Pitching best practices with Dr. Conrad of The Orthopaedic Group

Pitching best practices with Dr. Conrad of The Orthopaedic Group

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome back Sports Talk nine to nine and five Randy
Kenedy in the Threaded Fasteners studio. Let's talk a little
bit of baseball and sports in general. I want to
talk about some health issues and how to stay protective
of your athletes. And we're going to talk now to
doctor Jeffrey Conrad. He is with the Orthopedic Group. He's
been on with us before. He is an expert in

(00:23):
the field of sports and management of your body. Jeff,
how are we doing.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
I'm good. How are you doing today?

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Doing great? Before we get into pitching and that sort
of thing, I wanted to say that I was very
proud to have your son on the show. Steven, who's
a swimmer, was at the US Olympic Trials and I
was thinking, I believe it's the You're the only the
second father son duo I've had on the show. The
other is Tony mccarer and then AJ McCahon. Tony with

(00:50):
the Fire Department, we've had on a bunch of times
in Aj the quarterback at Alabama. So there you go,
the Conrads joined the mccarren's. I think the only two
father sons I know. You're proud of your on what
he's accomplished in the pool.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah, he's really put a lot of time and effort
into it. He definitely is talented, but he is a
really hard worker and definitely puts his nose to the grindstone.
He's not afraid of doing a little bit of hard work.
So we're real proud of him, and he's done really well.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
All right, So you've come at this, you know, with
your profession and also as a parent of an athlete,
and so I want to talk to you a little
bit about, you know, just kind of protecting the body
in different ways, and today I want to talk about
pitching and what we see so much with management of
pitchers in the major leagues. We saw this The example
is with Paul Skeins, the phenom for the Pittsburgh Pirates,

(01:40):
who had a no hitter through seven innings and they
took him out against the Brewers. He had thrown ninety
nine pitches and they were just steadfast about this is
what we're going to do. Just when you see that headline,
what do you think about that?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Well, you know, we talked before comparing the softball and
the baseball pitch about pitch counts and uh and I
know they a lot of these managers are saying, well,
it doesn't really have much to do with the pitch counts.
But you know, when you put that much money into
a pitcher and and you overthrow him, I mean I
think that, I think that you're going to run an

(02:16):
increase risk of an injury. I mean, there are some
studies that say if you're over one hundred pitches that
that's when some of these injuries come in. And some
of these guys, Uh, some of the managers will say, well,
I don't really think about that. I look at the
way they're the way they look out on the field
and so forth, and I'm sure they do. But I
know it's in the back of your head if you're
paying a guy fifty million dollars to throw a ball

(02:37):
and you're ahead. Uh. You know the in the Chicago
game recently, the you know the picture what Shadow and Minago.
I know I'm going to mispronounce that name. You know,
they were they had a no hitter as well, and
they were up eleven oh, and he had I think
ninety five pitches or ninety seven pitches, and they pulled
him as well at around seven innings. So I think

(02:59):
it's really more, you know, I mean, how important is
that game and is it worth getting the no hitter
at the cost of, you know, injuring a picture that
may take you through the rest of the year. So
I'm sure it has something to do with injuries. But also,
you know, you've got pictures that are more specialized. You've
got closers that are that these these clubs are getting
just for that reason of closing the game out. So

(03:23):
you know, you don't want to sacrifice your picture just
to get an accolade of a no hitter. It'd be
a lot better if they can, you know, win the
whole thing for the rest of you know, keep that
picture so that they can win the whole thing for
the year.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
I saw one example, and this, you know, this is
me reading on the internet. Anybody can post on the internet,
but it did strike me as interesting that somebody was
complaining about pictures not throwing enough and saying it's you know,
the analogy would be if you're a marathon or just
being limited to running like one mile, you know, for
six months, and then on the six month and one

(03:54):
day now go run twenty six miles, and that would
be a bad way to think about doing it. Is
that Is that a bad analogy compared to throwing a ball.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Well, I think it's a little different because if you
think about it, you know, when you're training for a marathon,
you're not going to run the marathon pace or the
race pace all the time. So I think it's a
little different. When you put someone in a competition, you
probably don't see those marathon runners running over and over
running marathon, you know, races over and over again up

(04:25):
into the marathon race if they're wanting to have their
best race on that day. Although I think there was
an Olympian this year was pretty impressive that she did,
I think she and I might be wrong on which distance,
and she did that. She did a five k, at
ten k and then the marathon and she placed in
all of those, which is an amazing seat. But I
don't think that, you know, you can compare the intensity
of a race with with with training, So I think

(04:49):
it's probably the same thing. And of course I'm not
I was a baseball pitcher in in in my younger years,
but definitely was not in the I didn't play high
school baseball and I didn't play in college, but I
would think that the intensity that they are throwing at
in a game is different than them just training, you know,
and and and practicing. So I think it's a little different.

(05:10):
I mean, I'm not saying that they shouldn't be in
a game and be in a in that in that atmosphere,
because they're more that they're in that atmosphere just from
a mental standpoint and a physical standpoint, of course, I
think that prepares them well. But I think you can
overthrow these people, and I think that's why we use
pitch counts in the little leagues and even in the
in the major leagues. I'm sure they are keeping a

(05:32):
keeping track of that, especially with the amount of money
they're paying these guys.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, like you said, with the amount of money, they're
clearly trying to do what's right, that's for sure. You
know the old model of you know, you pitch and
then two days later you throw a quote unquote bullpen,
which again the intensity is probably not there the way
if you're actually pitching in a game, but you know,
and then on those in between days you just maybe
wouldn't throw at all. I just, uh, you know, I

(05:58):
just wonder what the prevailing research is about that. Just
kind of having multiple off days between starts.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, I think you've got to make sure. You know,
if you look at any type of whether it's strength
and conditioning, whether it's endurance training or any of that,
you know, the whole point of it. You stress the system,
but you have to rest to recover and hopefully what
we call super compensate or you get that much stronger.
So if you're you know, if you if you were
trying to get your bench press max up higher, you

(06:27):
don't go do bench press every day and go heavy
every day. You've got to make sure that you have
days of rest so that you can absorb that training
that you that you've done.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
How about that whole thing about if you pick up
a calf when it's little, you can pick it up
for the rest of his life. This is an end
depth question for you.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
You with your answer, right, I'm not sure that maybe
maybe that applies.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
It probably does it. We're talking to a doctor, Jeffrey Conrad.
He is with the Orthopedic They have such a wonderful organization,
not just for you know, technical stuff like if you're
a professional baseball pitcher, but for you know, your run
of the mill weekend warriors and people dealing with all
sorts of issues. They do such a great, great job there, Jeff,

(07:16):
I was I was wondering about you see these athletes now,
not just baseball, but other sports where we're wearing these
compression sleeves on arms and legs. Is that just a
cool fashion statement or have you ever recommended that people
wear those sleeves, which they do look good?

Speaker 2 (07:34):
You know, I think that maybe they're they're more probably
for some comfort. I think some people do feel like that.
There are some compression garments. I know there's several companies
that come out and they say that they make you
more efficient and make your muscles work a little bit
more efficiently. And I don't know that we have a
whole lot of studies that support you know, a lot

(07:56):
of our a lot of the literature that we have
in orthopedics. We try to look at what we call
randomly prospective studies, uh, And I don't have a whole
lot of those in our literature that support or refute it.
I tell patients if they if something you know, makes
them feel good when they're training or when they're doing
a RaSE or something like that. You know, you see
a lot of people wearing them for marathons and so forth,

(08:17):
and and uh, and I know that you know, with
my son with his swimming, a lot of times they'll
have these different compression garments and different hydrophobic h wet
not wetsuits but but bathing suits that are supposed to
make them go faster and make their muscles more efficient.
But I don't know that we have a whole lot
of studies that necessarily can definitively say that they help

(08:40):
in terms of that in terms of just making the
body work more efficiently. Obviously they can, they can tell
those those suits. You can look back when Phelps was
swimming and they had some of those suits that I
think they made illegal because they were so long and
they were better than they were quicker than skin. But
I don't I don't know if if it truly makes
your muscles work more efficiently or not.

Speaker 1 (09:02):
What are you dealing with most of these days at
the orthopedic group on a daily basis?

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Well, right now, you know, we've got some football stuff
because we're covering a lot of football, and we've got
you know, today, I've seen some football players, I've seen
some cross country runners and just kind of a whole
host of different things. And now that we've got all
year round sports, so we see a little bit of everything.
You know, there's still got the fall baseball kids coming

(09:28):
in and stuff like that. So we we see a
whole whole range of things, which keeps us busy and
keeps keeps us on our toes.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
You guys are so professional. I mean it is. It's
a pleasure when I have to deal with something like
this with me or anybody in our family. We trust
the orthopedic group. We appreciate that, and I appreciate you
entertaining my cow questions as well.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Joe, Well, thank you very much. We appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Maybe you can research cows before we talk again. Okay,
maybe we can.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
I'll try to look that up on carrying a cow
and see how many people have I mean down in
Alabama or in Texas. We might see those people. I
don't think up north they have too many calves to
grow up the cows. But we'll see.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Very good. Hey, we appreciate it very much. We'll talk
again soon.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
Okay, all right, take care of have a great day.
There you go.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
That's a doctor, Jeffrey Conrad. He's one of the good
ones at the Orthopedic Group does an outstanding job there.
I'm Rindy Kennedy on Sports Talk ninety nine five