Posts tagged with "velocity"

A Biologically Based Look at Your Throwing Action

A Biologically Based Look at Your Throwing Action

The Evolution of Lower Body Engagement

The only way to truly maximize your lower body rotation is by balancing on one foot and opening your front shoulder.

When you do this, your spinning action tells your body you may be in jeopardy of getting hurt.

To stabilize the situation, your body places your front foot back on the ground.

When your front foot hits the ground, it’s your connection with the ground that causes your hips, when compared to your shoulders, to over rotate.

Your body’s drive to get your shoulders parallel to your hips forces your under rotated shoulders to catch up with your hips.

Your shoulders catching up with your hips whips your throwing hand into release.

Creating a Lower Body Throwing Action

Lower body engagement begins with your hands separating at the same time your stride begins.

Your hand separation opens your front shoulder and sets off the cascading series of events described above.

As a consequence, you see your throwing arm whipping into release, your ball ending up where you expect and you challenging the best hitters to make solid contact with your pitches.

Measuring Your Lower Body Involvement

Your lower body is driving your results when …

Your Motion – Your hands separate at the same time you begin your stride.

Your Results – You expect each pitch to end up where you planned.

Your Opponent – Your Opponent’s tendency is to miss your mistakes.

Finding Solutions

Failure to experience any of these indicators means you need to pay more attention to your movements into your front leg lift.

Need help with your front leg lift? Let’s talk.

Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“Winning Pitch Location Strategies©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2020, Pro Pitching Institute.

5 Confidence Builders

5 Confidence Builders | Pro Pitching Institute

5 Confidence Builders

Use these 5 confidence builders to remove the toxicity from your pitching and give yourself the confidence required to experience more success every time you take the mound.

  • Stop living in the past.

Learn from the past and always move forward.

  • Learn to control and manage your thoughts.

Stay focused on the movement patterns you know produce the best results.

  • Use trends to improve.

Instead of making arbitrary adjustments, use your performance trends to pinpoint areas needing improvement.

  • Adjust your footwork.

Anytime you want to improve, begin by changing your footwork, then use your results to measure your adjustments and work from there.

  • Never beat yourself up.

You’ll always experience ups and downs, but, overall, when a larger portion of your pitches end up closer to your target than in the past, you are getting better.

What’s in your future?

Follow these simple recommendations and, rather than trying to produce the results you think you need, have the confidence to be the best version of yourself and know, with the right focus, you have what it takes to succeed against the best hitters at the highest levels.

Want to have the confidence to expect every pitch to go where you want with the late stage movement you need to succeed? Let’s talk!

Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“Winning Pitch Location Strategies©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2020, Pro Pitching Institute.

Only One Approach Produces Pitching Success!

Only one approach produces pitching success.

Managing the way you think to move produces better, more sustainable, pitching results than trying to manage the way you see your body move.

The Most Elite Pitchers Use an Inside/Out Approach

When examined closely, 5% of all Pitchers use an Inside/Out process to achieve the elite pitching results you dream of having.

An Inside/Out Mental Process lets your foot placements (the outside) use your body’s inherent reaction patterns to drive your results (the inside).

  • Your foot placements drive your body position at the top of your front leg lift.
  • Your front leg lift body position determines your throwing arm path.
  • Your throwing arm path impacts where the pitch ends up.

With an Inside/Out approach, you stop trying and start producing the elite results you always dreamed you have.

The Rest of the Pitchers Use an Outside/In Approach

Until examined more closely, you represent the 95% of all Pitchers who  use an Outside/In Approach to try and manage your reactions (the outside) as if they were controllable actions (the inside).

Typically, an Outside/In Approach deals with the movements you see as you move from your front leg lift into your release.

  • When you experience an unacceptable result, you think to adjust your arm slot.
  • You use trial-and-error to figure out the arm angle that’ll improve your last pitch results.
  • Finally, you use muscle memory to reinforce your new arm slot.

With Outside/in Approach, you feel like you’re always wondering where your next pitch is going to end up.

Effective foot placements produce remarkably consistent results

Your foot placements supply the prompts guaranteed to produce 5%’er results. If you’re a Pitcher or a Pitching Dad who wants to know about their current foot placement, let’s talk.

Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“Winning Pitch Location Strategies©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248
#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2020, Pro Pitching Institute.

How to Experience Instant Pitch Improvement

Your biological drive to stay in balance controls your pitching results.

You want any change to your motion to do two things.

First, you want to feel like your release is less restricted. Second, you want to see a larger portion of your pitches travel into your intended target.

Balance predicts these outcomes

The more your biological need for balance keeps your throwing arm free to react to your lower body activity, the less restricted your motion feels and, better yet, the more you can expect your pitches to end up going where you want.

On the other hand, the more your biological need for balance uses your throwing arm to offset your stride, the more stressful it becomes to get your ball to end up where you want.

Leg lifts and balance

When your leg lift ends with your back knee to the second base side of your back foot, you can spin into your stride, use your throwing action to keep your body in balance and, on a regular basis, can expect your pitches to travel into your target.

Contrary to this, when your leg lift ends with your back knee over or in front of your back foot, you have to stride toward your target, you use your throwing arm path to offset your stride and you never know where any one pitch will end up.

How to guarantee sustainable improvement

Your “leg lifts and balance” indicate the right changes to your front leg lift is certain to improve your results.  Knowing this, the only way to change your front leg lift becomes adjusting your initial foot placements.

The best news is that simple changes to your foot placements are very measurable and incredibly repeatable and, with the right footwork, your improvement is guaranteed.

Failure is not an option

By using the cues your biological need to stay in balance shows us, we teach you a dynamic front leg lift position that sends your ball where you want and with the ball movement you expect.

Struggling with your results? Wasting time experimenting with your foot placements? Ask us for help!

Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“Winning Pitch Location Strategies©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248
#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2020, Pro Pitching Institute.

Pitching Balance Guarantees Sustainability

Your front leg lift drives your pitching results.

When you stride or fall toward your target, you can’t know where your pitches end up.

What is your sequencing?

Next time you look at your motion, focus on your front leg/hand separation sequencing.

When, after you begin your stride, your hands separate, you know your biological need for balance is using your throwing arm path to offset your stride.

When your natural need for balance takes over your throwing arm path, you cannot possibly know with any certainty where any one pitch ends up.

As a result of your stride coming before your hand separation, whether you realize it or not, every pitching session is spent TRYING to figure out a way to control your biological drive for balance.

The solution is not as simple as you think.

Contrary to widely held beliefs, no one has the will power to simply demand your hand separation to come before your stride.

However, you do have the power to better manage your biological need for balance.

Right now, it is your biological need for balance that ends your front leg lift with your weight over your back foot.

With your weight over your back foot, you have one choice … stride and use your arms for balance.

Therefore, you change your stride/separation sequence by making your weight distribution into your front leg lift more efficient.

Do this and, instead of striding out of your front leg lift, you come out of your front leg lift with your hand separation triggering your stride.

What is in your future?

If you can’t find a way to get your initial legwork to change your hand separation/stride sequence, ask me for help.

My “Winning Pitch Location Master Strategies©” will teach you how to use your hand separation to produce the pitch location required to compete at the highest levels.

Want to know more? Contact me through the Pro Pitching Institute website.

Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“Winning Pitch Location Strategies©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248
#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2020, Pro Pitching Institute.

Come back from the pandemic a better Pitcher

To come back to the mound from the pandemic better and stronger than you left may seem daunting, but, when you use your biological need for balance to your advantage, it’s very possible.

During the pandemic and with the stay-in-place directives, you don’t have the luxury of seeing the results of any change you make to your motion and, when you do, the sample is so small that you can’t tell with any certainty what impact the change has.

In these trying times, how can you improve your results?

You start by analyzing elite pitching motions and notice, without exception, how each Pitcher’s body unravels from the bottom up.

Next, you realize what you see is determined by their body’s biological need for balance. This means that, whether in slow-motion or at game speed, these Pitchers know how to use their throwing action to get their bodies back in balance.

Use your slow-motion delivery to predict your results.

With this in mind, let’s use your super-slow-motion delivery as your personal benchmark.

When, because you use your throwing arm for balance into your stride,  your slow-motion delivery stops as your front foot hits the ground, you can’t know with any certainty where any one pitch will end up.

On the other hand, just like these elite Pitchers, when you end your stride using your throwing action for balance, you use your biological needs to deliver your pitches directly into your intended target.

A pandemic challenge guaranteed to improve your pitching

To come back from the pandemic a better Pitcher than when you left, find a way to use your biological need for balance to force your super-slow motion to end with you having to make a throwing action.

We can guarantee you come back from the pandemic a better Pitcher

After 25+years of studying how a Pitcher’s biological need for balance relates to their pitching results, we know from your slow-motion delivery your readiness for delivering your pitches directly into your targets.

During your slow-motion delivery, if you can’t figure out how to end your stride with a throwing action, use one of our “Winning Pitch Location Strategies©” to help you come back from the pandemic better and stronger than ever.

Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“Winning Pitch Location Strategies©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2020, Pro Pitching Institute.

How to Expect Superior Pitching Results

You’re born with a biological balance mechanism whose sole purpose is to satisfy your deep-rooted need for balance.

Your biological balance mechanism turns “on” before you even realize you have an imbalance. Likewise, once your body senses it’s back in balance, your biological balance mechanism turns “off”.

Your biological balance mechanism produces the movements you see

Prior to making any action, your biological balance mechanism must be in the “off” position. This means that any action will cause your weight to shift.

Your weight shift activates your biological balance mechanism. Your imbalance instantly uses your leg, torso and arm movements to get back in balance. Once in balance, you begin this cycle all over again.

This means the only way to control your movements is to obsess over making the right action out of the right starting position.

Your biological balance mechanism determines your arm slot

Your biological balance mechanism uses your footwork to determine your body position at the top of your leg lift.

Your body position at the top of your leg lift tells your biological balance mechanism the throwing arm path to take into your ball release.

You can expect stellar results

When you have the right footwork, your drive for balance uses your throwing action to complete your delivery.

This means, when you properly manage your biological need for balance, your pitches end up where you want and behave the way you expect.

Want to use your biological balance mechanism to your advantage?

Through our “Winning Pitch Location Strategies©”, we use your biological balance mechanism patterns to teach you how to expect your pitches to travel directly into your intended target.

Want to know more? Visit the Pro Pitching Institute.

Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
Propitchinginstitute.com
“Winning Pitch Location Strategies©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2020, Pro Pitching Institute.