Dan I was at Children's Hospital Sport Med Department again last Friday for 2.5 hours trying to understand the differences in the male verses female differences as to Q angle, hip width, the firing of the glutes, imbalance of the hamstring to quad, the notch width where the ACL passes through etc and how to prevent it from happening. One of our kids mothers works at Children's and her daughter is in their program and the Sports Med Director allows me to observe and ask questions with her mother's permission.
To say the least this has been a real eye opener as to how to prevent ACL injuries which is why we include it as part of our clinic information for hitting now and why we teach throwing before hitting. You heard for yourself Jenny Topping and Crystl tell the kids if we would have had this information before may be this would have never happened to us!
You heard Crystl tell the kids especially the young ones not to hit basket balls or do drills that suddenly stop their motion as it puts too much stress on the shoulders, elbows and wrists. I asked the trainer at Children's about this and his lay person explanation to me is the muscles in the shoulder serve to pull the arm into the socket, rotator cuff, labrum, trapezes...not sure of the spelling however with the elbow being away from the body, as it should be to slot, it is not in a good position to come to a sudden stop and especially for the younger kids it is not recommended by them to do. Same thing with squats as they do not recommend more than 120 degrees in the knee bend and anything 90 or less is a recipe for disaster i.e. butt below the knees.
I would think with having college trainers they would step up and stop this at least for the younger girls however most clinics have a wavier of liability so I guess they are OK legally however what about morally?
I know there is some style to what everyone teaches however causing the shoulder, arm and wrist to come to a sudden deceleration is not healthy!
Per one of our parents his daughter walked by that drill completely as she knew better. She was also asked why she did not take the knob of the bat to the ball and who told her to keep the knob inside the path of the ball!
It is difficult to understand why some of these college coaches teach what they teach in the Midwest verses Pac 10, southwest conference etc and then there is the Midwest! Where we teach swinging down on the ball, level to the ball, starting our hands over the plate, squishing the bug or starting the hip and throwing the hands to the ball, then you bring in CB, Berg, Topping and Finch and no one can believe how they do it is not how X college teaches it and so forth and so on...WSU does not teach those techniques and they are doing pretty well so you are correct Dan by having learned over the years which camps are worth going to.... which is why we always invite Coach B and his staff to come to our clinics. He is a US Nationals coach also and works with Team USA as the opposition coach.
I just hope the little ones do not get hurt doing some of these drills.
