Learn How to Pitch Correctly at the Youth Level

Learn how to pitch correctly at the youth level

Pitching Analysis Transcript

Hi, this is Brent Pourciau at topvelocity.net, I’m gonna do a pitching analysis her of Casey, going to pair him up with Tim from when he was a young youth pitcher. I think this is good footage to use with my young pitchers so you can see where Tim Lincecum was when he was a little kid.

Youth Level Pitching Analysis

Let’s take Casey in his leg lift, Tim’s already in his leg lift when this footage starts, both in a good position, doing a good job of lifting up and then leading forward and taking those hips to the target. As Casey’s going he’s taking that knee with him, so this is a great first move here, you can see Tim’s in a similar position, as his lift leg comes down both very similar. Let’s see what Tim does from here, you can see he continues to load down as he takes the ankle to knee as best as he can to his front hip, takes that force vector into linear position. This is tough for young pitchers to get down and build this much flexion at a young age because our leg strength doesn’t show up until we get to High School, College, so to show some leg strength at a young age is pretty impressive, it’s impressive that little Tim is doing this but this is the goal here. We wanna make sure that we’re moving down, building flexion as we’re lining up the force vector, the ankle knee and staying closed and this is what Tim’s doing here, not as well as he does today but incredibly well for his age.

We can see here with Casey, this brings up a great point of what I talk about in my analysis, you can see Casey did a great job in getting to this first move but he doesn’t take advantage of it and he allows his front leg to open up, all his weight to go forward and for him to land with a stiff drive leg, he never used the drive leg to build power. The reason we lead with the hip, we start our movement early, we take that drive leg knee with the front hip is because we want to put ourselves in a position to start building speed, preventing the lift leg from opening early so that we can get into this position that Tim is in. If this lift leg had flung open earlier and you didn’t lead with the hip and you didn’t take that force vector with it, you would never even be able to have the potential to get where Tim is so the reason for this is to get to this – flexion of the drive leg knee, force vector, as linear as you can, you need this knee pointing to that target, as linear as you can. Let me draw lines so you can see. You want this force vector right there, so that would be your ankle, and knee, and then your front hip out here, that’s where we wanna get. Tim is almost there, his force vector is just a little vertical because that’s his front hip there. So we wanna get all the way down her and out here, that’s why we start with this move, a lot of pitching coaches talk about his move. The problem with this move is, if you don’t know how to get into the load position and you don’t know how to build power out of it which is the next component, then this position serves no purpose. This is like putting the cart before the horse, you’re not focusing on the foundation which is this component into the power component which is 3X pitching, that’s the approach.

Our philosophy in the 3X program is where Casey could move into the beginners guide, he could use it using a basketball instead of a 2 pound medicine ball. He could then start to develop and master the power component into the torque component or how we convert that power. We can see at this point that letting the lift leg and the head with it really puts us in the position where Casey could have just started like this and just swung his arm back and through the ball and probably threw harder. At his age, the best advice for Casey would be to not spend a lot of time on the delivery until he can learn how to do what Tim’s about to do here, even though Tim’s extended out with is front leg it’s still closed off so you can see it starts to open up and that’s that foot synch I talk about in my articles, as he drives the back leg through, you can see it completely driven through as he lands and the shoulder completely closed. This is the component Casey needs to start to train from here to here with hat hip to shoulder separation, we work on that the whole time through the 3X pitching velocity program and the ace pitcher handbook.  We also work on this, from here, to external rotation, to here, look at that external rotation, it is at this age, is just unbelievable. Seeing this I would have said if this young boy could  keep his mechanics as he gets bigger, quicker, stronger, faster we are definitely going to see a D1 or Minor League or Major League or one of the greatest pitchers ever which is pretty impressive.

Casey here does this right, but from there on out pretty much just kind of falling or whipping the arm or letting the arm go. He needs now baby steps, work on the load to triple extension before front foot strike into hip shoulder separation then external rotation and the release, and that’s where we spend most of our time with the 3Xpithcing velocity program. Casey’s got a great start here, most young guys don’t work on these kind of mechanics at his age so allow him to take this time to learn about it, move through these drills and start to learn what it’s like to move through these components and in a couple of years you’re gonna have a kid who has some really good mechanics.

Until then, keep asking questions and keep us up to date on your progress.