July '24 - Arm and Shoulder Injury 5

Arm and shoulder injury prevention and rehabilitation part 5

This final post in the series will cover injury prevention including maintaining condition for throwing.

As with any sporting activity, warming up and cooling down are important. It's tempting to just get into the throwing while taking it easy for the first few sets so they are the warm up. But warming up the muscles with other movements that don't include the ballistic nature of actual throwing is much better. Of course these should include the whole kinetic chain and not just focus on the arm and shoulder. As per general sports information static stretches are better off in the cool down along with range of motion movement, where the warm up should consist of light dynamic movements preparing the body for the main activity.

Maintaining condition for throwing is also important again due to the ballistic nature of the action. If you don't throw more than once per week (which is probably many of us) then unless you are doing other strengthening and conditioning work in between sessions, you're going to be feeling it the next day. 

Of course there are many relevant exercises that can be utilised. I think there are so many options that are equally effective that people can make their own choices as to what they feel is suitable and include the types of exercises that they enjoy doing.

Stuff I've found useful:

Arm swings incorporating full body twisting and wrist rotations for the warm up. These are common parts of warm ups for martial arts and other sports and to me are the logical go-to warm up for shurikenjutsu. They should be dynamic and relaxed. Around body, cross body and vertical arm swings combined with big radius arm circles cover the basics. Of course there are many others as well. There are different ways to do each of these so pick a form that includes twisting and stretching of the full body, especially cross body and side lines from hand to foot.

Tea cups exercise. I first came across this as a preparatory exercise in Chris Davis' Martial Body program but examples are easy to find on YouTube. This is great for shoulder mobility and control. The empty handed version in both directions is a perfect cool down after throwing. For this I like the version that horizontally reaches right out including back behind you, rather than scooping in from the side. There is also a weighted version where you hold a weight in your hand while doing it (a 1-1.5kg dumbbell plate is perfect) and this is better for strengthening and maintaining condition rather than cool down.

Other cool down exercises to include are slow twisting of the arms and shoulders (again incorporate the limb twist into and through the body like outlined for the warm up arm swings) and basic static stretches. The twisting can be both opposing (open one side, close the other) and harmonious (both sides open, both sides close) versions.

You don't have to look far to find the Thrower's Ten. Originally developed to address arm strength and fatigue in baseball players to try and reduce arm injuries in baseball, this set of exercises has been updated over the years and there are some adjusted versions as well. It's a pretty comprehensive set of arm and shoulder exercises that go together with the other general strength training for throwing sports. The whole set is probably over kill for what we do but it's a great reference. If you identify a weakness in particular throwing muscles then selected exercises from this set would help to condition them. I used a few of the resistance band pulls to help rehabilitate a front deltoid injury.

As well as weighted tea cups and exercises from the Thrower's Ten, other general strength exercises will help maintain condition for throwing. I like clubbell swings, body weight exercises and general weight lifting with dumbbells. Of course kettlebells are all the rage these days. Body weight movement programs like the GMB Fitness Elements course, other animal movement exercises or body weight flow sequences are great for shoulder strength, control and mobility.

Stuff I've found not so useful:

Using a full warm up sequence from another martial art. A generalisation is that weapons based martial arts aren't as vigorous as many hand to hand martial arts and this is certainly the case for shurikenjutsu. Other martial art warm ups usually target specific things relating to that art and for more active arts prepare you for a level of cardio based activity in the main segment of the training session. These warm up sequences often go for longer than is necessary for our activity and use up training time.

Throwing action under resistance or with weight. These are also from the baseball scene. One is performing the throwing action slowly against resistance bands. At least in this case the resistance is in the same direction as the thrown object's inertia as it accelerates. But the opposing force of the resistance band continues to increase as it stretches and the force angle stays constant unlike a thrown object's inertia. There is some benefit to moving through only a very small part of the throwing arc with a very light resistance band, bouncing as a plyometric exercise. But moving through the full motion against a resistance band didn't seem to provide any benefits for me. The second I've read about is again going through the throwing motion but holding a weighted object. The force direction is completely wrong and I also didn't get anything from doing that. I did meet a baseball player who used a weighted plyometric ball for conditioning, but he was doing small elastic movement training with it unrelated to the throwing motion. These weighted plyometric balls are also used for throwing practise but many sources warn that they cause injury being heavier than a baseball. Of course shuriken generally weigh much less than a baseball or cricket ball and I think throwing heavier objects will encourage mechanics we actually don't want to use in shurikenjutsu.

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