Fixing sprinters posture using the foot hyperarch mechanic

[jryan15]

So is this the move you're talking about?

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

That is exactly what the move looks like and this is a great visual to refer to. However that is not how the movement is implemented at the high level. At the high level, that movement pattern is a "result" of other actions and not something that you can just do. That movement is very dynamic.

- For a glute athlete who isn't doing it, the root cause of the problem is likely rooted in preceding steps of the drive process or it's from active shoulder rotation into release or from intentionally getting too sideways as part of the drive, etc, etc... For a glute athlete, fixing this missing part of their motion should be resolved at its root...

The drill could be very good for a true glute driven athlete who does not understand how to stay back and resist turning forward or how their back muscles should be recruited when pulling the ball around the circle.


- For a quad. dom. athlete, the root cause is a deep underlying problem. Manually doing the stick move might bring awareness to the issue, but it likely does not have the ability to resolve the issue. Fixing the problem requires a lot of non-pitching work to resolve the underlying quad. dom. issue.

For a quad dom. athlete, the first goal in fixing their mechanics should be transitioning from the girl on the right to the girl on the left. The movement doesn't need to be same (deep waste bend vs shallow waste bend), but the hips should be the PRIMARY explosive element for propelling their bodies forward (NOT their legs/feet pushing into the ground).

 

[ArmWhip]

I'm still struggling with the 3 o'clock position at detach being a cause. What if it's like the needle on a speedometer? 3 o'clock for 60+ mph, 2 o'clock for 50+ mph etc? It would be interesting to take a pitcher with 2 or 1 o'clock position at detach, have her practice a little with an 11in ball or maybe even a 10in ball. See if her velocity goes up, which it should because she is throwing a ball with less mass. If her velocity goes up then videotape her and see if her ball position at detach has changed.

 

[jryan15]

Detachment at 3 o'clock is primarily useful as an indicator of current strength/mechanics. A really strong quad dominant kid might be able to be off the rubber by 3 o'clock, but that kid will still hit a progress wall at some point because of the inherent flaws in a quad based drive mechanic. If you're a re-planter, you might be able to separate way before 3 o'clock .

My goal in helping everyone in this community is to help them see the pitfalls of quad dominance. It is a terrible inhibitor to athletics. Detachment at 3 o'clock is an excellent old school checkpoint to give you a quick assessment.... Off by 3 o'clock, probably doing ok. Not off by 3 o'clock, probably have some issues that need a higher level of focus...

IMO the key to being a successful pitcher, is to develop a thrust based, glute/hip driven drive mechanic. You can be successful without, but your upside is limited.

When you have a glute driven drive, all of those strength and conditioning efforts should be fully realized in your pitching progress. When you have a quad based drive, you only get marginal improvements from those same workouts. This is because those workouts are not very effective for quad dom. kids... Which is why those kids don't get bigger, stronger, faster as fast as the "athletic" glute driven kids.

Again IMO, the single biggest thing that a pitcher can do to go from mid 50's to 60's is to develop and continue to improve upon a glute drive drive mechanic. That's the real difference between 9th grade, 12th grade, and college pitchers... Their arm speeds max'd out at 14u... Their pitching speed increases are primarily the result of strengthening their posterior drive chain.

 

[BigSkyHi]

Hi all,

I wanted to start a topic to discuss sprinting posture improvements without actually working on sprinting posture... This relates to pitching in that we expect to see sprinting like motions within a pitchers drive mechanic. I've said for a while now, how can my DD have sprinting posture when pitching if her sprinting posture is bad to begin with???

I started discussing the foot hyperarch mechanism by Chong Xie in a couple other threads (1 and 2), but it wasn't really the right place to introduce the topic.

Background

A while ago, I discovered a late push pattern in DD's drive mechanic. The late push pattern is a pattern in-which her drive leg delays applying force to the rubber until well after her hips get out front of the rubber. This is a result of using the quads instead of the glutes to drive. The delayed push is not only slow, but it forces her foot to stay on the rubber for an extra long period of time. Staying on the rubber that long then makes it very difficult to acheive a key pitching checkpoint, drive foot separation from the rubber at or before the arms reach 3 o'clock.

Here is a visual of poor rear hip extension due to the late push pattern (hip does not extend, rear leg extension is late, using legs for forward motion instead of glutes):

This discovery has taken us on a long journey into the world of glute activation (glute activation thread, model pitcher database). We spent several months working with glute strength experts to strengthen DD's glutes and made great improvements in strength. However there was minimal improvement in running or pitching mechanics.

Through the help and guidance of the good Lord, the search for a solution continued. I came across Chong Xie's research on foot hyperarch (HA). After doing a lot of research on him and the mechanic, we took the plunge and began working with his mechanics. We are only 7 weeks into the process and are starting to see great results that I wanted to share. It will take some time for this to roll into pitching and sprinting mechanics, but I am confident in the next few months, we will see it.

The underlying basis of his research is that people's feet have both a relaxed and active state. In the active state, peoples glutes fire automatically based upon nerve sensations in the foot. The active state isn't well suited for daily walking and activities so the foot goes into a relaxed state in which the glutes are not active. Unfortunately in today's world of comfortable shoes, paved sidewalks, and general comfort some people learn to do athletic movements with their feet stuck in the relaxed state....

With this in mind we learned the HA mechanic and began working on exercises to strengthen the feet. I am very happy to show the results thus far.


Results

Here is an overlay of her running with and without the mechanic <link>.... There is an obvious difference.

[video]

What might be less obvious is that she is running with about the same cadence. This means she has become faster without even changing her running turn over rate <link>.

[video]


This jpeg shows the difference in distance between the two after 20 steps.

This jpeg shows the improvement in running form, and I can't stress this enough. We did absolutely zero work on running form improvement.

While her feet aren't strong enough to do this when sprinting or in her drive mechanic, I have high hopes that soon the changes will creep in.


Conclusion

With all this, I say to you. If your pitcher is not making progress in her drive mechanic or maybe she is heavy footed or slow, consider that maybe she has an underlying problem that is bigger than pitching. She might generally be "quad dominant" and her glutes might not be activating correctly.

Look into Chong Xie's research. It could be rewarding even beyond pitching improvements.

Chong Xie's instagram site

The Secret of Athletecism Please manually fix the link!!! The site is HTTP not https!!!

The Secret of Athletecism Please manually fix the link!!! The site is HTTP not https!!!

For some reason the link keeps adding an (s)...

Index
How to assess quad dominance? Originally discussed in this thread (link).

How to do HA and see it's working
How to train HA

The late push pattern description
The late push pattern graphic
Digging in using toes vs. pushing from ball of foot
Example of locked ankle vs not
Two ways to propel forward (good vs. bad)
Graphic of two different sprinting mechanics
Key pitching checkpoints
Unexpected symptoms of a poor drive mechanic

How the glute issue affects a hitter

Most amazing. Thanks.

 

[hummingbird]

Really glad I found this thread. I have been wondering forever why my DD can never be in the h position by 3 o clock. She's basically at 12 o clock by the time her foot comes off the plate.
I also see in her videos now that she is definitely not thrusting, by comparing it to the gifs the OP posted many times.
Very useful and this couldn't have come at a better time because she is really starting to fall behind other pitchers in her age group when it comes to velocity. Her form and mechanics all looked fine but couldn't understand why her velocity wasn't increasing. Now I see why.

 

[Tatonka]

Really glad I found this thread. I have been wondering forever why my DD can never be in the h position by 3 o clock. She's basically at 12 o clock by the time her foot comes off the plate.
I also see in her videos now that she is definitely not thrusting, by comparing it to the gifs the OP posted many times.
Very useful and this couldn't have come at a better time because she is really starting to fall behind other pitchers in her age group when it comes to velocity. Her form and mechanics all looked fine but couldn't understand why her velocity wasn't increasing. Now I see why.

Seeing it is one thing, finding a way to fix it is another.... Getting DD to employ and utilize the hip thrust and power from the glutes is often not easy. Ideas, drills and positive cues anyone?

 

[hummingbird]

Seeing it is one thing, finding a way to fix it is another.... Getting DD to employ and utilize the hip thrust and power from the glutes is often not easy. Ideas, drills and positive cues anyone?

Yeah I know exactly what you mean. I tried showing my DD this thread just now and she was like.. what? lol..

I really could use some drills on this. Also, I'm assuming doing some sort of glute specific exercises would help.

 

[BigSkyHi]

Chong Xie and others have some youtube out there. This one got me interest in learning more.

 

[texasheat]

IMO the key to being a successful pitcher, is to develop a thrust based, glute/hip driven drive mechanic. You can be successful without, but your upside is limited.

There are a lot of step style pitchers who pitch/pitched at the D1 level. Here's one at Baylor.

Baylor Pitcher Step Style?

With Canion out, I think I found the elusive step style in Baylor pitcher Liz Paul. Hard to tell on the streaming video? Anyone see her? What do you think? Watch Live Sports Events and ESPN Programs Online and on Mobile Applications - WatchESPN

www.discussfastpitch.com

 

[Gtrips07]

Detachment at 3 o'clock is primarily useful as an indicator of current strength/mechanics. A really strong quad dominant kid might be able to be off the rubber by 3 o'clock, but that kid will still hit a progress wall at some point because of the inherent flaws in a quad based drive mechanic. If you're a re-planter, you might be able to separate way before 3 o'clock .

My goal in helping everyone in this community is to help them see the pitfalls of quad dominance. It is a terrible inhibitor to athletics. Detachment at 3 o'clock is an excellent old school checkpoint to give you a quick assessment.... Off by 3 o'clock, probably doing ok. Not off by 3 o'clock, probably have some issues that need a higher level of focus...

IMO the key to being a successful pitcher, is to develop a thrust based, glute/hip driven drive mechanic. You can be successful without, but your upside is limited.

When you have a glute driven drive, all of those strength and conditioning efforts should be fully realized in your pitching progress. When you have a quad based drive, you only get marginal improvements from those same workouts. This is because those workouts are not very effective for quad dom. kids... Which is why those kids don't get bigger, stronger, faster as fast as the "athletic" glute driven kids.

Again IMO, the single biggest thing that a pitcher can do to go from mid 50's to 60's is to develop and continue to improve upon a glute drive drive mechanic. That's the real difference between 9th grade, 12th grade, and college pitchers... Their arm speeds max'd out at 14u... Their pitching speed increases are primarily the result of strengthening their posterior drive chain.

Wondering why you say arm speed maxes out at 14u and the rest from drive mechanics? Doesn't Rick Pauly say only 3-4 mph come from drive? (Or another way 95% from arm and brush combo)

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