Quick and Easy Screening Tool for Youth Baseball Players

The Arm Care Screen (ACS) is a quick, easy, and cost-effective tool for coaches, parents, and sports medicine staff to use during preseason movement screening! Movement screens can be helpful in discovering and tracking modifiable risk factors that can contribute to potential injuries in our athletes. Throwing a baseball places a huge demand on the body as energy and power are transferred through the hips, torso, shoulders, elbow, and wrist. Too many times, baseball athletes suffer a variety of overuse injuries due to lack of mobility or power generation throughout the kinetic chain. The ACS is a brief overview of the entire kinetic chain using components of single leg stability as well as hip, torso, and shoulder mobility. A recent study, “The Intra- and Inter -rater Reliability of an Arm Care Screening Tool in High School Baseball Coaches” published in a recent issue of the International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy tells us the ACS is a reliable tool to be used. The photo and corresponding instructions provided above are from the article. For scoring, each component of the ACS is scored as pass or fail on both the right and left sides.

If you’re a baseball athlete, come see us for a shoulder and hip mobility program! If you’ve had an injury or struggling with lack of mobility, our sports performance physical therapy and training can get you back to playing at your best! Get started on your program today!

Reference: Matsel KA, Brown SN, Hoch MC, Butler RJ, Westgate PM, Malone TR, Uhl TL. The Intra- and Inter-rater Reliability of an Arm Care Screening Tool in High School Baseball Coaches. Int J Sports Phys Ther. 2021 Dec 1;16(6):1532-1540. doi: 10.26603/001c.29680. PMID: 34909258; PMCID: PMC8637259.