An Athletic Stance Guarantees Sustainable Command

Whether you’re a Little League Pitcher, already pitching professionally or any level in-between, ending your front leg lift in an athletic position is one of the undeniable differences between sustainable fastball command and not knowing where your pitch is going to end up.

Every athletic event starts from an athletic position.

No matter the sport, except for pitching – we'll get into this in a second – you, like every athlete on the face of the earth, begin each play from an athletic position.

Your foot placements give you a stable foundation. When you bend your knees, you automatically center your weight between your feet. These 2 actions put you in a position to instantly do whatever you need to successfully complete the play and keep your Team close enough to win.

Poor athletic positions mean poor results.

You never end your athletic position with one foot in front of the other. Should you choose to do this, you know …

• You wouldn’t be stable.
• You’d use your arms to maintain your balance.
• You couldn’t react as quickly as you need to.

An athletic position where you place your feet in front of one another means, when you make a play, the chances you’re off-balance are huge and the chances the play ends poorly is just as great.

Pitching Ready Athletic Positions.

In pitching, when perched on one foot, your knees become your foundation. Therefore, by ending your front leg lift with your knees shoulder width apart, the chances each pitch travels directly into your Catcher’s target become a given.

When, however, you end your front leg lift with your front knee even with or behind your back knee…

• You’re unstable.
• You use your arms to stabilize your body and
• As a result, you never know where any one pitch is going to end up.

Here’s your bottom-line … unless you end your front leg lift with your knees shoulder width apart, you’ll always be searching for fastball command.

Here’s the good news.

By following the process outlined at the Pro Pitching Institute, you’ll end your front leg lift with your knees shoulder width apart. Once mastered, instead of using strikes or stats to measure your results, you use your ability to deliver every fastball directly into your Catcher’s target to measure your front leg lift.

Tell a friend! Have a friend struggling with their fastball command? Make sure to tell them about the Pro Pitching Institute.

Skip Fast
Freelance Pitching Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-281-2596

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2019

Throwing reflexes create superior command.

How your body works.

Once you tilt your core, your body uses your arms to bring your core back to vertical.

Two ways to move down the mound.

There are 2 ways to move down the mound…

With a tilted core.

When you move down the mound with a tilted core, you use your arms to get your core back to vertical. Once your front foot gets back on the ground, you use your arms to complete this task. Only when your core returns to an upright position can you complete your delivery. However, when you complete throwing action your throwing arm ends up working by itself. With your throwing arm working by itself, you never really know where any one pitch is going to end up.

With an upright core.

When you move down the mound with an upright core, you lose your core at foot plant. The instant your core moves from vertical a throwing action, or should we say a throwing reflex, gets your core back to upright.

Your throwing reflexes call upon your body’s self-correcting tendencies to bring your throwing hand through a very sustainable and extremely productive release window.

Here’s your bottom-line … when your movements keep your core vertical into your foot plant, you can always expect your ball to travel directly into your target. 

Here’s the good news.

The Pro Pitching Institute prioritizes the movements you need to keep your core vertical into your foot plant.  In the end, by following the process outlined at the Pro Pitching Institute, you motion ends with a sustainable throwing reflex. Once mastered, instead of using strikes or stats to measure your results, you use your ability to deliver every fastball directly into your Catcher’s target to measure your core alignment.

Tell a friend! Have a friend struggling with their fastball command? Make sure to tell them about the Pro Pitching Institute.

Skip Fast
Freelance Pitching Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-281-2596

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2019

A simple solution to better fastball command.

Whether you’re a Little League Pitcher, a Professional Pitcher or any level in-between, between this blog and the movements presented on the Pro Pitching Institute web site, you’ll be a step closer to knowing how to use your fastball arm speed to deliver more pitches directly into your target.

If you’re new to this blog, you owe it to yourself to subscribe today. 

Improve your performance.

You take the ball, get your sign, expect your pitch to go where you want, but, more often than not, you miss your location and, to properly catch each pitch, you force your Catcher to move his glove?

Then, every once in a while, when you see your Catcher's mitt drift over the plate, you quietly pray the hitter doesn't do too much damage?

Stick around and you’re going to discover the 2 reasons this happens and the one solution that’ll give you complete control over where your ball ends up.

How do you use your throwing arm?

Here’s your bottom-line … the longer you use your throwing arm for balance, the less likely you are to see your ball end up where you want.

You can tell when you're going to use your throwing arm for balance and can't predict with any certainty where your next pitch will end up when, before your front foot even comes off the ground, 

#1 … you begin with your back knee over your back foot

or

#2 … you begin with your back knee ahead of your back foot.

It's that simple and, even better news, the solution is just as simple.

Use your lower body to throw.

You keep your throwing arm free to respond to your lower body and will see a large ratio of pitches end up where you want when you begin with your back knee in front of and to the second base side of your back foot.

This blog and the Pro Pitching Institute web site combine to tell you how to permanently begin each motion with your back knee to the second base side of your back foot.

More importantly, by fixing your initial back-knee position, you’ll experience the dominant fastball command needed to attract next-level attention. 

Here’s the good news about improving your fastball command.

The Pro Pitching Institute prioritizes the important aspects of your motion while ignoring the less relevant things.  In the end, by following the process outlined at the Pro Pitching Institute, you motion looks like the one you originally visualized, but, instead of using strikes or stats to measure your results, you use your ability to deliver every fastball directly into your Catcher’s target.

Tell a friend! Have a friend struggling with their fastball command? Make sure to tell them about the Pro Pitching Institute.

Skip Fast
Freelance Pitching Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-281-2596

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2019

How do you get noticed?

What’ll separate you from everyone else?

The answer is simple … sustainable fastball command.

Whether you’re a Little League Pitcher, a Professional Pitcher or any level in-between, the movements presented in the Pro Pitching Institute web site teach you how to use your lower body to produce pinpoint fastball command.

If you don’t think fastball command is possible, you owe it to yourself to visit ProPitchingInstitute.com.

Getting your lower body to produce fastball command feels natural and normal, but, here's the catch, so does your lower body not having any impact on your throwing action.

When, on a regular basis, most of your fastballs travel directly into your Catcher’s mitt, you know your lower body is driving your results. When you never really know where your fastball is going to end up, your lower body has nothing to do with your throwing action.

The good news is that, if you stay with the movements presented at ProPitchingInstitute.com, I'll give every reason to expect every fastball to travel directly into your receiver's target! 

3 Reasons You Struggle with Your Command

There are simple 3 reasons your lower body fails to produce fastball command and they all have one thing in common … a front-to-back movement into your starting position.

These are the 3 easily-solved causes for you losing your lower body and, consequently, compromising your fastball command.

#1 ... You begin your delivery with your back foot tilted. With a back-foot tilt, as soon as your front foot comes off the ground, your body moves from front-to-back which causes you to lose your lower half and, consequently, never really know where any pitch is going to end up.    

#2 … You begin your motion with your feet too far apart. With your feet too far apart, the instant your front foot pushes off the ground, your body moves back, you lose your lower half and, again, you don't know where your pitch is going to end up.  

#3 … You begin your delivery with your back-knee in front of over your back foot. With your back-knee over your back foot, as soon as your front foot leaves the ground, your body lurches back, you lose your lower half and your fastball command suffers.  

Here’s the good news.

Some simple adjustments to your footwork and back leg positioning stop any front-to-back movements during your starting position.

The ProPitchingInstitute.com tells you how to correct each of these flaws.

More importantly, by fixing your initial legwork, you experience the next-level fastball command needed to attract next-level attention.

Try it. It's simple, it's effective and it's sustainable!

The Pro Pitching Institute promotes next-level, fastball command.

The Pro Pitching Institute prioritizes the important aspects of your motion while ignoring the less relevant things.  In the end, by following the process outlined at the Pro Pitching Institute, you motion looks like the one you originally visualized, but, instead of using strikes or stats to measure your results, you use your ability to deliver every fastball directly into your Catcher’s target.

Tell a friend! Have a friend struggling with their fastball command? Make sure to tell them about the Pro Pitching Institute.

Skip Fast
Freelance Pitching Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-281-2596

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2019

Does what you see really reflect what happens?

Can you trust what you see?

It’s human nature that when you see someone throwing strikes with acceptable velocity or someone pitching for a high-profile Team, you trust what you see, memorize his movements and, to reproduce his results, attempt to copy his movements.

You naturally think your eyes are capturing truthful images, but what you believe to be true is a clever estimate of what’s happening.

As with all predictions, what you think you see is never 100% correct. This leads to errors and, instead of you controlling your opponent, these errors lead to next-level hitters controlling you.

The gap in your thinking becomes more apparent when you struggle to resolve the mismatch between your lack of command to your perception of the way you want your motion to look.

It’s at this point you realize the details you thought you saw really aren’t as refined as you think. It’s the gaps between what you think you see and what happens that promote the misses your next-level opponents exploit.

Distractions are abundant.

Distractions to learning come in 2 forms.

1. You get distracted by seeing an obvious change in movement or
2. You get distracted by seeing a different reaction to the same movements.

Instead of understanding why the distractions happen and addressing the cause, you seek to change the distraction back to what’s comfortable for you.

When you know the cognitive mechanisms driving your motion, the magic happens at the glove.

You measure your motion by your ability to regularly deliver 2 pitches in a row into your target without your receiver’s mitt or, when you see an unacceptable outcome, you bring the next pitch back into your receiver’s target.

Your attention to one specific movement relaxes your focus on your total motion.

You can only process a limited amount of information at any one time, so when you get distracted by any single movement, you miss how this action impacts all your movements.

The interest in the results skews the way you think about the motion.

Instead of your motion producing your results, your results drive your motion. Your movements skew farther and farther away from your vision of “good”.

Your vision of what’s “good” is hijacked by the notion that velocity is more important than command.

Eventually, you get to the point where everyone around throws as hard as you. Unless you’re a Pitcher who commands his fastball, your climb up the baseball food chain depends upon you missing your target less often than the next guy.

Your stats are good; therefore, you’re pitching well.

When you think you understand your motion, you relax and become less aware of the otherwise suspicious things happening within your delivery. These flaws come back to bite you at the next level.

What really happens?

Unless you pay close attention to the reasons the Pitcher you choose to copy moves the way they do, you simply won’t see what happens.

Now that you know there are holes in your thought process, you get …

• Confused – what do you do next?
• Flustered – without know how, you try to do what someone asks you to do?
• Perplexed – the solution to your situation is beyond your understanding.

The most effective way to make sense out of what you see is a focus on the cognitive mechanisms driving your pitching motion.

The Pro Pitching Institute promotes next-level, fastball command.

The Pro Pitching Institute prioritizes the important aspects of your motion while ignoring the less relevant things.  In the end, by following the process outlined at the Pro Pitching Institute, you motion looks like the one you originally visualized, but, instead of using strikes or stats to measure your results, you use your ability to deliver every fastball directly into your Catcher’s target.

Tell a friend! Have a friend struggling with their fastball command? Make sure to tell them about the Pro Pitching Institute.

Skip Fast
Freelance Pitching Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-281-2596

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2019

A Pro Pitching Institute Blog – Shoulder Your Command.

Not only is your weight distribution controllable, but by staying in balance, you keep your throwing arm free to instantly respond to your lower body activity.

How your body works.

• When your body is in balance, your shoulders are level.
• Level shoulders allow your throwing arm to complete your delivery.
• Therefore, when your body is in balance, you’re able to complete your delivery.
• Your body uses your shoulders and arms like a trapeze artist uses their pole.

Weight over your back foot.

Ending your front leg lift with your weight over your back foot promotes shoulder tilts.

With your weight over your back foot, you rely on a forward weight shift to move your body toward your target. The instant your movements create a forward weight shift becomes the instant your shoulders tilt.

Your lower body is responsible for leveling your shoulders. Once your front foot gets back on the ground, your lower body pushes can level your shoulders. However, due to the delay between your front foot contacting the ground and your release, unless you’ve discovered a productive leg tempo, you never really know where any one pitch will end up???

Weight centered in front of your back foot.

When you begin with your weight centered just in front of your back foot, with the right movement sequence, you use your lower body for balance, your shoulders remain level and your arms are free to move the way you want.

Because your shoulders remain level into your foot plant, your upper body instantly responds to your lower body activity. In the end, your body naturally creates an extremely productive throwing reflex.

Once you make these movements and sequences the core of your delivery, you come to expect every pitch to travel directly into your Catcher’s mitt.

The Pro Pitching Institute “Benchmarks” promote level shoulders.

By following the “benchmarks” outlined at the Pro Pitching Institute, you expect your level shoulders to deliver every pitch directly into your Catcher’s target!!!

Tell a friend! Have a friend struggling with their fastball command? Make sure to tell them about the Pro Pitching Institute “Benchmarks”.

Skip Fast
Freelance Pitching Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-281-2596

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2019

A Pro Pitching Institute Blog – Basic Fastball Command.

How your body works.

You’re bombarded with volumes of print, hours and hours and hours of video and unclear verbal instruction, but, when you tear everything down to its bare essentials, this is what matters.

• Your body is instinctually driven to keep itself in balance.
• One simple decision -  where, before your front foot comes off the ground, you place your feet - determines the size of your target area.
  

Place your feet under your hips; your catcher’s mitt is your target area.

When you begin with your feet under your hips, you’re able to position your back knee to the second base side of your ankle.

Once your front foot comes off the ground, your lower body maintains your balance and, more importantly, your arms are free to move the way you want.

With your arms free, you use your glove side to rotate your body down the mound.

At foot plant, your rotation creates a glove side imbalance where, to get itself back in balance, your body makes a spontaneous throwing reflex.

Your fastball command is driven by your foot placements which …

• generates your front leg lift position which
• allows you to rotate down the mound which
• spontaneously brings your throwing hand through a very tiny and extremely productive release window.
  

Begin with your feet too far apart; you expand your target area.

When you begin with your feet outside your hips, your back knee begins over or in front of your back foot.

Once your front foot comes off the ground, to keep yourself in balance, your body places your weight over your back foot.

With your weight over your back foot, unless you stride, lead with your hips or work to create hip to shoulder separation, you won’t move into your release.

At foot plant, your body is naturally driven to get itself back in balance. Once in balance, your throwing arm is now free to complete your motion.

Never knowing where your ball will end up means you choose to place your feet outside your hips which...

• causes you to end your front leg lift with your weight over your back foot which
• forces you to shift your weight down the mound which
• uses your throwing arm for balance which
• at foot plant, frees your throwing arm to complete your motion which
• instead of being a reflex action, turns your release into an independent action.
  

Our “Do It Yourself Pitching Benchmarks” shrink your target area.

By following the benchmarked process outlined at the Pro Pitching Institute, you expect every pitch to travel directly into your Catcher’s target!!!

Tell a friend! Have a friend struggling with their fastball command? Make sure to tell them about the Pro Pitching Institute “Do It Yourself Pitching Benchmarks”.

Skip Fast
Freelance Pitching Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-281-2596

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2019