The Shoulder in Baseball: Strengthening in-season

As with stretching, we are looking to MAINTAIN arm strength and prevent injury during the season and NOT GAIN arm strength via strengthening exercises. The below videos by mark verstegen contain exercises that have been confirmed as the best shoulder exercises for throwers by several journal articles including ones from Mike Reinold and Dr. James Andrews. However, there a couple of slight modifications that are needed to these videos as well as comments.

The exercises are called the T, Y, W and L exercises because that's the position your body forms when performing the exercises. The T, Y and L exercises have good research to back them up, but the W exercise doesn't. However, there is no research saying that it causes any adverse effects so there is no problem if you chose to perform that one as well.

If you are just starting these exercises during the season then be slow and cautious with your approach. I would recommend only performing these exercises one set of 10 repetitions each two times per week with no more than 1.5Kg of weight. That may not feel like much but it's enough for the first 2-3 weeks (you can add a extra set each week). Depending on your size and general strength, you may progress to 2-3 sets of 2.5Kg for the next 3-6 weeks. Anything much higher is not necessarily going to give you any extra benefit and may cause you injury especially if you had no pre-season training.

There is no great evidence as to when to perform these exercises between each start. Often pitchers will perform these either the first or second day after they pitch and at least one or two days before the next start as well, sometimes an extra one in the middle.

On the Y, T, and W, keep the thumbs up towards the sky as shown.

You can also do these exercises on a flat gym bench or a physio ball as shown below, which i prefer. I also prefer to have the body more parallel to the ground, which also replicates the research more closely.