By PAUL YOST paulyost@hotmail.com
©Copyright-2008 Houston5ABaseball.com

In both the athletic and general fitness population, emphasis is often placed on what some people call the "show" muscles. If you don't know what I mean, these are typically the upper body musculature of the chest, biceps and shoulders. The big problem with this is it can cause problems from a postural standpoint and make you more prone to injury. This is especially true for the baseball athlete.

We all ready know the overhead throwing motion is unnatural for the human body - If you didn't, well you do now. Being that baseball athletes perform this motion repetitively throughout the late off-season, pre-season and in-season periods, it is imperative to do everything necessary to reduce injury risk. Otherwise, all that hard work in the off-season cannot be transferred to the field as intended. To prevent this unfortunate circumstance, we must place emphasis on upper body pulling movements such as the row.

The row exercise incorporates all the upper back musculature including the scapular retractors, posterior deltoid and rotator cuff. All these muscle groups are paramount to keeping the shoulder in a neutral position and less likely for impingement to occur. Using the 1 arm dumbbell row, hammer strength row, horizontal pull up, cable row, and bent over row are all decent choices to help injury proof the shoulder. As far as strength numbers are concerned, the trainee should be shooting for equality on these lifts in comparison to the bench press variations. It's also important to note that unilateral exercises such as the 1 arm dumbbell row help to lessen strength imbalances from the throwing and non-throwing side which further reduces chance of injury. In other words, be sure to include one arm rowing motions to your program.