“In order to become the person you’re meant to be, living the amazing life you’re meant to live, sometimes you have to go through hard times. Sometimes you have to be broken down so that you can learn, grow, release, and recalibrate.”-Unknown
This quote helps illustrate something I’m sure we’ve all felt at some point during our baseball careers. Baseball is a sport that involves an overwhelming amount of failure, and the ability to learn from failure is very often what separates athletes who succeed in maximizing their potential from those who do not.
I’ve experienced a ton of failure throughout my baseball career, from getting released from professional teams, to dealing with injuries, to having disappointing results in training. All of these are opportunities to learn, grow, and recalibrate, and what I’m doing right now is no different.
Over the past year or so I’ve had some ups and downs in my training. I’ve had promising results followed by forced deloads due to pain. Each of these has given me feedback on things I need to correct and how I can improve my process.
Currently, I’m working back from some forearm tendinopathy. This is a fancy term that Jill Cook, one of the leading researchers in the field, defines as, “An overuse tendon injury resulting in pain, decreased exercise tolerance of the tendon, and reduced function.”
This may seem like a setback, but honestly it feels pretty good to have a more definitive handle on how to fix the issues I was having. I would build up to solid velocity, believing I was on the right track, and then my elbow would stop cooperating. More specifically, the forearm muscles that protect the medial elbow would stop cooperating.
I’ll be putting out a more detailed post about tendinopathy in throwers, but suffice to say, I’m on the right track now and feeling good about the direction I’m going. I know what I need to fix and I know how I’m going to proceed once I’m able to get back to throwing.
This is a minor setback, and one that’s been brewing for a while, so it’s best that I take care of it now. I’m excited to get back to throwing and show you guys the progress I’ve made, but that will have to wait for a few weeks.
Anyway, thank you for following me on my journey to the show and stay tuned for more content next week!