The fewer moving parts aspect turned out to be a huge benefit for my daughter. She was 12 and dealing with a growth spurt that took her from short to 5'8" when we bought the Hillhouse instructional videos and started practicing pitching at the house. She struggled (and still does, to some extent) with balance and keeping track of all of the body parts that have to work together to deliver a ball on target. Keeping the ball in her glove and her hands together until they separated naturally on the way up the circle helped her a lot. She got more accurate instantly. Velocity stayed pretty much the same. She is 14 now, pitching for her high school JV team. I asked her if she wanted to lengthen her very compact delivery since she is dealing with older hitters now, and she politely declined.
How fast should the wind-up/delivery be?
- Thread starter CoachJD
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FiveFrameSwing
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Then do you advocate a continuous increase in the velocity of the throwing arm throughout the forward arm motion (up to 'release')?
FiveFrameSwing
Banned
Are you recommending to 'load' up to the 12-o'clock position? What are you 'loading'?
I like to explain it like a roller coaster. You go up slow then come down fast. If you went up fast you'd fly off the track.
I've seen it illustrated as a dotted line on the upswing, and a solid line on the downswing.
Basically, you only take the arm as fast as you are able to do and still maintain control so you can prevent the hand from flying backward. It's more of a feel thing than anything. Once you get to the point where you can pull the upper arm down, pull like crazy.
- Sep 10, 2013
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the arm needs to be correctly 'bent' (about 10 o'clock) at heel plant. not straight and locked out. with palm UP, the forearm gets loaded and ready to whip/brush.
DD gets this feeling of something transferring from the upper arm to the forearm (blood rush?) when she does this right and yes, the pitch is always better.
when DD goes very fast from backswing to 12, her arm ends up locked, no bend and worse, palm down. it's taken a loooonnnnngggg time to fix this and we're not there yet, but getting there.
