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coachbob

Banned
Apr 26, 2012
543
0
SoCal
I'll add my two-cents worth, my focus is on the arm. The battle cry of this forum is IR, the rotation of the forearm. The initial pivot point is the shoulder, as the arm rotates through the back (past nine o'clock) the upper arm will stabilize against the rib cage and rotate the forearm. Your DD arm never establishes a secondary (and much faster) pivot point around the elbow. I've built a clip focusing on that slight pause of the upper arm against the rib cage and mixed in a clip from your daughter for comparison. It's subtle but very important for whip.



Outstanding generosity in assembling that video. I think that's about the best forum post I have ever seen.
 

Merrill Danner

Relax and breathe!
Sep 26, 2012
130
16
74441 - Oklahoma
Kudos to you for taking the time and effort to help your DD maximize her potential! I am not a pitching expert, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt.

1) Have her start every pitch, even in practice by bringing her hand and glove together and pause to get her grip there. I have seen too many pitchers develop the bad habit of getting their grip before they bring their hands together, tipping their pitches or not bringing the ball and glove fully together and pausing.
2) As others have mentioned, you do not want to try to change too much at once.
3) Try to get her glove up in front of her and avoid allowing her arm to "swim" outside her body.
4) I would try to get her plant foot angled more towards home plate. Not straight at home plate, but @ 30 degrees to the right. Looks better on some pitches or camera angles.
5) For her drag leg, try to get her more on her toe, driving her drive leg foot towards the her plant leg calf. Avoid "bowling" with the drag leg. It looks better on some of the pitches vs. others.



This is great I want to thank each and everyone of you for helping me help her. It means a lot to her, she is a driven individual and i love her very much.

Maybe one more question.

Which of the suggestions here would be the best place to start? The more is see and learn the more i come to understand how everything is related. A small change in the beginning of the pitching motion can have a big effect on the finish.

I can never thank you enough for taking the time to look and help me.
 
May 26, 2013
372
18
Ramstein Germany
I got to thinking about this on the way to work and a better way to explain what is going on with your daughter (I have one student doing the exact same thing) and almost every girl who takes up the art of pitching. There's basically three phases a girl can go through learning to pitch.

The first phase, the one your daughter is in, is muscling the ball in a large circle with the shoulder acting as a pivot point. Some just push the ball towards the target while some get fancy and put a wrist/finger snap on the end. If they start with this style early enough and do it long enough it's possible to become a successful HS pitcher and low-grade TB pitcher. The only real problem with this style is it bazillion wrist snaps to become average.

The second phase, learning to whip is either learned through serendipity or, if you're lucky enough, you'll run into a pitching coach who understands the whip. The whip, as demonstrated in the video clip I provided, is the act of moving the arm in a very large circle then reducing to a small circle using the elbow as the new pivot point. What you’ll need to look for is the elbow leading the ball/wrist through the backside of the circle. At six o’clock the upper arm and elbow will slightly pause as the forearm rotates to catch up to the elbow, release is at mid-thigh or six o’clock and a nice follow through to finish off. I use Board Member's Lock-It drill for those stubborn girls who never whip around the smaller pivot point. In my mind, learn this before anything else and there’s a reason why, which is phase three.

The third phase is bit trickier in my opinion; it's learning how to use the body to whip the shoulder and then sending that collected energy down through the arm into the ball. When done right it's like turbo charging the arm whip and has a corollary effect of improving accuracy. Java’s Drive Mechanics dissertation is a thing of beauty and relevance. Even it can be broken down into two phases for simplicity: First is the drive phase, an efficient, powerful and quick method of consistently moving forward off the rubber. Second is the conversion phase which will take that linear drive energy, and with a sudden stop, converts it to rotational energy used to whip the shoulder thereby turbo boosting the arm whip. You'll know when she has this down pat by the noticeable increased zip on the ball. When she's out of sequence you think she just threw a change up. You will literally spend months, if not years, perfecting this phase.

Work on the arm whip and have her work on dry drive mechanics (no ball) separately. There is no shortcut.
 
Last edited:

Merrill Danner

Relax and breathe!
Sep 26, 2012
130
16
74441 - Oklahoma
I got to thinking about this on the way to work and a better way to explain what is going on with your daughter (I have one student doing the exact same thing) and almost every girl who takes up the art of pitching. There's basically three phases a girl can go through learning to pitch.

Wow, thank you that makes sense to me now that you explained it like that. Thank you very much for your help.

Lock-it drill found it she started doing that over the weekend, same day the video was shot. Thank you again
 
Last edited:
Dec 5, 2012
4,143
63
Mid West
Not too bad overall, Shes gonna be fine. To add on to what some others have mentioned, I see an awesome job of getting stable and firm front side. Really good there!!!
Lets get her to mirror up the glove arm with the ball arm to fully pull down together onto that aforementioned firm front side. Secondly, tighten up the arm circle by brushing the bicep to the ear going up, and brushing the forearm to the thigh coming down. Finally, be sure to lead with the elbow coming downward. She looks like shes turning the ball towards the catcher too premature (this is sucking a lot of the I/R whip out of the pitch) Overall, shes doing very well. Good luck, James
 

Merrill Danner

Relax and breathe!
Sep 26, 2012
130
16
74441 - Oklahoma
Not too bad overall, Shes gonna be fine. To add on to what some others have mentioned, I see an awesome job of getting stable and firm front side. Really good there!!!
Lets get her to mirror up the glove arm with the ball arm to fully pull down together onto that aforementioned firm front side. Secondly, tighten up the arm circle by brushing the bicep to the ear going up, and brushing the forearm to the thigh coming down. Finally, be sure to lead with the elbow coming downward. She looks like shes turning the ball towards the catcher too premature (this is sucking a lot of the I/R whip out of the pitch) Overall, shes doing very well. Good luck, James

Thank you for the comments, we just put up a mirror in her room several weeks ago. She really loves being able to see herself going through the motion.
Thank you again.
 

Merrill Danner

Relax and breathe!
Sep 26, 2012
130
16
74441 - Oklahoma
I just saw that several weeks ago, when she releases from the back hip she is trying to curl her hand from pinky to thumb. is it that she is trying to muscle through it? when I look at it standing behind her it as though she is trying to turn her hand clockwise. she is working hard trying to get the hand to whip but finding it difficult to allow it to relax.
 

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