Before almost any physical activity, warm-up exercises are encouraged by both coaches and health professionals. While warm-up exercises are widely known to prepare the body for more intense exercises, workouts, or rigorous physical activities, their specific effects in terms of sports performance have been the focus of various studies.

1. Radar Sports, LLC
Warm-Up Exercises and
Cryotherapy Improve
Performance of Pitchers

2. Before almost any physical activity, warm-up exercises are encouraged by both coaches and health
professionals. While warm-up exercises are widely known to prepare the body for more intense exercises,
workouts, or rigorous physical activities, their specific effects in terms of sports performance have been
the focus of various studies.
Intensive Warm-Up Routines
One study looked at the effects of short-duration stretching drill on the elbow and shoulder range motion
of professional baseball pitchers. Twenty male professional baseball pitchers followed a five- to ten-
minute dynamic warm-up consisting of running and light throwing before doing 40 full-effort pitches on
the pitching mound.
The study found that the warm-up exercise significantly contributed to lowering rotational motion deficits
in the throwing shoulders of the athletes. This is an indication of an increase in pitching performance as
well as a decrease in shoulder and elbow injuries.

3. Alleviating Muscle Stress of Pitchers with Cooling
Meanwhile, evidence suggests that cooling therapy has positive effects on throwing performance.
Cryotherapy, a healing method that uses ice and other cooling objects, is usually applied to relieve muscle
injuries in athletes. In baseball, cryotherapy helps subside muscle pain -- caused by high stress from
repetitive pitching -- in the throwing arm of baseball pitchers.
However, a study that focused on the effects of cryotherapy in pitching velocity of college-aged male
baseball pitchers revealed that average pitching speeds increased for the group subjected to elbow and
shoulder cooling methods between each innings. In conclusion, intermittent cryotherapy not only sped up
muscle recovery between each inning but also improved the pitch speed of the players.
These data display the significance of proper exercise and attention to muscle care to the performance of
baseball pitchers. Warm-up exercises and cryotherapy were found to be adequate preparation and
maintenance routines, respectively, that significantly improved the performance of baseball pitchers.

4. Sources:
https://www.radargunsales.com/
http://journals.lww.com/nsca-
jscr/Abstract/2016/04000/The_Effect_of_Intermittent_Arm_and_Shoulder.17.aspx
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0363546516671943
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sms.12353/full