By: Chip,
April 09, 1998 at 19:20:36 Interesting to hear the comments on this one. Pitching is the heart Regarding accuracy, you should focus on the beginning and the Second, most youth pitchers finish their delivery with their arm Third, most youth pitchers use their arms and not the large Two final thoughts. Mechanics involve throwing: i.e., where to Finally, there are an infinite number of
things that can go wrong,
Date: April 09, 1998 at 22:13
Re: need: drills for throwing strikes
By Chip
In Reply to: need: drills for throwing strikes posted by Dennis
of the game, and pitching instruction varies from anecdote and
habit to the regimented. (I like organization and direction for
kids).
end. The first motion in pitching is coming to the balance point.
We call this the flamingo drill: The pitcher lifts (not kicks) his
front knee towards his back shoulder and comes to rest with that
leg hanging in the air. The shoulders are pointed towards the
target; the hands are on the "elevator line" between the chin and
the belt buckle and are not extended away from the body; the
front (stride or landing) knee is at least as high as the belt; the
landing foot is inside the stride knee and is even with the post
knee; the post leg is slightly bent, with weight on the toes/ball of
foot and not the heel. The pitcher should be able to stand in that
position for thirty seconds or more without wavering or losing
balance. A "flamingo three" where the pitcher reaches balance,
holds for a three count, and then throws the ball is good training
for this movement.
next to their waist, about belt high. This delivery doesn't get the
lower body involved and usually pulls the head outside the target.
The finish position shou
ld have the throwing hand BELOW and
OUTSIDE the landing knee. Our drill for this is Shoulder Head
Shoulder -- the pitcher starts in the balance position with
shoulders on line to the target (glove shoulder in front, throwing
shoulder behind). As his hands break and as his weight goes
forward, his head must go straight on line toward the target.
(Most young pitcher pull their heads toward the outside to get
more power). At the finish, his throwing hand should be as
described, with his shoulders again on line (glove shoulder
hehind, throwing shoulder in front). This drill should be done at
half speed from 30' or so.
muscles of their legs and hips to power the ball. It's difficult to
explain the correct process to kids; I've found that talking about
"spinning the hips" or "pushing off" creates problems instead of
solving them. The drill I use is as follows: Put the pitcher
regulation distance away from a cement block wall. Paint or
mark one block as a target. Have the pitcher throw twenty
pitches at the target block and keep track of how many hit the
proper target. Make sure (1) that he gets his elbow up even with
his shoulder by the time his front foot lands and (2) that the
pitcher lands on a bent front knee and then bends his back.
Many coaches add a hat or another object on the ground and tell
their kids to "pick up the cap" during the follow through. This last
is extremely important: most pitcher through HS seem to want to
land on a stiff knee. By landing with a
bent knee, the hips can
turn and fire through, resulting in much more power without
losing accuracy. This drill can be done twice each practice and
will, over the period of a week or ten days, improve accuracy a
good deal.
place hands and feet and head &c. A pitcher can't think of those
things while competing. Of course, practice will make some of
this second nature, but so will mental imagery. We have a name
for each part of the throwing puzzle, and we call the whole
process "I (rock back) am (pivot the plant foot) ready (balance
position) to (stride foot lands; arm in loaded postion with elbow
even with shoulder) strike (release point) now (follow through
position)." We have the kid say the "I am ready to strike now"
sentence as he pitches. After a while, he throws in a rhythm to
this sentence, and we can talk to him about where his foot was at
"ready" instead of going over the balance point. That way, on the
mound, he has a formula to rely on instead of a bunch or words
or body positions. A further step is to use actual images: one
pitcher pretended he needed to reach out to flick a switch (at
"strike"/release) to make the catcher's glove explode; another
imagined that he was holding some animal up that wanted to
jump out and bite the mitt. The rhythm sentence and the mental
imagery are extremely effective (once basic mechanics are
learned), and kids as young as 8 y.o. can profit from this
approach.
and even professional pitchers in the major leagues can be
successful with noticeable flaws. Once you teach the fundmentals
and iron out obvious mistakes, take your time in identifying root
problems. For example, my son has played catcher for many
years; he had not pitched competitively until this year. He did
various drills for years and was in the proper positions during
delivery but just looked horrible on the mound -- he looked just
like a catcher trying to pitch. I just couldn't locate the flaw, and
every correction seemed to make things worse. Finally, I backed
off and just let him take some lumps for two or three games.
Then I saw what was happening: once his hands broke and rose
near to his ear, his mind told him he was ready to throw. He
would hesitate slightly at the point a catcher normally throws and
his arm would tense up. By the time his arm reached the loaded
position, his body lost rhythm. We corrected that in short order
and he's been doing well since, but it's just not always easy to
spot the root problem.