9 year old pitcher - elbow pain

by Bill White
(newport beach, ca)

My 9 year old is a pitcher for his baseball team. Our league has strict rules about pitch counts and he rarely pitches more than 2 innings per week (approx 30-40 pitches)

He has just started complaining about pain just above the elbow. We just started Fall baseball and he has not thrown since July...He pitched a lot last spring and had no issues at all...

In addition to the "super icing" as well as the "dixie cup ice massage" what can we do as a pre-game routine to help the problem?

Thank you!



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Joshua Answers:

Hi Bill. You didn't leave your email with the check box to get notified, so I hope you find this answer....

But for everybody else's benefit, I have comments and questions.

1. Describe the pain above the elbow. In great detail.

2. How long does the pain last?

3. Is it sharp or dull pain?

4. What else does your boy to with his arms, activity-wise. 9 is pretty young for pain, especially with so few pitches.


The icing will help with the pain. I'm curious if it's joint pain, or soft tissue around the joint pain.

Pregame, I would massage all the tissue of his shoulder, upper and lower arm, and around the elbow. The deltoids and biceps and forearm muscles are meaty, but there' not much meat around the elbow, so there you're rubbing connective tissue, ligament, joint capsule, tendon.

Massage it all, not enough to hurt, just squeeze the sponge.

That's the general, overall answer. More details from the questions above will be able to fine tune the answers.

For instance, it matters if it's joint pain or tendon pain, which points to 'jointitis' or Tendonitis.





Joshua Tucker, B.A., C.M.T.
The Tendonitis Expert
www.TendonitisExpert.com