PABaseball posted:...
Arms are most durable in the elementary/middle school ages. When people say they threw a ball from 9am to 5pm all day, they weren't lying. I understand the concern with arm issues, but the odds of him developing shoulder issues at 11 would be most likely from a freak accident or the actual result of arm abuse.
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PA, I don't disagree with most of what you wrote, but the above gives me pause. For most kids, elementary/middle school ages include the years of fastest growth, and that is the time when arms are most subject to injury. Between ages 12-14 (grades 6 to 8), my son grew about 6 inches. That means his growth plates were wide open and subject to overuse injury. He avoided any serious problems, but we shut him down for several months on two different occasions due to "Little League elbow" and "Little League shoulder" -- that is, pain from strain on his growth plates. This happened even though he followed Dr. Andrews' pitch count guidelines. Many kids just can't pitch much during their fast-growth years. I have seen middle school kids end up needing surgery for literally tearing their UCL away from their arm at the growth plate--no parent wants to see that happen.
I have said before on this site: I think Andrews and his associates are the gold standard. No one has definitive answers yet about arm health. but Andrews and his associates have the most experience and draw their conclusions based on medical expertise and the largest data set.
I think parents of young pitchers need to remember two things: 1) The plural of "anecdote" is not "data." You will hear about lots of pitchers who threw 100 pitches 3 times a week from age 6 and never had a problem. It's true, some pitchers can handle workloads that cause others to break down. But no one knows exactly why, and no one knows how to create that kind of durability through training.
2) You need to train your son from an early age to be honest with you about how his arm feels. (Working some stiffness out of muscles is different from pain that signals something more serious.) And until your son is old enough to do it himself, you need to communicate any and all pertinent health information to his coaches. I know my son's coaches wanted to keep their players healthy, but I was in the room when the orthopedist examined my kid and they were not. At times my son was embarrassed when I spoke with his coaches, but parents embarrass their kids all the time--it's part of the job description. (Now that my kid is in HS, I wouldn't talk with a coach unless I thought there was some serious risk to my kid's health. He's a young man now and he's responsible for his own arm care. But he's a HS junior with a healthy arm, and I don't have any regrets about being careful when he was younger.)