Great topic and explanation! Thank you
Drag leg and hip snap help
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- May 3, 2014
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Good Stuff J - was trying last night to get my pitchers to lock the ankle so there was no forced dorsiflexion during their drive out - it will take some time to retrain. Watching the videos and reading the explanations and re training the way I run I definitely see and feel more bounce when locking the ankle. Even took a few basketball shots this way and can feel more bounce. It's like the forced dorsiflexon (like when you squat butt to floor with heel on ground) absorbs energy instead of transferring it. It is indeed the hole you speak of.
When driving off - if the ankle dorsiflexes it absorbs energy instead of transferring it up the posterior chain. You see the knee stay bent and hip remain flexed instead of the knee straightening and hip extending.
When learning HA and locking the ankle you hopefully get this. Watch her ankle stay locked and the "bounce"
One of my pitchers coming back from left ankle injury and prob suffering from glute amnesia as well as an unlocked ankle and forced dorsiflexon. Watch the Nike swoosh on her sock get closer to her toes as she drives out.
Once again - really good stuff Jryan as we all dig into this stuff deeper.
I know Xie uses basketball mostly - jumping off one leg to dunk, etc. Or even long jumping and high jump. Is pitching any different?
When driving off - if the ankle dorsiflexes it absorbs energy instead of transferring it up the posterior chain. You see the knee stay bent and hip remain flexed instead of the knee straightening and hip extending.
When learning HA and locking the ankle you hopefully get this. Watch her ankle stay locked and the "bounce"
One of my pitchers coming back from left ankle injury and prob suffering from glute amnesia as well as an unlocked ankle and forced dorsiflexon. Watch the Nike swoosh on her sock get closer to her toes as she drives out.
Once again - really good stuff Jryan as we all dig into this stuff deeper.
I know Xie uses basketball mostly - jumping off one leg to dunk, etc. Or even long jumping and high jump. Is pitching any different?
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BM, excellent contrasting GIFs! The difference between Ueno and your student clearly shows the difference. The pattern of your student's drive leg is burned in my mind from a year of hard work with DD to try and improve her drive. Ultimately the image below is about the best she acheived.
I refer to that pattern as the late push pattern. The drive foot becomes a pivot point as it looks like the pitcher posts the drive leg and simply pivots from behind to in front without getting any boost... The lack of boost forces a few bad symptoms:
This undesirable drive pushed me to dig deeper into glute activation. I researched Brett Contreras and Kelley Baggett who are experts in the field. Both of their work is structured around targetting and strengthening the glutes. The thought being that if the glutes get strong enough, they will resume normal operations. After many months of hard work, DD made huge gains in strength. She went from struggling to SL deadlift 65lbs to being able to do 200lbs. Similar gains in hip thrusting as well reaching 205lbs (all the olympic weights in the house at the time). Her glutes got strong, but her drive mechanic did not noticebly change.
I had all but given up. Through prayer and calls for help, the Lord put me onto Chong's site again. This time I researched his material with a more open mind. I am confident that the HA mechanic is the missing link for many kids who are doing the same workouts as everyone else, but not acheiving results. I do not think this is a basketball specific mechanic, and I see it as an absolute for anyone to acheive an automated response from the glutes.
HA is super tricky. You can resist dorsiflexion and look locked but not be locked. Your student definitely does not get the bounce that Ueno gets. In my experience, that bounce is completely involuntary. I don't think you can replicate it without having an active HA even if you don't know you're doing it.
The HA mechanic and the visual indicator are relatively simple. Getting them to trigger the glutes is much harder for some than others. I wish that Chong would go full public with his learnings but he has not yet, and I want to be respectful of his intellectual work. I understand that his first TED talk is soon to happen. Maybe after that the cat will be out of the bag, and the mechanic can be discussed more openly. Among other things, I think the research will turn the 5k+ jogging world on its head. A lot of incorrect gait analyses out there right now.
I refer to that pattern as the late push pattern. The drive foot becomes a pivot point as it looks like the pitcher posts the drive leg and simply pivots from behind to in front without getting any boost... The lack of boost forces a few bad symptoms:
1. The legs will spread as the stride leg is forced to reach out while the rear leg is left on the rubber (a lot of PC's try and correct this with knee-to-knee emphasis)
2. The reaching front foot can also tend to pull the hips sideways. This is what tends to give the appearance of "driving open". This can be manually overcome with heavy focus and the athlete can resist driving open. For a student with some foot-glute linkage, they will improve, but for those with minimal linkage it will only mask the condition.
3. Since the glutes are not reactive the quads are needed to supplement the power. Since firing the quads will straighten the leg, the brain knows it is necessary for the hips to be in front of the foot before engaging them (otherwise you would pop up instead of out)...hence the pivot pattern which is a stall for time. This series of events is the late push pattern.
4. The result is that the drive foot stays on the rubber for a long time. This makes meeting the checkpoint of drive foot release from the rubber by 3 o'clock incredibly difficult.
2. The reaching front foot can also tend to pull the hips sideways. This is what tends to give the appearance of "driving open". This can be manually overcome with heavy focus and the athlete can resist driving open. For a student with some foot-glute linkage, they will improve, but for those with minimal linkage it will only mask the condition.
3. Since the glutes are not reactive the quads are needed to supplement the power. Since firing the quads will straighten the leg, the brain knows it is necessary for the hips to be in front of the foot before engaging them (otherwise you would pop up instead of out)...hence the pivot pattern which is a stall for time. This series of events is the late push pattern.
4. The result is that the drive foot stays on the rubber for a long time. This makes meeting the checkpoint of drive foot release from the rubber by 3 o'clock incredibly difficult.
This undesirable drive pushed me to dig deeper into glute activation. I researched Brett Contreras and Kelley Baggett who are experts in the field. Both of their work is structured around targetting and strengthening the glutes. The thought being that if the glutes get strong enough, they will resume normal operations. After many months of hard work, DD made huge gains in strength. She went from struggling to SL deadlift 65lbs to being able to do 200lbs. Similar gains in hip thrusting as well reaching 205lbs (all the olympic weights in the house at the time). Her glutes got strong, but her drive mechanic did not noticebly change.
I had all but given up. Through prayer and calls for help, the Lord put me onto Chong's site again. This time I researched his material with a more open mind. I am confident that the HA mechanic is the missing link for many kids who are doing the same workouts as everyone else, but not acheiving results. I do not think this is a basketball specific mechanic, and I see it as an absolute for anyone to acheive an automated response from the glutes.
HA is super tricky. You can resist dorsiflexion and look locked but not be locked. Your student definitely does not get the bounce that Ueno gets. In my experience, that bounce is completely involuntary. I don't think you can replicate it without having an active HA even if you don't know you're doing it.
The HA mechanic and the visual indicator are relatively simple. Getting them to trigger the glutes is much harder for some than others. I wish that Chong would go full public with his learnings but he has not yet, and I want to be respectful of his intellectual work. I understand that his first TED talk is soon to happen. Maybe after that the cat will be out of the bag, and the mechanic can be discussed more openly. Among other things, I think the research will turn the 5k+ jogging world on its head. A lot of incorrect gait analyses out there right now.
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- May 3, 2014
- 2,149
- 83
Again great stuff. Yes, your daughter's clip still shows too much dorsiflexon so the knee bends via quads as the shin angle changes - do you have a before to show the improvement? And yes you get that late push out of the quads. When doing squats if you can eliminate dorsiflexon you only have your hamstrings and glutes to use and will really limit how much your knees bend and the shin angle will not change all that much. This same movement for pitching would eliminate a lot of slop in the rear leg so that the leg will straighten sooner detaching you on time.
This is what I see as the marker for what you are describing.
Watch Ueno's knee, when she bears weight on the push foot, the knee does not sink downward or drift forward.
It, and the shin angle, remains very stationary (locked?) while the upper leg/hip thrusts forward.
Yes?
Lol, that is the improved clip!
It's from last year (before HA). It was after months of two step/push back drills. Here are initial clips (2015 clips, 2014 clips, 2011 clips) primary drive mechanic change is that her back heel historically hit the ground.So Chong has a different take on "dorsiflextion". We tend to see dorsiflextion as something that we do, and we measure it and say "to much" or "not enough". Not to put words in his mouth, but I interpret Chong's take as dorsiflextion as not something that you do. When you see NBA players in stride, they looked dorsiflexed, but they are not. They are HA activated and the shin angle is what it is... When they plant and cut, the shin angle is a derivative. If they are HA active with angle flextion at 70 degrees, their achilles is loaded and their posterior chain is ready to pop. If they are not HA active, they are simply dorsiflexed to 70 degrees, and the posterior is not engaged.
IMO dorsiflextion is not something that we should look to control. You can control it, you can force the foot into the positions that look right, but if HA is not activated, you will not get a glute response.
I hope that makes sense. It is a different way of looking at something we have been looking at for a long, long time.
Also keep in mind that measuring the shin angle to the shoe might not be telling the whole story... Last year at recommendation of another member, we went to a physical therapist. While I gained more knowledge and info to store away, basically we spent $600 bucks for a dude to stretch my kids calves. She went from roughly 0 to 5 degrees of non-forced dorsiflextion to ~20 degrees in each foot. ZERO improvement in drive mechanic.
A quick comment, please don't get hung up too much on my DD in this thread. I am ok using her as an example, but I don't want to pull this thread off topic. If you do have feedback, please post in any of the attached threads. Thank you!
Yes. I would bet the farm that Ueno's ankle is locked via the HA mechanism. As she loads that locked ankle, she will get a glute response. Her posterior drive chain will be "springy".
It is possible to incorrectly lock your ankle (using shin muscles) which will not yeild a glute response.
- May 3, 2014
- 2,149
- 83
Jryan - I was asking for a before clip to compare - sorry I was not clearer!
- May 3, 2014
- 2,149
- 83
The foot mechanic is the way to lock the ankle. So, I agree with J. The only real test to this is to squat using body weight with relaxed ankles and then apply the HA mechanic and try and squat. Night and day.
As I work through this I can feel my hamstrings more and more. WRT pitching - look at Abbott.
Now look at Steph Curry. Watch the shin angle to heel connection. Even the way he lands.
How about Usain Bolt?
As I work through this I can feel my hamstrings more and more. WRT pitching - look at Abbott.
Now look at Steph Curry. Watch the shin angle to heel connection. Even the way he lands.
How about Usain Bolt?
My bad. Try this.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS BEFORE / AFTER HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HYPERARCH. This is a history of a lot of work on drive mechanics, two step drills, and pushback drill.
2014 - I think before doing much 2 step (heel stays on ground)
May 2015 - Had been doing early stages of two step (heel stays on ground)
Feb 2016 - After months of working on two step (heel slightly off ground)
In the bottom clip, she did not let her heel hit the ground during push. Since she does not know or use HA, she absorbs the power tranfser through her shin muscles and got nothing from the glutes.
Along the same time frame we did redcord and a lot of weights at school and at home. She made the top 5 leaderboard for squat and power clean for freshman girls out of a class of >800 kids. Despite all that work, we only made a marginal gain in drive power. In 2014, her foot released from the rubber 2 frames after the arms hit 3 o'clock. Same in May 2015. In Feb 2016 she got to 1 frame after 3 o'clock. That is the best that she has ever done.
I know that we can cheat this by delaying the backswing and doing other stuff, but the data does not support that she should delay her backswing. I made this database to analytically compare her to the elite pitchers... The stat "time from peak of backswing to drive foot push" shows the average of the elite was 1 frame which was where Baily was.
This is my basis for saying that if you do not have a moderate to good foot-to-glute linkage, no amount of two step and pushback drills will catch you up to your peers who do have foot-glute linkage.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS BEFORE / AFTER HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH HYPERARCH. This is a history of a lot of work on drive mechanics, two step drills, and pushback drill.
2014 - I think before doing much 2 step (heel stays on ground)
May 2015 - Had been doing early stages of two step (heel stays on ground)
Feb 2016 - After months of working on two step (heel slightly off ground)
In the bottom clip, she did not let her heel hit the ground during push. Since she does not know or use HA, she absorbs the power tranfser through her shin muscles and got nothing from the glutes.
Along the same time frame we did redcord and a lot of weights at school and at home. She made the top 5 leaderboard for squat and power clean for freshman girls out of a class of >800 kids. Despite all that work, we only made a marginal gain in drive power. In 2014, her foot released from the rubber 2 frames after the arms hit 3 o'clock. Same in May 2015. In Feb 2016 she got to 1 frame after 3 o'clock. That is the best that she has ever done.
I know that we can cheat this by delaying the backswing and doing other stuff, but the data does not support that she should delay her backswing. I made this database to analytically compare her to the elite pitchers... The stat "time from peak of backswing to drive foot push" shows the average of the elite was 1 frame which was where Baily was.
This is my basis for saying that if you do not have a moderate to good foot-to-glute linkage, no amount of two step and pushback drills will catch you up to your peers who do have foot-glute linkage.
