, getting out of pain isn’t the same as getting back to sport.

What Rehab Should Focus on After Pain Settles

The goal after pain settles is to close the gap between where you are and what your sport requires. For a runner, that may mean gradually increasing mileage. For a pitcher, it may mean rebuilding throwing volume and intensity. For others, it could mean restoring strength, power, conditioning, or confidence. Whatever the activity, the principle is the same: progressively expose yourself to the demands you’ll eventually face.

Pain Relief is the Beginning, Not the End

A decrease in pain is worth celebrating, especially if the injury has been limiting for a long time. But pain relief itself isn’t the finish line. It’s often the point where the focus shifts from feeling better to becoming prepared. Because getting out of pain and getting back to sport are not always the same thing.

The Best Plans Aren’t Perfect. They’re Adaptable.

We’re always told that if you want to achieve something, the best thing you can do is make a plan. But as Mike Tyson said, everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. You start feeling better, but then work gets busy, you get sick, you go on vacation; life happens. Suddenly you’re not following the plan exactly as intended, and it can feel like you’ve fallen behind or failed. But needing to adjust a plan doesn’t mean the plan failed. In many cases, the ability to adapt is what makes a plan successful in the first place.

I learned this lesson the hard way while training for a half marathon. Last year I was building my running volume, but I became inconsistent with both my running and strength training due to travel, illness, and a stressful period. Instead of adjusting my program, I tried to continue as if nothing had changed. The result was knee pain that stopped my training and set me back for months.

This year I faced a similar situation. My honeymoon meant two weeks without running. Even though I was still active through walking and swimming, I knew that wasn’t the same as running. Instead of trying to continue where I left off, I adjusted my plan and reduced my volume for four weeks to build back up before progressing further. It delays my half marathon timeline by a few weeks, but that’s a much better outcome than losing another seven months.

Here are some things to consider if you feel you’ve been inconsistent in your rehab due to life getting in the way:

• Manage expectations - if you’ve missed time due to life events, it’s unrealistic to expect the exact same progress as if nothing had changed. Adjusting expectations isn’t being negative; it’s being realistic.

• Something is better than nothing - rehab doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Even doing one exercise is often enough to maintain momentum until life settles down.

• Plan out what you can - if you know a vacation, work trip, or busy period is coming up, adjust the plan before it happens instead of trying to pretend nothing has changed.

• Accept what you can’t plan for - illness, stress, emergencies, and unexpected events happen. Success isn’t avoiding them - it’s knowing how to respond when they occur.

• Rehab is full of ups and downs - even under ideal circumstances, recovery has ups and downs. Progress isn’t measured by perfect weeks. It’s measured by the overall trend.

• This is not a setback; it’s an adjustment - taking a step back after a break isn’t failure. It’s often the smartest way to keep moving forward.

Life is going to happen. Vacations, illness, work stress, family commitments, and unexpected interruptions are part of being human. A good rehab plan isn’t one that only works when life is perfect. It’s one that can adapt when life isn’t. Missing time doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Sometimes the smartest thing you can do is take a small step back, adjust the plan, and keep moving forward. That’s not a setback; that’s good rehab.

Build Calluses, Not Blisters

Load management and gradual progression can feel a little abstract sometimes. One analogy I often use with patients is the difference between building calluses and developing blisters.

Blisters are pockets of fluid that form between layers of skin after sudden or excessive friction. Most people have experienced them from a new pair of shoes that rub until they’re broken in. They’re painful, limiting, and usually settle within a few days.

Calluses, on the other hand, develop gradually over time in response to repeated pressure and friction. They’re your body’s way of reinforcing an area to better tolerate stress.

The same thing can happen with training and activity. When we suddenly do too much, too soon, we often develop the equivalent of a blister. Our body isn’t prepared for the spike in stress, so pain flares up and we become limited for a few days. But when we progress gradually, we give the body time to adapt. Over time, we become stronger, more resilient, and more tolerant to the demands we place on ourselves. We build calluses instead of blisters.

It’s natural to want to progress quickly in sport and training. But most of the time, the better approach is to build calluses, not blisters. Avoid big spikes in activity, progress gradually, and give your body time to adapt. That’s usually what keeps people active, healthy, and moving forward long term.

Injury Prevention Doesn’t Mean Injury-Proof

Why Injury Prevention Matters

Athletes, professional organizations, and everyday active people are always looking for ways to prevent injuries, and why not? Injuries hurt, interrupt training, and take you away from the sports and activities you enjoy. For teams and organizations, injuries can also mean reduced performance and financial loss. Because of this, there’s constant attention on injury prevention strategies, from training methods to recovery tools. But can injuries truly be prevented? Yes, but no. Unfortunately, you can do everything right and still get injured.

How Injury Prevention Programs Work

At the larger population level, the FIFA 11+ is a clear example of how we can prevent injuries. Across multiple studies and systematic reviews, this program of warm-up exercises and drills has been shown to lower injury rates, particularly for the lower extremity and severe injuries in soccer players. The biggest benefits are seen when teams consistently perform the program, reinforcing that injury prevention is less about finding the perfect exercise or tool, and more about regularly exposing athletes to strength, balance, coordination, and sport-specific movement demands over time.

Organizations can prevent injuries through rule changes and mandating protective equipment. Major League Baseball implemented two significant rule changes to prevent collisions at second base and home plate through the Chase Utley Rule and Buster Posey Rule, respectively. Unsurprisingly, facial injuries increase in hockey when players are no longer required to wear full face cages.

How Athletes Reduce Injury Risk

Individuals can also take steps to prevent injuries themselves. The entire premise behind load management is to gradually expose and progress an activity in order to drive positive adaptations and prevent overuse injuries. Exercise and resistance training should, in theory, increase our overall fitness, strength and tolerance for load so that we have increased capacity for the stress of physical activity and sports.

Why You Can Still Get Injured Doing Everything Right

Ultimately, though, we’re never going to be able to prevent all injuries. Injuries are multifactorial, and even if you’re doing everything right, random stuff can still happen. You can roll your ankle in a divot while running, fall funny on your shoulder in a rugby tackle, or accidentally collide with a teammate on the hurling pitch. In a more indirect way, stresses with work and/or family may compound with your activity stress and make you more prone to an overload injury, or you might overstretch your progression and end up with an aching knee. These are all things that can result in an acute or chronic injury that are either out of our control or inadvertent. Even in the studies looking at the FIFA 11+, there were still injuries that occurred to those who completed the program.

Is Injury “Prevention” the Right Word?

Part of this discussion may come down to semantics. “Prevent" implies stopping something from happening entirely, which is why many people in sports medicine prefer terms like injury mitigation or risk reduction instead. But even those terms have limitations because injuries are unpredictable and multifactorial. Still, if an intervention group in a study experiences 0.7 injuries per 1000 training hours compared to 1.3 in the control group, it’s reasonable to say injuries were reduced or prevented at the population level, even if we can’t predict who specifically would have been injured.

Injuries certainly can be prevented, but you can do everything right and still get injured. This is because injuries are multifactorial, and we often don’t know exactly which factors contributed to them. It certainly makes sense to take reasonable measures to prevent injuries, but injuries from sports and physical activity are a reality and not something we are going to be able to eliminate completely. The best we can do is physically prepare for the demands of the activity, progress appropriately, recover well outside of sport, and stay as healthy as possible.

How to Build a Better Arm Care Program

There are many exercise programs out there billed as arm care programs. Most of these rely heavily on bands or light dumbbell exercises, like the Thrower’s 10. These programs can be great for the early stages of rehab after an injury or surgery, but if you really want to strengthen your throwing arm, arm care needs to involve more than just bands and external rotations. Here are some things I think you should consider as part of your arm care routine.

Full Body Strength Matters for Throwing

Throwing and pitching are full body movements. Power starts with the legs and is transferred through the core, shoulder girdle, and ends at the wrist. Think of cracking a whip: the momentum starts at the handle, but the snap comes at the very end- that’s ball release. If you’re already doing some shoulder exercises but not incorporating your core and trunk, you’re missing out on some major development.

Compound Exercises Build a Stronger Throwing Arm

We typically think of arm care as isolation exercises for the rotator cuff, but any exercise involving movement of the shoulder is going to get the rotator cuff firing. Compound, multi-joint exercises allow you to train multiple muscles at once and allow for heavier loading. Think various types of rows, chest pressing, overhead pressing, and pull-ups. These exercises can help you build a lot of strength.

Rotator Cuff Training for Baseball Players

When most people think of rotator cuff training, they think of bands and light dumbbells. But the rotator cuff muscles are still muscles, and they can usually tolerate more load than people think. I also like training them in positions that better reflect throwing - around shoulder height and with a straighter arm to mimic ball release. Lateral raises and various T’s are some of my favourites, but I also like face-pulls for external rotation.

Train the Speed and Forces of Throwing

No exercise can fully recreate and prepare you for the forces generated during throwing, except for throwing itself. But power-based movements and eccentrics can still prepare the arm well because they emphasize speed and high force generation. Medicine balls are a favourite tool of mine, but you can also do traditional resistance exercises with lighter weight and higher speed. For eccentric exercises, you’re focusing on a slow, controlled lowering of the weight- these can create high levels of tension and are especially useful for building strength and force tolerance, but can also be very fatiguing.

Don’t Ignore the Biceps, Triceps and Forearm

The rotator cuff gets all of the attention, but don’t forget the other muscles. The biceps and triceps both attach into the shoulder socket, and therefore play a role in throwing. The biceps are especially important, as it acts as a 5th rotator cuff muscle providing extra stability, but also controls the elbow as we extend to ball release. The forearm muscles, especially the flexor muscles, are garnering more attention recently as a way to help mitigate elbow injuries like UCL tears.

Shoulder Mobility Still Matters

Throwing requires you to have excellent shoulder mobility, and this can decrease following a throwing session. Working on overhead mobility and external rotation through the pectoral and latissimus muscles can help restore range of motion loss over the course of a game and season.

Progressive Throwing is Part of Arm Care

We typically think of arm care as shoulder strengthening exercises, but we would be remiss if we didn’t consider the overall load and stress on the arm, with throwing being one of the biggest contributors. Here we want to make sure we avoid spikes in throwing volume and intensity by programming a progressive increase, and then allowing enough time between sessions.

Recovery is Part of Arm Care Too

It can feel like you always need to be doing something, but doing nothing can be just as important (link to blog). A workout is only as good as your ability to recover from it. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep, nutrition, hydration and relaxation (link to other blog) to support all of the work you’re putting in. A fatigued, overworked muscle is more prone to injury.

When Strength Testing Can Help

If you’re playing at a higher level and looking to up your game, or are currently dealing with an injury or pain with throwing, it would be valuable to get your shoulder strength tested to see if there are any deficits. In my experience, baseball players are often lacking strength in external rotation (relative to body weight and internal rotation), scaption (lateral raise) and grip. Testing can help identify where an athlete may need more attention instead of just guessing.

How to Build an Arm Care Routine

This may seem like a lot to consider, but arm care doesn’t need to be its own separate workout. It can be spread throughout your week depending on your schedule and training goals. Power exercises can be added early in sessions, compound lifts already train many important muscle groups, and a few targeted shoulder and forearm exercises can fill in the gaps. For example, grip strength can be added by trying to squeeze barbells or dumbbells as hard as you can or by emphasizing finger grip during certain exercises. The goal isn’t to cram everything into one day - it’s to consistently expose your arm to the demands of throwing over time.

This also isn’t to say I don’t like resistance bands or light weights. These tools can have their place, especially as part of your warm-up, or if you’re looking to get some time under tension with slow, controlled exercises as part of a lighter training day. The problem is when these tools ARE your arm care, and not just one part of it.

Final Thoughts on Arm Care for Baseball Players

Don’t think of arm care as just exercises for your shoulder; think of it as trying to build the strongest, most resilient arm you can. This includes full body strength, compound upper body exercises, shoulder and arm exercises specific to throwers, adequate mobility, progressive throwing and proper recovery. As much as I listed some go-to favourite exercises of mine, there really is no single right way- find exercises that target what you need and fit the demands of throwing. Stick to a routine, perform it consistently, and you should see your arm health improve. Arm care doesn’t need to be complicated.