Advanced Stone Skipping for softball pitchers to learn IR?

Here is my take on "I/R" vs "bowling." I/R, as you recently learned, is roughly the rotation of a limb towards the midline of the body. Clockwise rotation for left side limbs and counterclockwise for the right side.

I/R alone adds nothing to the ball if the arm is straight. For example, hold the ball down at your side and rotate the arm/hand/ball back and forth as quickly as you can. Now let go of the ball midway through a rotation. The ball will drop almost straight down and will be spinning however fast is was when it was released.

When using the bowling style, the ball only travels as fast as the arm is moving in the circle. This machine is very simple and inefficient. Some try to improve on it by practicing wrist snaps; somehow thinking that the muscles can help propel the ball faster.

Whip alone adds significant speed over using a just a straight arm (bowling.) Simply, its allowing the lower arm to loosely lag down the backside—being pulled down by the upper arm. The lower arm is catapulted when the upper arm pauses at the rib cage.

When I/R is combined with whip, that is where the real magic happens. Magic? Not really. It’s more of a combination of simple machines working in series to fling a yellow ball very fast, very efficiently and with much less effort than any other style.

Some confusion about I/R’s contribution pops up now and then. I/R of the upper arm is a given when using whip. It must rotate no matter what the lower arm is doing for any speed to occur. The question often arises: How do we get the most out of lower arm I/R?

Going back to rotating the ball back and forth quickly: if the ball is in line with the arm, there can be no other force applied than rotation. No matter how much effort is made to rotate the ball, it still is only going to travel as fast as the arm is swinging. The key is ball lag. When we pull the ball down with a loose lower arm and palm up, the ball is lagging. Just like a bat, tennis racket, golf club head, etc, the object lags until it gets whipped. Can you imagine swinging a bat held in line with the lower arms? How about trying to swing a tennis racket held in line with the forearm? When the ball lags, it becomes so much easier to make it go fast.


Lower arm and ball lagging:



The result is clocked somewhere around 70 MPH:


Hope that made sense...

Ken

One more tidbit. Some have asked why it's important to start the release phase palm up. I liken facing palm to third as partial loading or half lag. Why only use some of the potential energy when more is right there?

Ken B said:

One more tidbid. Some have asked why it's important to start the release phase palm up. I liken facing palm to third as partial loading or half lag. Why only use some of the potential energy when more is right there?

Click to expand...

You were obviously paying attention when I was going at it with Steve Huff about this exact subject.........

I don't recall much other than some drama. I usually don't spend much time in threads like that unless I feel there's a chance to learn or contribute.


BTW, whatsa "tidbid?"

I thought Ken was referring to me and my heresy from last week where I questioned the value of palm up vs facing third. I think I resolved that by the way.

The key is ball lag. When we pull the ball down with a loose lower arm and palm up, the ball is lagging. Just like a bat, tennis racket, golf club head, etc, the object lags until it gets whipped.


^^^ from Ken's post

deserves to be highlighted because lag is a universal concept like Ken points out and is used in every sport where generating speed of an object is important. LAG is the precursor to whip.

The stone skipping clip, the original discussion on this thread, reminded me of side arming a throw but using IR. This stone skipping technique is a sling shot side arm throw using IR.

Bump.... Still searching for the elusive lag argument between Coach H and Coach H...


Added:
Found it! https://www.discussfastpitch.com/softball-pitching/9166-ir-one-more-time.html