@Dominik85 posted:I'm not a huge expert on that but I read that the classic Weightlifting front squat can tax the inside of the elbow which is not an area pitchers want to tax.
So if you do it maybe use the cross arm variety.
A great point, but that comes with a caveat. How does your muscles get stronger? You load them with heavy weight and it responds to that stimulus by getting stronger. How do bones get stronger? They need to be exposed to force, enough of a force that requires it to respond and adapt and grow stronger. If you don't do that, if the forces are too low and/or too infrequent, they won't get stronger. Same thing with cartilage, tendons, same thing with your IVDs.
So, one could make a counter point that you would want to stress the elbow so that it can adapt and become more resilient to loads placed on it (this would be the same rationale for.. if a pitcher hasn't thrown in 4 months you don't have them throw 100 game like pitches the first day, you would build them up to it).
But to your point, say there is a pitcher that is doing front squats, and his elbow starts hurting, can he modify that to the crossed arm position and still move the weight? If so, great, until the pain settles down, and then they can go back to doing their preferred method.