Toni Paisley & Esia FootDoctor team up

[Laphoneman]

Im not sure how important this is.

Lets use Rachel Garcia as an example, she turns her foot a little bit.



Would turning her drive foot less make her more better than changing her rise ball spin from bullet to 11-4? I think that is an easy answer. Spin axis all day.

Edit: I think posterior chain is imperative. But s little foot turn is not the end of the world.

dd is in beginning stages of total forward drive without ankle collapse meaning we are still working drills. I don’t know if she will achieve it at full speed pitch but I do believe it is going to affect her spin rotation hopefully farther away from bullet spin.
she was in a rut for speed so we are just trying something different with lower half.
the reason I am trying this change is because Toni (professional pitcher) said she wish she would have known this when she was younger because it would have made her better.
So I’m on here asking people I trust for their opinions. I will give feedback on dd progress or failure to help others steer toward or away from this teaching.

as far as the video I had never seen it before but I am glad to know even Rachel can’t throw a perfect 6/12 riseball And even she has room for improvement because she is one of the best pitchers in the game.

 

[Laphoneman]

My daughter's pitching coach is a big fan of the foot doctor, she doesn't make it too technical in lesson though. I find a lot of what he says to be confusing, and not sure how exactly to translate to my daughter. I do like the idea of working with your body and hopefully less injury due to proper mechanics.

listening to Esia definitely requires a translation to get information to dd. However he makes me realize “the more you know the more you know you don’t know “

 

[Laphoneman]

Just so we're on the same page. A) I'm not a pitching instructor although years ago DD wanted to pitch from 11YO to 2nd year 14 and Hillhouse was her PC. We saw him every week for an hour. I am a Throwing/Hitting/Catching instructor as well as a 18 year veteran TB coach. I have studied the Kinesiology behind those motions so B) I understand Instructors studying and learning the Kinesiology aspect of the motion. C) However, some instructors don't want to study this kind of stuff and don't feel the need. That doesn't mean that they don't know what they're doing. Before Kinesiology even became a discipline, great pitching instructors were churning out top D1 pitchers. I seriously doubt you'd say that James, Pauly, Hillhouse, Java, etc. etc. don't know what they're doing because they possibly haven't studied this stuff.

Go to the Hitting technical Forum. Some of the threads over there are so technical, you need a college level anatomy textbook, a dictionary, a kinesiology textbook and 4 hours to understand just one post in a thread that's 127 posts long.

Everything I know about pitching came from either Hillhouse or this site; watching, reading and digesting what I saw and read. Many parents come to this site for the same thing, advice and instruction. The average bucket mom/dad doesn't need to know this stuff and there's no way an average bucket mom/dad is going to go through all of the above to understand it. I suggest we don't turn the pitching forum into that type of forum. To carry on the car analogy, when the car isn't running right, it goes to a knowledgeable mechanic. When DD"s not pitching right, take her to a knowledgeable PC with a proven track record of producing multiple College Pitchers.

ETA: Just a piece of advice...You might want to watch who you poke at...especially when someone like myself has been on here for 10 plus years and has a habit of outright flaming posters that catch us on a bad day.

If you’re satisfied with what you know that’s great. I choose to keep learning. That’s why I started this post. I was not trying to poke at you I’m here just trying to learn. I apologize if I offended you.

 

[mel77]

dd is in beginning stages of total forward drive without ankle collapse meaning we are still working drills. I don’t know if she will achieve it at full speed pitch but I do believe it is going to affect her spin rotation hopefully farther away from bullet spin.
she was in a rut for speed so we are just trying something different with lower half.
the reason I am trying this change is because Toni (professional pitcher) said she wish she would have known this when she was younger because it would have made her better.
So I’m on here asking people I trust for their opinions. I will give feedback on dd progress or failure to help others steer toward or away from this teaching.

as far as the video I had never seen it before but I am glad to know even Rachel can’t throw a perfect 6/12 riseball And even she has room for improvement because she is one of the best pitchers in the game.

What do you mean by ankle collapse, are you talking about rocking back before driving? I ask because it was pointed out that my daughter needs more ankle stiffness which I am not sure how to achieve yet.....

 

[Laphoneman]

What do you mean by ankle collapse, are you talking about rocking back before driving? I ask because it was pointed out that my daughter needs more ankle stiffness which I am not sure how to achieve yet.....

That is part of what they are teaching to keep the achilies short and not stretched out with stiff ankles, but ankle collapsing is when you video from behind and as soon as the drive foot starts the heel turns inward and sometimes leads the drag foot (toe pointing rearward). Apparently drive foot should drive over the toes Esia says pinky toe not big toe so the shoelaces are pointing to catcher or down to ground and the heel stays straight and does not turn in.
supposedly this will force you to use your hamstring and glutes instead of the quads. The stretched achilies prohibits the hamstring from firing. This is what I’m understanding this is why I started asking questions of people more knowledgeable than I

 

[cnardone]

My dd got into the habit of turning her drive heel in (knee out) before push off. We are working on breaking that habit now. But, her spin has a direct correlation to her drive foot. She drives straight, she gets 11 to 5 (viewed as a catcher). She turns the heel and she still gets pitch and yaw, but closer to bullet than 11 to 5.

My guess is that in the case of Garcia, I am guessing the down stream effects of her turn are much smaller than that of your average 11yo

 

[Towny9]

My dd got into the habit of turning her drive heel in (knee out) before push off. We are working on breaking that habit now. But, her spin has a direct correlation to her drive foot. She drives straight, she gets 11 to 5 (viewed as a catcher). She turns the heel and she still gets pitch and yaw, but closer to bullet than 11 to 5.

My guess is that in the case of Garcia, I am guessing the down stream effects of her turn are much smaller than that of your average 11yo

Is your daughter physically weak in the lower half. Mine had this problem when she started and she is a fairly weak kid in her legs. I came across a video I would have to try and find again saying that the turning in of the foot is a strength and stability issue more so than a mechanical issue. It needs to be addressed physically and not mechanically. As my DD has gotten stronger the problem sorta fixed itself.

 

[ArmWhip]

I've spent some time going over the videos that have been posted and I have some questions about what is being taught. The drills/exercises are all aimed at having the foot and knee in line with the direction of drive. However when you look closely, in freeze frame, at how the pitchers actually pitch you see that most of them turn the heel in and the knee out when they launch. Which raises questions, the first of which is whether the foot/knee alignment at launch is an accurate indicator of strong gluteal activation. In baseball pitching the glutes are an important contributor to the stride, just like in softball. But in baseball the foot and knee are at a 90 degree angle to the direction of the stride, because the torso is also aligned at 90 degrees. So I'm thinking that softball pitchers that open the torso before launch will also turn the turn the heel in and knee out when they push off.

The second question involves the idea that the calf muscles should be activated to keep the heel off the ground or at a 90 degree angle to the shin at push off in order to activate the glutes. If the calf is stretched or relaxed the glutes will not fire. If this is so then why do sprinters use starting blocks, which support the heel and relieve pressure on the calf? This also means that when a pitcher digs a hole in front of the rubber so that the ball of her foot is lower than her heel she is inhibiting gluteal firing. I've also seen studies which link tight calf muscles to under performing glutes, if this is so then wouldn't the reverse be true, if the calves were relaxed wouldn't the glutes have to pick up the load? I would like to see some myographical studies that show the relationship between calf and glute activation.

With all that said the pitchers in the videos all look pretty good.

 

[Laphoneman]

I've spent some time going over the videos that have been posted and I have some questions about what is being taught. The drills/exercises are all aimed at having the foot and knee in line with the direction of drive. However when you look closely, in freeze frame, at how the pitchers actually pitch you see that most of them turn the heel in and the knee out when they launch. Which raises questions, the first of which is whether the foot/knee alignment at launch is an accurate indicator of strong gluteal activation. In baseball pitching the glutes are an important contributor to the stride, just like in softball. But in baseball the foot and knee are at a 90 degree angle to the direction of the stride, because the torso is also aligned at 90 degrees. So I'm thinking that softball pitchers that open the torso before launch will also turn the turn the heel in and knee out when they push off.

The second question involves the idea that the calf muscles should be activated to keep the heel off the ground or at a 90 degree angle to the shin at push off in order to activate the glutes. If the calf is stretched or relaxed the glutes will not fire. If this is so then why do sprinters use starting blocks, which support the heel and relieve pressure on the calf? This also means that when a pitcher digs a hole in front of the rubber so that the ball of her foot is lower than her heel she is inhibiting gluteal firing. I've also seen studies which link tight calf muscles to under performing glutes, if this is so then wouldn't the reverse be true, if the calves were relaxed wouldn't the glutes have to pick up the load? I would like to see some myographical studies that show the relationship between calf and glute activation.

With all that said the pitchers in the videos all look pretty good.

I didn’t see anything about relaxing the calf. I only heard them talking about stretching the achilies would disengage the hamstring.

 

[Tango]

Seems to me that all of his movements are trying to get optimal energy to push the pelvis forward. One point that I really like, if the heel of the drag foot goes out then it is following the hip. If the heel turns you inward your drag hip is behind the stride hip. Can this be taught as shoestrings down of course but pelvis is proximal as may help some more.