Get your lower body truly involved
In a common but inefficient motion, the throwing arm fires the baseball without involving the lower body.
A strong back leg push is useless without a powerful hip rotation, and an explosive hip rotation is impossible without a solid foundation from the back leg. Because your lower body is uninvolved in your motion, you’re trying to generate all the power and command with your throwing arm, which puts immense stress on the arm.
The result is a significant increase in throwing arm injury, a loss of command, and a decrease in velocity.
Elite pitching is a precise sequence where the glove arm generates the power and the hips transfer that power up the kinetic chain.
The Glove Hand rotates the Hips to generate command, velocity, and keep your motion injury-resistant.
While it may seem that the hips are the primary source of energy, they act as a powerful transfer point for the energy created by the lower body. The back leg is where the initial power is generated, and the hips then rotate to transfer that force up the kinetic chain.
Think of the transfer as a car engine. The engine (the glove hand) creates the power, but the transmission (the hips) is what takes that power and delivers it to the wheels (the throwing arm). Without the hips, the energy from the legs would be lost.
The Role of the Glove Hand
The glove hand is the true engine of the pitching delivery; its job is to generate the initial momentum and push the body down the mound.
- Initial Force: The pitching motion starts with a powerful glove-hand action that propels the pitcher forward.
- Ground Force: The back leg maintains a connection to the ground for as long as possible, allowing the pitcher to generate and transfer force efficiently without losing energy.
The Role of the Hips
The hips’ primary role is to rotate and release the stored energy from the lower body, and create the powerful “whip” of the body. A well-timed and explosive hip rotation is the key to unlocking maximum velocity and is often the main differentiator between pitchers with average and elite speeds.
- Hip-to-Shoulder Separation: As the pitcher strides forward, the hips begin to open toward the target while the level shoulders remain closed. This creates a powerful coil in the torso.
- Energy Transfer: The hips act as a rotational force multiplier by taking the linear energy generated by the glove hand, converting it into rotational energy, and transferring the energy up the torso to the throwing arm.
