Jesse Howell - Pitching Performance Coach
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Icing after a game isn’t wrong. If it helps your kid feel better, keep doing it.
But it’s an acute soreness tool, not an injury risk reduction plan.
A lot of parents are counting on it to do a job it was never shown to do.
Here’s what the research tracking injury rates actually points to:
→ Not pitching through arm fatigue. In a meta-analysis of adolescent pitchers, it was the biggest risk factor.
→ Keeping innings in check. 100+ innings a year is a huge red flag.
→ A structured warm-up and strength program. In a 12-month randomized trial of youth players, one cut shoulder and elbow injuries by about 45%.
→ Finding shoulder and hip mobility and strength gaps before the season, not after something hurts.
One more thing: icing right before throwing can temporarily lower strength and accuracy. If you ice, only do it after you throw and only if you have acute pain.
You’re not failing to do enough. Nobody has shown you what to look for.
I’ve spent 10 years helping pitchers stay healthy and reach D1 and pro ball.
It always starts in the same place: finding out where this arm is at risk.
Comment ARM and I’ll send you my free 2-minute Arm Risk Check.
Five questions that show you which risk factors your kid has and what to do about each one.
Every arm is different. That’s why we assess first.
Sources: Sakata et al., AJSM 2019; adolescent pitcher meta-analysis, 2020; Bleakley et al., AJSM 2004; BJSM 2024 cryotherapy review.
If you Lee trying to gain weight this offseason focus on consistency more than intensity.
Most people will reach their weight gain goals if they start by gaining 1 pound a week.
Sometimes that will be 2lbs sometimes it will be zero but that biggest mistake I see is kids falling into the pattern of being consistent with their diet one week and then falling off the wagon the following week. The more you can develop the systems and habits that lead you towards the goals you have set, the more the goals tend to take care of themselves.
Most people simply need to be more consistent rather then looking for a shortcut and magic trick.
Comment the word “offseason” and make sure you’re following this page and I’ll send you a free guide to pitching development.
10/06/2026
In 2019, Jameson Taillon was shut down with elbow pain.
The plan was to rest, stay cautious, and get him back that season.
When he started throwing again, the pain returned.
Surgery to repair a flexor tendon found he also needed a second Tommy John.
In 2026, after another elbow flare-up, he’s headed back for another procedure.
Your son is not a big leaguer, and his soreness doesn’t mean he’s headed for surgery. But this pattern shows up at every level:
Arm hurts → shut it down → feels better → ramps up → it’s back.
That’s rest-and-hope.
Rest calms the symptom. It doesn’t tell you why it keeps happening.
If his pain keeps coming back, the next step isn’t another week off. It’s an evaluation from a qualified sports medicine doctor or physical therapist.
Once he’s cleared, the work changes.
He needs a progressive return to throwing, workload that matches his current capacity, and a full-body assessment to find what’s pushing stress onto his arm in the first place.
Pain-free isn’t the same as prepared.
If your son has been cleared but keeps cycling through soreness, rest, and return, DM me “PLAN.”
10/05/2026
Arm slot isn’t the problem.
For most high school pitchers, it’s the symptom.
His coach kept telling him to “get your elbow up.” He was missing high to his arm side, low to his glove side, and losing velocity every time he tried to throw a strike.
More arm slot cues weren’t going to fix it, because his arm wasn’t the problem.
His pitching mechanics were his body’s best solution to how it’s built and how force was moving through it.
So instead of fixing his arm path, I changed his setup and gave him one cue: throw it sidearm.
His arm angle barely moved.
His command, timing, and arm speed did.
Parents: if your son is working hard, taking lessons, and still stuck, the next drill probably isn’t the answer.
Understanding how his body is built is.
That’s why every pitcher I coach starts with an assessment, not a program.
DM me “ASSESS” and I’ll show you where to look first.
Are you a wide or a narrow? And does it actually matter?
Infrasternal angle. A proxy for bone structure, connective tissue behavior, and collagen fiber orientation.
Narrows bias toward expansion and external rotation. Flatter, tighter turn, higher center of mass. Wides bias toward compression and internal rotation. Oblique turn, lower center of mass.
That’s not a personality test — those are two different ways of getting through a rotation, and they ask for different things out of a program.
But it explains why a guy gravitates toward a position. It was never a list of what he’s allowed to do. Narrows aren’t banned from deadlifting. Wides can still press overhead.
The far ends give themselves away. The widest wides, the narrowest narrows the program writes itself.
Most athletes live in the middle, and if you only know the extremes you’ll misread nearly everybody.
Worth saying too: you don’t see many narrow shapes drifting toward powerlifting. Work with enough high-level pitchers and you’ll see a lot of narrows. That doesn’t mean a wide can’t pitch. It means if you train every pitcher like a wide — max strength, force output, go get it — you’ll hurt guys who needed something else.
It’s a framework for better decisions. The second it becomes a rule, you’ve traded one oversimplification for another.
Where do you land on this — useful or overused?
Let me know in the comments.
10/02/2026
They’ve been calling kids “built different” for a hundred years.
Scouts call it a projectable frame.
Your grandpa said a kid was built for it.
They were all looking at the same thing nobody could measure it.
Here’s one piece of it. Look at where the bottom ribs come together under the breastbone.
Some kids are narrow through there.
When they rotate, the turn stays flat and tight, and they carry their weight high.
Some are wide.
The turn happens more on an angle, and they sit lower.
Neither is better.
They’re two different ways of getting through a rotation, and they don’t ask for the same things in the weight room.
Most offseason programs are built for one of them and handed to both.
Everybody squats the same, everybody chases max strength, everybody gets the same plan.
That’s how a kid ends up stronger, beat up, and throwing what he threw last summer.
And most kids land somewhere in the middle, which is exactly why you can’t call it from the bleachers.
When you understand what you’re seeing the solutions become more obvious.
The mistake people make is thinking there’s a cookbook for this stuff. It’s more of a framework than a set of rules.
Comment SHAPE and I’ll send you the free guide what to look at before you buy another offseason program.
10/01/2026
Youth pitcher arm soreness after tournaments isn’t always from throwing too much.
It’s from throwing more than his body can recover from.
The pattern I see every year:
Takes months off from throwing.
Ramp up too fast to get game ready.
A ton of throwing Saturday. A ton more Sunday.
Almost nothing during the week.
You can’t build intensity before you’ve built volume.
When both go up at the same time, that’s when arms get hurt.
A well structured training plan and throwing program builds capacity step by step, so throwing builds him up instead of breaking him down.
That means high days, low days, and a plan for the weekdays between tournaments.
If his arm gets sore every time he ramps back up, comment AUDIT and I’ll send you my free 4-minute Velo Audit.
Baseball pitching coach in Central Oregon(Bend and Redmond), and working with pitchers remotely nationwide.
(Sharp pain, numbness, or pain that won’t go away? Please see a doctor or PT first.)
After tournaments, does your son throw during the week?
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