Originally Posted by
topflightpro
My point about the pitch counts wasn't to point out the number of times they throw the ball, but rather they number of times they throw the ball really hard. Bigger gears are, in many, but not all, cases, harder to turn than smaller gears. I can see the argument that a developing body is more likely to sustain injury from repeatedly slamming a big gear.
Throwing a ball "soft" is less power. This is not the case with juniors. We are not pulling back power, just switching gears. For the most part I just see we are making arguments. I have not been able to find data. Personally I have seen some use/over use fatigue, but that is more data than I can find on racing male junior knees.
Any kid able to hang with 15+ boys is training much more than racing. So, even if there were data supporting big gears are bad, rules do not address where most time is spent, not do they address hill where kids are definitely pushing hard.