Arm care is popular for overhead athletes to partake in as a part of their pre and post throwing routine. This is essential for javelin throwers to be able to stay healthy and avoid common issues such as UCL tears in the elbow and labrum / rotator cuff tears in the shoulder. Many throwers such as myself will end up having to miss a full season at some point in their career due to Tommy John Surgery.
Systematize
You need to have a process and a system in order to fully recover and prevent injury from happening. After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Often times too many people deal with pain but never take the steps to actually learn about the process, and create a process that works for them.
Pliability
Pliability is the concept of making your muscles malleable, so think of a deep tissue or soft tissue massage, massage gun, or foam rolling. Your joints can be MOBILE but your muscles need to be PLIABLE which means your muscle fibers should ideally be long and loose. This is a concept that was popularized by the TB12 method, otherwise known as Tom Brady. He and his trainer worked significantly on the pliability of his muscles so he could absorb force while being tackled, be able to bend more, and recover faster from game to game.
Mobility
Having good mobility in the shoulders, chest, scaps, and lats is essential to be able to avoid forward shoulder impingement, find the proper arm slot, have the necessary external rotation & layback in your throwing arm. If your arm is able to externally rotate freely and have proper layback, this takes the stress off your elbow and allows your chest to take over. Having your chest take over is essential to throwing far because your chest is the main accelerator of the throwing arm, which is why chest strength is so important for throwing power. You then go from relying on the small ligaments of the elbow and shoulder to throw far, and instead put the stress on bigger muscles like the chest and lat that can handle more and produce more power.
STABILITY
Upper body stability focuses on practicing accelerating and decelerating your arm at higher weights, but lower speeds. Great ranges of range of motion, but overloaded within that range with specific focus on the shoulder joint. It is training your upper body to absorb force and /or enter into new ranges of motion for a split second to increase your joint capacity and get stronger in those deeper ranges of motion. Decelerating is essential to staying healthy because without proper deceleration your body will not feel comfortable accelerating at full speed, because your body will know it is unprepared to slow down after maximal acceleration. Proper deceleration will allow you to be relentless. Another great way to prepare the arm for shoulder health and deceleration is through reverse throws at heavier weights and reverse throws at lower weights but higher speeds.
To view all of the above in video format check out this video
Strength
Once you have all of the preventative arm care taken care of, you will need to use a combination of strength exercises to make sure your arm is strong enough to handle the forces that you put it through while throwing. This includes weighted mobility, (strength through length), plyometrics, hypertrophy, anterior strength training, posterior strength training, and isometrics.
If you want a more in depth look at the strength portion of the arm care routine, be sure to check out our free javelin course here
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