Transcription
Hi guys, welcome back! Today we're continuing our posture series, talking about all the common postural issues that we can see in the stages of the pitch that affect your speed and command.
Last week, we talked about the load and how that's really the one position where we don't want to be vertically stacked. We want that weight loaded forward. We don't want to sit down, we don't want to sit back; we want to load forward.
Today, we're going to be talking about the reach. The reach is the second stage of the pitch that happens as we push from the load into that root position.
So, what takes us from the load to the reach? After we've gotten to this position, we're going to make sure we have some heel drive back there with that back heel. That's going to push that front knee forward, past the front toe.
Then, we're going to focus on that stride leg knee—knee, I said, not foot—knee coming out and up. Once that knee gets to about here, we're going to push back really hard with that drive leg and extend the hips.
Hip extension, drive leg extension—your drive leg is the foot, the leg that's on the rubber. Okay, that's what we want to see. We want to get out into a nice square reach.
Now we've left the load position where we are not vertically stacked. Speaking for a fastball, every other stage of the pitch that we hit after the load, we need to be tall and vertically stacked.
The reach, power K, and the delivery—so now that we've left that load, we're going to push out into the reach, and we're gonna be really tall and sexy. Here's what we want to see: hip extension, drive leg pushback.
My hands are coming straight at the front side; everything is nice and tall and level. My head is on top of my shoulders, my shoulders on top of my hips, my knees are underneath my body.
A lot of the issues I'm going to talk about today, a lot of the postural issues, generally tend to stem from a poor load position. Because a poor load position makes it so you can't access the correct muscle groups to drive correctly off the rubber.
A lot of times, though, especially in younger pitchers or pitchers who have never done strength training, for example, you could have a good load position and still exhibit some of these issues. Because a lot of these things very much rely on muscular strength—glute strength, core strength, hip strength—to be able to do this.
If very young pitchers are lacking in that, we can see these issues as well. So the first one would be what I call stepping off the rubber instead of pushing and driving off the rubber.
What you'll tend to see is your pitcher will get into their load position, and then they'll kind of keep this back leg bent. Their hips will stay back, and they'll kind of come out like this.
Okay, so you see how I'm kind of just stepping out with my stride leg instead of really pushing back? My upper body is forward; I'm not in that tall stacked position.
Okay, this is going to greatly make you lose power behind the pitch because we're not truly pushing off the rubber. But it's also going to create a loss of command because when we land, when we get collapsed like this, very often what happens is we're not in a good position in power K.
We can end up bouncing up as we deliver, which can create lift. It creates poor timing with the release when you're snapping the pitch.
Okay, so that is the first big one—kind of like continuing to scrunch when you go. So I'm gonna load to the reach; I want you to think extension. Everything extends—the hips, the drive leg—everything is going to extend so that you get taller.
But a lot of times, what these very young pitchers do, because they don't have that strength yet, is they continue to collapse. So they're here, and they'll actually get more bent as they try to come out, and that creates a lot of big postural issues that throw off the remaining stages of the pitch.
I really like to have my young pitchers take the ball out of their hands and really just practice like a glide. Feel the extension of the hips; feel the extension of the stride leg—the drive leg, excuse me—so that they're feeling a true push back and a glide, as opposed to just getting smaller and smaller and kind of just stepping off the rubber, where they're then in that forward scrunch position.
When you push off the rubber and we get vertically stacked, I want you to think about how tall your pitcher is. It doesn't matter if she's 16 feet or 5 feet tall; she could be 4, 4 and a half feet tall.
But when you push off the rubber, again, every remaining stage after that, we are tall and stacked. So when your pitcher pushes off the rubber, she should be her height.
Okay, so if I'm a five-foot tall pitcher, and I'm here, I'm not my height; I'm like half my height. But if I'm here, now I'm my height.
When you land, you should be as tall as you are, you know, as your height is in real life. One of the other big postural things that can happen in the reach happens as a result of opening too early.
But we'll start to see, instead of that nice square hip extension going to our target, where our upper bodies are nice and tall, if those hips open too soon, a lot of times what we can see is we'll start to see upper lean across the power line.
So whereas we want to be here, a lot of times what we'll see is this. So we're already starting to initiate some upper body lean across the power line, and we know that if we land in power K like this, it's not a good thing.
But that stem starts in the reach. This is why it's so important to focus on extension and everything going straight out before you open up.
Really trying to get your pitchers to feel the feeling of leg drive and hip drive so that they're really getting to that tall stacked position.
Okay, so we don't want to see pitchers getting shorter as they come off the rubber. We don't want to see upper bodies going first; we want to see hips going first.
And we don't want to see opening that causes upper body lean across the power line. All of these things are going to tremendously take away from your power, your potential to throw harder.
But they're also going to throw off arm path, body positioning, your ability to whip and snap correctly—all things that are going to throw off speed and command.
Okay, so these are the postural issues we can see in the reach. Really trying to have your pitchers focus on hip drive, leg drive, staying square, getting tall, getting to their height—whatever height they are.
Next week, we're going to talk about the postural issues we can see in power K. I hope you guys have found this helpful. I'll talk to you soon!