The Secret to Your Lower Body Engagement

 If you’re a Pitcher struggling to get your lower body to drive results, treat this reverse sequence as a checklist to discover where to place your focus.

Do you …

(Answer each question with a Y or N.)

_ End of your stride creates a separation between your hips and your shoulders.

_ To create this separation, you must begin your lower body rotation before your front foot ends your stride.

_ Your upper body activity allows your hips to rotate into your foot plant.

_ To free your shoulders to rotate, you must keep your throwing arm uninvolved with your balance.

_ To keep your throwing arm uninvolved with your balance, you end your front leg lift with your hips level to one another.

_ To end your front leg lift with your hips level, before your front foot even comes off the ground, you must place your feet under your hips and, once you do lift your front leg, your front hip stays in place.

Still fighting to get your lower body involved. 

Change your mindset. Instead of thinking about your lower body engagement as something you do, begin treating your lower body activity as something that happens.

Still obsessed about getting your lower body to drive your results, then ask Coach Skip how to use your current throwing action to trigger your lower body engagement.

Coach Skip Fast

Pro Pitching Institute

“The Secret to Fastball Location©” Author/Coach

+1-856-524-3248

skip@propitchinginstitute.com

http://propitchinginstitute.com
#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2021, Pro Pitching Institute.

What Makes Lower Body Engagement So Difficult?

 

Rotation/Forward Momentum Don’t Mix

Rotation is straight-line momentum that moves around a vertical axis. 

The issue … You can’t have straight-line momentum and rotation at the same time.

2 Conditions for Lower Body Engagement

First, you must use your foot placements to present your body with a vertical axis.

To create lower body rotation, your footwork into your front leg lift must give your lower body a vertical axis to rotate around.

When your footwork causes an upper-body tilt, you lose your lower body. 

Second, lower body engagement requires two conditions.

1. An initial rotation … an upper-body action uses your vertical front leg lift axis to rotate your body down the mound.

2. Tension … Your foot plant stops your rotation, creates tension between your hip and shoulder positions, and naturally whips your throwing arm into release.

Here’s the issue … Because most Pitchers fail to end their front leg lift with a vertical axis, they can’t rotate down the mound, their foot plant malfunctions, and there’s no tension for their lower body to react to.

As a defense mechanism, without ever realizing it’s a natural reaction, Pitchers waste their pitching career “working on” their lower body as if it were an action.

5 Simple Fixes for Lower Body Involvement

A string of precise foot placements, knee positioning, and front leg lift actions will engage your lower body every time all the time.

Struggling to engage your lower body, spend a few minutes with Coach Skip over the phone, tell him how you begin your motion, and he’ll give you three things you can do right now that’ll instantly improve your lower body activity.

Coach Skip Fast

Pro Pitching Institute

“The Secret to Fastball Location©” Author/Coach

+1-856-524-3248

skip@propitchinginstitute.com

http://propitchinginstitute.com
#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2021, Pro Pitching Institute.

“Do This” Coaching is the “Silent” Killer.

 

The “Do This” Pitching Coach

The “Do This” Pitching Coach knows what he wants to see but doesn’t know how to teach you to “do” what he wants.

Therefore, his teaching style turns into him saying, “do this”. “get (this body part) in this position” or “change this”.

This approach baits you into taking responsibility for your own results.

Last I checked, your Pitching Coach should know more about how your body works than you. 

Therefore, when your Pitching Coach holds you accountable to “do” what he asks, what purpose does your Pitching Coach serve?

The “Silent” Coach

A well-trained “Silent” Pitching Coach understands how your body works.

Why “silent? 

Without saying you need to “do (anything)”, he silently watches your motion, sees your roadblocks, makes immediately effective adjustments, and, once he does, he always gets you to use less physical effort to produce better results.

What’s a Pitcher to do?

When you work with a “Do This” Pitching Coach, you may be putting your pitching career in jeopardy?

Once you find a Pitching Coach who silently goes about his job, makes simple adjustments that continually improve your results, and, when asked, talks in terms of cause and effect, you’ve found a keeper.  

Don’t know where to find a “silent” Coach? Ask Coach Skip about his programs.

Coach Skip Fast

Pro Pitching Institute

“The Secret to Fastball Location©” Author/Coach

+1-856-524-3248

skip@propitchinginstitute.com

http://propitchinginstitute.com
#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2021, Pro Pitching Institute.

Trust Your Self-Corrections

 

To protect yourself from injury, your body is in a constant state of self-correction.

Once you understand how to manage your body’s self-corrections, you become the elite Pitcher you always dreamed you’d be.

Level Hips Manage Your Self-Corrections

When your footwork ends your front leg lift with your hips level to one another, you spin down the mound, end your stride with your hips/shoulders at opposing angles, and see your pitches repeatedly travel into your target with uncanny regularity.

Your body’s self-corrections optimize your mechanics and your results.

Tilted Hips Create Chaos

When your footwork ends your front leg lift with a hip tilt, your self-correction mode causes you to lose control of your throwing arm path, and you can’t know with any certainty where any one pitch will end up.

To improve, you make arbitrary mechanical changes, put your self-correction mode into a state of chaos, and never know where any one pitch will end up.

Manage Your Self-Corrections

There’s a surprisingly straightforward way to trick your body to end your front leg lift with your hips level to one another and to challenge the best hitters to make solid contact with your pitches.

Struggling to end your front leg lift with your hips level? Ask Coach Skip for help.

Coach Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“The Secrets to Fastball Location©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Call or Text: 856-524-3248

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2021, Pro Pitching Institute.

Pitchers: Control What You Can Control

 

All You Need to Know About Balance

When your hips are level and your shoulders are positioned directly over your hips, your body is in balance.

Anytime you do anything from a balanced position, you completely control your movements, and with an understanding of your body’s programming, can also control the way your body is going to react.

Balance within a Pitching Motion

Therefore, when your front leg lift is in balance and you properly choreograph how you come out of your front leg lift, your body can turn your hip/shoulder separation, delayed shoulder release, and pitch location into a well-managed reaction.

However, when you end your front leg lift with your weight centered over your back foot, you may feel balanced, but you’re not “in balance”.  You make it impossible to properly choreograph your movements down the mound, and everything you see is your body’s uncontrollable reaction to your weight shift.

Control Your Front Leg Lift

A laser focus on your very controllable foot placements, leg positioning, and front knee path into your front leg lift promotes a balanced starting position, and, with the right trigger, clears a path to your pitching dreams.

Struggling with your front leg lift? Ask Coach Skip for help.

Coach Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“The Secrets to Fastball Location©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Call or Text: 856-524-3248

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2021, Pro Pitching Institute.

Take an Advanced Look into Your 2021 Pitching Campaign

 

Your body is built to deliver your pitches directly to your target.

How close are you to seeing this happen?

Are You Going to Naturally Miss Your Target?

To throw a ball into a target, you rock back, step forward, throw the ball, and watch what happens.

When your head moves, you risk missing your target.

Until you find a stepping rhythm that puts your throwing shoulder in the same spot on every throw, you struggle to hit your target with any regularity.

Are You Going to Locate Your Pitches?

Logically, when you place your head in the same position on every pitch, you’re much more likely to see the ball go where you want.

When you begin your motion with your back knee flexed over the little toes of your back foot, it’s extremely likely your head stays in the same spot on every pitch.

From there, as long as you open your front shoulder to your target, you increase the likelihood your pitches travel directly into your intended target.

Takeaways

To improve the ratio of your pitches traveling into your target, make your back leg flex a regular part of your set-up, then begin your throwing action by opening your front shoulder.

Struggling to do this? Set up a short phone call (or text) with Coach Skip for help.

Coach Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“The Secrets to Fastball Location^©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Call or Text: 856-524-3248

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2021, Pro Pitching Institute.

If It Works Now, Will It Work Tomorrow?

 

If it works now, unless you do something to get even better, it might not work tomorrow?

The Hitters You Face are Getting Better.

Every Hitter is better today than they were yesterday. They’re learning their craft, getting better at recognizing when a ball is coming into their hitting zone, and making sure they drive every mistake that any Pitcher throws their way.

Combat Hitter Growth.

To combat the Hitters' growth, you need to understand how to get your pitches to travel directly into your target with enough late-stage movement that, even when you do miss, the Hitter struggles to square up on the ball.

Limit Mistakes.

The best way for a Pitcher to limit their mistakes is to let the Laws of Nature take over their results.

Consistent with Newton’s Laws, when you understand how to use angular momentum to take you out of your front leg lift, and force your body to react to the end of your stride, you allow your body’s twisting action to send your pitches directly into your target with uncanny regularity

Or you can let inertia take you down the mound, use your stride timing to put your throwing arm in the same slot, and hope your ball travels into your target.

Coach Skip Prepares You for Tomorrow

To find out how to make the Laws of Nature drive your results, set up a short phone call (or text) with Coach Skip.

Coach Skip Fast
Pro Pitching Institute
“The Secrets to Fastball Location©” Author/Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Call or Text: 856-524-3248

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2021, Pro Pitching Institute.