Written by Getting through a professional sports season is a grind. Packed schedules, travel, and competing at a high level against the best athletes in the world take their toll on the human body. As a result, injuries are piling up at a record clip this year so far in the Major League Baseball season, and it is hard to keep up with the players who are missing time during the current NBA playoffs.
It is easy to blame the pandemic. First, the athletes were off for weeks, forcing them to abandon their regular training routines. Then, when they returned, they faced condensed schedules with making up lost games. Finally, off-seasons were shorter as a result of the schedule changes.
In baseball, injuries are up considerably so far for the beginning of this season compared to 2019. However, 2019 saw a similar increase from 2018. Teams are showing an abundance of caution and utilizing the Injured List with less discretion. Managers are giving position players more days off and closely monitoring pitch counts.
Yet, the injuries continue to pile up. Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and George Springer have missed considerable time so far this baseball season. The NBA’s Nets built a super team centered around Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Kyrie Irving. All three have missed significant time due to injuries during the regular season and now in the playoffs. They hoped to have the trio ready for the playoffs, but Harden has not been able to get his hamstring healthy, and Irving took a nasty fall on his ankle.
Many of the injuries are related to soft tissue soreness, strains, or pulls. Former strength coach Gary McCoy, who worked for the Marlins and Astros minor league systems, believes you can prevent many of these by understanding the sport’s asymmetrical rotational movements, developing a “braking system” to handle them, and committing to proper recovery. He works with clubs in Taiwan on developing a system for an “injury-free season.”
The biggest stumbling block for adopting McCoy’s approach in MLB is our American culture. Many American coaches did not buy into McCoy’s focus on core strength before expanding out to the limbs. We are in love with our deadlifts, squats, and bench presses here. Americans love asymmetry, and baseball is the most asymmetric sport there is. We like our asymmetrical car races like the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500, where they each involve 800 left turns without a single right turn. We strengthen a pitcher’s right arm and tune the alignment on our race cars to go left—no need to worry about the other side.
We focus on our strengths and push ourselves to perform until we break. Rest is for the weak. If you are not willing to go along, then we will find someone who will. This mindset has permeated all parts of our culture, and we have exported it abroad. We call it the American Dream, work hard and achieve prosperity, success, and upward social mobility.
Yet, McCoy’s system requires the players to incorporate balance into their training routines. He has right-handed batters take twenty left-handed swings in the batting cage at the end of batting practice. Left-handed pitcher Dallas Keuchel would simulate a right-handed pitch using a dumbbell.
Tom Brady understands this philosophy. Several years ago, he quit lifting weights and now uses resistance bands for all of his training. They force you to focus on your core in each exercise and improve overall athleticism while reducing back pain.
Achieving balance requires you to understand your weaknesses and minimizing them, where our culture encourages us to focus only on our strengths. We specialize and perfect our expertise in one area rather than broadening our efforts. The result is a lot of soft tissue injuries. Today’s MLB players are among the first generations that embraced year-round select baseball rather than playing other sports in the fall and winter. The seasons are long and intense, giving them no time to do much else other than baseball.
Achieving balance requires you to let go of constantly comparing yourself to others and competing. All that matters is you and your journey. Unfortunately, we start forcing young baseball players to compete for spots on select teams when they seven or eight years old. You want to get on the right team so you can get on the high school team and have a shot for a college scholarship. There only so many spots, a mindset of scarcity sets in rather than win-win.
Achieving balance requires you to slow down and pay attention to what is going on. You have to learn how to breathe. We get caught up in our to-do lists and commitments and spend all of our time on urgent tasks. There is no time for important tasks or to set the goals that would allow you to determine if what you are doing is necessary or not. You become reactive rather than proactive. We wear our calendars and to-do lists around like they were a badge of honor.
Being out of balance works fine until all of a sudden, it doesn’t. It is like a load of towels that gets out of control. The washing machine stops. The soft tissue can’t take it anymore, and the hamstring gives out. We call it “leg soreness” and treat the leg so we can rush back into action. Start the spin cycle over again and hope it makes it long enough to finish.
Baseball teams are increasing their use of data to analyze players’ health as they do their performance. They are “light years” ahead of where they were ten years ago but still lag behind other sports in collecting and monitoring data. Unfortunately, privacy issues make this difficult. The players union agreed to allow it as part of the COVID-19 protocols but may not accept allowing wearable devices going forward. It will be one of many issues in the negotiations of a new collective bargaining agreement next winter.
Unfortunately, more data and more analysis may only continue our focus on the surface issues. We need to strengthen our core and fix our culture to achieve an “injury-free season.”