Good Workout Plan for Pitchers After Shoulder Surgery

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Mickey Hiter with Sandlot Baseball, and the question's asked how to come up with a good workout plan for a player that's had shoulder surgery. First of all, it's important to know that checking with your doctor that did the shoulder surgery is a really, really good idea. As most of the times, they're going to prescribe some type of rehab workout. But there's many things you can do to strengthen the fore muscles and the tendons that makeup the rotator cuff. Usually the injury that's sustained to the shoulder is the rotator cuff. So the over use can cause those injuries and everything from tenderness to weakness to pain can result from a rotator cuff that's sustained some injuries. There are many things that you can do to help that and to strengthen those fore muscles and the tendons. One of the things most use is these rubber bands, they come in different colors for different strengths of elasticity. So and usually start off with a very flexible tube like this with the handles on it, and then progressively get to one that provides more and more resistance. But basically, you're going to be doing exercises that would require abduction, extension, where that you're pulling this way to extend. All the different motions that you would use to your, to increase to strengthen your shoulder. Basically that can be done from the side where you're turning your hand this way, to where you're turning it back from a different direction, this way. Pulling it to extend this way and then pulling this way to increase. All these things are going to affect the muscles and the tendons that go with those muscles in the rotator cuff area. Also you can get on a Throwing Program that's graduated and usually prescribed by the doctor. The doctor's going to tell you, you're going to need X number of days, weeks, months of rest after an injury, depending on the severity of the injury. And then you get on a very good graduated Throwing Program, where you start off very small discs, just throwing very light. And gradually increase as you're able to get at, to the point that you can long toss. But the very best way of strengthening those areas is with these bands, and again they vary in the resistance they give and they also come in very different models. You tie them to a fence post or any immovable object and then doing your exercises. And usually your rehab person at your doctor can give you some of these exercise, exercises to strengthen that shoulder muscle. But in short, that's how we strengthen the muscles and overcome an injury to the rotator cuff of the shoulder area."