I wear them on the bottom two straps of the shinguards, and they do not hinder my ability to block the ball. My son is 19 and has been catching for 12 years.
He started wearing knee savers in high school. Not because he was injured or dealing with any knee pain, but because it was that he realized he wanted to be catching for a long time and wanted the best chance to extend his playing career. He is now catching in college and still wearing his knee savers, in spite of some razzing he gets from his teammates. However, he is probably one of the least lazy kids on the team, and no one gets in his face about that!
Docs at Boston's Children's Hospital one of the best in the country recommend knee savers to prevent injury and especially for those recovering from injury catcher's tend to get a more advanced form of OCD. Young players are very susceptible because their growth plates are still open.
It's a devastating injury that takes a year if not much more off of an athlete's sports life. Thanks for the article, my 12 year old daughter has been a catcher for three years and has been wearing knee savers from the start. I have heard many coaches say, just as you have said, it makes them lazy. We took them off for a few months and my daughter complained of her knees hurting, not sure if it was psychological or not but they went right back on.
Thanks for the article, I bookmarked it to send to other coaches when the say it makes them lazy. Hi I am now a sophomore in highschool and I have strong fundamentals and skills in blocking receiving and throw downs but my arm is not the strongest.
How can you strengthen the arm from stretches to long tossing program? There are pros and cons to any product out there. I totally agree there is no product out there that makes a player lazy that is an attitude that they choose. I have seen it at the lower levels where catchers won't set up properly in their secondary stance but chances are they haven't been taught, the knee savers didn't force them to. I'm glad there are guys like Xan that are willing to educate the masses on the finer points of catching.
Thanks for all you do for baseball and the development of catchers! Hey coach! Just got done reading your article on knee savers and was glad to here how many mlb players wore them. My 12 year old son has them but doesn't wear them because he doesn't see the other guys wearing them. Are there truely benefits for wearing them?
I have bad knees from work and wouldn't mind them for me: but want to ask if I should insist on him wearing them or not. You state, " I have no strong feelings in youth players if they are worn correctly and proper catching stances are preserved. With so few youth coaches able to correctly coach their catchers those are two big, "ifs. My concern with knee savers other than when worn improperly is when the catcher needs to be in the block position. I work with my catchers to get down in the dreaded "w sit" position, with the toes pointed out and I generally catch a lot of flack for it by moms who say that "w sit" is the devil.
Weaver teaches keeping the feet in and under the body. I'm wondering how the knee savers work with the feet in. I'm assuming not well. Good article! No, this pic was my senior year in HS. Awesome, I'm glad she's getting some good info from it. Tell your family I say hello! No problem, glad you liked it! Please feel free to forward it to anyone who might like reading it. Xan was this pic at Holmes. By the way I love reading your post my daughter is catching for her travel team and I get a lot of helpful info from your post.
Thanks for this article. I coach catchers at a 5A high school just north of Houston. I've had this question asked many times by parents usually of freshman. I always responded with something similar. I myself never wore knee savers until I tore my meniscus. From that point on I always had them. Again, thanks for the article! Get Pro Plus Membership. New Training Products Available. Written By. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.
No I did not catch. But there is no posistion that I respect more than this posistion. And there is no posistion that requires as much dedication and desire to be really good at. Knee savers I could careless. Wear them if you want to. Dont if you dont want to. But my son was not asking the colleges that recruited him if they believed in knee savers. He already knew that they wanted someone that wanted to block and took pride in the ability to do it.
Great post Coach May. Coach May, In general I agree with blocking everything and always protect the blue in all situations. Always, no exceptions. Never is free rein given to ole' a pitch and let it go to the backstop. It's never "I don't need to block this pitch" but rather "How am I gonna stop this one" The catcher's stance dictates everything he will be able to do unless he is always in a runners on base stance.
Then his blocking range is wider but if he down low butt fist-high off ground , he is limited to what he can do laterally. The issue isn't blocking but when should you block versus pick versus smother.
And that actually boils down to pitch recognition more than anything. By HS, if a catcher doesn't block well he isn't a catcher for long.
Blocking hurts, period. At mph, even the pitches you block fairly well ding you to some degree. The further up the ladder a catcher progresses, the smarter he has to be about protecting himself because the season gets longer. Show me a catcher with no bruises after a game and I'll show you one that sat on the bench.
The pitches that I don't advocate blocking are the ones I described that are in a different zipcode. Get outside that and they caught hell from the coach and the catcher. Speed doesn't bother a catcher Basically the zone is as wide as a normal door, not a difficult target even for a 12 yr old.
Plate is 7 balls wide giving you 3 on both sides Any HS pitcher should be able to do this easily.. MLB catchers as good as they are don't block a pitch 2 feet outside Many HS coaches go overboard on the blocking everything to the point of wanting catchers to dive for ball even with no runners For that matter, there are HS coaches don't know how to watch a catcher recieving a pitch to tell pitch location.
How often have you heard a HS coach tell a catcher to always protect himself All goes back to pitch recognition which is why it is so important that catchers do bullpens and work hard. Bullpen sessions give a catcher a look at all the pitchers,their deliveries and their movement. Very good post. I've always thought great footwook behind the plate is what makes a catcher stand out from above the rest. Anybody can fall forward and block a ball in front of them.
Pudge had the best footwook of any that I can remember and that's what made his defense over the top of the others. As far as the knee savers issues, I ran hurdles in school, so I did several strecthing exercises before and after a race.
I've also competed as a catcher in adult leagues for quite some time and have continued my basic stretching program before and after a game. I have never used the savers and never had problems with my knees. I also spent a good deal of my working career on my feet. I did some type of stretching exercises for my job. I don't know if they have helped, but I don't think I would able to do as much athletically as I do today if I hadn't of continued. Great discussion, there are some really great posts here.
Personally, I like wearing knee savers. I'm a freshman in college, and I haven't had a problem with them yet. In fact, the only time I ever use them is to give signals, but that is a welcomed break. The other 90 percent of the time I'm either in my receiving or runner on stances. So, like many other posts, I don't think it is the knee savers that makes or breaks the catcher.
M MizunoPro Member. Hey guys, first post. I recently took these off, and have noticed i am alot more agile without them, and throws to second are way more consistent. Even when i had them though, i never rested on them with men on. He gave the example of placing a tennis ball behind your knee and duct taping it there and then attempting to crouch. The damage done from placing those pads directly behind the knee will far outweigh the damage done over time while playing the position without them.
Now, seeing that the knee is designed to bend that way, we also asked him whether it is the mere act of repeated squatting that causes this damage or something else? My father's illustration was "why are their entire Asian cultures that spend more time in a catchers squat position as a daily routine and no real increase in degenerative knee disorders?
Elderly people in these cultures are in that position for hours a day, yet they do not seem to need Knee Savers. Farrago had thought about that situation himself and does not have a medical reason why they do not suffer from this "catcher specific" problem.
He questioned whether it may have to do with the fact that from childhood these people sit that way, but he was not positive. However, after talking with a few more doctors regarding this matter, it was explained to me that although the crouching position does tend to put some added strain on the knee joint, there is a chance it is the constant standing back up that could really be the key to the added wear and tear on a catcher's knees.
Remember me. Log in. Forgot password or user name? Knee savers? Pros, cons? Posts Latest Activity Photos. Page of 2. Filtered by:. Previous 1 2 template Next. I recently bought a second-hand set of catcher's gear for my nine-year-old, as he had shown some interest. The set did not come with "knee savers". Should I get a pair? Do they help learning the correct receiving stance?
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