WARNING! Here's Why The Bench Press Is Dangerous For Baseball Pitchers

Why I Think The Bench Press Is The Single-Most Dangerous Weight Room Activity For Baseball Pitchers. Trust Me Pitchers, This Special Baseball Pitching Report May Be The Most Important Instruction About Baseball Pitching Workouts, Conditioning & Training Programs You'll Ever Read, Period!

Coach Ellis,

My 14 year old son loves baseball but is also a proficient football player. The football coaches like his speed and strength and have him lifting three days/week. Of course, one of the strength benchmarks is the bench press. I noticed in an article that you mentioned that pitchers should never bench press.

Could you explain why and, if possible, direct me to a good weight lifting program. He pitches but also plays shortstop & catches.

Thank you,

H. Krantz, Michigan

From the desk of STEVEN ELLIS, The Complete Pitcher™:

Why all the fuss over the bench press?

This is a great baseball pitching question that lies at the center of much debate in baseball circles.

Some baseball coaches, pitching instructors and strength coaches say, “Go for it.” Others, like myself, say, “No way, Jose! Not for baseball pitchers!”

Let me ask you this: what does the sheer amount of weight that someone can push while lying flat on their back have to do with anything related to a baseball pitching movement?

It doesn’t, at all.

Now, I am perfectly aware of the impulse to perform the bench press. Young kids are sitting with a bunch of their friends at the weight room and someone strong walks in. It’s common to hear, "I wonder what he can bench?"

When I was in college, I can’t tell you how many times I was asked how much I could bench by my non-baseball friends.

It was always fun to see their reaction when I told them, "Never done it, but I can throw 90 mph!"

Unfortunately, an over-emphasis on the bench press over the years by the bad advice of baseball coaches taking their cues from football strength-training programs, often coupled with poor technique, has led to a very high incidence of shoulder injuries in baseball players (and non-athletes, alike).

This is especially problematic for baseball pitchers whose livelihood depends on the health of their throwing shoulder.

A tweak or an impingement caused by poor bench press technique means time spent on the disable list, not on the pitcher's mound where baseball pitching obviously needs to happen.

The problem with traditional bench press technique?

The bar is lowered until it touches the chest, both elbows drop behind the back and the straight bar is then pressed back up to the start position. Everyone is expected to lower the bar to their chest. Some weightlifters even cheat and “bounce" the bar off of their chest, which makes the movement easier, in other words, they can add more weight than proper technique would normally call for because they use the momentum of the bar to lift the weight back to the starting position.

However, to perform the bench press exercise under such guidelines requires a greater range of motion (ROM) than is typically found in the shoulder joint of baseball pitchers.

(The movement-restricting factor during a bench press is not the muscles of the shoulder; it is the special connective tissue casing around the shoulder joint called the "joint capsule." This highly specialized structure is anatomically designed to not only allow just the right amount of motion to prevent joint damage, but also contains thousands of specialized nerve endings called "proprioceptors." Proprioceptors are special nerve endings that communicate with the brain to inform it of joint position and speed of movement, as well as pressure, tension and pain in and around the joint. Loading the shoulder and forcing it beyond the functional ROM limit will stretch the shoulder joint capsule. In most people this will occur by letting the bench-press bar travel until it touches the chest.)

Additionally, because the bench press is performed on a flat weight lifting bench, normal movement of the shoulder blades (scapula) is disrupted. This demands that more movement must occur in the shoulder joint itself.

As the bar is loaded with heavier and heavier weights, the shoulder blades are pressed into the bench harder and harder, further disrupting the normal mechanics of the shoulder girdle joints and overloading the shoulder.

What’s so important about training within your given range of motion (ROM)?

What most lower-lever baseball trainers, baseball pitchers, baseball coaches and instructors don’t seem to respect is the fact that training beyond the shoulder’s passive barrier with heavy loads will stretch the shoulder joint capsule.

Once stretched, the joint capsule can no longer stabilize the shoulder joint with common arm movements such as throwing a baseball.

If these arm movements are repeated without the stability provided by a functional shoulder joint capsule, an impingement syndrome develops, resulting in inflammation and pain in the shoulder joint.

Bursitis and rotator cuff tendonitis commonly develop secondarily – both of which are the most common baseball pitching injuries.

Because the shoulder joint capsule provides critical information about arm position, baseball pitchers with a loose joint capsule often lose their ability to accurately sense joint position.

This will result in a loss of baseball pitching accuracy, command and control of the fastball, as well as the “touch” and finesse requires to master off-speed pitches.

Baseball pitchers rarely ever reach a loaded end-point in the same position twice in the same game. Because the loads in baseball pitching are both brief in duration and seldom as high as those encountered during a bench press session, the shoulder joint capsule can recover from intermittent exposure to end range loading.

For baseball pitchers with insufficient range of motion (ROM) to perform the traditional bench press (often characteristic of lower level baseball pitchers), going to the gym and lowering heavy loads to your chest with slow speeds of movement, 30-50 repetitions or more per week is like repeatedly crashing a car into a brick wall at slow speeds just to prepare for the one day you may actually have an accident!

Sources: Essentials Of Strength And Conditioning (National Strength and Conditioning Association) by Thomas Baechle and Roger Earle; Paul Chek of the C.H.E.K. Institute and conversations and notes taken in 2003 with Danny Stinnett, the head strength and conditioning coach of the Chicago Cubs Minor League Baseball Organization.

Yours in baseball,

Steven Ellis
The Complete Pitcher™
www.thecompletepitcher.com
www.thecompletepitcher.blogs.com

P.S. Part 7 of our 10-Week Exclusive Tuesday Article Series on Steroids and Nutritional Supplements in Baseball, which was supposed to appear today, will appear next Tuesday, March 7.

Comments

[Dustin Drucker]

Ok well in the offseason i workout my whole body, cardio and alot of weigh training, but when season comes around my muscles dont get worked out at all because i feel sore when my pitching day comes around, so during the offseason i get big , but that all goes away when baseball comes around, how do major leaguers do it if it really sores out my body parts,m really help me on this one