VIDEO: Ahmad discusses four components of shoulder instability in baseball players
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Key takeaways:
- The components of shoulder instability are traumatic instability, microtrauma, dynamic posterior instability and hitting.
- Obtaining stability while maintaining range of motion is critical to success.
WAILEA, Hawaii — At Orthopedics Today Hawaii, Christopher S. Ahmad, MD, spoke about shoulder instability in throwing athletes and baseball players.
Among the four components of shoulder instability in these athletes is traumatic instability.
Ahmad said that for the baseball players, there are challenges because if it is their throwing shoulder, then obtaining stability while maintaining range of motion is a critical feature to success.
“If you make them too tight, they can’t externally rotate and they can’t throw hard and they won’t get back to their desired level of performance. You don’t make them tight enough or repair the soft tissue well enough, they will have symptoms of instability,” Ahmad said.
The other components of shoulder instability for baseball players are microtrauma in throwing athletes, dynamic posterior instability and hitting.
“Hitters on their lead shoulder, if you are a right-handed hitter, [then] your left shoulder, put so much force in swinging hard trying to get that homerun, that they have a posterior-directed force on their humerus relative to their glenoid and they can get posterior instability, particularly with the swing and miss. If it is an away pitch, the shoulder is more adducted. That is how beautiful understanding the biomechanics of hitting is. You can predict who is going to have problems with their lead shoulder hitting.”
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Ahmad CS. Traumatic shoulder instability in baseball players. Presented at: Orthopedics Today Hawaii; Jan. 7-11, 2024; Wailea, Hawaii.
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