Wednesday, April 14, 1999

It hurts to throw like a girl

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No offense, but weak technique can lead to injuries, orthopedic surgeon says

BY SUE MacDONALD
The Cincinnati Enquirer

INFOGRAPHIC Right and wrong throwing techniques (165k)

        Dr. Warren G. Harding means not the slightest offense — honestly and from the bottom of his heart — when he uses the term “throwing like a girl.”

        He is a nice person and orthopedic surgeon and not someone who would intentionally offend another with a derogatory, sexist term.

        But it's baseball season again, and in his quest to find a simple way to help parents and coaches teach young children how to throw a baseball properly, he keeps coming back to the “throwing like a girl” phrase.

        It's the best way to visually describe how NOT to throw, because it automatically conjures up an image of an awkward, weak and miss-its-target kind of lob.

        “It's what everybody knows the problem as,” says Dr. Harding, a former Reds team physician. “I always couch the term very, very carefully when I'm talking about it because it offends children very much — little boys and little girls. I don't say "you throw like a girl.' ”

        But both boys and girls who lack a natural ability to throw often adopt this graceless throwing stance commonly called “throwing like a girl.”

        He and a premed student named Nicole Straus, a senior at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., have developed a four-step process, using simple concepts, to help parents and coaches teach children ages 5-12 how to throw properly.

Four steps
        From personal experience (he was a Little League coach years ago), Dr. Harding knows that teaching a child how to throw is not always easy. Most attempts are filled with sports medicine concepts or anatomical terms the lay public doesn't always grasp.

        Some children and adults, he says, have natural athletic ability. They can throw a ball, swing a golf club, kick and catch a ball with very little thought.

        But some people don't have that inborn ability. They don't know which arm or leg to use. They stand incorrectly or stiffly. They don't know what to do with the rest of their body during a particular movement. They have to stop and think about what others naturally “do.”

        He simplified the act of throwing into these four steps:

        1. “The key is to push off from the foot on the same side as your throwing arm,” Dr. Harding says. During a throw, one foot is the pushing foot and the other is the landing foot. The pushing foot is the one you lean back onto, the landing foot is the one onto which you move forward. If throwing right-handed, push off with the right foot and land on the left foot. If throwing left-handed, push off with the left foot and land on the right foot.

        Sometimes, asking a child to switch the positions of their feet will help their throwing skills tremendously.

        2. Pivot the torso as you draw the arm back to throw. Rotate the body away from the target and cock the ball with the elbow in front of the shoulder, not behind it.

        3. Keep the cocked elbow on a plane with the rest of the body, not behind the shoulder.

        4. Step toward the target as you throw and land on the foot opposite the throwing arm.

        Dr. Harding uses the image of a gush of water rising from a person's feet up through the legs, thighs, hips, trunk, shoulders, elbow and out the arms and hand to propel the ball.

        All four of the steps ensure that the forces will flow smoothly through the body, allowing the pitcher to throw accurately and with enough force to get the ball to the target.

        But starting on the wrong foot keeps the body's natural forces from flowing fluidly upward. It also makes pivoting difficult or impossible (and the pitcher risks falling down).

        Not pivoting also restricts the natural throwing forces. Keeping the elbow behind the shoulder bottlenecks the forces in the shoulder, forcing the thrower to hyperextend the shoulder in order to cock the arm before throwing. This unstable and inefficient position inhibits the natural throwing forces, risking shoulder and elbow pain/injury from throwing incorrectly, he says.

        “Not everybody is going to develop a "live arm,' as they say in the baseball world, but at least this will help,” Dr. Harding says.

        And it's best to start early, sports medicine and orthopedic specialists say.

        Because children's bones are still growing, they're at risk of throwing injuries that adults are not, according to Dr. Benjamin S. Shaffer, sports medicine director at Georgetown University Medical Center.

        Children's bones grow from the ends, not the middle, and throwing incorrectly, too hard or too much can put too much stress on those growth plates, leading to conditions dubbed “Little League elbow” or “Little League shoulder.”

        Typically, resting the affected arm gives it a chance to recover. Continuing to throw with pain can cause long-term damage.

        “ "No pain, no gain' is not a reasonable principle when it comes to throwing,” Dr. Shaffer says. “A parent or coach can ruin a kid's elbow by forcing him to throw through the pain.”

        Once the throwing motion is learned properly, Dr. Harding explains, the four steps also can be used to help with similar skills that mimic throwing — laying up a basketball, swinging an ax, hitting an overhead shot in tennis, serving a volleyball and swinging a golf club.

       

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