11YO DD Pitching clip - comments / suggestions appreciated!

[flyer]

I/R - Started to switch to I/R 1 month ago when I found this forum (THANK YOU!!!), DD has been struggling to get palm up, especially in games, mostly pushing and guiding the ball. Very happy to see in today's game that her arm motion seems improved quite a bit.

Front Side Resistance - Firstly I thought with palm up, her upper body would naturally lean backward. From the clip, apparently it does not stop her collapsing. The cues I had for her in practices were "stand-up" and "connect knees faster". Any suggestion on drills / cues?

Drive - I feel her drive is decent, but puzzling how to help her really transfer that momentum to her pitch. Is it too earlier to worry about this, before getting the right arm whip action?



Thank you, the Forum!

 

[corlay]

her drive is incredible for an 11u.

on the flip side, her core strength might be insufficient to resist on the front side after stride foot plant?
that may be at least part of the cause of her "collapse" as you put it.

A strong drive is great, but the pitcher must maintain resistance and posture after foot plant,
and harness all of that energy efficiently into the pitch. Sounds like you already know that.

what kind of velocity does she get, out of curiosity?

 

[javasource]

Flyer,

I see a lot of up/down in your DD's drive. Her wind-up has her pulling down hard... sending force down. Her drive starts upright... sending force up. Although she does get off the rubber decently... if all of her energy was spent going forward... she could learn to resist better. Although she has some Bruce Lee type moves with kicking that leg up... it would be pretty incredible if it went OUT... more than up. You're DD's leg is falling from a second story window... it's hard to resist that kind of fall.

I might recommend scrapping the super-high wind-up while you work on forward force generation. Have her send her arms out in front of her body... so that she can pull them into her body... so that her body can start moving forward sooner. Once she establishes better forward body momentum sooner... you'll see that translate into outward force generation, as opposed to upward. From there, front side resistance will need to be there... or she'll walk right through the pitch.

If you've access to starting blocks... it might help to teach her a "rolling start"... meaning, body starts rolling forward as the backswing is heading backward. Don't confuse the "rolling start" with a foot roll, it is instead... transfering weight to a resistive left leg... resulting in forward body momentum.

She's also missing the whip, releasing out front too much, as opposed to off the rear leg. Better forward momentum/resistance will help with this a bit, too.

She looks like a great work in progress, keep up the good work.

 

[WillyT812]

She still needs to work on the whip. I'd venture a guess she actually has no whip at all. Even though the arm is bent at nine o'clock you'll notice her upper arm never stabilizes against the rib cage for that split second needed to whip. I created this clip for another poster to show the difference and what you should be looking for. Hope it helps.

 

[mothgirl]

Love that video! Thank you for posting it again!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[WillyT812]

I'm working on another clip of one of my own students. I call it the fake arm whip. If you look at snap shots you'd think she has a great whip. Ball up at 9:00, nice rotation of the arm as well. But what you don't see is her snapping the arm almost straight down and whipping past the new fulcrum point (her elbow). She's just muscling the ball with rotation and no snap (whip). This is our off season goal, to whip/snap versus just rotate. Once I finish this clip I'll post in a separate thread for discussion.

[video]https://youtu.be/OftdOupfXEE[/video]

 

[flyer]

Wow! Thank you, corlay, javasource and WillyT812!!

corlay - i'll get a gun so that her pitching progress can be measured, thanks for your comments! I'll have to study javasource's sticky post on Drive mechanics.

javasource - Used to think your post on drive mechanics is too advanced... looks like i was wrong, we will try to understand it better, thanks for sharing!

WillyT812 - your video is one of my favorites on youtube! Have been watching it with DD many many times! She is doing fine with drills, but loses it in full motion.

After reading all your comments, DD asked me this evening to take another clip, and would like to check with you if this is a better form / right idea.

 

[flyer]

I'm working on another clip of one of my own students. I call it the fake arm whip. If you look at snap shots you'd think she has a great whip. Ball up at 9:00, nice rotation of the arm as well. But what you don't see is her snapping the arm almost straight down and whipping past the new fulcrum point (her elbow). She's just muscling the ball with rotation and no snap (whip). This is our off season goal, to whip/snap versus just rotate. Once I finish this clip I'll post in a separate thread for discussion.

[video]https://youtu.be/OftdOupfXEE[/video]

Looked quite the same to my eyes... what are the real differences, what was really missing from your student's arm action?

 

[WillyT812]

Flyer, when my student and I warm up she has a nice 1 to 7 spin most of the time. But as we crank up the power and work drive mechanics her spin becomes a bullet spin. Not what we want, we need the ball pulling down, changing planes. Also, she's topped out at about 50-53mph, not much faster than when we're warming up. In my attempt to figure out why the bullet spin I learned that both the bullet spin and speed limitation are one and the same problem. Watch the angle she has on her arm at nine o'clock and notice she maintains that angle almost completely through the pitch past ball release. Unlike the clip of Jennie, my student tucks her elbow in towards her back to maintain that same angle and throws the ball with her hand in a C-position with the stripe facing third. All she is doing is rotating her arm (both upper and lower), the arm never stretches out and whips. It's a fake whip, she's very good at it, very good. But we need more speed and spin, she'll never get it until she learns to truly whip with a long arm.

Your daughter doesn't have my student's problem, she has a pendulum problem. Her upper arm needs to stabilize against her rib cage while her forearm whips past that point. Think about bat lag when hitting, it's the same principle. The ball will lag behind the elbow until the upper arm stabilizes against the rib cage which at the point it will move (rotate) past that point. This is cracking the whip so many upper level pitchers talk about. Have her slow it down during warm-ups focusing on stopping the upper arm for a forearm whip.

On one of my other students who's just starting out I tied a belt around their upper arm and just let her feel whipping the arm versus using it all. Minimal success trying that method but it did get the premise down.

 

[WillyT812]

BTW, I had to read, reread, and still read JavaSource's drive mechanics sticky. The whip is about spin and speed. Drive mechanics is about accuracy and consistency with a dash of increased speed. I can tell before IR2 ever releases the ball whether it's going to be a good pitch or not just by how she comes off the rubber. Drive mechanics and whip mechanics go hand-in-hand; one without the other equals half a pitcher.