A top softball coach reports that, contrary to popular belief, underhand pitching can cause injuries as much as overhand pitching does.
Top softball peak performance coach Marc Dagenais bases his report on the study conducted by Rojas IL, Provencher MT, Bhatia S, Foucher KC, Bach BR, Romeo AA, Wimmer MA, and Verma NN, which was published at The American journal of sports medicine.
It was conducted using seven female softball pitchers as test subjects. During the tests, it was found that the force exerted by the biceps during a windmill throw was higher than typical overhand pitches.
The study found that the windmill motion performed by elite softball players causes high amounts of stress on the biceps, which, "may help explain the high incidence of anterior shoulder pain clinically observed in elite windmill pitchers."
"In fact, I have seen many young pitchers just disappear after suffering from various overuse injuries," says Dagenais. Because of this, he says players should do the following to prevent softball-related injuries: improving their mechanics, balancing work and rest to avoid overuse, and strengthening the muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
Dagenais also says that although the windmill motion is more natural than the overhand throwing motion done by baseball softball players, "there's not that much more benefit overuse injuries could still occur."
Dagenais is a softball coach with more than 20 years of coaching teams that include the Canadian Women