By PAUL YOST ©Copyright-2008 Houston5ABaseball.com

You need to take care of your shoulder. This is especially true if you're a pitcher. This seems like a given, but I've come across many professional athletes that don't pay any attention to this area. The purpose of this article is to give you some direction in maintaining/improving the health of your shoulder.

Exercise Options

If you've read anything else of mine, you know I'm all for big, "bang for your buck" exercise for the vast majority of training time. There are, however, a few things to consider in terms of balance and isolated work.

1. Balance your presses with your pulls. This means the majority of the time you should have one upper body pulling exercise for every pushing exercise. In our bench press society, the backside, or posterior chain, is neglected. It seems nobody cares how much anyone rows or chins. Having a strong back in relation to your chest and shoulders is essential to keeping you on the playing field and performing well.

2. Work on scapulae stability/strength. By incorporating upper body pulling movements into your routine, you'll hit this area quite a bit. This doesn't necessarily mean that it's enough though. Oftentimes, I see athletes that could benefit from some extra scapulae work and/or don't execute rowing movements properly. Using exercises such as the rear delt fly, blackburns, or the Y, T, W, L can be of benefit to you.

3. Strengthen the rotator cuff. Many of you may all ready know this, but sometimes I feel it gets too much attention at the expense of the muscles of the scapulae. Long story short, if the muscles controlling the scapulae are weak, it doesn't matter how strong your rotator cuff is. Regardless, you should still be using some rotator cuff movements in your program. Side lying and standing external rotations are a couple good movements to use.

4. Don't abuse scapulae/rotator cuff work. I may be contradicting myself here, but more is definitely not always better. Some athletes that do pay attention to movements such as these abuse them. They perform them daily or multiple times per week. Some may disagree, but I feel you probably shouldn't have more than 2-3 sessions per week. You can use them to warm up, but fatiguing them constantly will hurt you more than help.

Conclusion

Working on the muscles of the scapulae and rotator cuff are very important to baseball players and other overhead athletes. By paying some specific attention to these muscle groups, you'll see a lowered injury risk and possibly a better performance on the field. Just make sure you don't abuse them and spend a majority of your training time on the larger movements.