How to fix glove swimming??

[halskinner]

It has always amazed me how quickly adult full sized pitchers are used to compare something for a young pitcher. AA 180 pound muscular adult pitcher vs maybe a 95 pound pitcher? Gloves pretty much weigh the saame. That amount of weight will have a much lesser effect on an adult pitcher than it would on an average 12u.

Take the glove off of her at practice, have someone else catch the return throws for her. See what happens when the glove arm weighjs next to nothing.

 

[Ken B]

FR,
I very much agree with you. I just want folks to consider fixing the problem and not the symptom. I teach driving the glove hard towards the catcher to help with the forward drive. In almost every case, a big swim is the symptom of not "shoving the glove." (Thanks Hal!)

 

[Boomers2012]

Is this any better pertaining to the glove swim? Now that we know she can keep from swimming, we want to be sure this is the correct way to keep practicing. Is there anything else that looks "off"? Timing? Internal Rotation? I am worried that the IR is not as good as it could be......what do you think? As always, we appreciate the input.

2213LP - YouTube
2213LP1 - YouTube

 

[ThatDad]

I am no expert, but I think her tounge angle is perfect. She should be just fine. The other stuff will be easy.

 

[nanotech14]

Have her start with the glove hand and her pitching hand go out together. She will be able to hide the ball longer and with both moving towards the catcher at the same time she will create more drive.

 

[Ken B]

Much better!

Ask her to think about driving her stride toe/knee towards the catcher. Right now she's landing around 90 degrees. Should be no less than 45.

 

[FrozenRope]

Is this any better pertaining to the glove swim? Now that we know she can keep from swimming, we want to be sure this is the correct way to keep practicing. Is there anything else that looks "off"? Timing? Internal Rotation? I am worried that the IR is not as good as it could be......what do you think? As always, we appreciate the input.

2213LP - YouTube
2213LP1 - YouTube

Looks good. The only thing I notice is the's dragging the right foot like an anchor. Work on getting her up on the inside of her big toe as soon as she pushes off. Remeber, you want as little resistance to the forward momentum as possible. The onle reason a pitcher would want to have anything drag on the ground in the forward motion is to keep it legal. The less that is dragging...the better.

Here's a good example.
Softball Power Drive - mechanics in slow motion 1000 frame per second - YouTube

Get her to feel the drag on the inside of her right toe. My DD had the same drag of her entire right foot...heel to toe. Her PC corrected it by having her focus on pushing down and out of the rubber. Gave her a good bend in the knee and gave her a little more lift to force only the toe to drag. Improved her forward momentum at the same time.

 

[Alan Snedeker]

Looks much better to me. Definitely looks like she is not using her arms as much to leap. To me her stride shortened up a little and her timing is better, because she is not flailing her arms and stretching her leg out to get off the mound. The whole top half is much calmer. Now build on the leg drive without the upper body flailing and see if you get the back foot to drag lighter like FR says. This will take time, but it looks like she has been working hard at it.