Learn How Important Quickness is in Pitching

Learn how important quickness is in pitching

Pitching Analysis Transcipt

Hey this is Brent Pourciau at topvelocity.net. We’re gonna do a follow up now with Connor and pair him up with Brandon Morrow. Connor says he’s having some improvements through the program which is great news, I can definitely see where we need to continue and improve here at Big Kid, really it’s gonna be speed – just getting you to take advantage of your size, getting you to move faster through these mechanics. You could definitely get your velocity towards your goals, 90 plus, whatever you want, whatever you’re looking for, I think it’s all here, depends on how hard you wanna work at it and also how well you work through the program. We don’t want to over train, we’ve got to also be aware of nutrition, our recovery, getting good sleep, all those things specifically as we get everything we can out of the program. We’ve really gotta pay attention and focus on the whole aspects of developing the complete pitcher, not just the big things, we gotta get good at the details. Keep working hard and let’s see what we got here.

High Speed Camera Pitching Analysis

So let’s take Brandon into his leg lift, take Connor into his leg lift here with the high speed camera. High speed cameras are cool, you don’t miss a frame, that’s the coolest thing about it. Not always necessary, you can shoot with just a regular 29 frames a second and really get a quick glimpse, but if you wanna really narrow it down and get those components down perfectly it helps having high speed so we can make sure everything’s working smoothly and we can see the whole entire delivery. Connor here closes off well, using the tilt at the beginning of the delivery is fine, most important that the tilt comes in through the stride, making sure that you stay tilted through the stride. The only thing is I would say stay focused on your force vector. Look at Brandon here, see how the knee here even at this point is starting to shift slightly inside the drive leg so he’s pretty much got everything from the head to the hip to the knee breaking inside the foot, so focus on that. You actually look like you’re going back the other way, because you’re a big guy, we struggle with starting early, we’re not quick, I hear the analogy in football a lot and I like it, they’ll talk about a running-back and they’ll say he’s fast but not quick, or he’s quick, but he’s not fast, meaning that he can cut and move and make those quick movements but when he gets into the open field he’s not as fast. There’s definitely two components to speed, there’s quickness and then there’s overall speed. Coming out of our leg lift, we’re looking for quickness and then just in the front foot we’re looking at speed so we’re really ultimately focused on both but more quickness, being quick as a pitcher coming out of our lift leg would really benefit us more than just focusing on how fast we are through our stride. I believe that the quickness out of the lift leg is really going to have more effect on the overall speed just because mini strides, we take one stride. Focusing on that quickness out of this move would show, just like Brandon here, you would have, in the peak of your leg lift, the force vector starting to line up, to move forward and everything inside that drive leg.

So as your lift leg descends, it’s moving a little bit faster than you and I think that’s just more along the lines of being quicker out of your lift. So we can see your lift leg’s going just a little bit faster, you’re really reaching out hard and your force vector, the point where you start reaching out is right here and your force vector is very vertical. Let’s take Brandon, you can see that when his lift leg is coming down, he’s going with it. Let’s take you back when your front leg breaks your hip about right here, it’s hard to tell, and this is where Brandon breaks his hip. So look at the difference in the force vectors here, you can see that Brandon is a lot more linear than where you are, you’re more like that. This is when his front knee is breaking his hip, he got going a little bit quicker out of the chute than you so he got going a little bit quicker here, his hip’s farther out and his force vector more linear. That’s what we’re trying to do, that quickness out of our lift leg is key to us getting into this load position which Brandon gets into in between these two frames here. You can see he’s still closed off, he’s got flexion, his force vector’s in line, he’s in a decent load position. So let’s take you there before you move to extension, you can still see you’re a little vertical back here. I know it’s hard with big guys, but being too vertical back here, as opposed to Brandon who’s a big guy, 6’ 5”, it takes a lot of leg strength to get that knee here following this front hip, still have good flexion on that drive leg, because right now you’re still kinda throwing out and putting your weight out here. If you look at Brandon you can see that all his weight is still riding on this back leg, this leg looks pretty light. On you this front leg looks pretty heavy, it looks like you’re about to put it down, looks like you’re really coming off that leg which you are. You get here and you’re fully extended and that’s really the point where your force vector really needs to be so you need to get to this angle of force, still having the flexion in your leg.  You just need to get quicker out of that lift phase, that’s pretty much all it is.

The good thing for you Connor is that you’re going through the 3X pitching velocity which is key for you because you still need to develop, get better at triple extension which we’ll go through, get better at converting that hip to shoulder separation, get stronger to be able to handle a more explosive stride and when you graduate from that we’ll go into the 3X pre-season program which focuses mainly on the load position, focuses mainly on right here – getting better on building flexion and lining that force vector. It’s gonna be a good transition for you, you’re gonna go from here into the pre-season program and you’re gonna get good at getting quicker out of your lift and it’s gonna help you really progress more through the 3X program. You’re on the right track, you just gotta keep working harder, getting stronger, getting faster and all these will continue to synch up and continue to program the motor co-ordination through all the med drills and all the velocity drills.

So let’s take Brandon, look at the difference here, this is the point where your lined up and extended, he’s lined up and he’s got flexion and look how explosive that extension is. He starts moving quickly, everything gets in position and then boom, he attacks the zone, gets fully extended, before the front foot even lands, the toe’s up and as he lands the hips rotate immediately, shoulders still closed, an amazing torque, you can see the chest pushing out even at this point, still fully extended. We’ll take you, you don’t really have much of a drive, you go into a little extension, this extension was really to get your force vector in line – it got you in line and all you really did was roll over on it and then fall. Look at the difference here, from load to just before front foot strike, 1, 2, 3, watch the drive leg, 1, 2, 3,. Look at the difference between there and then you and your load right  here, even though it’s slow motion, you’ll be able to do 6 – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 – so now we’re down. You didn’t see anything in the drive leg, if anything we got maybe linear here and then that extension was really to get you linear, it wasn’t to build much power. You can see that when you land, your hips are still closed so now they have to come around and by the time they come around you’re already throwing the ball so still very poor hip to shoulder separation. Because you have a little more spot, stride speed, power from your previous analysis you got some decent external rotation and you’re finishing a little bit farther out but you’ve still got a long way to go. We wanna be able to create this hip rotation here at foot front strike, not coming afterwards , so we can get this hip to shoulder separation, then you’re gonna finish more forward trunk tilt. See you’re more upright, Brandon doesn’t have a great front leg, your leg is similar, but you’ll see he’s probably a good three feet off the rubber to you, that’s gonna show that this is definitely a high velocity category and you’re definitely low velocity. When you land, you’re still on the rubber when Morrow lands he’s a good 12 inches off the rubber, serious stride power there. That should be your inspiration, someone like Brandon, Brandon’s vertical jump is probably 36 inches I would guess, just seeing this right here, pretty impressive, yours I would say is 27-28 inches, he can probably jump a foot higher than you, that’s why he can achieve triple extension before front foot strike and land a good 12 inches off the rubber and convert that hip to shoulder separation.

Pitching Analysis Conclusion

So you can see we got a better athlete here, you need to use the strength and conditioning program to develop yourself into this type of athlete, which the program does, and then just keep working on the mechanics along the way so we can effectively use that new power, that new muscle development in our pitching delivery and velocity. I like the progress, you just gotta work hard, it gets better, you just gotta get to a point where we can start producing power  that is more than our body weight, we start moving like these guys. Focus on that, keep going at it hard and good things will keep coming. Best of luck.