The muscles of the human body can produce forces that exceed the body's ability to withstand them. This can happen in extreme situations, such as during sudden or uncontrolled movements, or in situations of intense stress, where the body mobilizes abnormally high force (sometimes called “hysterical strength”).
In these cases, the muscles can generate forces strong enough to damage more fragile structures like tendons, ligaments, and even bones. For example, a maximal effort, such as lifting a heavy object, can lead to muscle tears, tendon ruptures, or bone fractures. This shows that muscles can produce more force than the surrounding structures can support, especially when there is an imbalance between muscle strength and the stability of joints or connective tissues.
Neural control and reflexes are normally designed to protect the body in such situations, but these mechanisms can be overwhelmed or bypassed in extreme circumstances.
These "hysterical forces" or excessive forces at a lower intensity can be applied during repetitive movements that do not align with an athlete’s natural motor preferences. When sports movements are not in harmony with an individual’s motor profile, this can lead to inappropriate muscle, joint, or tendon strain. This desynchronization, even at moderate intensity, can create repeated microtraumas that eventually weaken certain body structures.
In baseball and softball, where repetitive movements are pervasive (throwing, hitting, running), athletes who perform actions contrary to their natural motor preferences could chronically strain muscle chains or joints in a suboptimal way. This can lead to muscle overactivation, manifesting in movements where the athlete unconsciously compensates for mechanics that are not natural to them.
Thus, the repetition of inefficient or poorly adapted movements could lead to an accumulation of stress, increasing the risk of overuse injuries (such as tendinitis, muscle tears, or joint injuries). In a context like MLB, where performance is highly technical and repeated at a high pace, not respecting motor preferences indeed contributes to a rise in long-term injuries. These injuries (or performance drop) are more frequent among players who, despite impressive strength and endurance, do not adhere to movements most natural to them.
The current biomechanical culture in baseball, promoted by certain coaches and companies, contributes to the rise of injuries because it does not take into account the individual motor preferences of athletes. These coaches and companies emphasize general mechanical principles and movement optimization through data-based models. While these approaches are extremely useful for improving performance, they rarely account for the individual variations in motor preferences, leading to a higher injury risk for some players.
Motor preferences represent the movements that are natural and most efficient for an individual, based on their body structure, nervous system, and coordination (prevalent neuromuscular chains). If a player is encouraged to adopt movements or postures that go against these prevalent neuromuscular chains, even if they are biomechanically efficient in general, this will create excessive strain on certain parts of the body, causing muscular imbalances, microtraumas, or compensations.
For example, standardized programs aimed at "correcting" the mechanics of a throw or swing without taking individual motor preferences into account impose a load on muscle chains or joints not suited for that type of movement. This causes chronic stress on parts of the body less prepared or aligned with the player’s specific body structure.
The fact that the current narrative focuses on a uniform biomechanical approach, without personalization based on motor profiles, explains the increase in injuries among athletes who fail to adapt to these adjustments. Players, in their quest to maximize performance, force unnatural movements through ever-increasing training volumes, leading to overuse of certain body structures, fatigue, and ultimately increasing the risk of long-term injuries.
In summary, by adopting a purely mechanical view that omits the central nervous system and its natural collaboration with the body, players maximize their performance but do not optimize it! Maximization certainly brings performance gains, but it is a partial vision of athletes' reality (morphology, physiology, personal biomechanics, prevalent neuromuscular chains...), and it is short-term.