Tcu Athletic Training: Fill & Download for Free

The very best professional athletes are freaks of nature; pitchers in particular have bodies that are abnormally stronger, or more flexible, than the average individual; Ryan epitomized that description.Ryan says it’s genetics:Q: With a 27-year career, do you attribute your longevity in the sport to the fitness regimen that you maintained over the years?A: It certainly played a role along with genetics. The aging process affects each of us differently. While you cannot stop the aging process, you can slow it down. My goal was to slow it down as much as possible. It became a lifestyle with me, and a challenge to play and compete on that level as long as I possibly could.That amounts to the same thing.He kept himself in peak physical condition throughout his career, and as others said, his pitching mechanics were flawless. It’s said player pitch with their legs, because the power to throw a fastball can’t be generated by the upper body alone.Ryan knew was true and worked hard to keep his legs strong yet flexible. He lifted weights but voided bulking up and losing flexibility. After leaving a game, you’d find Ryan riding a stationary bike to maintain cardio fitness and keep his legs in shape. The following comes from, The Day After Is Routine : Baseball: Nolan Ryan, taking his seventh no-hitter in stride, goes back to work.(after celebrating his 1991 no-hitter with the team) Ryan climbed aboard a stationary bike to begin the training grind that, he says, has allowed him to throw 96-m.p.h. fastballs at 44.Before his next start . . . he will have twice gone through weight-lifting sessions and run and stretched every day except the day before he is scheduled to pitch.I explained some of this in Fred Owens's answer to If scientists were able to analyze every muscle/tendon of a power pitcher like Arnoldis Chapman, what would would stand out as freakish/extraordinary?There’s tremendous tension put on the relatively small bundle of ligaments throwing a 90 MPH fastball . Dr Fleisig experimented with ligaments from cadavers and found that in an average person (that’s you and me or me 30 years ago anyway) the UCL breaks at about 80 Newton-meters.Test and calculations have determined that the torque on an elite pitcher's elbow when he throws a fastball at 90mph is about 80 Newton-meters. This brings two conclusions: 1) Every major league pitcher is a freak of nature to some extent and 2) it’s no surprise the UCL breaks.In How Fast Can a Pitcher Throw the Ball? Jeremy Repairman discusses the stress exerted on a pitcher’s armIn a laboratory at the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala., Dr. Glenn Fleisig studies the biomechanics of pitching, inviting pitchers ranging from middle schoolers to major leaguers to throw on the mound he has set up . . .. . . the amount of torque needed to throw in excess of the century mark is greater than the amount of force the ulnar collateral ligament (the elbow ligament Strasburg tore) can withstand before giving out, according to tests Fleisig has done on cadavers.When a pitcher cocks his arm, where it is turned back to the point where the palm is facing toward the sky, there's about 100 Newton-meters of torque on the arm, which subjects the arm to the same amount of stress as if the pitcher had a 60-pound weight hanging from his hand in that position . . .From that cocked position, the arm snaps forward to its release point in 0.03 seconds, and at its peak speed, an elite pitcher's arm rotates at upward of 8500 degrees per second. If that single instant of speed could be maintained, then a pitcher's arm would spin around 24 times in a second."Shoulder rotation in baseball pitching is the fastest motion of any joint in any athlete," Fleisig says; moving faster than hip joints in sprinters or shoulders in elite tennis players.The article leaves unsaid, that the effective 60 pounds of weight remains on the shoulder, arm and wrist until the arm passes through vertical when moving forward. That amounts to only about .015 seconds, and it doesn’t feel like it at that time, but it does put strain on the muscles beyond anything the average person undergoes is daily life.Ryan had elbow pain in 1986, and Dr. Jobe told him he had a partial tear of his UCL that required surgery. Ryan decided not to pass of the surgery and as it turned out, it was the right idea; his body decided to fix itself."Dr. Jobe said there might be scar tissue that would hold [the ligament together]," Ryan recalled. "I decided to go home and see what would happen. Around Dec. 15, it quit hurting. Then it was sore the first 10 days in Spring Training, but it went away, and the rest is history."In 1993, I watched Ryan’s elbow give up in a game against the Mariners. Ryan planned to retire at the end of that season anyway , and never contemplated surgery.In 2017 Ryan told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic ($$) he could have pitched in 1994.After his elbow healed (in 1986) Ryan produced four straight seasons of 200 or more innings and 200 or more strikeouts. His career did not end until Sept. 22, 1993, seven years after Jobe recommended he undergo Tommy John surgery. Ryan, playing for the Rangers, finally tore his UCL on a pitch to the Mariners’ Dave Magadan.By then, Ryan was 46. He retired rather than undergo a ligament transplant. But once again, his elbow healed itself, anyway.“I could have pitched the next year,” Ryan said. “I was a volunteer pitching coach for TCU where my oldest son Reid was going at the time. I threw batting practice to those kids all the time. And my elbow was never an issue.”As I said, a freak of nature, and an amazing athlete.