Velocity Rx Podcast

Plyo Balls and Broken Dreams: Baseball's Dirty Secret #28

• Dr. Kevin J. McGovern, PT, CSCS • Season 1 • Episode 28

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Youth baseball pitching injuries have reached epidemic levels as parents and coaches are being misled by velocity-focused training programs utilizing weighted balls and dangerous techniques.

• 50% of Tommy John surgeries now occur in youth players
• Weighted ball programs target children as young as 11 years old
• Independent studies show 25% injury rates with these training methods
• Hall of Fame pitchers like Nolan Ryan and Pedro Martinez threw hard without these injuries
• Current MLB pitchers are experiencing unprecedented injury rates
• Proper mechanics and command are more important than raw velocity
• Many position players now needing Tommy John surgery
• Data-driven approach removes human evaluation from baseball
• College recruiters should look beyond velocity to find complete pitchers
• Proper mechanics and command are more important than raw velocity

If you want to protect your child's arm, avoid weighted ball training completely. Focus on proper mechanics, command, and the mental aspects of pitching that actually translate to success on the mound.


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The Velocity Rx podcast mission is to help save one million arms by giving the very best mechanical, health, and arm care information to it's listeners.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, this is Dr Kevin McGovern and it is time for another VelocityRx podcast and today I have a very special guest. I met him on a cesspool. Well, many people know what the cesspool is. It's a cesspool of politics and, unfortunately, sports and a lot having to do with baseball, and that is Twitter, formerly X, and the site's not the cesspool and, unfortunately, sports and a lot having to do with baseball, and that is twitter, formerly x, and the site's not the cesspool, it's the people on it.

Speaker 1:

Um, and we're here to talk about today, about pitching, pitching injuries of the youth of america. The parents of america are being misled, the injury rate is through the roof and this is just a common guy who just realized all of this happening, a former coach. I'll let him talk about it, but he's literally looking through not rose-colored glasses, real glasses with real lenses no pun intended, since he's wearing glasses today to see what is going on. His name is David Myers and we're connecting from all the way across the country. He's in Washington State. So, david, thank you for coming on today. I am so looking forward to just having a conversation of a like minded human being about the incident of injury in youth baseball, especially with the baseball pitcher. So thank you for coming on.

Speaker 2:

Oh, thank you very much for having me, doug. I appreciate it. I'm excited about this topic. I'm passionate about it because I love what you're doing. Get the word out, because parents need to hear the other side of the story. You know they're being sold a lot of training strategies that I think are leading to this huge, terrible trend of youth kids tearing their arms up, and obviously the MLB. The trend is just skyrocketing every single year. It seems like you can't go two weeks without finding out somebody has a season-ending surgery, and now it's happening in spring training, even Like it's absurd.

Speaker 1:

I mean, if you're a Yankee fan, they've lost four pitchers in the last three weeks. Three, you know it's insane. So tell us a little about you, how you became involved in baseball and how this now is a crusade of yours to get the word out to be like look, this is a cult of injury. I call it a cult this whole velocity, like somehow you know Roger Clemens didn't throw a 95, apparently you know. It's just this cult. So tell us, give us a little history and tell us where you're at all right.

Speaker 2:

Well, I am a baseball guy. I love the game. I've loved it since I was a wee, wee boy. Uh, obviously, I played high school baseball, played a little college ball, and I'm not one of those guys that pretend that, oh, I had an injury though, that I was going to be an MLB player. No, I was a JC kid and I saw guys that were way better than me and I was like all right, I'm going to go ahead and hang them up and go after some real money. Love the game still.

Speaker 2:

Coached, coach for years, coach for over a decade. This is my first year not coaching in ages, because we moved from arizona to washington state and I'm just not in the, the baseball world. I got two kids and, and there are different age groups, so instead of you know, I'm just trying to be a dad now for at least until they graduate, and then I'll probably get right back into coaching. Um, but yeah, I'm just being a dad and being a watcher. How I got into this discussion is actually because of my kids and because of coaching.

Speaker 2:

I was originally in the. When I got into this, I was in the Pacific Northwest, right where driveline got its roots over here and close to Kent, where they're at their home base is and where their original home was. And like any other baseball dad on the planet, my kids love the game and I'm all about trying to help them have the most opportunity, like all the parents are and coaches. Frankly, you know, if I can find a new exercise or a new program that helps my kids get an advantage, I'm going to do it. I'm not going to lie, as long as it's healthy, and that is actually how I stumbled onto driveline. I saw.

Speaker 2:

This was how many years ago, oh man, this is when they were in their original facility in Kent when they had I know you're not up here, so like we're talking it was a small, small organization. They hadn't, uh, other than a handful of people. It really wasn't known outside of washington state. And, uh, this is the beginning when, uh, trevor bauer was there, like, we walked in and saw him because he was one of their very first adapters with the name and, yeah, we walked in, checked them out and, you know, the fact that Trevor Bauer was in there implementing some of their stuff gave them instant credibility in my head. And I found out that, you know, kids were adding Velo to their arm and I only thought about the short term. I wasn't even thinking. You know, it increases the chance of injury or anything. So I was like you know, this is cool, we're gonna dive into this. We got so as far as buying plyo balls and so you put, you put your kids on this program.

Speaker 2:

I did I put an entire uh because they they advertise and we can get into a ton of this, but they advertise kids throwing and using their program as young as 11 years old, like they actually try to sell these plyo ball kits with weighted balls and the age 11 from age 11.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you can look it up on their website right now I'm not making anything up from age 11.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you can look it up on their website right now I'm not making anything up. It says recommended for kids aged 11 to 13. In this, uh, plyo ball kit and they sell with it, uh, they're scheduled what they recommend and basically they're having kids throw heavy balls. Uh, they're recommending it at 11. We didn't go that early.

Speaker 2:

I've always been super careful, like I wouldn't even let my kids throw a curveball until they were 14. That's not an exaggeration. I was just, you know, I knew that that's an extra stressor and they're young and holding and, and so we played around and found a change up that would they could throw with the arm action of a fastball that had a little bit of a tail like a curveball. So I let my kids throw that because I felt like that was one of the safer ways to throw a baseball at that age. But that's how careful I was with my kids and I mean I mean all the kids like the travel ball kids, all the kids I've ever coached I care about their health and enjoyment of the game more than you know throwing three extra miles an hour. Okay, um, that season, one of our kids, uh and I'm gonna screw up the name of this had a, uh, a blue ablution fracture, fracture and usually that's called the avulsion fracture, avulsion fracture.

Speaker 2:

Thank you very much. So what that is?

Speaker 1:

is the tendon, that when you're young and have a growth plate, your tendon is essentially almost stronger than the bone. So the avulsion is ripping the soft tissue sort of bony process off the growth plate. So if that were an adult kid or a kid is fully grown, that would have been a Tommy John surgery. But the avulsion sometimes heals. Sometimes, in this case, it didn't. Your body's built correctly once and then after that you've got to put it back together, but that is an incredibly serious injury.

Speaker 2:

Yep, and I one, you know, at first, because we don't think that we're at fault for things, we don't want to blame ourselves. There's no coach out there who wants to say I screwed up and I will stop doing what I'm doing right now. And I will stop doing what I'm doing right now and I will pivot. And. But I talked to this kid's dad and, mind you, as a coach, this was my idea to do this, the kid's 14. And I thought, oh, you know most of all all the stuff dangerous. We passed that at 14. No, he had the evolution and I immediately stopped all driveline stuff.

Speaker 2:

I wasn't 100% sure that it was driveline stuff. At the time I just knew that this kid got hurt. It's under my watch. I got to figure out if anything I'm doing is a part of this, and then I started doing the deep dive on everything driveline related.

Speaker 1:

And I found out that kids all over the Northwest were having this.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I found out immediately in the same town. Another kid was doing it without me, without anything to do with me, had an avulsion fracture.

Speaker 1:

That's a great question how did you so quickly find this out when it's not published? I figured Shane Bieber going down last year would have been like earth shattering that people were looking into this plyo ball stuff and nothing. Two times Cy Young winner out for the year no one batted an eyelash no one batted an eyelash, yeah, um.

Speaker 2:

Well, fortunately in the northwest there were a lot of uh driveline related things in and social media is already pretty strong at the time and you could connect the dots and driveline themselves will never, ever tell you that kids are getting injured or their athletes are getting injured in-house because they are making good enough money. They moved from their little shacks in one part of Kent and moved into a giant facility where they could have a huge monster weight room as a warehouse to where they could ship out all the stuff they're selling online. They could do all their their hitting uh batting cages. They have nets for trying to play long toss by yourself, because obviously it's not a huge field. The place is massive and uh driveline's name over here was getting pretty big, to be completely frank with you, so big that other like copycats started popping up all over the place and I won't name those. But driveline's name got big and it got popular quick and so it is not hard to find anyone over here that has had an injury and worked with driveline, like there's a lot of them. Frankly, driveline knows about it, you know. I'm sure that there is a percentage. I'm gonna give driveline a little bit of credit. I'm sure there's a a percentage of people that they don't even know about the kids that just stopped showing up. Or you know the people that bought stuff online and adhered to their their scheduled recommendations of workouts, that got hurt and never went to driveline and told them hey, I did this, I did what you guys said and I ended up needing a Tommy John. But they know of a lot of kids that were in house, like you know again, I'm not going to throw this kid under the bus that you know came to me. He's a junior and he had a full on Tommy John surgery and he was working directly in-house with Driveline and there's, there's tons of these examples out there.

Speaker 2:

What I didn't realize is how fast and how integrated driveline was becoming. I knew it was becoming a thing in Washington state, washington State. I didn't realize that Kyle and people that worked for him were getting jobs all over the place, as you know. What do you call it? Consultants, you name it. I mean it was going. I mean, all of a sudden, vanderbilt had like a drive line and Vanderbilt's biggest you know name in college baseball as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, there's other schools popping up there, but Vanderbilt has been consistently great for a long time. And then all of a sudden boom. Two of their pitchers end up, you know.

Speaker 1:

I treated one of their pitchers.

Speaker 2:

Which one? It's okay, what's?

Speaker 1:

that, kranzler? I got him, I saved. I saved his scholarship before oh, that's okay. What's that? Kranzler? I got him, I saved his scholarship before. Oh, that's fantastic. He was the pitcher of New Jersey 2021. At a labor list, he'd thrown heavy balls in his basement, came to me, fixed his mechanics but then went to go celebrity trainer. So I'm not sure what he's doing now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well then I did the deep dive and tried to find out. Boom, all of a sudden they're in Japan, went to go celebrity trainer, so I'm not sure what he's doing now. But yeah, well then I, you know, I did the deep dive and tried to find out. Boom, all of a sudden they're in japan and, uh, it's, it's, it's infected the entire baseball world and it's breaking my heart because you, the increase. And and I'll use driveline as a metaphor for all of their copycats as well because they started this trend, they did the deep dive and their stuff was adding velo, so kids are doing it. And now, all of a sudden, we're getting 50% of all Tommy John surgeries are, all of a sudden, kids. And, ironically, I just saw that posted by Driveline this week. Their main Twitter post was this alarming trend and I'm thinking good God, do you not see that you're a huge reason why this is happening? I did see that and it's all driven by money. I mean, you know, there's zero chance.

Speaker 1:

Let me ask you a question. You're a baseball guy, but you're not. You know, you're not a medical guy, not a kinesiologist. How did you begin to look and say wait a minute, because the biggest problem I have in convincing parents is they're brainwashed, like literally. I've had to come up with a disclaimer, like I have, you know, as a physical therapist with a license.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm a first reporter, right, I'm a first reporter or a mandated reporter, obviously, if there's child abuse or if there's injury, Like now you've told me that your son is injured and that you don't heed my advice or my warning, and you continue to do like, whether you train with me or not or go somewhere else. But if you don't heed my advice now, because you're never the parents, never going to blame themselves, never, right, they're going to turn it around. So I literally had I had to come up with a like a cover, my butt disclaimer that says okay, you know, you told me your kid was injured. Here were my recommendations. This is what you need to do so that someone doesn't come back at me and get sued, because the problem with a lot of these places is they can't get sued. I can get sued, right.

Speaker 1:

So, as a, a baseball person, when did you realize that something is not right, Like you know, because if you go in, you know you've got 3,000 followers. I got less than that. Driveline's got 50 million. How did you finally realize that this something is not right? Something is something in the water stinks Well.

Speaker 2:

I'm embarrassed to say. The first time I actually even crossed my mind is when we had an injury on our own team. Okay, that avulsion injury is what opened my eyes and I had already spent, you know, good money getting supply balls for our team. I stopped it immediately and, yeah, and I realize very quickly, because after you know it takes you a second because you don't, we don't think that way and I'll give some credit to the parents because they're not thinking you know, hey, I'm, I'm, I'm putting my kid's arm in jeopardy. That's not the way they're thinking. They're thinking how can I help my kid become the best that he can possibly be? You don't think, oh, what are the risk factors? And I'd love, I wish that I could cause.

Speaker 2:

We do this with everything else. Like you know, when your kid turned 16, you're like, oh, I love my kid, I'm so happy that he now has his freedom and I don't have to take him every single where place he gets to drive. Well, wait a second, all right, the faster he drives, the more dangerous the situation is right, sure, really the same. With these weighted baseballs and plyo balls, you know you're adding risk and in this case, like they're doing damage from the moment they start doing it. It's an accumulative effect until, basically, it's not a matter of if they have an injury with these techniques, it's a matter of when.

Speaker 2:

And here's the craziest part. Here's the craziest part. If you, uh, one of these guys tears their ucl, needs a tommy john surgery, they don't compute that this is the cause of the injury. So how do they get, how do they build up their strength back up? Nine times out of 10, they do the same damn thing that got them there to begin with. Look at that. You could like show him a tiny. I love the guy superstar. You know I'm absolutely a fan. He was a driveline guy. You could have seen him doing reverse picket, uh, pivot pickoffs with the play-o-ball long before he tore his UCL. He tore it, rehabbed doing it and now he's doing it a second time. Guess how he's rehabbing. I guarantee you.

Speaker 1:

He's going to either retire from pitching or he's going to be a three-time loser like Nathan Evaldi. He'll do it again.

Speaker 2:

Because who's in his ear, who's profiting from these rehabs? Right, yeah, 100%. And so they're not getting the full deal, they're not getting the full explanation of. You know, they're just trying to get back to what they knew they were capable of at one point and they don't know the. There are other avenues out there to increase velo, to do it safely. It may take more time, you may have to work more on technique to get there, but it's a safe way of pitching. And, uh, no free lunch? Yeah, there is no.

Speaker 1:

So, like you, said you've taken a deep dive into people who. So now you know getting away from the people that you don't like. Yeah, you've taken a deep dive into obviously finding people that are doing it correctly, because, um, contrary to popular belief, nolan ryan threw pretty hard. Um, roger clemens threw hard, pedro martinez threw hard, kurt schilling threw hard. These guys did not have tommy john injury. The only guy in the hall of fame that has had tommy john surgery is mr smoltz, john Smoltz, john Smoltz, who is very on the. He's very against these velocity training regimens.

Speaker 2:

Is he really? I hadn't heard his statement. That's awesome to hear.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, he's. You know, because I think what the main thing that has happened is. We've gone from a drop and drive, so when your first move to home plate is down, that's going to keep your arm on time. Now the MPA velocity tread are teaching you to leap forward to take this longest stride. Well, when you take the long stride right, it's called it's a kinesiological term called the length tension relationship, and what that is is my bicep is really strong here in a shortened position. It's not strong out here with my elbow extended. So if I'm going to curl something from here, I don't have as much strength as I do here.

Speaker 1:

So they're taking these enormous strides and the body does not have enough strength or ability to rotate the spine around the front leg and they're trying to get this whip they'll even say whip action from this layback from their arm, which is the opposite of how you generate power. Bruce lee and and mike tyson will like choking on the fact that this is not how you build power. Mike tyson, doesn't take a left hook from south america, bring it up through texas and into canada, right? That's just not how you generate power, never had. But what they have done is they have used this whip because these, what these, what the structures are, are pliable like an elastic band and they do have elasticity. So you're using that elastic, using that elastic and we know what happened afteriable like an elastic band and they do have elasticity. So you're using that elastic, using that elastic, and we know what happened. After we use an elastic too many times, it snaps and that's what's happening and now go and add, uh, more weight than a regular old baseball.

Speaker 2:

And you're just attention on that those ligaments that stop and accelerating the ball.

Speaker 1:

The other thing is accelerating the ball. What I call uphill is accelerating the ball, what I call uphill from behind your head not downhill with gravity. So who have you seen online that you think is doing this right or has the answers? Most of those people are shunned. I would be one of them.

Speaker 2:

Well, ironically, both of them have doctor in the beginning of their name.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2:

Have you ever heard of Dr Tyler Winfield? I have, yes, yep, the beginning of their name you and uh. Have you ever heard of dr tyler winfield? I have, yes, yep. Um, I, I've watched him. I like what he's about. He's very anti, uh, weighted balls. I don't know every single thing about him. I haven't gone into his facility he's out in texas and just checked out everything about him. But I, from what I gather, we're on the same wavelength of you know what is what is more likely to create injury and what is not. You know he very streamlined. He doesn't like flyers at all. I think he's even said outright I can't stand the idea of throwing heavy like I don't know this. But traveling promotes 12 ounce baseball.

Speaker 1:

Oh, yeah, I had my first. I had my first gal with Tommy John surgery two years ago, because there's a softball equivalent to this heavy ball stuff.

Speaker 2:

Are you kidding me?

Speaker 1:

Yes, it's called high-level throwing and they're throwing heavy balls and you know, locally, she was throwing heavy balls out on an outfield and tore up her elbow. Yeah, what are we doing, right, you know? So it's um, it's, it's, it's, it's disturbing, and every day I'm out saying things, every day, you know, by these bots, right? So, just so you know, parents, when someone posts something and there's already 4 000 likes, 3 995 of them came from bangladesh or came from a bot. Okay, like their own post right, right.

Speaker 1:

And these guys, it's like I said, it's a cult, like they just have this, this. You know people will attack. And then, of course, you say you look at their social media and be like bro, you're attacking what I'm doing, you have a labrum tear or you have a tommy, you've had tommy john surgery, hello, it's. That's why I said it's literally like a cult. It's a cult it's.

Speaker 2:

It kind of breaks your heart because in the history of the game, guys we didn't have to keep track of. There's always there's excess to everything, right, but we weren't keeping track of 100 exactly. You can only throw 90 pitches at a certain age. All of that stuff makes sense for load management, right? I want to say that I'm not anti. You know pitch count, but the ridiculousness is that we're focusing on guys that you know. It used to be commonplace for a guy to throw you know 120 pitches in an MLB start and we didn't have any of this rash of Tommy John surgery. So why is that?

Speaker 1:

Fernando Valenzuela threw 10 innings. God rest his soul. In a World Series game, yes.

Speaker 2:

But why, all of a sudden, are we having a huge rash of Tommy John surgeries but yet our pitch counts are way low and everybody is super uptight about it, which again, I don't want to like. Get mad at the pitch count people that is a factor like anything else, I mean, but it's nowhere near as detrimental to these arms want to like get mad at the pitch count people. That is a factor like anything else I mean, but it's nowhere near as detrimental to these arms as the training that these kids are doing well, let me, let's just look at this.

Speaker 1:

So I always. Can you name one major league baseball player who cannot hit a fastball?

Speaker 2:

no right, you can't play they didn't get there because they couldn't hit exactly now there are people that can't hit breaking pitches.

Speaker 1:

There are people that can't hit change-ups right, many. Okay, so we. So let's look at velocity. Garrett cole, who's now down with another elbow injury, left a yankee spring training game the other day with an average fastball velocity of 97.8 miles an hour. Yeah, he gave up a bunch of hits, two left the yard, there was a walk. Okay, it's not Velo that's getting people out. I'm sorry, like, besides Nolan Ryan name another perfect game or no hitter, where a guy threw 97 miles an hour. It's location, it's, it's it's movement. You can hit a fastball now I mean, and I don't know how they got into this craze, but I mean, do you think it's good baseball to watch a world series game where the starters out after four innings?

Speaker 2:

I don't.

Speaker 1:

Right, I mean like right and the last four worlds you know. Here comes third time through the order. He's out Like what is that? I don't get?

Speaker 2:

it. It's a changing environment and it's just a matter of like pointing out what the problem is, because I love this game and, again, I don't know again.

Speaker 1:

First you have to admit there's a first.

Speaker 2:

You have to admit there's a problem or figure out what the problem is, and that's what they're not doing. They're blaming because the people that that research this stuff all have money on the line, like okay, so I I hate to beat up driveline well, I don't but um, I'm going to keep going back to driveline because there are so few studies that actually look at where the stressors are and try to understand what is common in the injuries. There's only been maybe seven studies published that you can find All of them, but two were published by driveline. The two studies that are not published by driveline, they didn't have any money on the line, they weren't selling anything.

Speaker 2:

Um, both of them said that using weighted balls and weighted plyos a significantly increased the chance of injury. As much as 25 percent like no, not 25 percent, like. It only increases your likelihood of injury 25%. They were saying 25% of the people that use this training had injuries. That's insane. That's insanity. Kyle Bode, who has nothing but money involved, who's got the ears, and his lackeys have the ears of major league programs are telling him that that doesn't have anything to do with it.

Speaker 2:

Someone?

Speaker 1:

explain to me. Actually, jim Rooney, who's been on my podcast, the former major league pitching coordinator, completely disenchanted with all this velocity crap. Basically driveline tread. They speak to major league baseball in terms of the deeper data. They are just real. So you said, especially driveline is a data company. So if so, they're just pounding major league baseball with data increases in vlo. That, of course, leaving out injury. And right now you know major league baseball doesn't have scouts and baseball guys in their front office. They've got yale, columbia and harvard nerds and they're just soaking up that data and everything is data driven. There's nothing you know.

Speaker 2:

So third time through the lineup they got to come out.

Speaker 1:

You know, even with this pitch count like I want to get rid of the pitch. I shouldn't say get rid of it because I think it's got its place, I want to add to it because it's just an arbitrary number. You and I can go on the mound opposing one another. I could have flawless mechanics and get to 50 and my arm feels great. You could be can't stand on one foot. You throw, throw 50. The damage to your shoulders, compared to mine, can be exponential.

Speaker 1:

We have to have in-game movement and strength tests between innings to make sure these kids arms are maintaining strength and deep and not having fatigue, so that, like 51, the 51st pitch isn't the last pitch they throw for two years. That's the issue. I don't agree with that. It's just. It's just so much out there and the. To me, the solution is very simple. Number one there's no testing drive like you go. I can guarantee. Give me a thousand driveline athletes. Every single one of them are going to fail a basic squat test. Every single one of them. They're going to not be able to stand on one leg. Okay, because I've seen it in 31 years. I've had Olympians who can't do proper squats. And how do you put all of this huge force on top of a base of support that can't handle it? It's kind of like putting in the penthouse of a skyscraper before you build a parking garage. It's a recipe for disaster, and that's what I see.

Speaker 2:

Well, when it comes to the pitch count because we're in agreement on this and again, I'm not saying it has no relevance, but it is not the problem I'll give you my best example, and one of the more famous ones. Sometimes it's easier to look at non-pitchers. So Jonathan Leucroy, a catcher who's had a good long career, a good hitting catcher. He was looking to build his arm strength because he was worried that his defensive metrics weren't high enough, and so guess what he did? He did driveline. Then he had a Tommy John surgery. There was no pitch comes involved. Really, there's so many position players.

Speaker 1:

I think the Yankees had three position players Dominguez they're the Martian, they're a star. Same thing the Yankees. Juan Soto was a Yankee only for the fact that Dominguez blew out his elbow because he was going to be the starting outfielder. But they had to wait a year because he had to come back from Tommy John surgery yeah and it's I just a position player.

Speaker 1:

And that gets me at the other thing too, because I am not a proponent of long toss, for that simple reason, like you want to throw 90 feet in a line with the same mechanics but these kids I see throwing 200, 300 feet tilt in their spine. You know people will say it helps mechanics. Well, tell me how doing something opposite of how you're supposed to move improves your mechanics.

Speaker 2:

Well, I won't lie, I don't hate long toss, but I but I hear what you're saying it has to be done the right way when it comes. Hate long toss. But I hear what you're saying. It has to be done the right way. When it comes to long toss, you're not supposed to, you know, have huge tilt and throw abnormally and put a bunch more stress on your UCL.

Speaker 1:

Find me a kid doing it correctly.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, see, that's part of the problem is, when it comes to something like that, that's actually what gives a lot of these guys outs. You know the guys that are teaching their kids the wrong way. They'll say, oh well, it's, they were doing this wrong or this wrong. Well, I will tell you right now you could have a kid doing long toss wrong and it's not going to do nearly the damage that it is. When they're doing, what do you call those running guns?

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, I can't even watch those.

Speaker 2:

Those are so bad, but they're okay with that. You know what I mean. But they'll blame it on 50 other things and say that's the contributing factor. It's not their training.

Speaker 1:

I always like the running gun. I always like the running gun and the forward roll. Oh my God.

Speaker 2:

And then they put things on social media like this is a good thing. And here I am. I can hear their UCL tearing as they're doing it. I'm like this is not a good thing for you, kid. There's no way that that is advantageous in any way.

Speaker 1:

So I have a post pinned to my account. I did a camp at Montreat college two years ago. Literally I was in the same town where the hurricane came through and leveled the town. Beautiful school, naia school, yeah, and I had most of the team come off of the camp. Some had their own trainers.

Speaker 1:

That didn't want to come. Everyone who did not come to the camp and were using their own trainers. They were all injured that year. Funny enough, yeah, so one of the kids the pitch, the former pitching coach, has now left because he just has had enough of this. He just like left careers. He had sent me the pitching the plyo ball program. So, first of all, the biggest thing was you're going to throw an 80%? Find me an athlete that knows the difference and can move the difference between 90% and 80% or 50%. What is that? What does that mean? And the amount of balls that they were throwing, even at 80% Daily, was shocking. I still have, like I want to say I don't have it in front of me, but over 50, 60 baseballs of these weighted balls like, oh my gosh, not working, not doing any core work, no Olympic lifting, no scapular stabilization exercises, just file balls. That's what their program was. And he, he's hurt and he's not come back.

Speaker 2:

actually, I think he was hurt at tommy john surgery and got hurt again oh, I believe it and I and I can almost see his training to get back yep, because he did the same thing did not realize that's what probably hurt him in the first place and then he doesn't does the same thing. And every single time you do it, every single throw, it is an accumulative effect and you're always I always say the next throw could be your last yeah, it's just a matter of what hurts most, or bad enough to where you have to go get it checked out.

Speaker 2:

It's not a matter of if it's happening, it's just how long it takes until.

Speaker 1:

So I have a lot of parents listen to the podcast. You're a parent, you're a coach. Yes, sir, a parent is listening to this. Maybe they've seen driveline, maybe you know. Maybe their kids are doing heavy balls. What is your advice to them? If you had them in a room for five minutes, what would you tell them?

Speaker 2:

Oh, man, I would say, don't do anything weighted for your kids. And if you're going to do, uh, teach your kids the right way to throw a baseball to where, even in their warmups and their practice, it's intentional. Make sure that they warm up properly and that they have good mechanics. Take anything that someone if they have financial gain at all look into what they're saying and do the research. Dig in, because, man, these kids, we don't want them hurt, we don't want them getting injuries and it is not worth it. Period.

Speaker 2:

And the growth of these kids is going to be strongly affected or affecting their development to where they can put themselves in jeopardy if they're doing things wrong. Let's enjoy this game. If I could do anything, I would get rid of all weighted balls, all plyos, I would teach a long toss, but it has to be something that you're right next to them, making sure that they're doing it the right way. Don't let them be 16-year-old kids that get lazy and just start hocking a ball and then it's detrimental to what they're doing. Agreed, follow doctors in place, because doctors know Doctors with baseball background are going to know a lot more than some dude with an engineering degree trying to sell you plyo balls and pay attention to the injury rate and what those guys did wrong, so you don't replicate it.

Speaker 1:

Exactly Well. Hey, man, I appreciate you coming on. That was fantastic and yes, thank you Listen. Please like and subscribe this podcast. Help me save 1 million arms. We need it. We might not even have a million left by the time. This velocity thing times itself out, but well, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Another thing, if there's any college guys out there. You know, quit using straight velo as your metrics man. Get out and watch kids. Kids that throw low 80s and have awesome breaking stuff that are getting kids out. You know eras matter, not just velo. There's a lot of different ways to recruit these days and and let's start looking at that stuff too, because it it's helping drive these injury rates. So I would love it if college guys scouts would start recruiting kids that are good, that just aren't, you know, flaming up the radar gun right, because right now I can't even imagine if there ever will be another 300 game winner in Major League.

Speaker 2:

Baseball oh yeah, that's. It's very unlikely unless things change great, greatly.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you, Dave.

Speaker 2:

I appreciate you coming on. Thank you, man, have a great weekend and thank you guys for listening.

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Dr. Kevin John McGovern, PT

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