Four Points of Resistance in Pitching

Rick
Keeping the body quiet as you mention is extremely important and when the body is not quiet, it is a symptom of the ball being improperly forced thru the delivery and follow thru. In a sense it is futile to tell a student to keep their body quiet without giving them an understanding of the cause of it being too busy or inefficiently too active. We are in the business of identifying root causes rather than treating symptoms eh. I appreciate your curiosity! I hope I'm communicating the same!
Regarding the possible additional stress on the shoulder in " the 12:00 vicinity" mentioned above, I'd like to think it creates a healthy torque. ( I hope torque is the right word here.... maybe we can ask boardmember : )

3)The hips move in a torquing action but actually stop (at about 45 degrees to the powerline) just prior to release....this stopping action is why I call it "HIP SNAP" vs hip rotation. The stopping action helps with the whipping action the pitcher is trying to create in her arm action. It also provides a solid non-moving foundation (resistance) for the forearm to "brush contact". A common flaw is to see pitchers who attempt to throw with the hip.....they typically don't get the resistance to achieve high levels of speed, spin, or location desired. See the youtube clip attached for details on this hip snap/stoppage.

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I got a new student last night, been taking lessons for about 1 1/2yrs from local JUCO asst coach.

She was taught the "Slam the door hips".

She firms up her front leg but due to her trying to slam the door, she loses all the resistance she's built up. The hip shoves forward, which causes the shoulder to shove forward, causing the release off the front leg and a step forward at release.

I showed her dad my vids of Scarborough, Pauly, Finch, then his DD. I didn't want to mess with her much since she still has a tourny this weekend, I just worked getting her to release a little earlier. Worked on her change-up.

Told the dad what she needed, allowed him to go home and think about it. He's going to let her take 2 weeks off after her last tourny and if he thinks he wants me to work with her I'll see her the end of July.

JoJo
I hope she gets to you. Hate the slam the door hip action.....a very poor transfer of energy.

Told the dad what she needed, allowed him to go home and think about it. He's going to let her take 2 weeks off after her last tourny and if he thinks he wants me to work with her I'll see her the end of July.

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You're lucky. I had a dad tell me he wanted to me to work with his DD. I told him it would take an entire winter to get his DD's mechanics where they needed to be. For lack a better description she looks like she is throwing a baseball submarine pitch. I haven't heard from him since.

Rick Pauly said:

JoJo
I hope she gets to you. Hate the slam the door hip action.....a very poor transfer of energy.

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i still have old videos of DD's former PC who asked her to slam the door. i'm glad DD's out of that now.

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Bump

Thanks for the bump, Ken. I had not seen this before. Great thread.

I have another related topic I am working on the wording for and will post sometime soon......"Pitching is a sequence of accelerations and decelerations".

In terms of hitting, Chris Yeager bases much of his training off of accelerating and decelerating body parts.

The notion is that body parts reach a maximum velocity and then decelerate in order to pass their momentum to the following segment.

When a segment ahead in a kinematic sequence fires, a segment behind in a kinematic sequence wants to go the opposite direction or stabilize.

Sit in a chair with a swivel base ... lift your feet off the ground ... rotate your upper body quickly in one direction, and take note of how the lower body goes in an opposite direction. Now imagine the benefit of having your feet on the ground to stabilize your lower body.

Sometimes you simply have to tell a player to place more emphasis on their upper body so that the lower body stabilizes.

Thanks for the bump on this great post by Rick. I could tell that my daughter (turned 11 today) was not generating the proper resistance but now I can understand the 4 points as described by Rick. She was taught HE early on and has a weak core. She has particular difficulty with achieving a firm torso and firm shoulder. I think the core muscles will get better with age and training. I have stressed during her workouts that we need to improve the firming of her torso and shoulder. She cannot feel the firming action needed during her pitches. I've never seen any drills to improve on these resistance points. Any ideas on how to move forward to increase her resistance?