In-Season Arm Care Programs: Keeping Your Upper Body Healthy All Season Long
Keeping your arms and shoulders strong and mobile are important in a successful season for any overhead athlete. Often, skipping out on warming up, cooling down, and stretching can cause preventable injuries. Athletes can excel throughout their season without worrying about injury with proper care and effort. The throwing or hitting motion of sports such as baseball, softball, tennis, water polo, swimming, and volleyball could result in injury due to the tremendous force athletes put through their shoulders. In women’s volleyball, the ball can be spiked up to speeds of 70mph, and in tennis, players can serve up to 128 MPH. With such high velocity and force behind hitting and throwing, athletes need to keep up with strength and mobility. Here are six exercises all overhead athletes can do for a healthy upper body.
6 Warm-Up Stretches for Overhead Athletes Before a Game
“Go get your arm warmed up!” This is a phrase I hear all the time for overhead athlete sports, whether it’s the relief pitcher in baseball, the center fielder in softball, the ACE server in volleyball, or the star QB. This is solid advice; it’s never a good idea to go into aggressive overhead activity without a proper warm-up, but what makes a good warm-up? That can be a very loaded question! Fortunately, by understanding the anatomy of the shoulder and the requirement by its muscles to work optimally overhead, it can be simple to get an athlete ready for action and, more importantly, lower their risk for injury.
Stretch of the Week: Tricep and Lat Wall Stretch
We are at the half way point for November! Week three is a Tricep and Lat Wall Stretch with the foam roller. You will also get a massage on the underside of the arms with this stretch.
Stretch of the Week: Self Massage for the Lats
Happy Fall and welcome to the final week of September! This week I am providing a self massage technique for the lats.
You will need a foam roller for this stretch. You can purchase one for relatively cheap on Amazon! You have to be able to lay on the floor for this one as well, so the only contraindication would be if you are unable to get down and up from the floor. You could always try to use a wall instead.
Stretch of the Week: Chair Lat Stretch
This week marks the half way point through the month. How are you feeling? Are you keeping up with your stretching? I hope so!
This week’s stretch is chair lat stretch. It’s a great one to do at work if you sit at a desk all day, so take a break! I sometimes will even do this stretch at my kitchen counter 🙂 The only contraindication for this stretch is if you have a shoulder injury where you can not raise the arm overhead without pain. In which case, please refrain from performing this weeks stretch.
Stretch of the Week: Teres/Lat Stretch
Week 2 of September is another lat stretch. But it can also get into the teres major and triceps a bit, so it’s a three for one! I just call this a Teres/Lat stretch.You will not need anything for this stretch. The only contraindication for this one is if you have frozen shoulder or can not lift the arm overhead, please refrain from doing it.
