Can anyone tell us the state that lactic acid comes into play? I find it hard to believe that lactic acid is an issue for a pitcher if you understand energy systems.
Is long distance running good or bad for baseball players?
Baseball is a power sport with many short explosive bursts of energy. Long distance running works your aerobic energy system, a system that is never used in baseball. Some studies show that it can actually cause a decrease in speed. Sprints are a much more effective when designing a conditioning program for baseball players.
Some people argue that long distance running helps get lactic acid out of your arm, especially the day after you pitch. The problem with that is there is very little if any lactic acid in your arm after a pitching performance. For lactic acid to build up, you have to perform at full effort for at least 20 seconds consecutively. PItchers use one explosive burst for less than one second at a time and then rest for at least 12 seconds. There is no lactic acid build-up. The soreness in your arm is more likely caused from a bunch of micro-tears in your muscles from the repeated explosive movements. Doing a series of longer sprints will get the blood flowing to these micro-tears just as well as a long distance run.
Personally, through research and my own personal experience ice DOES do more damage than good.
If you have a muscle injury, then yes, ice is good. You do not want to get compartment syndrome, therefore ice helps.
However, a lot to most of baseball injuries, especially pitching, involves tendons and ligaments.
If it comes to tendon or ligament injuries, which a lot of sports injuries are, then ice is bad. Tendons and ligaments have a very limited blood supply. In order for the healing process to occur, we want blood, we want blood flow. Heating an injury that involves a tendon or ligament brings blood to the area to increase and speed up the healing process.
It is thought that pitching produces lactic acid because of the pain that can result after pitching. This cannot be though. Only anaerobic exercise creates lactate which is caused by fermentation after glycolysis if there is an oxygen debt. This oxygen "debt" comes from the rest interval not being great enough in relation to the work. In pitching, the work interval is far less than 1 second and usually around .2 of a second. The rest interval is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of usually around 12 seconds, but can be even greater or lesser, it depends on how fast the pitcher works. Rest to work inteval of 12 to 1 is NOT anaerobic. If the work interval is less than 1 second, like closer to .2, then you can see that the rest to work interval gets increased. Again, NOT anaerobic So as you can see, pitching is NOT and cannot be anaerobic and CANNOT produce lactate.
Therefore, running, which would turn lactate back into pyruvate and thus eliminate the pain associated with lactic acid in the muscles, CANNOT help a pitcher recover because pitching is not anaerobic.
Hope this helps everyone.