- Sep 29, 2014
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To Ken's wonderful post, I'd like to add a couple things...
Javasource mentioned "stride-dominant drive" recently. I absolutely love that label, as I believe it is quite common in young pitchers. I refer back to a recent point I made in some other thread awhile back. It is much easier to stride out well than it is to THRUST out explosively. Why? Because the stride takes a lot less muscle effort than the thrust. And, the thrust is bearing the body weight. You'd have to be one heck of an athlete to develop a thrust-dominant drive over a stride-dominant one.
At first glance at this clip, things look pretty good. Looking deeper, I see one issue that I think ties in with Ken's points is this... She has a great stride, but could be more explosive with her thrust (the two-step action and staying square Ken mentioned should help). I see her as being somewhat stride dominant. I believe stride dominance results in a drive that is too high for the pitcher for the thrust she has, end not enough forward momentum. And, you tend to see the torso tilted back a bit fairly early in the drive.
I don't see this young pitcher as having a serious issue with stride dominance, but I does sort of stand out to me.
Also, Notice that once she gets stretched out with her legs and the stride foot has kicked all the way forward, the stride foot comes straight down rather than continue forward as it lands. It almost appears that her back (right) foot is sort of refusing to let go.
What do I see as the fix for this????? A more explosive AND SPRINGY THRUST, such that once the thrust is spent, that back/right leg/foot doesn't look stuck, but rather, sort of springs forward away from the rubber (as would be the case with a sprinter sprinting out of the blocks) due mainly to the sheer force of the forward-moving body and the liberation of the drag foot.
I know I've been slightly contrarian in this thread but her stride leg never exceed parallel so I'm OK with it in addition arm arm circle at the height of her knee during drive is right on target. However you can see her turning already vs staying straight more next post