@roothog66
Thanks. I try not to delay handbreak much as I feel many pitchers break too late as it is but I think that is something I'm going to have to do at this point. I'm also hoping as we have some more time outside and in the bullpen things will improve with more pitching. Saying our weather has been poor would be optimistic we weren't even on a field for the 1st two weeks of practice, and have had 4 games postponed because of rain and many fewer bullpens than usual.
I'm not sure I was directly criticizing you for the ice comments; sometimes posts show up next, and that wasn't necessarily the post that was being responded to. The intent of my comment was for a couple of people, one of which the way I was reading it was saying icing is bad and basically criticized my trainer, and suggested ice has no use and then comments how his son recovers by taking freezing cold showers.
Also, I just want to go back and touch on my opinion of running for pitchers since I think we have identified what we are talking about for distance running. I to would not be in favor of running any baseball players to what some have identified as 3+ or even 5-20 miles. I don't need a scientific study to tell me that is a waste of time and likely leads to the build up of more lactic acid.
Which brings me to another point, I've been reading all these posts on lactic acid build up in pitchers and sort of have to point out. Lactic acid is created when muscles are stressed usually for a long amount of time and cannot get the amount of oxygen needed. Distance runners actually work on raising their lactic threshold that so that the body can more efficiently remove the lactic acid from the system. So I would like to see actual numbers of the amount of lactic acid produced by baseball players during pitching. With the rest between the limited activity my "guess" would be that there would be limited production. So technically on the question of running flushing out the lactic acid, I agree it is not needed.
However if lactic acid did build up to a middle distance running program between 1000-1600m at certain intensities could be useful for processing the lactic acid.
Actually, there have been several studies proving that lactic acid build up is pretty much a myth. Any build up is long gone by the end of a pitching performance. This, from Eric Cressey's site:
"
The current practice utilized for conditioning is for pitchers is to go for a long run the day after a game to “flush” the sore arm of lactic acid, or minimize muscle soreness to recover faster for the next game. These theories are not supported by the current literature and the physiology of the sport.
In the current research study examining the physiology of pitching, Potteiger et al. (1992) found no significant difference between pre-pitching and post-pitching blood lactate levels of six college baseball players after throwing a 7-inning simulated game. Even though during an inning there is a slight lactate production of 5.3-5.8 mM, (which is not high, considering resting lactate is 1.0mM), it does not cause a buildup of lactic acid in the arm of a pitcher after a game. As a comparative example, a high lactate response would occur from squatting for multiple reps at about 70% 1RM; this might produce a lactate level of about 8-10mM (Reynolds et al., 1997). Furthermore, jogging to flush the arm of lactic acid after a start is unnecessary and not supported by the literature, especially since we learned all the way back in 2004 that lactate was not the cause of muscular fatigue ; even the New York Times reported on this in 2007! A lot of coaches simply haven’t caught wind yet – in spite of the fact that exercise physiology textbooks have been rewritten to include this new information."