arm goes around in the circle,
let's follow the position of the hand and where the palm
of the hand faces. As the arm goes up in the
front, the palm is on or near the trailing side of the
circle while the elbow is naturally rotating toward the
leading side.
Keeping the hand and arm in a natural position is
stress and tension free. Forcing the hand,
for example, to be on the leading side of the circle
at the top and coming down in the back introduces tension,
and minimizes the ability for a natural whipping action
of the arm.
As the arm is around 12:00 o'clock , the palm is naturally
moving more toward the leading side and some cases is
still on the trailing side facing home. The
elbow will be more toward the leading side of the circle. Any
position of the hand other than this will have to be
forced and will place undesired tension on the arm. Tension
in the arm lessens the natural whipping action that happens
just before the release. The whipping action
is the greatest contributor to ball velocity, catapulting
the ball from the release and it shouldn't be compromised.
As the arm is coming down in the back, the elbow is
still on the leading half while the palm is still up
or at least on the trailing half of the circle. As
the arm passes the bottom of the circle, the natural
movement of the arm will have the elbow go to the trailing
side of the circle while the palm will now be more to
the leading side of the circle before the ball is released.
This transfer of the elbow from near the leading side
to the trailing side (the whipping action of the arm)
accelerates the lower arm up to 20% faster than the upper
arm. This whipping action or position change
of the arm puts the hand and fingers behind the ball
driving it out of the release faster than any other pitch. Consequently
I just call the faster pitch a drop and not a fastball.
Under ideal conditions, at the release, the fingers
will be behind the ball driving it toward the target
while at the same time imparting down in the front rotation. However,
flexibility being what it is, especially in a younger
arm will more than not have the hand lagging behind at
the release. This will have the palm facing
away from the body more toward third than facing the
target.
If the fingers haven't gotten behind the ball and the
palm is still facing a little away from the body, the
resulting spin will be more of and undesirable spiral. With
a beginning pitcher, I feel it's more important to develop
a smooth, relaxed, and effortless motion than it is to
agonize over the spin that is a little to a lot off of
the mark. If the young student has a hard
time grasping all the different movements in the new
motion they are being introduced to, the spin on the
ball is one of the least important things to work on.
When learning a new skill, g ood athletes excel at controlling
their muscles as long as they don't have too many things
to work on at the same time. It's easy for
most pitchers to change the position of the hand later
on to deliver better down in the front rotation.
If there is a problem with the way I start out a beginner,
it's in teaching the loosey goosey action of the arm
at the beginning. 30 years of teaching young
pitchers may not be enough time to figure out the simple
pitching motion. But in teaching beginners
to have a loosey goosey rubber arm and helps in having
an effortless and natural action of the arm. Later
they can add strength to an already good motion assisting
the sound mechanics they should have by then. However,
by starting off with a more relaxed motion, it promotes
a more relaxed release that tends to have the position
of the hand lag behind making the pitch spiral. The
good side is that it's just as close to having the hand
in a position to throw a rise as it is to throw the drop. And
don't tell me they don't throw a rise in college. All
great pitchers throw a rise.
OK now, after the pitcher is solid in the basic motion,
my students already have a change and understand the
concept of turning the hand for a simple easy to throw
change up. I have them turn the hand in between
a change and how they release the spiral rotation and
sometimes they understand easily. For some
students, I exaggerate and have them think about turning
the hand and pointing the thumb in toward the leg when
throwing the drop. I usually get a compromising
position of the hand between the change release and the
spiral release which will have the fingers behind the
ball at release.
In all aspects of pitching, whether you are learning
the basic motion, or advanced pitches, doing it slowly
gives you a chance to focus on isolated body parts. Pitching
aggressively, like most aggressive students do, puts
the motion on automatic and they continue to do whatever
they have done before. Practice doesn't make
perfect, the practice of perfection makes perfect. (Thanks
Dave) if you practice with incorrect movements or an
incorrect motion, or an incorrect position of the hand,
you will get really good at doing it wrong. Practice
makes permanent.
When it comes time to learn the correct rotation, practice
at a slow pace with the correct (down in the front) rotation
and develop a habit of doing it correctly. Build
on that. If you practice at the normal distance
you will have to throw hard to make the distance and
old habits will take over. This will bring
out automatic tendencies in your motion. If
you throw hard, like I mentioned, the old habits will
take over and you will continue to do whatever you did
before. If you want to develop new habits
do it at a slow pace and focus on the parts of the motion
you want to change. After enough repetitions
you will develop a new habit of movement that in time
will be strong enough to replace the old habit.
This is worth repeating for the third time. Practice
doing a new movement correctly to develop a new habit
of where the position of the hand is, to deliver good
down in the front spin. In time (lots of reps)
the new habit will overpower the old habit.
Now that you have the ball spinning in the right direction,
you may want it to spin a little faster (tighter). Don't
fall into the trap of thinking you can have a turn over
drop that will be your fastest pitch. The
fastest ball you can throw is a drop and the fastest
drop you can throw, in my not so humble opinion, and
one that has the greatest spin is the peel drop. Just
by the nature of the pitch, turning the hand over the
top of the ball will slow the ball down. The
nature and one of the values of a slower ball is to give
in to gravity and drop more. Adding the direction
of spin and you may have a slower pitch that drops off
of the table.
Every self proclaimed turn over drop pitcher I have
seen or taped either has a slower pitch because they
in fact have a legitimate turn over drop, or they have
a peel drop with a turn over follow through. Because
they have a turn over follow through, they confuse and
misrepresent an actual turn over drop.
Back to the peel drop. To get more spin you
need more lift at release. To get more lift
with the fingers on the backside of the ball, you have
to have strong fingers (finger tip push up's, weight
on a roll up rope etc.) or a motion that will do it for
you. Actively pushing on the backside of the
ball with the fingers, driving it out of the hand is
good lift. A crisp sharp landing of the stride
foot stopping momentum is lift. After the
leverage from the fingers comes the driving force from
the forearm and biceps, which applies lift as long as
the sequential application to force starts at the fingers
and ends with the shoulder.
PRACTICE HARD, PRACTICE OFTEN, AND PRACTICE DOING THE
RIGHT THING |
