Tim Lincecum, risk of injuries

It is irresistible to write about a player that is featured everywhere and that earned the nickname of “The Freak”.

I had to go to the dictionary, I’m still foreign, to find out what the people meant with “freak”. I learned that “it is something or somebody unusual, unexpected or abnormal”. Then I started to research why the people consider him in that way, and I arrived to the conclusion that we are many times stuck with irrational standards that come from historic believes.

We learned that pitchers have some characteristics and without any critical thinking, we accept forever that they should look and perform in some particular way. And when somebody appears different, instead of rethinking our standards, we consider him/her a freak.

Well, the discussion in the media is centered now in when his shoulder will be injured, and everybody was wrong. He is healthy and also “world champion!!! Even more freak…the freak of the freaks ever!!! The problem is that we keep comparing him with the standards. If most of the pitchers get injured he should also suffer from it and sooner since he is different. But still, it hadn’t happened.

Lets analyze Mr. Lincecum performance from a different perspective.

He has already shown that the body size is not a determinant factor to accelerate the ball in baseball, and that throwing technique is THE key variable.

But how is it possible that his shoulder, being him “so small” compared with other pitchers, has not been damaged yet? Because there is a very important technical aspect that he manages very well, that it is the relationship between muscular contraction and relaxation. He is able to apply a huge amount of power at the right moment and for the necessary amount of time (no more, no less). This is a safety factor that prevents him to deteriorate his tissues (shoulder tissues materials). We need to understand that overuse is not only related to how many pitches a player performs per week, but also to its technical quality.

We can also appreciate that his training process was very smart in his beginnings. He did not waste time trying to get bigger to look like the other pitchers (weight lifting training).

Instead, he became technically expert. Since his muscular mass is small at the level of his upper body (but big enough to accelerate the ball), he has great shoulder mobility. This is the capacity that has prevented him so far of being injured.

Of course, if he does not control the volume of work, he can still increase the level of risk.

I said before that he has an expert technique… well…not really! He is technically efficient, although he has an increasingly risk of injury but not at the shoulder level as everybody believes.

Mr. Lincecum main risk is in the spine structure at the cervical and lumbar level, and also in his left hip and knee. I will analyze this in the next post.

Therefore, we will probably see him having trouble in the next few months, not in relation to his shoulder, because of muscular pain at first, and then related to structural damage in his lower back and neck. In addition, sooner or later his left hip and knee could become a problem too.