Stride Length

You can try lengthening your stride and check the results, but there is a lot more to a pitchers mechanical delivery than just stride. Do you have a coach that can check you as you try to adjust your delivery?

Diminishing returns? The longer the stride the harder it becomes to rotate the hips.

Whats more important the stride or the rotation?

Mojo

quote:

Diminishing returns? The longer the stride the harder it becomes to rotate the hips.

Whats more important the stride or the rotation?

Stride and rotation are both important. As well as arm speed, etc. It is a combination of things. I somewhat disagree with the statement above about the hip rotation. Overstriding is a problem, for sure. Too short a stride leads to alot of other timing and power issues.

I always recommend 5 1/2 of your own footlengths from the rubber. This may adjust 6" one way or the other. This allows for rotation into footplant.

Fact is he says his stride may be too short. This can also effect rotation. I guess we won't really know without seeing a clip.

What about hip rotation? The longer the stride the harder it becomes to rotate your hips. Try it.

Mojo

All MLB pitchers seem to have no trouble rotating their hips and they all have much longer strides than I do. I don't know, it just seems like I'm doing something wrong.

Overstriding hinders hip rotation, not a proper stride. What he wants to know is the proper stride length for him. It varys from person to person. Some players of the same height have different leg lengths.

quote:

Originally posted by nd943:
After looking at several different mlb player's strides and doing some research I feel mine is too short. Am I correct and what is the effect of having a short stride?

I think the whole premise of your question is wrong.

So your stride is shorter than average. Who cares? Is it causing you a problem?

If it's not broken, then why fix it (and risk breaking something)?

I'm sure your mechanics are different than those of most professionals, but no two professional pitchers have the same mechanics.

If I go by the simple rule ''if it's not broken don't fix it'' then I will never get any better. I'm not having any problems so should this mean I shouldn't try to get better, of course not.

You can find the right stride length for yourself quite easily. Go through your widup and then stride as far as you can. If you can land on the flat of your foot, you are not going too far. If you are landing hard on your heel, then you have gone too far. This will be dictated by how flexible your are with your lower half. Go as far as you can and still land on a solid flat foot or even the ball of your foot. If you can do that, you won't have any trouble rotating either.

Hmmmm.... sounds like a hard and fast rule to me..

quote:

You can find the right stride length for yourself quite easily. Go through your widup and then stride as far as you can. If you can land on the flat of your foot, you are not going too far. If you are landing hard on your heel, then you have gone too far.

Then again hard and fast rules are hard and fast



How about backing up and using some chaining to go through things.

I would start with arm action, what does your arm action look like?

Then, how do you feel about your rotation, is it powerul?

A video clip is the best way to do this.

MoJo, How about answering the young man's question about his stride length!!! You can drill him on arm action in another thread. Hip rotation is no problem unless you are landing hard on your heel.......like Mark Prior. If you land on the flat or ball of your foot, you won't have any problem rotating.......if you don't believe me, just go out to the mound and try it.

quote:

Originally posted by bbscout:
Hip rotation is no problem unless you are landing hard on your heel.......like Mark Prior.

Scott Kazmir is another example of a pitcher who lands on his heel and I wouldn't say he has any hip rotation problems. I think how your stride foot/leg is getting opened into foot plant is more important then whether or not you're landing on your heel.

Jason

You sign the guys who land "hard" on their heel, and I will sign the guys who land flat or on the ball of their foot.

Line up all the young pitchers in the neigborhood and have them stride out to a position where they land hard on their heel and then see how they rotate.You can use an example like Kazmir if you wish and I will use examples like Ryan, Maddux and Clemens.

BBScout, thats exactly how I've learned to teach stride. It seems to work well. If the player lands on the heel, he's overstriding. I did suggest we would have to see a clip, but I believe the young man can check himself with what you posted.

nd943-

For starters, I agree with Bighit15….good place to begin no matter what mechanics you use….unless you’re one of those kids with size 15’s

Landing “hard” on the heel may indicate problems such as crashing into foot plant. But the action of landing on the heel first (as opposed to landing on the toe first) is not a detriment to opening the hips into foot plant. There are high velocity pro pitchers that use the heel to toe action as a means of opening their hips late into foot plant.

quote:

Landing “hard” on the heel may indicate problems such as crashing into foot plant. But the action of landing on the heel first (as opposed to landing on the toe first) is not a detriment to opening the hips into foot plant. There are high velocity pro pitchers that use the heel to toe action as a means of opening their hips late into foot plant.

My son lands flat. He used to crash his heel. We tried to get him to land ball of foot, but it didn't work for him. A lot of pitchers land heel to toe without crashing. He has size 14, but he is 6'5".

I just wanted to say thanks for the advice. I'm going to work on slowly increasing my stride. I can increase it without landing on the heal, which is what many of you suggested. It might just take time to get used to, we'll see.

bbscout,
No offense intended...

I happen to believe in what I said. Do we always have to stick strictly to the title of the thread?

Sorry Sarge, I'm done with the military.

I think young players need to look at everything. Focusing on stride length is losing sight of the forest for the trees.

I stand behind with what I said.

Mojo

I say a pitcher should stride as far as he can naturally. This means the pitcher should go out as far as he can with out pushing off his back foot. If you push off your back foot then you might over stride. The pitcher should just drift out smoothley and go as far as he can without forcing it.