quote:Originally posted by BOF:
Don’t you just hate it when logic and science is introduced into an emotional discussion?
MTH, my son has taken lessons from a Cardinal pitcher who is friends and a cohort of TPM’s son and they worked on stride length a little in conjunction with a lot of other issues, mostly however about staying on line, closed and landing in the same place consistently. I concur (with a lot less knowledge) with Tom House on the stride length and strength. When my son was a scrawny long legged freshmen (fawn like) I used to stress about his stride length, and the coach we were working with looked at me and said “what makes you think his leg strength is going to support that? – relax dad it will lengthen out naturally as he gets bigger and stronger”
I agree. We went to a camp two years ago when son was an 8th grader and the old wise pitching instructor said that both follow through and stride length improve with added maturity and strength. Over the last two years I have seen son increase both stride length and amount of upper body follow through naturally without him having to think about it. The added velocity due to skeletal maturity and muscle strength naturally make the body stride longer and allow more follow through with the upper body. I don't really worry about it so much now. My son strides about 90% of his height.