Help with wrist snaps

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Mar 25, 2009
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My 10 yo is having a problem with her wrist snap. She is snapping her hand to the side.She practices wrist snaps in the open position and at times her fingers after the snap is almost pointing to her thigh. The ball is coming out between index finger and thumb on occasion. Does anyone have any tips for helping her to correct this? Thanks
 
Jul 14, 2008
1,800
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My 10 yo is having a problem with her wrist snap. She is snapping her hand to the side.She practices wrist snaps in the open position and at times her fingers after the snap is almost pointing to her thigh. The ball is coming out between index finger and thumb on occasion. Does anyone have any tips for helping her to correct this? Thanks

Does it look anything like these? If so, you may want to rethink "fixing it".....

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Internal rotation of the forearm IS the snap.......
 
Aug 21, 2008
2,359
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SBFamily, you're 1/2 right. I believe too much emphasis is put on the wrist which eliminates the Elbow snap. If the elbow is trained to SNAP (as it does for an overhand pitcher) then the wrist will also snap. However, in training the wrist only... pitchers often neglect the elbow and they lose SOOOO much power.

The first video clip of boardmember's shows a great elbow lead, which is great. however, both the first and last video clip also show the pitcher releasing at the side of her body, not in front of it. This means the ball is going AROUND the hips, not through them which will make backspin on a riseball impossible. The Ueno video is strange and I have to believe the context and intent of the video is showing how loose her arm is through the pitch. The added movements at the end show more of an exaggeration to me than an actual motion. That clip shown above is actually cut short of a longer clip where her arm does this goofy follow through. It's my opinion that this was part of an instructional video or something because what she does after throwing the ball is not natural and I don't think she actually does that in a game.

Bill
 
Feb 17, 2009
37
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Elbow Snap

Hey Bill, How do you train or teach in order to get the elbow to snap? We have your dvd, maybe we need to watch it again. I know you said on your drop that you release it further back than your fastball, how do I help my DD with the drop? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
My 10 yo is having a problem with her wrist snap. She is snapping her hand to the side.She practices wrist snaps in the open position and at times her fingers after the snap is almost pointing to her thigh. The ball is coming out between index finger and thumb on occasion. Does anyone have any tips for helping her to correct this? Thanks

This is a bit of a broken record but here goes again.
I've run this experiment numerous times and find the results to be relatively consistent:
Measure the fastball speed of your pitcher---let's say it is 60 MPH. Then put a bowlers glove on her pitching hand (the bowlers glove locks the wrist so it can't snap) and now measure her speed again. Typically the speed will be within 2 MPH of her previous speed. In some cases I've seen it match.
My simple conclusion is that the wrist adds very little to speed-------the fingers are a much greater influence on speed.
Note that when viewing most pitchers doing wrist snap drills it doesn't match what actually happens in the real pitching motion. With a full motion pitch the wrist slices into the release zone and then rotates (pronates) such that the palm is facing the catcher at release. Wrist snap drills typically have the palm facing the catcher throughout the total drill......not a good reinforcement of what you really want the wrist to do.
The video of Ueno's arm/wrist action is what I see in almost all elite level pitchers-----they tend to let the fingers do the work and let the arm/wrist flow into its natural follow thru motion. It is a very common flaw to force some kind of preconcieved follow thru path. The action of the fingers/wrist should dictate what happens in the follow through.
 

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