I have been closely examining the types of injuries that many baseball players are receiving. This includes injuries such as oblique strains, hamstring pulls, groin strains, elbow strains and so on. These injuries may not be severe but the athlete cannot play for several days or weeks once they get them.As a result, Many of the injuries that the players are coming down with can be prevented. It would not take a great deal of work to make the necessary changes.
Many of these injuries stem from an inadequate physical base or foundation. Understand that only doing a few multi-joint or compound exercises is not effective in fully developing all the muscles and joints of the body. To do this it is necessary to do a multitude of exercises, usually around 20 or more to hit all the joints and major muscles.
The best program with which to do this is the 1 X by 20 strength training program. In this program you do 20 or more exercises for 20 repetitions for one set. Athletes on this program experience greater gains in strength, muscular endurance, muscle mass, coordination and most importantly, come down with fewer if any injuries strength. it is ideally suited for the off-season but can also be implemented in season as it will not detract from playing and may even enhance playing because of the improved coordination and strength..
Understanding technique is also necessary in order to create and develop strength exercises that duplicate what occurs in execution of a sport skill, as for example throwing, hitting, running etc. These exercises are called specialized or dynamic correspondence exercises that couple technique with strength. Such exercises have been proven to be the key to prevention of injury and at the same time, improve and enhance the ability of the player to execute the skill.
To illustrate we can use the example of a strained oblique muscle that a professional pitcher suffered while warming up in preparation for a game. Strengthening the obliques should be a must for all pitchers and batters. These muscles are responsible for rotating the shoulders which creates up to 50% of the force that is created in the kinetic chain of joint actions.If he had been doing the reverse trunk twist or the Russian twist and did not have disruptions in his kinetic chain (which is reasonable to assume on a professional level) there is no conceivable reason why he should have strained these muscles.
Another preventable injury is dislocation of a non-throwing arm while batting by a professional player. In this case it should be obvious that he did not have adequate strength of the shoulder joint muscles to withstand the forces during the swing. The muscles on the back of the shoulder undergo a strong stretch from the arm abduction and medial rotation. To strengthen these muscles the player has to do a strength exercise with the arm in the same position as in the swing. In this way he can develop strength in the exact action that occurs during the swing.
This is the beauty of specialized strength exercises. They duplicate the same neuromuscular pathway and develop strength in the same pathway and range of motion as it is displayed during execution of the skill. This is why they are so effective in not only the prevention of injury but improving the ability of the player to execute the skill.
In the case of Gregerson, he would need to develop greater strength of the rotational muscles through a greater range of motion. You have to develop the strength while the pelvic girdle is immobilized so that the action more closely duplicates what occurs during the pitch. This would entail doing an exercise such as the Russian twist on the Yessis Glute Ham Back machine. Doing it on an inflated ball or in some other manner will never be effective for prevention of injury.
It is highly unlikely that the strength and conditioning coaches were doing exercises such as these to prevent the injuries from occurring. If they were, the exercises were not done as precisely as they should be in order to be effective. Understand that technique of the exercise is equally important. Many coaches have a tendency to ignore how precisely the exercises done. This is a major mistake since any slight deviation in exercise execution can change the effect of the exercise greatly.
Thus it should be obvious that in order to not only prevent injury but to enable the player to execute his skills more effectively and with more power, is necessary to combine or couple technique with strength. This is the basis of specialized exercises, which as you can see, are the most important ones that a player can do. They have an immediate effect on performance. But they are not well known and because of this, are not widely used in the training of most players.
For more information on specialized exercises see Build a Better Athlete and Biomechanics and Kinesiology of Exercise.