Learn How an Explosive Drive Leg Can Increase Pitching Velocity

Pitching Video Analysis

Pitching Video Analysis Transcript

Hello this is Brent Pourciau at topvelocity.net and I’m doing a pitching analysis of Drew and I’m gonna pair him up with Brandon. I’ve done a few of these for Drew, I see he’s getting better and the reason I’ve paired you up with Brandon is that so you can see someone who is more explosive than you. You’ll see he really has an explosive drive leg ultimately at the point of triple extension. He’s a great example of it, that is why I’ve put him into my arsenal of pitchers here. Let’s just take him to his leg lift, well take drew there and we’ll basically see what I’m talking about.

Pitching Drive Leg Analysis

Drew starts in a similar position, closes off the hips and shoulders, leading with his hip, weight inside his drive leg foot, he’s in position, take him into the load position and we can see Brandon really moving forward, starting to build that speed as he loads on the drive leg. Look how far off the mound he is and his front leg has not even broken his front hip. Let’s take Drew to that position, here’s his front leg in that position, Drew’s loading but not as much forward progress so here you really have to be careful, you want to load but you also want to forward progress because you don’t want to stall out, you don’t want to lift, load and then go because then you might as well just start right here. We want to use that lift leg, everything from the lift leg to the load to build as much speed as possible. We only have our stride to generate as much power as we can so we want to start from the beginning. Any time wasted building that speed and power is going to affect the speed and velocity of the ball. Drew, you could lead more with your front hip, at this load position you want to have a bit more speed, so really throw your hip out there, push you hip out and get going a little faster so you load. I really believe that the guys who have a hard time doing this, a lot of guys come to me and say coach Brent, how do you get your hips to go into the load, how do you get that momentum going early. It comes down to you not being strong enough, it comes down to you need more leg strength, so your body will really let you take off because ultimately your body’s gonna hold you back if you don’t have that leg strength, specifically on your lead leg. Your landing leg is going to take about 175 per cent of your body weight at front foot strike, so if you weigh 200 pounds we’re looking at over 300 pounds that’s gonna hit your front leg. Not many guys out there who I’ve worked with who have velocity issues can one legged squat 300 pounds so you can see right there how critical it is to have a lot of leg strength and that’s really what’s gonna allow you to hit these components effectively and be able to actually implement them. A lot of the guys who get frustrated with 3X pitching is because they think by now they know what it is to be explosive and to move like a hard thrower that that’s just enough, that they can just basically mimic that and implement it into their delivery and that’s just not the case. The case is that it’s not good enough to just know where you need to be, you actually have to train yourself and to develop to get to that position to move the way these hard throwers move.

Here with Drew, he’s just stalling out, he’s just loading more than he is moving forward and we can see Brandon is farther out, not as loaded as Drew but he’s farther out, he’s got a little more speed in his body. There’s a balance between speed and loading that weight on your drive leg. This is why I wanted to use Brandon and Drew, watch this explosive triple extension, he’s starting to open up now and you can see it right there. Look how quickly that is, it looked like everything was in slow motion, which it is, then all of a sudden it just, boom, like its fast forwarded and it’s not, it’s one frame like these are all one frames. It shows how much quick twitch muscle fibre he is firing at his point, that is tremendous. It’s very similar to Limsicum, to Trevor Bauer, it really is across the board with all the hard throwers.  This is where they really stand out and they really shine, that drive leg explodes and really starts to build that power into front foot strike. You can see Brandon doing that so effectively, he hits that triple extension almost in the second frame, we can see that back leg dragging and that front foot is not even down. That’s really explosive power, it’s like a linear jump, but notice how his shoulders are, he’s staying closed, when his front foot hits he knows to show immediately, transfer that into the tuck of his glove side which is creating that fulcrum. We can build that torque through the core and start to get that arm going into the stride phase. So you can just see how he’s converted this explosive movement here, into this explosive movement here. See that? Let’s look at that again. This one frame here, look how quickly he’s moving and look how he converts that when he gets to front foot strike to this movement here in this one frame here. This is the foundation of 3X triple extension, explosive triple extension before front foot strike and then the ability to convert that into torque, into shoulder separation and then external rotation. The timing of these events also makes him another perfect example, in as much as him being able to have that explosive power.

So we see Drew here as he, because he didn’t have that forward progress and he is loaded on that drive leg without his hips out far enough at this point, he has to take a bit more time to get that force vector, that ankle to knee in position with that front hip, so now he can explode into that linear movement here, but you can see that at that explosion is not even close to what Brandon is doing. Really Drew you’re still kind of falling, there’s really kind of no explosive driver there at all. There are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, don’t really see the explosive movement that we’re seeing here. We can see Brandon, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, it’s very obvious that in this frame he turns it on, we don’t see that there with you Drew, you’re still kind of falling on to your front foot. Because of that you’re not really creating the toque that he’s creating here as we can see the difference, your glove side is till wide open, I thank if you had more explosive power you’re gonna tuck that tighter, create more torque, you’re still dealing with power issues Drew, which is speed and strength and that comes through training your muscles to move that way, modelling more fast twitch muscle fibres, becoming more explosive, training like an Olympic athlete. You should go watch some videos, get out of baseball, not as far as your playing, but look outside of baseball, go and study some of the Olympic lifters, guys that aren’t really big. Go look at the lightweights, but man, can they move some serious weight and can they move it quickly. Go look at them, go look at Mat Bruce who I’ve trained with, go look at any of the other ones that are Olympic qualifiers or that have played in the Olympics and watch how they move quickly. If not, go look at javelin throwers, go look at some other sports that uses explosive power, that’s not just a strength sport, not just a speed sport, they’re actually using both. Look at those athletes and train yourself to move like them, use the fusion system and the 3X velocity program and train yourself to be more explosive because that’s just what you’re dealing with is these power issues. I appreciate you sending the video and I hope this helps.