Avoiding injuries

[gzhpcu]

It would be interesting to have a biomechanical expert on the staff address movements that avoid injuries in some future article.

Examples:

- Brian Gordon mentioned bending the elbow after impact on the serve

The answer is a mechanism identified for baseball pitchers some years ago at the Indiana University Biomechanics lab - it holds here also - by combining upper arm arm internal rotation with a rapid elbow flexion immediately post contact, the extreme bone on bone force encountered at the end of the strong elbow extension can be minimized - try it, it is very effective - perhaps if I'd had that knowledge in my competiton days I would not have broken off a large part of my olecranon process - for which the removal surgery was quite gruesome according to the Orthopod - in short, the extension/flexion mechanism is a sound safety factor required (but not necessarily used) for those who use extreme elbow extension on the serve (which should be everyone)

- Eric has come up with the rotor cuff thread for the kick serve (having the upper arm more or less in line with the shoulders)
- bending your legs more to avoid bending your back too much on the serve

[EricMatuszewski]

Phil,

I'd like to see an article on injury prevention thru technique adjustment as well.