glove side leg action, bent or locked?

Get a good, long stride- six feet if you are a 6' footer, land on your ball of foot with everything still staying back, push off the rubber and then twist your torso with everything you have and, all the while, don't take your eye off of a spot on the catchers mitt, and your velo will be there. The arm is the last thing to coome through and is just along for the ride. Visualize a whip. You arm is the and the ball needs to be the last thing to go forward but it need to snap through-likea whip. Or when you are snapping a wet towell at one of your buddies in the locker room...

john, you can land on the ball of your foot after striding your height?

bakstop, Greinke lands on a bent leg like every other MLB pitcher.

sultanofswat

he does land on a bent leg but at the point of ball release his leg is completely locked out, wheres beckett is very bent. i use to be bent until my pitching coach hand me try to lock at release for more velocity. now that it doesnt work for me and im trying to go back to bending im having trouble going back to the bent leg

I am a firm believer in landing bent and then at some point after ball release the leg should come back straight. The reality of it is that after the hip has turned, no more power comes from the legs- velocity wise. It has already began its transfer through to the arm at this point. The landing leg is thus just the "stopper" (lack of a better word, eh eh) to keep the body from being thrown to the ground. Think of it as the point of pivot upon which your torso and arm windmill around upon. Do this-

Video the backside of your body (first base angle for righty) as you pitch. Watch the line across your shoulders starting at footplant. Think of your gloveside shoulder as a pivot line down to your lower leg. This pivot line should be just that- a point where everything revolves around as the arm launches the ball. Think of it like when i pitch and right after foot plant my glove side shoulder is locked into position where it will no longer go forwards or backwards but only rotate along a line from there down to the landing foot. Pitchers that lose velocity may find that pivot line actiually out of sinc with their leg and may even see the pivot move backwards which means the pivot has found itself more in the middle of the body and thus a loss of velocity due to the loss of the lever length.

Velocity almost always has to do with simple physics and mechanics. Having the leg bent or straight at release really has no meaning or bearing on velocity if the pivot line is moving in a direction counterproductive to velocity.

Do that- make a video and watch how much the glove side shoulder moves- is it the pivot point or is it in the body? If its in the body- that is your lack of velocity. Move it tot he shoulder and do not worry so much what your leg is doing at release- it is only the stopper.

Landing on the ball of the foot is conventional wisdom but the fact is that most MLB pitchers, especially the harder throwing ones land heel first or flat and very few land on the ball of the foot first.

I would be against excessively heel first, despite how well Frankie Rodriguez does but a bit heel first is fine for most pitchers. Landing ball of the foot first tends to slow things down unless it is virtually flat.

Landing with the leg extended is usually not a good idea and extending or not extending after landing with a bent leg is a matter of personal preference. There's probably a small velocity advantage to extending the leg after plant if it fits into the rest of the pitcher's motion.

Bakstop007,

quote:

“which was is more effective? “

Neither is more effective but one is more strategic and puts you closer to being able to lengthen your rotation.

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“if you were teaching locking the leg what would the keys to doing it successfully?”

Feel your glove side hip after foot plant start to rotate and then turn on the extension to then full length of your glove side leg, it will then assist in gaining more lengthy rotation. You are probably attaining only 90 degrees of finish hip rotation that only 45 degrees is usable during your bent knee drive; with the posted drive you will attain another 7 degrees of rotation.

Since with the traditional pitching motion the first posting on the ball arm side above the pitchers plate puts you in position to drive you bodies mass sideways with (crotch muscles) on the inside of your legs then has you come to a complete stop by using the muscles predominantly on the outside of your upper legs then posting up on the glove side leg will only give you a higher angle from which to then throw with your torso, chest, then arms (nothing is going along for the ride here!) on a more downwards plain. One more advantage is you have at least achieved full extension of the leg at the culmination of the actual forwards drive although disconnected along the way! If you perform with a bent knee and maintain it through the pitch you have only lowered you plain some, if you do not lock this knee angle in and dampens eccentrically by movement during drive you will perform less powerfully.

There is another way! Where you actually use the large muscles of the legs (while the ball is being actually driven forwards unlike traditional) the way they are built to achieve forwards movement from one to the other pushing your bodies mass ahead of each leg in a perfect kinetic chain where you end up in the perfect classic athletic drop step position where 180 degrees of rotation is performed, instead of recovering from posting leaving you susceptible to line drives and poor ballistic defensive response.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nle8-1K-wTw

Seen this many times all from the posted recovery position.

quote:

“many pitchers nowadays seem to lock the leg striaght out at ball release. ex: burnett and greinke.however others like beckett don’t”

Don’t look at professional pitchers, every one of them does it differently in some variation and it really does not matter. You are stuck with dropping in from a leg lift like them and the only difference is they are genetically gifted fast twitchers, not saying you are not one of these also.

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”my pitching coaches have been trying to transition me from the bent leg to the locked leg.”

This should have started in September!! Not now!!

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“ im not sure if together everyone ive worked with is missing part of the concept”

Talk to 20 pitching coaches you will find out you know just as much as them on this!

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“but it feels extremely restrictive, and i still am about 10 mph from my old velocity”

Learning a new mechanic just as your starting competition is a flawed concept even for high motor learners. Your timing will change gradually to where you can then have intent.

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”ive still been chasing my old velocity and the final piece of the puzzle is my glove side leg, its messing me up completely, im not getting to follow through with my body at all”

The further you stride the less you can then rotate and pronate.

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”another major problem resulting is i cant longtoss over 200 feet whereas i use to be able to go over 300 easily.”

Then something else is wrong with you? Because when you long toss every bodies mechanic changes to an earlier humeral transition unless you long toss with a leg lifted timing.
If you are crowstepping correctly you are throwing closer to the way you should be pitching on the mound and as powerfully and safely as possible.

quote:

“i feel a pain in my right oblique (throwing side) i feel like im completely working against myself”

This only means it is out of shape and will become more fit as you use it and the pain will subside if you choose to listen to your coaches (which is a good idea because of other reasons) because acquiescing on mechanics with coaches is a touchy subject at all areas.
This soreness alone can cause your velocity loss because it is one of the first muscle groups of the actual throwing mechanic. You need a “sport specific” interval training routine so that when it is that particular muscles turn to fire off in the kinetic chain it can then withstand the stress.

Thanks Yardbird but i finally got a camera again andtook some video of my bullpen the other day and found a glaring problem. my back leg was dragging against the ground sideways (the entire inside of my foot was dragging on the ground for the first maybe 4 inches of my drag) i thought i had been pushing off properly but i guess its just a bad habit i got into over the last year

As a result none of my back side is used, my hips hardly rotated at all and when they did there was absolutely no hip shoulder seperation

Backstop007,

quote:

“i finally got a camera again and took some video of my bullpen the other day”

Good for you!! This is the way it should be done, take control, it’s your life you should control it.

quote:

“my back leg was dragging against the ground sideways”

This would be the anchored glove leg drag that all traditional pitchers perform whether they lift it off or drag it with the toe buried in the dirt or dragging sideways long after pushing off and is a recovery mechanism caused by bending of the back. You can see how this causes less late rotation

If you drive this leg forwards and stay tall you will get even more late rotation

quote:

“there was absolutely no hip shoulder seperation”

Watch your video and others, although 30 frames a second is not adequate and you will see that every pitcher looses this perceived separation before the ball actually starts going forwards. When you start to gain actual forwards movement (X-graph) of the ball your shoulders and hips are almost parallel anyways and your hips and shoulders will travel together during this timeline even with the traditional mechanic. Separation is not a problem nor a positive help ever unless it causes Oblique muscle tears.