RHP hips flying open

MidAtlanticDad,

 

For sure it would be a mistake for most kids to land as far off line as Brian Wilson. He has the ability/flexibility to keep his hips closed despite landing far left of the plate. Not only that, he even opens his foot farther to the left.(toe pointed to 1B line)

 

If most people did this it would be near impossible to stay closed.  Try it without even throwing.  My suggestion is to have your son spread out wide side ways to the catcher shortening the distance might help.  Transfer the weight from back to front and just throw from that position until he can feel things working.  We have had success working with pitchers who open too early by doing this.  Obviously you need to use your hips/core to throw from the position I'm talking about.  Think... Throwing with your BELLY!  

 

Next try to replicate that position at landing from the stretch.  The stretch is a bit easier to get to that spot than the windup at first.  Then once it is comfortable out of the stretch it should be easy to do the same thing out of the windup.  This does not take a long time to get the feel, but watch closely for old habit to show up again. 

 

Once the delivery is more online and the hips are used better (Think using the BELLY to throw). You should notice a few things... Less strain on the arm, more arm speed, more velocity and better control.

 

Once again the position is spread out sideways to the target as the position you would be in when your stride foot lands with a full delivery. You simply can't throw the ball very well without using your body correctly.  Weight back, transfer forward and throw. Pitcher will actually feel it when he gets it right.  We have a permanent radar display and typically kids will increase several MPH out of this position when they get it just right.  If further proof is needed, do the same thing with the front foot open like Wilson, most will find out right away how things work best.

 

Anyway, this is really easy to explain in person, but tougher to explain in writing. Hope you get the picture.

 

Whether you decide to do this or not, best of luck.

Elbow issues are generally a timing issue of the arm dragging behind and getting in the high power position after the shoulders have already started opening. Position of the foot has no effect on whats happening with the elbow. Do you have video of your son pitching?

PG and Skylark, thanks for your replies.

 

PG, his pitching coach is using those types of drills. So far he’s not feeling it, but I like the idea of pitching with your belly. I’ll run that by him. In his case, I think it’s just going to take a lot of reps. He plans to work on it during the high school season (away from the team), and hopefully be ready to do some relief work for his showcase team.

 

Skylark, I think there is some arm drag happening too. I don’t have an video yet, but will try to put something together.

 

Thanks again.

MidAtlanticDad, the front shoulder opening up WILL cause arm drag. And Skylark is right, that arm drag will eventually lead to elbow problems. PG had some really good ideas. Something else to try is just drawing a line in the dirt from plant foot directly towards HP. Everytime he throws a bullpen, have him look down and see where he lands in comparison to that line. When my son was young, he had the same problem with the landing foot pointing open. I used to take him out to throw on a football or soccer field and play catch right on the sideline. Every throw, I would make him look down to make sure his foot was landing on the line. We threw hundreds if not thousands of throws like that. Using the sideline as a guide.

The other thing is to watch his glove side arm. Make sure he is not dropping his glove down or away from his body. Some people say to pull the glove to your armpit, some say to bring the chest to the glove. Either way, I think keeping that glove up and bringing it in close to the body will help keep that front shoulder closed. Hope these suggestions make sense.

Thanks bballman, the indoor mound he just started using has a white line down the middle, so he can clearly see the issue now.  He brings the glove hand to a good position in front of the chest, so I think that aspect is OK. Hoping to take some video this weekend.

Pretty sure your son is C/P like mine.  One thing the pitching coach at our local D1 (son is a senior on our team)  has talked to him about is the difference in throwing to second vs. pitching.

 

Maybe not an issue for yours but mine tends to want to pitch max effort like he is trying to throw to second.  Head would violently pull off to the side, shoulder would fly open and crazy my arm in general doesn't feel so good.

 

He figured out that if he smoothed things out on the mound he didn't lose any velocity, he had better command, his two seamer worked better, and his arm felt lots better.  

 

Just a thought.

  The best correction would be to have him make sure he leads with his front ankle and not open his toes up until near landing. Most pitchers open their front too soon which means that the hip will follow before you want it to. You also might want to check his glenohumeral interior rotation deficit because a lack of flexibility  here might force him to open up early to release the strain on his elbow and shoulder.

Mid, and herein lies the problem of asking for advice on a public forum.  Without seeing video of your son, you have received a lot of good advice.  I cannot dispute what anyone is saying as all have had appropriate things to say.  Just be careful about bringing too much of this to your son.  If you start thinking about too many things at once, it can create havoc.  At this point, I would pick one thing for your son to try.  Have him work on that one thing, that one trigger.  If he gets on the mound thinking about 10 different things, he will never get anything done and will wind up confused. 

 

Any of these things are good, just pick something you think will work.

 

Best of luck.

BackstopDad32,

Yes, I guess my son is now a C/P, too. I’m not thrilled about that, but he’s in a good situation (summer team) where he should be able to mix in a little pitching with his catching.  He shares catching duties equally with another kid, so he won’t have to shoulder the whole load. He should probably figure out which one he wants to focus on by the end of the summer, but he’s just taking it week by week for now.

 

Southpaw7,

Do you mean to “point” the outside of his ankle toward HP? I’ve noticed Drew Storen has an exaggerated turn-in of his lead foot during his stride. Makes me wonder if he uses that as a technique to stay closed. As for GIRD, his ortho diagnosed that at age 13, and he’s been pretty good about doing his sleepers and Blackburns since then. That seems to have corrected it. I actually took him to the doc for his approval before I let him get back on the mound.

 

bballman,

There was a time when I would try to “fix” everything in one session, but he taught the flaws in that approach at about 9U.

 

I do appreciate everyone’s opinions. I really trust his pitching coach, I’m just trying to be a more informed parent so that I can support his training between sessions.  Sometimes I fret over not addressing this sooner, but other times I’m convinced that he just wasn’t ready to absorb it until now.

 

Thanks everyone.

I like this advice for this kid..I also like putting a piece of duct tape down the mound to observe where he lands for himself.after all duct tape fixes anything

Posting "before" video.

 

http://youtu.be/fEKXKQ2ypK0

Just watched video.Two things I see. First is the arm action- I wish it were a little cleaner. Personally I like to see the arm swing down and up in a nice pendulum swing finishing with the forearm in the vertical position before the shoulders rotate otherwise the elbow joint tends to lag behind and gets whipped creating more stress on the elbow joint. Try practicing mock throws and get the arm up in that power position before front foot contact and definately before the shoulders begin to open. The second thing is the hips do open up a tad early. My son had this problem back in little league. We cured it by telling him to show his back pocket to the batter for as long as possible coupled with showing more back in the initial windup.

I do see good things. Despite the early hips, he has great hip to shoulder separation and also a good release point and follow through.

Watching the video, the big thing that stands out to me is how wide open his front foot is.  Since his plant foot heel is about on the line going to home plate, he is landing in a pretty good place.  His landing foot is way too open though.  I think that should be pointing towards home plate.  Even when he first lifts his leg, he is starting to point that foot open.  I would try getting him to land with that lead foot pointing towards home plate and I think a lot of that hip openeing early will go away.

I would suggest to NOT show the back pocket to the batter ever.  That is over rotating and will create more issues to correct.  You do not fix a problem by over compensating and creating another.  

 

I agree that you should not throw the "kitchen sink" at your son all at once.  Pick 2 things to focus on and correct those before going forward.  The top 2 IMO are:

 

Hips:  this is and can be an easy fix actually.  Film him from the side (back) and make sure he is getting all of his weight over his back leg.  During leg kick, make sure lead foot does not cross back leg BUT here is the fix.......the lead knee can go back to SS (point that direction.  What this does is allow proper positioning for weight transfer to the plate and proper positioning for the lead HIP.  By pointing slightly to the SS, it allows the hip to naturally lift and then at the beginning of weight transfer, the HIP is what leads first and this keep the lead shoulder closed too.  So both the hip and the shoulder are falling toward the plate closed.  the lead foot should then land towards center line (slightly to the left) with the lead foots toe slightly to 3B.  Only upon firm planting of the lead foot will the hips then get involved in rotation.

 

Glove forearm should be parallel to the ground, should height with the elbow/armpit 90* from armpit/hip. As hips rotate after plant, pull the glove to the chest to help in overall rotation.  This is what they refer to as the "complete rubber band" effect.  

 

The head should be over the landing knee or atleast within one head's width of either side of the knee.  This will stop the falling off to one side and help with control and less risk of arm drag which isolates both the acceleration and deceleration areas and increases potential for injury.  The reason why you have arm drag now is because when the hip/shoulder flies open, this makes your kid throw "open" ( to the left of center line) and this in return is a domino effect to arm placement which makes him drop slightly and "slingshot" around since he does not have the core and lower body working properly for him.  

Correcting the mechanical defaults will indeed add velocity without any more force on the body.  It is standard to expect 5-6 mph up to even 10 mph if you correct these issues.  Just make sure he doesnt buckle (drop/bend) the back knee when correcting.

This is not a fix in 20 reps.  It takes countless throws from the mound.  I suggest a dirt mound that you rake every 10 throws so you can see where he is landing from center line.

Good luck

For Love of the Game 

I would also suggest off season and in season conditioning programs that include plyometrics and core conditioning that focuses on pitching mechanics and muscle groups.  If you need help in identifying these, let me know.

 

To correct my previous post, "glove forearm should be parallel to the ground, shoulder height....."

Arm drag is due entirely to 2 things. The first has to do with arm action. Pitchers generally do one of two things. They either lead with their elbow or lead with their hand. The difference between the two can have a drastic effect on stress to the joints. A pitcher who leads with his elbow will cause his arm to be whipped around because it takes too long of a path to try to get in the power position which generally creates both a timing issue and even a shorter arm action in some cases. A pitcher who leads with his hand ( like a conductor leading in music) has a much cleaner action and also has a shorter path to get to the high power position, thus eliminating the violent whipping of the elbow joint. f their is an arm action issue, it may not matter at all what the hip is doing or when it is opening up because thearm action is not right, too slow, etc. which creates the whipping action regardless of staying closed little or lots.

The other element to arm drag is timing. A pitcher can have clean arm action and still be late because he may wait too long to break his hands or be too slow in his arm action.

We learned years ago that arm timing has almost nothing to do with hip timing and action but rather what the shoulders or upper body is doing. It was explained and shown to us in a simple throwing drill. Stand straight across from your throwing partner and without any initial hip rotation, keeping them square with your partner, and then start your arm action, swinging the arm in a nice clean arc while also turning your shoulders until you get maximum separation from your hips and then stop in that power position and note that you can get separation more than 90 degrees between your hips and shoulder angle. Then do the drill again but this time dont hesitate and throw the ball. This shows that the hips can and will be open when still in the power position. What happens a lot with arm timing in this drill is those who are late will never reach the high power position before the "shoulders" start rotating the arm into release even though his hips are open just like the kid next to him with the right arm action and timing. Its a simple drill and really shows arm action and timing issues.

Skylark, please explain what you mean by leading with the hand rather than the elbow.  Are you talking about taking the ball out of the glove?  Are you talking about the acceleration phase when the arm starts coming forward?  I know you can't mean acceleration.  And if you are talking about taking the ball out of the glove, I'm not sure that matters much as long as you get the ball up above your shoulder by the time of front foot plant.  If your arm is still low (below the shoulder) at foot plant, it will be very hard for it to catch up.  I get that in terms of timing, but how you get there is the issue.  Is that what you're talking about?

       
       


When a pitcher first breaks his hand from the glove is he leading with his elbow or his hand? If he leads with his elbow then the hand and ball follow the elbow and what happens is the ball and forearm are still down trying to come up when the shoulders start rotating. What happens is that you have your upper body going forward and the forearm and ball going the opposite direction fighting each other. So, the arm the gets violently whipped forward. Leading with the hand is similar to conducting music making a smiley face motion- nice smooth arc into power position.

As for here the elbow shoyld be in the power position, it should be at or beliw shoulder eight. Raising it higher than the shoulder places added stress on the shoulder because it fights the plane of rotation for all overand pitchers.

Wanted to post a recent video of 2015 after working on his mechanics this spring.  He has not pitched for his high school team, so he's just working on it one day per week.  He's going to give pitching a try during the summer season... mostly in relief.

 

Anyone see any progress?

 

http://youtu.be/Rf-1SwZIuRg

I'm not sure how beneficial the advice given here has been. Looking at your sons video, it really doesn't represent anything near an elite throw.

Look at how slow his tempo is. Quicker tempo can fix a myriad of timing problems and give a pitcher much better rythm on the mound. Compare his video with how fast many mlb pitchers move and explode to throw.

His arm action is sub par and I am going to guess he's sitting at around 80 mph off the mound. He is pushing the ball and what positives are here are entirely negated. There is little pelvic loading and rotation around the front hip joint.

I know the above is contrarian advice. But does your sons delivery really look like one that will throw a baseball 90-95 mph on 2+\- years?

 

Skylark- I'm curious as to your thoughts about the following pitching mechanics. Sorry for the grainy-ness of the clip, its rather old.

 

Looks like this video is of Greg Maddux. Yes it is grainy It all looks decent from what little you can actually see.