Tips, Tricks, or Drills for Increasing Arm Whip

[Traps71]

I was wondering if any of the more experienced pitchers or pitching coaches out there have any “go to” drills or cues or tricks or incantations or magic potions to increase and hold the bend in the pitching arm as it goes around the circle. My 14U DD has pretty good IR mechanics, but probably her number one issue is her arm mostly straightening out as she come over the top and down the backside of the circle. She is showing the ball to the catcher at 12 o’clock and there is some bend, but not enough. By 11 o’clock her hand is oriented toward third base. By 9 o’clock her arm is pretty straight. She gets brush, but there is just not much whip left in that arm. It’s definitely costing her speed.

We do arm whip progressions into a tarp where we focus on exaggerating the bend and holding it. With a standard ball. Without a ball. With a wiffle ball, etc. This all seems to go well...until we are actually pitching. We’ll keep doing these in the hopes that it will at some point click in. But is there something else that has worked for you that you think might help us?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

[heman1202]

Maybe I am reading this wrong but her palm/ball should not be facing third base until closer to release (think pinky leading to release). At the 9 o clock position she should be palm/ball to the sky. This change alone should help create more arm whip.

 

[Ken B]

This was discussed in a recent offsite conversation and some great ideas were shared. Hopefully someone took notes? @coach james @Man10 @Ken Krause @Rick Pauly

 

[BT3100]

Took DD forever to get loose and whippy.
Some of it was untraining her from the days of aiming the ball to throw strikes in 10u.
You can see it sometimes even now at 17. She will aim a pitch and her velocity drops.
When she is loose and leading with the pinky the ball explodes out from her hand, almost like magic. Part of it is confidence part training.
I swear the coaches at 10u can cause more harm then anyone can imagine.

 

[Ken Krause]

One of the things I use is to have the pitcher focus on making sure the ball is moving forward with her (relative to the ground) instead of it going backwards as she is moving forward.

Rick Pauly has a drill where the pitcher starts with her arms at 3:00 from the 45 degree position. Then she starts to lift her arms and focuses on bending her elbow by 2:00. She then has to maintain it down the back side of the circle.

The key is if the arm straightens out at the top of the circle the momentum will carry it out and back and she will loose the elbow bend. That often happens if she is thinking about throwing the ball. Instead, have her focus on taking her upper arm up to the top then pulling it down the back side of the circle. That should help maintain the bend and get into the whip.