Straight arm

Hey - my daughter is doing really well pitching in 10U so far. She just started learning how to pitch a year ago but only started pitching in games in January. She has been clocked at as fast as 47 in games but is usually around 44 mph. We've been investigating what we can do to increase her speed and improve her mechanics. We realized that she's straight armed from about 12:00 on. I'm writing to see how I can help her have a bend in order to whip it better at the bottom rather than pushing it.

Thanks in advance!

Check the IR classroom sticky, it's all in there.

It can be a long road for some. My DD has been working on it for a couple year's now and it didn't come overnight and is still a work in process. But like said above look at the drills in the IR classroom thread and focus on the combo of the bend in the arm and how this relates to the brush interference at the side/hip. I think you'll see that they are in conjunction. We tried using terms like lead with the elbow down the back of the circle and drop the elbow into the slot.

My daughter is 9 and we've been working on IR since spring ball ended. She's been picking it up really well, but the one thing that seems to disappear if we're not focused on it is the arm bend.

For us, the best way to correct it is to video it and watch the slow motion frames. My new phone has really good slow motion, and it allows her to see exactly what she's doing. We'll throw about 5 pitches, review the tape, and then she'll correct it, watch the new tape and see if she fixed it. Allowing her to visually see it seems to do the trick because it's ingrained from 2 years of self taught pitching (with a straight arm). I'm confident she's figuring it out, but the video tape seems to be the best tool we've used so far, kids seem to respond better to visual evidence and my dd likes seeing the footage after she's made the correction.

Corleone said:

Check the IR classroom sticky, it's all in there.

Click to expand...

Second that. Pure gold.