Strength in Numbers #71
Veteran’s Day is a great opportunity to reflect. Of course, I reflect upon the freedoms in my life, but it also takes me back to a day when my life changed for the better.
It occurred while my father and stepmother were visiting my wife and me in Philadelphia, PA. I was in my apartment when the phone rang and I was offered a contract to join the Los Angeles Angels.
It was November 11th, 2016. It was Remembrance Day, as we call it in Canada, and I will never forget that moment in my life’s journey. I signed the dotted line and prepared to ship my car to Arizona to resume my career in Major League Baseball as the organization’s Player Performance Coordinator.
At the time, I was making a move from my Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. I had contributed to establishing the Penn Throwing Clinic, a place where athletes were screened for movement, strength, and range of motion deficiencies with the goal of reducing injury risk.
While at the Clinic, I realized how passionate I am about injury protection. I fully realized how important it is to blend strength and skill, specifically dynamometry and biomechanics. We used sophisticated equipment such as Motion Analysis Cameras that shot infrared beams at 240 hertz and Biodex, a sophisticated piece of equipment to measure joint strength at varying speeds.
Professional pitchers were mostly the clientele, which led to more amateurs coming to see us. That’s when I met a young boy who was 13 years old and was rehabilitating from Tommy John Surgery.
I evaluated his throwing program and realized that he was being progressed too quickly, as his benchmarks for progression were time, absence of pain, and restored range of motion – no strength measures. He did not have pain; it was 6 months, and he restored full range of motion in his elbow.
However, he was incredibly weak, not only at his shoulder but his hip abduction and adduction were also far below our mark. Global strength weakness and specific strength deficits seen at the throwing arm are a recipe for disaster.
Luckily, we intervened and put this athlete on a course of isometric and eccentric training to maximize strength while maintaining range of motion. We also alerted his coaches and physical therapist that he needs to remediate his strength deficits.
The whole process took time and a lot of stakeholders to enact change.
It’s a reason why I love ArmCare.com so much. It empowers athletes and coaches to ensure players are healthy, fatigue-resistant, and high performers. You do not need elite researchers or clinicians to evaluate the throwing arm. However, if ArmCare.com were around, it would have been recommended immediately, and I’m confident the injury would have been avoided.
The procedure this athlete had was a palmaris tendon reconstruction, which is very common.
How to Repair a UCL
First, the athlete is anesthetized, the elbow is filleted open, and then the doctor goes into the forearm and extracts the palmaris tendon.
He then creates two holes above and below the torn ulnar collateral ligament, feeds the palmaris tendon through each hole, and creates a figure 8 pattern with the grafted tendon to stabilize the elbow again.
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| 1. The palmaris tendon is extracted from the wrist |
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| 2. The docks are created by drilling holes above and below the elbow joint space. |
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| 3. The graft is then being interwoven in a figure 8 pattern above and below the elbow joint space to reconstruct the ulnar collateral ligament. |
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| 4. The graft is then secured and reinforced to prevent revision surgery after creating a figure 8 pattern. |
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| 4. The graph is tightened to create stability again in the elbow. |
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| 5. The surgical site is then sutured together |
The Risks
Now steps 1-6 usually take 60-90 minutes. The cost is about $30.000-$50,000. The rehabilitation takes about 18 months, but the time lost competing with friends and watching your child play over the summer is irreplaceable. Not to mention the fear and depression that occurs with wondering, “If I had only done a better job evaluating my arm strength…” or “Will I ever be as good?” clouding the minds of wounded athletes.
Going back to the Remembrance Day theme, I vowed to do whatever I could to ensure that those who play the game can play as long as they would like and not have their careers cut short by being cut open.
The boy who had been operated on in these pictures was a high schooler.
If you have Tommy John surgery as a high schooler, there’s a good chance you will have a revision surgery as a minor leaguer, which minimizes your chances of playing under bright lights in big cities. Unfortunately, the second surgery has less than a 50% return to performance rate, meaning that only 50% of athletes who have this surgery again will ever be as good as they were before the secondary surgery.
I know Halloween is over, but this is meant to scare you. There will be a percentage of you that will say, “This won’t happen to my child”, or “My child doesn’t throw hard enough to get hurt,” or “My child is not good enough to need this product.”
I have heard them all, and I do not want to be able to say I told you so, as I have for so many. It baffles me that parents would rather pay 50k than purchase our technology and platform for nothing by comparison. Be grateful for your freedom, but remember that your health should be a priority, and it comes first.
If you have yet to see it, please read about our Bulletproof Arm Guarantee, as we have the only product on the market that guarantees velocity enhancement without injuries.
It’s easier to stay well than to get well, and 18 months is a lot of time to watch your teammates play while you sit on the sidelines. I also do not know what happened to the 13-year-old boy I met in 2016, but I pray he is still in the game and that opportunities are left for him.
ThrowFuzz Surgery Free, or take your chances.
