Coaches, you have a great responsibility to do no harm to your athletes. You must study, you must have a plan, you must know what the hell you are doing.
Oh my. I just had a conversation with a 12 year old (my kid) who told me that it really bothers his arm when he does rotator cuff exercises before he throws. Well, duh. Why would anyone ever perform exercises that fatigue your shoulder and arm before you throw full speed? Isn't that common sense not to do that?
Common sense.
So I told my son to not do the exercises, and if the "coach" has a problem to give me a call. He won't. But I would welcome the opportunity to teach him about the proper way to do things. But most folks have so much ego that there is no way that they would listen.
The baseball warmup shit is way out of touch. Here is an idea: Just throw easy before you throw hard. Too simple, I know. It must be exotic, this whole band/rotator cuff thing. Do them AFTER you throw, and do them perfectly. Baseball always has crazy ideas. I had a "pro" strength coach that actually asked out loud about a major league pitcher, "Why would he ever need to do a squat?" Coaches are always trying to reinvent the wheel. Why? There are so many myths in all the sports, but baseball takes the cake. Maybe because weight training is relatively new to the sport? Bunch of "functional" training. That's a good one. The hell does that even mean? Light, silly shit? Yep.
I've pulled my kids off of all kind of teams. When the football coach of my son's 10 year old team years ago wouldn't allow the kids to take their helmets off and have water to drink while on turf with the temperature 110 degrees, I took my son off of team. What should have happened is that the coach should have swapped places with the kids and see how he felt on that turf. What a dumbass.
That's almost as stupid as running laps on any team except for a team of marathon runners.
It isn't enough to just do what every body else does. Study, man. Just because the "top guy" in your region does it, don't make it right. Damn.
This is a problem, not just in this case, but all freaking over.
Also, the obsession with abdominal work is out of control.
Should you perform ab work before you squat? No. Why? Think about it. What is holding you upright in the squat? Your abs. Should they be tired when a weight is on your back? Nope.
Squats, deadlifts weights, cleans are all great ab exercises. You wanna do abs? Do some planks if you must. But the kids with the best squat and deadlift will be able to do them all day long.
It is all so frustrating and silly and it makes me wanna throw up when I see the bullshit out there. The problem is, it never changes. Just be the guy who doesn't follow the trends, who follows a common sense approach, a safe approach and a learned approach. It's not that hard to do.
