Are You Getting The Most From Your Arm Care Bands?
Thousands of pitchers blindly follow arm care programs that incorporate resistance bands and weighted balls each year in the hope of helping their throwing arm recover, strengthen, and prepare to throw a baseball. Unfortunately, although the purpose of arm care programs is primarily understood, the validity and science of how the arm care bands help are not. So, if you are currently using arm care bands as part of your program, how do you know if they are helping?
The gold standard and the most commonly used arm care bands on the market are J-Bands. J-Bands have saturated the market over the last two decades and have done a great job infusing themselves into all baseball channels. At DVS Baseball, we have previously studied J-Band's influence on shoulder range-of-motion and compared their effectiveness to our own AC Bands used as part of the DVS Arm Care System.
We recently completed a stretch/resistance profile test on the DVS Mobility & Strength Bands compared to the J-Band Jr & J-Band. We found their junior band for 12U and lower is, on average, 48% more resistant than our DVS Mobility Band. Their 13U+ band is on average 13% more resistance than our DVS Strength Band or 190% more resistance than our DVS Mobility Band.
With the variance in resistance between our bands and J-Bands, not to mention all the other bands that exist on the market, how do we know which bands work best? For example, what amount of resistance is too much and could contribute to injury or poor muscle function? How often and when do you perform do you use your arm care bands?
To best prepare your body for the demands of throwing, you first have to realize what it's trying to do each time you throw a baseball. It has nothing to do with throwing and everything to do with preventing your arm from getting ripped off. The more muscle fibers you have working for you at a high level, the more efficiently it will prevent this from happening, and the less wear-and-tear the joints, ligaments, and other soft tissues within the arm and body will undergo.
Overall, arm care bands, essentially any form of a resistance band/tube, are tools that aid in the effectiveness of your arm care program. The bands can help the muscles surrounding the shoulder and elbow joint contract more efficiently, creating better muscle function by adding variable resistance.
J-BANDS VS. AC BANDS
The graph below highlights the varying stretch profiles between the DVS AC Bands (Mobility and Strength) and J-Bands and J-Bands Jr. All bands were anchored from the same fixed starting position and stretched five feet from the point where the band was fully extended with no tension. Measurements in pounds were taken every six inches until five feet had occurred.
Statistics from Band Resistance Profile above.
For pitchers ages 13 and above, the J-Band is 3x more resistant than the DVS Mobility Band.
At 1 ft of stretch, the J-Band adds 6.17 lbs of resistance, DVS Mobility adds 2.12 lbs.
At two feet of stretch, the J-Band adds 9.48 lbs of resistance, DVS Mobility adds 3.27 lbs.
At five feet of stretch, the J-Band adds 15.87 lbs, DVS Mobility adds 5.75 lbs.
At 12 inches, the J-Band achieves 6 lbs of resistance, whereas the DVS Mobility Band never gets to 6lbs within 5 ft of stretch. (6x the stretch)
For pitchers ages 13 and above, the J-Band has a similar stretch profile to the DVS Strength Band.
For pitchers ages 13 and below, the J-Band Jr and DVS Mobility have a closer stretch profile within 2 ft of stretch.
In this case, you have two bands, the J-Band and the DVS Mobility Band, both used by pitchers as part of their arm care programs. Both bands are promoted for use before throwing and serve similar purposes to “warm-up” the throwing arm. We can conclude that the bands used to “warm-up” the throwing arm have significantly different resistance levels. We are just comparing two bands; imagine comparing all the arm care bands on the market?
When comparing both the DVS Mobility Bands and the J-Band, it’s important to note the recommended tension guidelines when using the bands.
Recommended Tension
J-Bands - Do not exceed 1 to 2 feet of tension.
DVS Mobility - At the end range of motion for each isometric, extend the band until it reaches the first tension point.
If you operated within the recommended tension guidelines for J-Bands, you are adding anywhere from 6 to 10 lbs of resistance. Whereas, with the DVS Mobility you are adding anywhere from 2 to 3 lbs of resistance. Much less variability due to the design of the band itself.
DVS Trainer Josh Mason provides a demonstration between the stretch profile of a J-Band compared to a DVS Mobility Band.
In creating the DVS Arm Care System and using varying resistance bands, we knew how often pitchers would vary their distance to add more tension with the bands or lack awareness while using the bands. Therefore, we created a low stretch profile in the DVS Mobility Band to use throughout our Thrower’s Isometrics. If a pitcher happens to back up too far, the DVS Mobility Band can only create but so much tension. J-Bands do not advocate to back up in the distance to create tension, but if it occurs, the J-Band jumps up in resistance quickly as noted above.
Our DVS Strength Band has a similar stretch profile to the J-Band and we would not advocate to perform any DVS Strength exercises prior to throwing due to the extra resistance.Therefore, the exercises involved within each program will determine how much actual tension is inflicted on the muscles and joints and how that translates to muscle function. Arm care programs and their respective programs and philosophy will vary wildly, but as a consumer with so many options, which program and bands are right for you?
WHICH ARM CARE BANDS ARE RIGHT FOR ME?
Pitchers in the USPBL using the DVS Mobility Band as part of their Thrower’s Isometrics.
The answer is we can probably use a ton of resistance bands to accomplish the purpose of most arm care programs. As noted above, some bands are more conducive for higher stretch profiles or lower stretch profiles. It’s the arm care program itself that can have mixed results on long term performance and health. It can be easy to validate the effectiveness of arm care bands based on how they make you feel. This is a huge component of the competitive mindset that helps a pitcher feel he’s prepared to throw. We can also use performance metrics, largely velocity and consistency of velocity as validation links of our arm care bands. But, outside of how the throwing arm feels, we can rely on science and objective measurements of historical joint motion to choose more advantageous arm care programs.
Whatever arm care bands you are currently using, you should at least be aware of how the intended resistance from arm care bands and their correspond exercises impact muscle function. It’s the muscle function which ultimately dictate your joint health and performance on the field.
WHAT IS MUSCLE FUNCTION?
As a thrower, your muscular system plays a pivotal role in your health and performance. Although every muscle in your body is just as important as the next, the demands placed on the upper extremity when throwing a baseball make the muscles of the arm, shoulder, and spine particularly important. When these are functioning at a high level, your body will handle the stress from throwing more efficiently, thus allowing it to operate at it's full potential.
In the picture above, each corresponding arm position and band color influence the contraction of a particular muscle group used in our Thrower’s Isometrics to create better muscle function prior to throwing.
Muscles and their associated fibers are fundamentally designed to do one thing: Generate Tension. They do this as a product of muscle fibers contracting and shortening. Countless tiny proteins within each fiber work to latch on and pull towards one another; this is the root of how muscles develop force. Even when a muscle is lengthening or decelerating, muscle fibers are still regulating this through processes associated with shortening. So, in this sense, you can almost think of it as the better a muscle can shorten, the better it will be able to do its job in all planes of motion. Therefore, whether you realize it or not, improving a muscle's ability to contract and shorten is the desired outcome of any exercise. It is through this process that a muscle can actually grow, get stronger, and become more functional relative to what you'll be asking of it.
“I started using the DVS Arm Care System in July 2016. Since then, I have logged 86 professional innings without any injuries. In addition my arm has never felt better on a daily basis. My flexibility and range of motion have increased dramatically as well as my velocity. When I first worked with DVS, I was 91-92. Flash forward to 2019, I’m consistently 95-97 and have maxed out at 99. I swear by this program and truly believe it saved my career.”
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If a muscle has good strength characteristics relative to the task at hand, then we can say that it has high Tolerability to stress. When a muscle is tolerating stress well, it has a much better opportunity to do what it's supposed to do when it's supposed to do it. This concept is known as Functionality, and it is essential for Contractile Efficiency, which is how efficiently the neuromuscular system is working in response to a given task. In the end, this is going to be the main driver of your arm care program, being beneficial for your health and performance.
IS MY PROGRAM WORKING?
Overuse injuries in baseball, such as ligament tears, frayed labrums, and many others, don't occur in just one instance. Rather, they result from repeated abuse over time. Think of it like water dripping on a rock. At first, the water will hit the rock and bounce off, and over time, that same drop will change the rock and create a divot structurally. So which drop was it that began to wear on the rock? The answer is all of them.
Even though the first drops may have been far from creating the divot, they were just as influential as the last. This cumulative effect is why general markers such as overall feeling, although valuable in many ways, don't necessarily tell the whole story of how well the body is handling every throw. Everybody feels good until they are hurt, and by the time you sense something is wrong, it's probably been going on for a long time.
So how do you determine that something is wrong before you feel it? Well, think about every other machine in existence, and most of them have some check-engine or indicator light that signals a problem long before it starts to malfunction. Wouldn't it be nice if the human body had a similar type of mechanism? Even better, what if there was an "indicator light" pertaining specifically to the throwing arm of a baseball player?
Shown above is the Total Arc Motion in the right shoulder. If this arc in the throwing shoulder is limited by more than 5º in relation to the non-throwing shoulder, a thrower is 2.5x more likely to get injured.
Thus far, a players' shoulder range-of-motion (ROM) pattern have served as the gold standard in this process and is regarded as one of the best ways to quantify how well an individual is handling the demands of throwing. Time and time again, this correlation has been shown in both prospective (i.e. prior to an injury) and retrospective (i.e. looking back after an injury has occurred) research studies within varying age groups and across multiple overhead sports.
If you haven't already, we encourage you to get a shoulder range of motion exam from your local trainer or physical therapist.
CONCLUSION
With your purchase of AC Bands, you get access to all videos and exercises within the DVS Baseball M.V.P. App
The purpose of the DVS Arm Care System is to improve your body’s ability to tolerate the forces associated with throwing a baseball by making the muscles of your spine, shoulder, and arms contract better. It does this by incorporating particular exercises with varying amounts and directions of force through specific joint positions that allow you to recruit and strengthen all your muscle fibers fully. The AC Bands we use to accomplish this purpose are one of many on the market. Therefore, we value the extensive research, testing, and creation of our AC Bands and the validation of its usage in a professional setting throughout multiple seasons.
We feel our AC Bands are the best on the market, but we recognize many arm care bands and their programs are beneficial to most overhead athletes. This article aims to help provide a bit of clarity and awareness about what to look for when choosing the right combination of arm care bands and programs to help enhance your career. If interested in purchasing our AC Bands that include all exercises and videos in the DVS Baseball M.V.P. App, click below.
