Fixing sprinters posture using the foot hyperarch mechanic

[jryan15]

I'm still trying to understand it and organize the information in my brain. But my take right now is that I think it could be a tool to get kids to a better drive off of their toe and feel more bounce than push. Drive mechanics talk about the ankle being a rigid level but I think this HA goes into further detail on how to make that happen. Some kids after doing 2 step, putting them in sprinter poses, creating better overlap, were still having trouble getting that "push" to transfer all the weight into the front leg on stride and the drive foot would stick or drag heavy. I was thinking it was a lack of core strength or muscle deficiencies. I was working with a national team (non US) player once who threw 67 but lacked control. She had a very strong core and everything else and she was very explosive but her drag foot ankle was on the ground IMO causing the lack of control. We worked on her just trying to transfer more weight to her front leg and it helped. She had excellent sprinter poses, overlap, all that mentioned in the drive mechanics but something wasn't connecting. She also had really bad ankles (sprains ect.). I think that even though she was strong she wasn't activating the right muscles on the drive. I'm going to go back to my videos of her and see if I see anything.

One thing thing Chong talks about in regards to basketball is that you don't need knee bend. So this confuses me with the sprinter poses in pitching and sprinters. My thought is pitchers and sprinters need it in the beginning to catapult them forward. Where as a jump shot is up and down. Sprinter pose gets you the angle then extend the hips HA gets you the bounce off of your drive toe. Thoughts?

A couple things to keep in mind. If you are quad dominant, you can't really "lock your ankle" and push off. Quad dominant means your glutes won't fire and without a push off via quads and via ankle plantarflextion, your not going to get far off the mound. It really comes down to the fact that a locked ankle is a result of an active foot, it is not something that you can just do. A strong athlete with no glute issues will just naturally have a mechanically locked ankle during the push off phase. If you were manually locking your ankle via shin muscles and then your glutes fired with full force, your shin muscle would collapse. The rigid locked ankle is a resulting action that happens naturally when you have a good active posterior drive chain.

Another thing that is true but very hard to conceptualize is that quad dom vs glute dom people have slightly different centers of gravity. A quad dominant person will tend to have a posture with slightly forward bent upper torso. This will put the COG further out than for a glute dominant person. As a result, a quad dominant person just can't hardly achieve a good forward tilt posture. They will get close and will fall on their face if they try and go just a little bit more. I know it's weird, but we've experienced the difference.

Regarding knee bend. When a quad dom person gets down and ready in the infield, they tend to have knee bend with an upright posture. When a glute dom person does the same, they too have knee bend, but also hip hinge. The knee bend during hip hinge is very different than knee bending with an upright posture. I know that is strange and I wish I had the full anatomical knowledge to explain why, but I can only explain what I feel. When a quad dom person changes levels via bending knees, the knee bend is supported via quads. When a glute dom person changes levels, they do it via hip hinge, but as they hip hinge, the knees naturally bend in a way that is not as noticeable in the quads... Somehow the glutes still carry the load. I do think that there are some mechanical linkages that are affected differently between the two, but I have no anatomy knowledge or data to support this.

Sorry for the wordy posts, but I hope that it helps .

 

[jryan15]

Okay so I've had another day of trying to understand and trying to get a couple of kids to feel it and trying to feel it myself (no real breakthroughs). In essence there's plantar flexion(PF)and dorsiflexion. PF is where your toes and foot point downward and dorsiflex is where toes and foot point to the shin. Chong's theory I think wants you to curl (point) the toes downward (toward heel) but foot upward, creating locked ankled (rigid lever) when jumping/running so you are bouncing off of the ball of the foot.

The next question is how to get kids to feel it. I think Rick Pauley's Sprinter Drive Drill is good. I also do a drill where I have the kid facing the catcher standing on the drive leg and she takes 2 hops staying on the ball of her foot on the drive leg before she jumps out to pitch. The key is for them not to hesitate between hops and pitching if they do they are not staying "locked" on the ankle and bouncing off the ball of the foot.

Quad dom is like a disease... The first step is to see if you have it or not. If your glutes work, keep doing regular strength and conditioning workouts, pitching drills, etc, business as usual and your athlete will continue to build glute strength and get more poppy off the rubber. You can add in some foot strengthening exercises to enhance things along with foot awareness during workouts to get a little more pop out of each rep which could offer faster strength gains...

If your glutes don't work, address it right away as it will never heal itself. De-emphasize regular workouts and get some heavy foot training going. Research exercises to strengthen windlass mechanic. Move onto HA squats, etc. Feel the difference, turn it on and off. Now go back to regular training and work very hard to always activate the feet. Be aware of what it feels like when the quads/shins are doing the explosive work to know if you are reverting.

Regular workouts for quad dom. people are exceedingly inefficient which means A'-athletes will continue to surpass B'-athletes doing the same workouts (not to be confused with A-B team/skill level which is different).

 

[Rosey]

I get what you are saying and I agree. I definitely think there are people who do it naturally and people who don't And I think you mentioned before if caught early on it can be easier to train. It's nearly impossible to train with success as they get older because it's almost trying to fix your walking habits if you're pigeon toed. You'd have to focus on it all of the time which is probably not reasonable unless someone took off for a whole year to train and wasn't put into game situations. I'm still going to keep trying to explain it to my athlete's to see if it goes anywhere. I can really recognize it in that hopping drill I mentioned earlier. Kids that are glute activated bounce right through. Others hesitate on the hop out to pitch and drop their heel a bit and/or don't lock the ankle.

The one thing I can get out (I mean there are many) but I think when it comes to recruiting, a coach who knows this can identify a player who has it or doesn't will have insight on whether the kid will make adjustments in college. When recruiting you look at a pitcher's potential and whether you can make some small changes that can make them better. Recognizing whether or not a player is quad or glute dominate can be key in knowing whether something like drive mechanics are fixable.

 

[jryan15]

I'm really glad to see your efforts on this issue. I think your drill for diagnosing the condition is a huge step forward as well! My skill set is more suited with identifying and isolating problems and solutions, but sadly, I'm not the best at fixing them ;-). It will surely take people with your skills and abilities to save thousands of kids from death by a thousand bench splinters...

You are right on the money about the recruiting angle, but technically it is already happening in that the elite programs pull the strongest physical athletes already. Though the coaches have no idea about the glute/quad issue, it is really apparent in about every speed or explosiveness drill they run. It is common for high level programs to sacrifice playing skills for athleticism knowing full well they have a better chance to teach a fast kid to drop step than to teach an average kid to be faster. A bigger heavyset girl who is quick for her size and has an explosive first step/dive (due to glutes) plus a good bat will work out well on a corner of any elite team.

From what I see, the primary age filter for glute/quad athletes is around 14u. In 10/12u the glute kids find their way into stronger programs while those left behind will continue working hard try and catch them, but it's not until around 14u that the separation gets really apparent and by 16u practically insurmountable. In my area, it's rare to see a quad dominant pitcher to work into a #1 pitching spot in HS.

FWIW it's pretty easy to spot quad dominant pitchers as they almost all are forced to end up butt-out as they stride. Thrust of the middle is the sign of a glute dominant pitcher and that can also be seen fairly easily.

 

[aaronbritton]

Good stuff j.
Have you studied Abbott's drive/push pattern.....she gets just about the most significant brush interference of any pitchers I've video'd......and her offset timing is amazing which IMO is one of the keys to her speed.
I've been doing a drill I call "Quick Sprinters Split Jump Drive"....it does basically what you are describing. I've seen some nice speed improvements with kids who are diligent in performing the drill in their practices.

I know this is kind of off topic of this thread but since I found this in here can Rick or anybody else explain what "offset timing" is?

 

[Rosey]

I believe Rick uses the term offset timing and Java uses the term Overlap. When the arms are moving back in the backswing and body (hip thrust) is moving forward. Body parts moving in opposite directions.

 

[aaronbritton]

Great thanks!

 

[jryan15]

I believe Rick uses the term offset timing and Java uses the term Overlap. When the arms are moving back in the backswing and body (hip thrust) is moving forward. Body parts moving in opposite directions.

This is also my interpretation of what they mean.
.
.
.
.
I do have contrary thoughts on overlap though. Not to put words in other's mouths, but there is an idea out there that overlapping negative and positive moves results in the desired overlap... I understand the process to be much more complicated otherwise all of our DD's would have excellent overlap when they throw overhand... But true overlap in the overhand throw is more the exception than the rule...

Here are examples of overlap and discussions that I've had in other posts...

link 1
link 2
link 3

In my opinion, the true overlap that we desire is when the hips are rotating forward while upper torso elements are still going backwards... When this works, it results in a huge amount of stretch that turns into various forms of whip in pitching, throwing, or hitting.

From my research, overlap is not simply as a resultant action of overlapping negative and forward moves. If you are a glutes dominant person, it could happen, but only when you have a degree of hip coiling (could be top down generated) and you are doing a rearward upper torso move that is recruiting the back in a way that causes the pelvis to tilt which then converts the coiled hip into a rotational movement. If you are quad dominant, you generally will not get the desired overlapping movement...

The reason being because a quad dominant person does not have a responsive glute muscle and it is the glute muscle working in conjunction with hip coil that converts hip coil into rotational movement that is centered around the rear hip. That was a mouthful... In short, even if a quad dom. person can coil and do a rearward upper torso move, most likely they will not trigger an early glute response and therefore will not get the desired overlap...

A quad dom. person can get overlap, but it requires very focused efforts to force the pelvis to tilt rearward. Even this is flawed because the overlap is then created more from the lower back grinding into hip extension than from the glutes exploding the hip into extension. If the quad dominant person is actively engaging the glutes while tilting the pelvis, it can work (like in hitting), but I struggle to find a way for pitchers to do this in their drive mechanic...

 

[aaronbritton]

This is also my interpretation of what they mean.
.
.
.
.
I do have contrary thoughts on overlap though. Not to put words in other's mouths, but there is an idea out there that overlapping negative and positive moves results in the desired overlap... I understand the process to be much more complicated otherwise all of our DD's would have excellent overlap when they throw overhand... But true overlap in the overhand throw is more the exception than the rule...

Here are examples of overlap and discussions that I've had in other posts...

link 1
link 2
link 3

In my opinion, the true overlap that we desire is when the hips are rotating forward while upper torso elements are still going backwards... When this works, it results in a huge amount of stretch that turns into various forms of whip in pitching, throwing, or hitting.

From my research, overlap is not simply as a resultant action of overlapping negative and forward moves. If you are a glutes dominant person, it could happen, but only when you have a degree of hip coiling (could be top down generated) and you are doing a rearward upper torso move that is recruiting the back in a way that causes the pelvis to tilt which then converts the coiled hip into a rotational movement. If you are quad dominant, you generally will not get the desired overlapping movement...

The reason being because a quad dominant person does not have a responsive glute muscle and it is the glute muscle working in conjunction with hip coil that converts hip coil into rotational movement that is centered around the rear hip. That was a mouthful... In short, even if a quad dom. person can coil and do a rearward upper torso move, most likely they will not trigger an early glute response and therefore will not get the desired overlap...

A quad dom. person can get overlap, but it requires very focused efforts to force the pelvis to tilt rearward. Even this is flawed because the overlap is then created more from the lower back grinding into hip extension than from the glutes exploding the hip into extension. If the quad dominant person is actively engaging the glutes while tilting the pelvis, it can work (like in hitting), but I struggle to find a way for pitchers to do this in their drive mechanic...

So is this the move you're talking about?

https://twitter.com/jjpower19/status/1072563138371948545/video/1

 

[ArmWhip]

Interesting thread but the whole thing seems very mysterious. One thing I see missing from the discussion is injuries to the knee area from heavy quad activation. I have a student with Osgood-Schlatters disease, it has lasted a full year even with a very quiet off season. And patella tendinitis has been showing up in some of her teammates.