Pitching – Is your weight centered between your knees?

How does your body define balance?

Let’s say I ask you to jump on a balance beam and, as quickly as you can, touch your nose.

- At first, you can’t control your arms. - You take a couple of deep breaths to let your mind settle your body over the beam.
- Once your mind senses you no longer need your arms for balance, you touch your nose.

I know I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already realize, but, by digging into this “settling” process, you’ll walk away with a better understanding why you struggle with your command.

Your “settling” process creates a sense of “stability”.

Your “settling” process. 

·       - Without thinking about it, your mind automatically centers your weight between your knees. - At the point where your mind senses your body is in balance, your knees are going to form a “diamond-like” shape.

“Stability”

- “Stability” is seen when you center your weight between your knees (your “diamond”). - “Stability” allows you to decide how you’re going to move your body. - You feel “stable” when you no longer need your arms to keep your balance.

Let’s prepare your body for your front foot lift.

·      - In the last blog, we recommended starting your stretch with your feet one baseball width apart. - From this position, you bring your shoulders down to your heels. - When done properly and as a reaction to your shoulders coming down to your heels, you see your legs/knees form a “diamond”.

Your “diamond” puts you in  a position to complete your front leg lift with your weight centered between your knees.

- By placing your weight between your knees, you lessen the chance you’ll need your throwing arm for balance and - As a result, you increase the possibility each pitch will end up closer to your intended target.

If you want to know what’s stopping you from “balancing” and “stabilizing” your motion, contact us.

Skip Fast

Expert Pitching Coach
Professional Pitching Institute

WWW: http://www.propitchinginstitute.com 

E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

Copyright © 2018

Pitching – You’re one foot away from better command.

Pitching aside … How do your foot placements impact your arms?

• ·         When your feet are wider than your hips, to get any one foot off the ground, you’re forced to shift your weight over your back-foot.
• ·         With all your weight over your back foot, to move anywhere, you must take a “step”.
• ·         Your “step” shifts your weight away from your back foot and, to keep you from hurting yourself, your opposite arm spontaneously moves up and away from your body.

How does something as simple as your foot placements relate to your throwing arm?

• ·         When you begin your motion with your feet too far apart, to take your front foot off the ground, you're forced to shift your weight over your back-foot.
• ·         With your weight over your back foot, to move your body toward your target, you must “stride”.
• ·         Your “stride” shifts your weight toward your target and, as an uncontrollable reaction, your throwing arm moves away from your body.
• ·         No matter the throwing arm path you want your arm to take, your throwing arm takes on a life of its own and will position itself relative to your “stride” tempo.

How can you use your foot placements to shrink your target area?

• ·         When you begin your motion with your feet one baseball width apart, your throwing arm won’t be as involved with your balance as with a wider stance.
• ·         Without doing anything else, because your foot placements keep your throwing arm available to respond to your lower body, you’ll automatically see your worst misses finishing closer to your intended target.

If you want to continue shrinking your target area to the size of your Catcher’s mitt, contact us.

Skip Fast

Expert Pitching Coach
Professional Pitching Institute

WWW: http://www.propitchinginstitute.com 

E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

Copyright © 2018

Pitching - Feeling balance isn’t being in balance.

Your mind wants to keep your body in balance.

For example, anytime your mind senses you’re falling, to keep you from hurting yourself, your mind instantaneously takes control of your every movement.

Being in balance.

“Being in balance” is ending your front leg lift with your weight centered between your knees.

·         At the top of your front leg lift, you can freely move your arms and legs.

·         To move down the mound, you first movement out of your front leg lift is opening your front shoulder.

·         To keep you from falling on your nose, you have no choice but to stride.

·         Because your stride interrupts your lower body rotation, you force your mind to overreact in a very productive way.

·         When you end your stride and stop your lower body rotation, not only do you completely change your body’s dynamics, but your mind receives another alert.

·         To keep from hurting yourself and to get your body back in balance, your mind forces you to make a throwing action, and, since your throwing action is an involuntary reflex, you know your body will deliver every pitch directly into your Catcher’s target.

As a spontaneous reaction, you challenge every opponent to make solid contact with any pitch you throw.

Feeling balanced.

“Feeling balanced” is ending your front leg lift with no space between your knees. To “feel balanced”, you end your front leg lift with your weight over your back foot.

·         To move down the mound, you’re forced to tilt your body toward your target.

·         The instant your mind senses this forward tilt, your mind instinctively uses your throwing arm to slow your movement down the mound.

·         As soon as your front foot gets back on the ground and your mind senses you’re no longer in danger, you can use your throwing arm to complete your delivery.

When you let this happen…

·         Your throwing action becomes a secondary, yet somewhat restricted, action.

·         Your throwing arm path is influenced by your body position at the end of your stride.

·         The conflict between the throwing arm path you want and the throwing arm path your body needs means you can't expect your ball to always end up where you want.

As an unfortunate consequence, when you challenge your body’s natural throwing arm path, you create the small ligament tears and fraying that lead to throwing arm distress.

What’s holding back your elite command?

The only thing holding you back from elite command is knowing how to end your front leg lift with your weight centered within your knees.

Teaching you how to end your front leg lift with some distance between your knees takes less than 10 minutes. If you need help with this, please contact us.

Skip Fast

Expert Pitching Coach

Professional Pitching Institute
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

WWW: http://www.propitchinginstitute.com 

E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com

Copyright © 2018

Turn your pitching results into a valuable reaction!

Where your command struggles come from.

Throwing with both feet on the ground discounts your command.

- When you land your foot plant and then make a throwing action, you twist your back.

> Your back’s twisting action carries down your spine and into your hips.

> At the same time your throwing arm comes into release, your body is matching your throwing arm path to your foot plant position.

> It’s these slight changes to your throwing arm path that, no matter how good your intentions, causes you to miss your target.

To improve your command, you need a reliable process that’ll produce the same foot plant position on every pitch.

Developing elite command.

You can generate much better command by clearing your front shoulder with one foot still off the ground. By clearing your front shoulder, your body lands your stride in the same position on every pitch.

+  To keep your from falling on your nose, your twisting action out of your front leg lift forces you to stride.

> Your stride creates the torque that travels up your core and out your throwing hand.

> By turning your throwing action into a reaction, you force your throwing hand to come through the same productive release window on every pitch.

This simple approach turns your throwing arm into an instrument you use to keep your Team close enough to win.

Sounds easy enough, but it’s not.

Clearing your front shoulder only works when you end your front leg lift with your weight centered between your knees. Since most Pitchers end their front leg lift with their weight over their back foot, turning your throwing arm into a productive tool isn’t as easy as it sounds.

If you don’t know the 4 simple actions that’ll end your front leg lift in a dynamically balanced position, contact us for help. You’ll be glad you did!!!

Skip Fast

Expert Pitching Coach

Professional Pitching Institute
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

WWW: http://www.propitchinginstitute.com 

E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com

Copyright © 2018

Elite pitching results are more mental than physical.

These pitching elements drive your success.

These basic elements that go into every pitch result.

1. Your Subconscious – To keep your body in balance, your mind is programmed to automatically rearranges your body parts.

2. Your Physiological Factors – When your mind rearranges your body parts, you’re hardwired to always react to the same conditions in the same way.

3. Your Psychological Makeup – After seeing an unacceptable result, do you adjust to your last pitch or stick with your plan?

These tools become your guide to a sustainable motion known to produce sustainable results.

Your subconscious patterns produce sustainability.

To produce sustainably excellent results all the time, you plan your subconscious reactions around your physiological patterns. Your sustainable results give you one option after every pitch … stick with what you do.

Your body language is the interplay between your shoulders and hips. By comparing your body language to the patterns proven to produce sustainably elite results, you systematically close the gaps between the two. In the end, you walk away with a set of repeatable movements that’ll deliver each pitch into our Catcher’s target.

Knowing your actions are sustainable, anytime you see an unacceptable result, you merely go back to the movements you know will produce the results you expect.

By merely thinking about the right combination of movements, your sustainably elite results become an involuntary reflex.

If you need help finding the right sequence of actions that’ll produce the results you need to move up the baseball ladder, contact us for help.

Skip Fast

Expert Pitching Coach
Professional Pitching Institute

WWW: http://www.propitchinginstitute.com 

E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

Copyright © 2018

Pitching … How to engage your lower body?

The best and easiest way to challenge every hitter on every pitch comes from turning your throwing action into a lower body reaction.

These are the choices you have to engage your lower body.

Your front leg lift.

By ending your front leg lift with your weight centered just in front of your back foot, your core is upright, and your arms are free to move anyway you want.

But not … By ending your front leg lift with your weight over your back foot, you tilt your core. You can move your arms anyway you want, but, unlike when you end your front leg lift with your weight centered in front of your back foot, your arm movements are separate from the rest of your body.

You move down the mound.

You open your glove side shoulder to create a lower body rotation. It’s your lower body rotation that forces you to move down the mound.

But not … To move down the mound, you’re force to shift your weight toward your target.

You complete your stride.

With your lower body rotation putting you in a position to literally fall on your face, you instinctively place your front foot on the ground.

But not … Your front foot hits the ground when the weight on your front side overpowers your throwing arm frantically trying to counterbalance your body mass on your back side.

You complete your throwing action.

Your natural foot plant stops your lower body rotation. The energy you generate by stopping your lower body rotation moves up your core and out your throwing hand.

But not … Landing your foot plant and getting your core back to vertical clears your body to make a secondary throwing action.

What lower body engagement does for you?

Your glove side shoulder opens to cause a chain reaction where your lower body rotation whips your throwing arm into release.

Because your throwing arm reacts to lower body activity, you spontaneously bring your throwing hand through a very productive and extremely consistent release window, you delivery every pitch into your Catcher’s mitt and, even on your off-speed pitches, show your opponent a fastball arm speed and exceptionally late ball movement.

But not … By using an upper body rotation to pull your throwing arm into release, you can’t deliver more than 2 pitches into your Catcher’s target, your ball takes a predictable path into your target and, based upon the pitch you throw, you change your arm slot and arm speed.

If you don’t know how to complete your front leg lift with your weight centered in front of your back foot, contact us for help.

Skip Fast

Expert Pitching Coach
Professional Pitching Institute

WWW: http://www.propitchinginstitute.com 

E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

Copyright © 2018

Is misinformation blocking your progress?

Where does elite pitching command come from?

Your elite command comes from you clearing your glove side before your complete your stride. The simple act of opening your front shoulder before your front foot hits the ground gets your lower body to pull your throwing hand through a very consist and easily repeated release window.

Stop listening to the majority of what’s said about your pitching motion.

Standing in the way of your elite command are your subconscious impulses the baseball community floats out there. You keep listen to what everyone says you should be doing and you won’t be able to get as few as 2 consecutive pitches to travel into your catcher’s target.

Start listening to your body.

These are some examples of what the baseball community says you need to do to be elite?

Keeping your front shoulder closed – When you keep your front shoulder closed into your foot plant, your throwing arm works by itself. With an independent throwing action, you never know where your next pitch is going to end up.

Striding – When you try to control your stride, you use your throwing arm to offset your forward weight shift. With your throwing arm involved with your balance, you physically take your lower body out of your motion.

Lead with your hips – Your body rotates only when your core is vertical. When you think to lead with your hips, your core is going to tilt. Your core won’t get back to an upright position until your complete your stride.  By that point, you’ve effectively lost your lower body.

Arm slots –When, to remain competitive, you must change your throwing arm path, you’re going to impact your stride. Anytime your stride is less than natural, you lose your lower body. As stated many times already, you lose your lower body and you never really know where your next pitch is going to end up.

Pitching help is on the way.

By getting your front shoulder to turn all these elements a spontaneous reaction, we draw out the elite Pitcher hiding inside of you. Call “Skip” today to talk about what we can do for you.

Skip Fast

Pitch Location Expert
Professional Pitching Institute

WWW: http://www.propitchinginstitute.com 

E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-524-3248

Copyright © 2018