Drive foot drills to help with turning

There is one big difference that no one is mentioning when discussing the sprinters start. Sprinters are attempting to keep their shoulders square to the finish line. Pitchers on the other hand are trying to get OPEN when they push off and stride. This is the reason most pitchers turn their pivot foot slightly out to allow the hips (and shoulders) to get open during the stride.
The shoulders of a pitcher should open in response to their hips having already opened... and the hips should do so naturally through extension of the stride leg. That simple.

However...

Where many go wrong, is in artificially opening the hips... by pivoting the ball of the drive foot on the ground. This is easy to spot, because the drive knee will not extend until after the stride leg does AND until after the pivot action. I call this a twisty-turn of the foot. This move is rotational, not linear. To make it linear, the path of the heel must be more vertical than sideways (during the push) AND... the pitcher must immediately apply the push in order to extend the drive knee BEFORE the stride knee.

The shoulders will NOT open naturally, if from 6-3, the glove arm ELBOW does not extend up and out to the target. After 3, never look at the glove arm again... it means nothing and just serves as a balancing mechanism to a system trying to perform work.

To open the hips, the pitcher need only stride forward... BUT... and this is the key, the drive foot pushes with pressure over the big toe. If the drive foot pushes with pressure over the small toes, the hips will not open naturally. Try it with a simple step.

The ONLY reasons you toe out, are that ankle eversion and inversion issues may prevent a pitcher from applying pushing pressure into the plate with their big toe AND this method allows for optimal muscle performance to occur in the drive leg. As many are unfamiliar with underlying ankle issues, MINIMAL toe out is all that is ever needed. The degree of toe out should NEVER be more than that particular athletes foot strike kinematics when they sprint. Film it, it's easy.

This is all you ever need to know on the subject and it's free... print it, memorize it, and apply it.

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4 girl's dad said:

I saw a couple others like that as well. But it sure looks like an illegal pitch. I mainly don't want her to get bad habits if I can help it.
Thanks for your reply.

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