Understanding Body Part Injury
Prevention: The Rotator Cuff
DYNAMIC WARM UP FOR OVERHEAD ATHLETES TO
REDUCE INJURY
Author: Dr. John Rusin
INTRODUCTION
It’s a new day and age in the world of high-level athletic performance and development. Over the
last decade, athletes in nearly every sport have become exponentially bigger, faster, and more
explosive. Through early sport specializations, enhanced functional training methodologies and
advanced sport specific coaching, the athlete of the 21st century is now more physically impressive
than ever before.
The strength and conditioning community should be reveling in their abilities as an industry to raise
the physical bar of athletes far and wide, but this is far from the case. This insanely high level of
current day athletic performance is instead quickly dismissed due to an equally high and increasing
rate of widespread injuries. Has the requisite need to stay healthy and functioning during
athletic participation been blurred by our society’s unwavering goal of producing the
ultimate athletic performance at all costs?
THE OVERHEAD ATHLETE EPIDEMIC
There may not be a more injury susceptible sporting demographic than overhead athletes. It has
been a rising topic of heated debate throughout youth baseball, and is now making it into the likes
of women’s volleyball and tennis; how do we keep our youth athletes from being put under the
knife before they hit high school?