Knudson: Rehab Now or Rehab Later?

By Mark Knudson, The Mtn. Insider
April 29, 2011

I don’t know Matt Purke and I certainly won’t pretend to know anything about his offseason or workout routine. But judging from what has transpired in the last two weeks with TCU’s Super Soph lefthander, I think I can make a safe analysis.

In my educated opinion, Matt Purke needs to do two things: More exercise/strength training and more throwing.

TCU has announced that Purke doesn’t need surgery on his sore pitching shoulder, which confirms what we thought a week ago. The reports about his injury didn’t fit the profile of an injury that needed an operation; it fit the profile of an arm that was under trained for the workload it was dealing with.

TCU announced that Purke will miss a couple more weeks while he tries to build up arm strength that simply hasn’t been there all season.

After a scintillating freshman campaign that saw him lead the Horned Frogs to the College World Series, Purke didn’t play summer baseball and reportedly took six months off from throwing at all. That’s half the problem right there.

The single best way to build arm strength and endurance is to throw. Go to a major or minor league stadium a couple hours before a game and you’ll see pitchers who aren’t starting that day out in the outfield throwing the ball all the way across the field on a line.

Back and forth, back and forth.

Long toss isn’t just for fun - it’s a necessary training tool for all professional pitchers. During the season, pitchers spend far more time on arm strengthening workouts than they do actually pitching in games.

Typically, professional pitchers will take some time off once the season ends in October but they’re back at work before Christmas, getting ready in a slow and steady manner for Spring Training in February. That work also includes more arm strengthening exercises with weights, rubber tubing and the like.

I wasn’t a Cy Young winner or anything like that. But I did do one thing that very few other professional pitchers do or have done: I made it through my entire 12-year professional baseball career without a single surgery being preformed on me. Not even a shot of cortisone. No one got close to me with a needle or a knife and I’ve got no scars to prove it. I was on the disabled list twice: Once for a sore arm and once for an illness. It was the first stint that led me to see the late Dr. Mike Vidmar, a Chiropractor who taught me what I needed to do to keep my arm and me healthy. For the rest of my career, which spanned 10 years, I missed only three starts due to arm issues.

That’s because I learned that I needed to do the exercise and workout routines, which I saw rehabbing players do, before I needed surgery. All those exercises with light weights or rubber tubing or special machines were all designed to tighten and tone the muscles in the shoulder, front and back, in order to prevent soreness from ever developing.

That’s likely what Purke will be doing for the next two or three weeks.

Add to that the long toss throwing program that builds up your arm better than any exercise, and I was able to stay healthy my entire career.

So my message to Matt Purke is simple: The rehab exercises that Dr. Andrews gave you and the program the strength training staff at TCU now has you on - keep doing it. Forever. Don’t stop when your arm feels better. Make those exercises part of your daily routine from now until you hang up your spikes for good, which is hopefully about 15 or 20 years from now.

I suspect Matt Purke will bounce back and become a factor on the mound for TCU in the post season. I also suspect that the ringing endorsement that Dr. Andrews gave him (and sent to all the major league teams) after they met last week will help convince professional scouts that Purke is fine and he’ll be drafted in the top ten of this June’s baseball draft as expected.

That’s when things will really get kick started for Purke. Matt, get ready for a whole lot more throwing and a lot of time in the weight room.

Healthy professional pitchers never get six months off.

See all of Mark Knudson's blog entries HERE.