Second month vids and question

[MountainMan]

Hey all,
My DD is in the second month of the HE -> IR conversion. Progress has been made but of course there is still a long way to go. I'm linking a couple of vids from her throwing yesterday. It was 35 degrees and she was out there pitching in shorts. Gotta love the drive.
Anyway, the first vid is for feedback. Anything you might see that we need to focus on. The second vid shows a weird thing she goes back to all the time that drives me nuts. Right after the release of the ball, she will jerk her arm back. Has anyone seen this before or have any suggestions on getting rid of it?

Thanks in advance.

Vid 1 for feedback

Vid 2 with issue

 

[grcsftbll]

Yes! My daughter used to do the thing with jerking her arm back all the time. It's much better now but she still goes back to it sometimes. I talk about keeping her arm relaxed after release, and I've shown her a billion slowmo videos of famous pitchers and what their arms do after release. It seems to be catching on. I think Board Member's drills in the I/R thread have helped too. In those your arm is very relaxed in this nice easy underhand toss. We warm up with those every practice now and I think that's helped more than anything, probably retraining muscle memory.

 

[MountainMan]

Thanks grcsftbll. I have heard many problems discussed on here and all over the internet but I had not heard anyone mention that. Thought maybe it was unique to my DD. Appreciate the suggestion. We will try that out.

 

[coach james]

In addition to staying loose, an easy suggestion is to simply have her point to her target instantly after release with her index finger and obviously palm oriented downward.

 

[DNeeld]

Based on what I see, the "pull back" looks awkward, but shouldn't be a focus point. There are other issues that need addressing. I see the pull back largely caused by her walkthrough more than anything else.

Here is what I see, in order things happen in the video, not in order of importance:

1. She starts her forward drive late. She waits until she reaches the top of the backswing to start forward, which causes her to be slightly behind the ideal synchronization. Work on getting some overlap. This takes a lot of time and patience to develop.

2. Ball orientation. Essentially from 12:00 on, she has the ball orientated toward third. This is better than being behind the ball and pushing it, but she needs to work toward a more ball to the sky orientation. How long she can keep the ball to the sky, or load, will depend some on her individual flexibility, etc, but she can get more load (resistance) and thus more power than she is currently getting.

3. Her drag foot has the laces orientated toward third. Work on getting the laces up and forward, coming over the top of the drag toe rather than the side of the foot. This will help develop her hip snap. Also, she continues her weight moving forward, bringing the drive leg all the way through. Work on her holding the "pitcher's pose" after every pitch until the ball is returned to her. This will help develop the proper posture and technique.

4. Her glove hand is basically doing nothing. Work on her using symmetry in her movements. The body loves to move together. Get her orientating the glove hand with the palm up, then sucking both arms AND legs together. A good drill is to start in the K position. Have her bring the ball into the glove above her head, start a small step forward, then violently suck her arms into her body and her drive leg into her stride leg. One thing to watch for is her drive leg hitting her stride leg instep to instep. Ensure the stride foot lands at the proper orientation and the drive leg should drive straight into it with the laces pointed to the catcher. The drive leg knee should end just slightly in front of the stride leg knee.

Get some of those issues worked out and I'm betting you'll see that pull back disappear without ever having been addressed specifically.

All in all, she looks great and you can tell she's put in some good work. Keep it up, it is a marathon, not a sprint!

 

[MountainMan]

Thanks for the feedback DNeed! I'm going to have to do some studying on the timing of the forward drive. That is one thing I haven't touched on at all with her because in all honesty, I don't know much about it. I did notice the ball orientation after making screen shots of the four positions. You're right, the ball is pointing towards 3rd as opposed to the sky. Her drag foot has been a constant battle. You can see in the screen shots, she has it more towards home. These shots came from the first vid. Yes, the second vid the laces are towards 3rd. Having them pointed towards 3rd is more common for her than not. Ugh

The screen shots also showed me the heel touching down first on the stride foot (second image). She needs to get the ball of the foot down first, I believe.

 

[Perfect Circle]

Have her set and watch this for 7 min. over & over... Lookin Good :{))

 

[DNeeld]

Some checkpoints to look for on the forward drive:

1. It begins before the backswing reaches the top. This motion of the arms going back as the body goes forward is what is known as overlap. This usually takes some time to develop as it feels really, really funky when they first start doing it. They will feel like they aren't going to be able to complete their windmill in time and will usually start to cut the backswing short. Just reinforce that if the arms are behind the legs, the arms will catch up. But if the legs are behind the arms, the legs never catch up.

2. Look for her drive leg to detach from the rubber by the time her arm is at 3:00. As you can see in the first shot, her foot is still firmly on the rubber at 3:00 and is finally detached in the second shot with the ball at 12:00.

The drive mechanics sticky is gold and has all the information you need to get her drive set.

 

[JJsqueeze]

In a nutshell...

1) More powerful drive-She looks like she is still in more of a step mode.
2) Let her arm open up her body from about 1 o clock to 11 o clock...she never gets open in her motion and as a result loses all ability to use a strong adduction.
3) stronger front side resistance....she has very little at this point and is just bleeding power through her release.
4) brush interference.

I listed these in order from the beginning of the pitch too the end, but in fixing it I would work on 2-4 before tackling 1. I also agree that her glove side could contribute more by pulling in harder to mimic what her throwing arm is doing.

Her motion kind of looks like she never commits to just throwing the ball hard...seems like she approaches release tentatively, maybe because she is aiming too much?

Do you have any video of her K drill? Or walkthroughs? I'm curious how her arm motion looks when the drive is removed in the K and walkthroughs are great for freeing a pitcher up to just let it fly.

 

[MountainMan]

Thanks JJ!

So, I just took a vid of her doing a walkthrough during tonight's practice in our nasty garage. Please excuse the mess. Thanks for the feedback!

Walkthrough Vid