Learn Pitching Velocity from the Japanese

Want to throw hard like a major league pitcher?

This is Brent Pourciau at topvelocity.net, doing a pitching analysis of Lewis, gonna pair him up with Asao Takuya my Japanese pitcher. Let’s take Lewis into his leg lift, the Japanese pitcher into his, you can see here where … is, his head is inside his drive leg, so he’s got a lot of forward momentum here, he’s already begun to take that weight to the target. We can see here with Lewis he’s too balanced up, it also helps to find some kind of mound or decline, it looks like you might be on an incline here, but focus on this, focus on moving earlier, meaning as that lift leg is coming up, already be shifting your weight forward. Don’t take any extra time to get going, start as soon as possible, as you start your delivery you should start moving forward taking your hips to the target and as your hips come up that forward movement should then close you off and bring that lift leg back toward your drive leg, your shoulders are also closed off. So you’re too balanced here so it’s gonna be harder for you to get going earlier. Harder throwers start building momentum earlier and it helps them with 2 things basically, it’s gonna help them with their power production and with their sequencing, or moving that power from toes to fingertips.

So let’s take our Japanese pitcher into the load position, you can see he’s got that forward drop, he starts to kind of fall forward, as he stays strong on his drive leg, keeps his lift leg back while he tries to accelerate into it, picking up speed by using gravity to bring him down and forward and at the same time lining up that force vector before he moves into his launch phase. So you can see how they drop down to a point where they get good flexion on the drive leg and it gets in line, that ankle to knee gets in line with that front hip so now as they begin to build their force production through their drive leg it starts to move towards the target. Now, if we kept this vertical we would have a problem and to start to move up so really the key to building power through your stride and being able to implement an effective triple extension or 3X, which is where you’re really gonna generate most of your power, and then be able to convert that into hip to shoulder separation into front foot strike. Let’s see how well you move into load, you can see as your lift leg’s coming down your pushing forward but your weight is all still balanced up over this back leg and now you start to reach out with your front leg and your force vector is actually getting in line but it looks like you actually got extended at this point where you wanna build flexion. Your force vector is not bad here, if you were on a mound it would be a bit more linear, but you’re too extended here so you don’t really have much flexion to benefit from so you can move into a full triple extension. Because of that, if you don’t have the ability to implement the leg drive, you’re just gonna put down and we can see that you do. You push off at the ankle a little bit but you put down with that stride definitely without achieving triple extension before front foot strike which would give you some acceleration and power, would open your hips at front foot strike and make it easy for you to generate some torque to transfer that power to the ball.

We can see our Japanese pitcher move into an explosive triple extension just before front foot strike and he gets the leg completely through, even the hip flexor. So this would be the perfect picture of triple extension, and the at front foot strike, he lands, he stabilizes and that hip those hips are perfectly open, shoulders perfectly closed. If you’re gonna create this kind of hip to shoulder separation at front foot strike it’s because your hips have opened at front foot strike and not any later. You can see as here as you land you definitely have no power, you’re still on the rubber, short stride and it’s gonna take you some time to get your hips through and you can see with our Japanese guy here it happened at front foot strike, you land here and then 1, 2, 3, 3 frames later your hips are finally through. With the Japanese pitcher, at 1 he’s pretty much through – this is slow motion so there’s more frames here – but we can see it happens immediately. Because Lewis you’re having to get your hips through so late it’s not an explosive hip rotation so your shoulders will not get separated from your hips because as your hips come round so does your shoulder and then you throw the ball standing up. This is a low velocity category because you have that forward trunk tilt, you don’t have that front leg extension, you’re in a short stride and you have that late internal rotation. You put yourself in a low velocity category because you were unable to get going early enough to achieve triple extension before front foot strike, to achieve explosive 3X where you’re a good few feet off the rubber here like our Japanese pitcher and all that power was unable to convert it from front foot strike to hip to shoulder separation.

That’s the 3X approach, this program is gonna train you and develop you as an athlete, an elite athlete, to be able to only move like this but to be able to develop the motor co-ordination around these complex mechanics but it’s not an easy road.  Its 16 weeks minimum and it’s very intense. There’s a beginners guide that’s gonna help you, get your feet wet and just understanding the basics, but then once you get into the ace pitcher handbook and the strength and conditioning program and throwing program then you’re really gonna have a big mountain ahead of you to conquer. But when you do, you’ll be so much closer to where this Japanese pitcher is here than where you are now and you’ll be able to experience  5-10 miles per hour or more of an increase in velocity.

Lewis, you’re a great candidate, you’re young you could implement any on these mechanics and you would see a drastic difference in your pitching performance but the goal is that you implement them all and I think that for you it’s very possible. So I hope that answers any questions that you have, hope the analysis helps and I highly recommend that you jump on the program.