In-Person Instruction: “Proprioceptively Accurate Power Position”
Pitching instruction is not a quick fix; it is a long-term development process!
- Starting now allows you to get on a path of continuous improvement, with a coach who can provide ongoing feedback and support for months to come.
- By making this investment in quality instruction, you gain a competitive edge.
- Pitching instruction allows you to focus on building a correct, efficient, and injury-preventative foundation.
- The instruction you receive treats your body as a complete kinetic chain, ensuring a holistic approach to your development.
Ultimately, now is the time not just to perform, but to hone your skills for sustainable success.
The motion you have vs. the motion you need.
The Motion You Currently Make
In a conventional motion, you continually adjust your hips, stride length, and arm movement as your body constantly seeks balance.
- Starting Position: Proprioception often guides a pitcher to center their weight over their back foot, which limits the ability to drive toward the plate.
- Foot Plant: To compensate for an unbalanced start, your stride makes a series of adjustments to restore the body’s balance as the front foot touches the ground.
- Throwing Action: Without doing anything to produce command, these offsetting activities put your glove arm under your armpit and bring your throwing arm forward to deliver your pitch, resulting in an inefficient, potentially stressful delivery that promotes injury.
- Kinetic Chain: With your glove arm finishing under your armpit, your kinetic chain always fails to fire.
The Motion You Need
Your proprioceptively accurate power position leads directly into your glove hand moving across your body, initiating one uncanny, regular motion that hits your target with consistent power and breaks down into one critical, fluid phase.
- The Starting Position: Your foot position gathers your weight just in front of your back foot. From here, your front leg lift gets your front knee in a specific position and has your front foot facing the target.
- Kinetic Chain: You maximize power and efficiency by sweeping your glove hand across your body, landing your stride effectively, and getting your throwing hand to fire the ball directly toward your target.
Everything points to the position of your arms, legs, glove hand, and throwing arm, and, unless your stride precedes your glove hand activity, you’ll always fire your kinetic chain.
Why Missing the Starting Position Makes Things Difficult.
Suppose you “miss” your optimal starting position (e.g., balance is off, weight distribution is incorrect, hips aren’t appropriately loaded, drive leg isn’t ready to push). In that case, it disrupts the entire kinetic chain from the outset.
- Flawed Foundation: The initial energy generation from the lower body is compromised. If you can’t drive effectively from the ground up, you’re immediately trying to make up for lost power and open yourself to injury.
- Timing Issues: An inconsistent starting position throws off the timing of subsequent movements. If the leg lift is too high/low, too fast/slow, or the weight shift is off, everything else down the chain is out of sync.
Proprioceptive Instincts and Compensatory Movements.
- The Brain’s Goal: Get the Ball to the Target. A pitcher’s brain, through proprioceptive feedback, constantly receives information about the body’s position and movement. Its ultimate goal is to get the ball from the hand to the target.
- Automatic Adjustments: When the brain senses that the body is “off” from its ideal kinetic chain sequence (due to a flawed starting position, for example), it triggers subconscious compensatory movements. These are adjustments made in later stages of the delivery to “fix” the problem and still get the ball reasonably close to the target.
Why Compensation is Detrimental (Even if They Get the Ball There).
- Increased Stress/Injury Risk: Compensatory movements often involve overusing smaller, more vulnerable muscles and joints (especially in the arm and shoulder). For example, if the lower body isn’t generating enough power, the arm might try to “muscle” the ball, leading to high stress. If the front side pulls off early due to poor initial balance, the arm has to “throw around” the body, causing additional strain and potential injury.
- Inconsistency/Lack of Command: While these compensations might get the ball “close,” they rarely result in consistent, pinpoint command. The precise timing and angles are constantly changing because the body is reacting to an initial error, rather than executing a smooth, repeatable pattern. Each compensatory movement might be slightly different.
- Inefficiency/Reduced Velocity Potential: Compensations are inherently less efficient than a clean kinetic chain. Energy is wasted, leading to a reduced ceiling for velocity. The pitcher throws “hard” for their effort, but not at their absolute maximum potential.
- Difficulty Identifying the Root Cause: Because the body is so adept at compensating, a pitcher often only sees the result (e.g., arm pain, lack of command) and struggles to recognize that the root of the problem lies much earlier in the delivery, possibly in the initial “starting position.”
The Ideal Scenario.
The goal for a pitcher is to create a single, fluid, and efficient kinetic chain that starts from a consistent and powerful starting position. When that initial position is consistently achieved, and the body moves seamlessly through the subsequent phases (including the crucial glove arm going to the front hip), the need for compensatory movements is minimized. This leads to …
- Maximized Velocity: All energy is channeled efficiently.
- Optimized Command: The release point is consistent due to repeatable mechanics.
- Reduced Injury Risk: Stress is distributed appropriately across the larger, stronger muscle groups of the lower body and core.
Coach Skip’s guaranteed instruction provides a solid starting foundation, emphasizing the kinetic chain, proprioception, and lower-body involvement to optimize your results.
In-person instruction costs $150 $60 per half-hour session, payable in Cash or via Venmo.
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- Instruction takes place at the Pitching Wall, 65 Fairmount Drive, Sicklerville, NJ 08081.
- The Fairmount Drive location is 3 minutes off Exit 41 on the Atlantic City Expressway.
- You’ll get a summary of Coach Skip’s session at the end, and during your next session, the notes will guide our subsequent steps.
- Coach Skip GUARANTEES your progress!
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Interested? Please fill out this form, and Coach Skip will contact you within 24 hours.
Discover a Much Anticipated Motion Today …
Zoom/Video Instruction | In-Person, South Jersey Pitching Instruction | 79-Page Coach’s Supplement
