Hi. About 6 months ago my daughter broke her scaphoid bone in her throwing hand in a non related softball accident. She was in a cast for about 10 weeks and of course wasnt able to pitch. During this time we both studied the IR threads, BI, etc and we both decided to go all in. My dd is 13y/o and has previously pitched for 4 plus years so every now and then an ugly HE mechanic/close door will creep in. But overall it was a smooth transformation. Not much speed increase has been noticed since the change(47-50) but im confident that will come. Main problem I see as a bucket dad is that on about every 1/5 pitches it seems to me that her throwing shoulder rotates towards the plate early and the ball has a funky spin with low velocity and no control with a slight lean to her body. Looks from the naked eye that the ball comes out of the side of her hand and the back of her hand/elbow points towards 3rd base. When she is pitching well and her body remains stable, she looks great other than around half her pitches are on the inside black of the plate and further in. Very rarely does she pitch outside half of the plate? Not sure if thats related somehow to the premature shoulder rotation that creeps in occasionally?Anyway, has any other bucket dads or coaches experienced this with there sudents or DD's and if so any advice on correcting this issue? thanks
IR... 6 months in
- Thread starter ChrisB
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Sounds like she is occasionally over-rotating her shoulders, which is not uncommon from my experience. There is a post on here in one of the threads where Rick Pauly states that even a slight over rotation of the shoulders can gets the mechanics out of whack. I know what you are describing which is the arm sorta being slung around the body on account of the shoulders over-rotating. I've worked hard with my pitchers to set the shoulder angle (see Rick's 4 points of resistance thread) and then pull together to get the hip angle to align with the shoulders by pulling the drive foot knee toward the catcher. I've also been doing some clicker training with my pitchers where I focus on the shoulder angle and whether they maintain the shoulder resistance through release. If they do it correctly they get a click. Just my quick thoughts though I'm no expert.
Just located the post from Mr. Pauly as it pertains to the 4 points. Very informative and a lot of good information. I will continue to study that. Can you explain clicker training? Sounds like a resource that i could use to help keep the shoulder back until after the release takes place. just have no idea what it is. Thanks
Greenmonsters
Wannabe Duck Boat Owner
Greenmonsters is correct, it is basically "dog clicker training." But, I've seen it endorsed by Rick Pauly and Javasource, so I've been using it. Rick has a good video outlining clicker training for softball on his website which can be downloaded for a few bucks. Keep it to one specific objective, i.e., shoulder rotation, etc. not a variety of things.
