The idea that you need perfect mechanics is one that always gets a little lost in translation.
The answer here is always going to be “it depends” and it depends on a lot of factors and context. Are “perfect” mechanics going to prevent every injury? Definitely not. Do “perfect mechanics” even exist? Maybe but everyone's “perfect mechanics” are always going to look different based on their individual body design (longer legs, shorter torso etc).
The main issue is mechanics don’t matter in absolutes, they most likely won’t be the sole reason you make a massive jump in velocity and they also won’t be the sole reason you got injured or stayed healthy. All of those things are multifactorial. Gaining velocity requires efficiency of mechanics, improving arm speed, weight gain, improved force output etc among others and generally occurs with more efficient mechanics as well.
Now, I want you to think about a kid that has never played baseball before and you are watching them throw a baseball. Their mechanics are probably going to be very atypical but it's not like their arm explodes either, their injury risk is probably lower as they aren't able to generate enough torque at the joint to injure it.
While the goal of mechanics is to assist someone to throw harder through more efficient movement, the greatest risk factor for a young athlete is throwing harder than their age related peers. This evokes the confusion of pitching mechanics: if mechanics are supposed to help you throw harder and how can they possibly both reduce and increase your injury risk profile?
Recently, I’ve had two baseball pitchers post shoulder surgery get told by their doctors they need to fix their mechanics so they don’t need to do it again. Look, mechanics can be a component of injury reduction and the two main mechanical adjustments I’ll screen for is whether the hips are rotating prior to the torso and if the elbow is on plane with the shoulders but they are also scrutinized/ over-blamed for their role in an athlete's injury.
In a study by Huang et al, it showed kids are more likely to sequence their rotation from top to bottom or torso prior to hips, which placed more torque on the elbow. Another study by Camp et al, showed that the elbow not being on plane with the shoulders is another risk factor for injury due to increased relative elbow torque.
This all goes to say, mechanics should be utilized, they can serve as guidelines and they can help to reduce potential stress to areas and they can be utilized to improve performance but they aren't the end all be all to performance nor injury risk. Here’s how I use mechanics: they serve as a guideline to see if the athlete shows the ability to get into and out of certain positions. I.e does this athlete demonstrate lead leg block? Ok, they’re rotating through their hips into the foot plant or is the elbow not forced behind the shoulder? Ok, they’re creating some sort of counter rotation through the torso but never are we saying, the sole reason for your elbow pain is because you throw like this.
You can find a full list of our mechanics check-list HERE
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