DD Pitching, Input welcome

[Six11 Hitting]

Here is a recent video of my DD pitching. She is a first year 14U pitcher. She is throwing a fastball here.

If someone can slow this video down that would be great. I recorded it on my cell phone and can't slow it down.

New video
Cailie pitching Nov 2012 - YouTube

Here is video of her from about 9 months ago.
Cailie pitching 2-2-12.MOV - YouTube

 

[Ken B]

I think she's doing well. In the second clip from February, I like her upright start. In the November clip it looks like she trying to load for a more powerful stride by getting back on her stride foot, but bends over maybe a bit too much. (Pretty nit-picky for an otherwise nice pitch.) I like how her glove hand is better utilized during the forward stride in the February clip. Doesn't look like she uses the glove arm in the Nov clip. Again, kind of nit-picky, but using the glove to help explode towards the catcher and loading the back foot without as much bend might be some things to consider. Who gets credit for such a good student?

 

[Ken B]

Side note--love the facility! Dirt floors in a softball training facility should be a must!

 

[Six11 Hitting]

Thank you very much for the kind words.

Many different things have played into her skill level. First and foremost she is extremely hard working. Second, she has been going to Roger Schliewe of the World Series training center for pitching lessons for a while now. He has some old school methods but overall has played a huge part in her progress. Lastly, I spend hours upon hours watching videos and reading on here to learn as much as possible. I then take that info plus what her pc is teaching her and teach her to utilize the best of both worlds. we spend lots of hours together working on this!!!

We absolutely love our training center. To be able to practice on sand year round is an absolute blessing.

 

[joemcq51]

The two things that stand out to me are her stride is left of center on her pitch and she is swimming with her glove hand. The angle of the camera makes it difficult to see. I think she is losing some of her velocity, by bleeding her energy to the left side during the pitch. It looks like she has been really focusing on keeping her weight behind the pitch. I think if you get her shoulders slightly more forward and work on getting out over her toes more, she will easily get her stride and glove back in line. This should allow all of the accelleration she is generating to increase her speed. I also think if you don't address, you are looking at possible shoulder issues down the road. She is putting a lot of undue stress on the shoulder joint, that will go away if she fixes the issue now.

 

[Six11 Hitting]

I don't do much video work with her so I learned a lot watching this video of her yesterday. I agree with most of what you said. I noticed the swim in her glove hand. I also feel like her weight is too far back. We have spent a lot of time on being explosive. I think that has transferred into her leaning back slightly. Those are the next two things we will be working on. She has NEVER complained about shoulder pain and she pitches a lot.

Thanks for the input.

 

[Ken B]

joemcq51,
I've watched the videos several times and I'm seeing her stride move on a pretty straight line. She looks very balanced after release, especially in the more recent clip. I'm not clear on the issue that will lead to shoulder issues. Can you reference a time mark on the videos to help isolate the issue?

For the glove hand issue, have her think about driving the backs of both hands, along with the stride toe, hard towards the catcher. (Currently, her glove hand isn't assisting in the forward drive and her ball hand is driving forward, but ball first/palm forward.) If she can feel how her hands/stride foot driving hard to the catcher help pull her body forward, she can understand why practicing this will help her. It will eliminate the glove swim, which is only a symptom of not understanding/feeling the effect.

 

[Ken B]

Will this spammer ever give up?


(Whoa! The mods deleted the post/poster I was commenting about. Same person that creates a new profile every week and tries to sneak in some spam...)

 

[Carly]

She is swimming with her glove hand, as joemcq51 mentioned. She can work on reaching out with her hands together here:

Where they are isn't necessarily a problem if the glove ends up maintaining a good track, but since she has trouble with it, she should work on keeping her hands together and then keeping the glove pointed forward until it drops. Working with her glove side up against a wall is a great way to fix this.

Does she throw high a lot? She does have an arch in her back, and it's causing her throwing shoulder to be much lower than her glove shoulder at release:

She then corrects that during delivery, moving her whole body from low to high as the ball is being thrown.

I don't think it's a weight placement issue; her leg work is really good, and if her weight were misplaced you'd see the effects in her stride and drive more. I think she's just arching her upper back. That can actually be trickier to work on... I've had students with the same problem and most of them can't feel that they're even doing it. But working on that is where I'd start. I was going to say her arm whip could improve a bit when I watched it at full speed, but after breaking it down to snap the pics I'm thinking the arched back and dipped shoulder are just holding her back a little.

 

[CoachFP]

She is leaning way too far back. She doesn't get a good "sprinters" type of push. I have to disagree that she is doing very well. I'll bet she can't throw very well down in the strike zone because of her grossly exaggerated lean and I am sure she could throw harder with a better push off the mound instead of leaning back.