10/3/06

Pedro Martinez

Over the course of the season I have been following the whole Pedro Martinez injury saga quite closely. (I have no inside information, as I no longer have any connection with the Mets, I only know what I read in the papers) This all reminds of what happened to the great St Louis Cardinal Pitcher, Dizzy Dean, in the 1930’s. The story goes that he either hurt his foot or broke his toe and continued to pitch. Not long after that he hurt his shoulder in what turned out to be a career ending injury. Sound familiar? With Martinez this cascade of injuries started with an injury to his right great toe. He was unable to throw all winter (not that he would have anyway) and still was unable to pitch most of spring training. The solution was to go to his shoe sponsor and have a special rigid shoe made to take the stress off the toe. Where does the stress go? It has to go somewhere, it will not just disappear. Sooner or later it was bound to affect his shoulder, given that he has a history of shoulder problems.

It is not rocket science. It all comes back to understanding the kinetic chain. It is about linkage. Everything is connected. Throwing starts from the ground up, so training should be from the ground up emphasizing linkage of foot/ankle to knee to hip to shoulder. For exercises to train linkage see my Functional Shoulder Exercise tape on sale now on the web site www.gambetta.com

posted by Vern Gambetta @ 10/03/2006 09:54:00 AM   2 comments

2 Comments:

At 10/3/06, 9:59 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have been waiting for this post since the news about the shoulder surgery came out!

Mark Day D.C., CSCS, DACBSP

 
At 10/3/06, 9:05 PM, Blogger Joe Przytula said...

Don't forget about his torn gastrocnemius muscle. What does the calf have to do with the shoulder? Well, if we look at the fiber orientation of the two heads, we see that the origin of the gastrocnemius wraps around the distal end of the femur, and helps transmit not only a sagittal, but a powerful transverse plane load to the bone…and we can’t talk about the femur without talking about the hip, because the femur really is the hip, and we can’t discuss the hip without discussing the sacroiliac and pelvis, because research tells us that the two work hand in hand with the lumbar spine…and we can’t talk about the lumbar spine without mentioning that powerful dorsolumbar fascia, after all, it has connections to the latissimus dorsi, gluteus maximus, part of the external oblique muscle, and the trapezius, which has attachments on the scapula.…and of course it is impossible to get into a discussion of the scapula without discussing the glenohumeral joint. Sounds just like that "dem dry bones" song my dad used to sing to us on his ukelele when we were kids.

 

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