Troubleshooting Baseball Hitting: Timing is Not Always the Problem

Written on October 23, 2012 at 10:01 am, by Eric Cressey

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Today's guest blog comes from current CP intern Jay Kolster, who has an extensive background in hitting instruction.

Great hitters are not born; they simply do things to put themselves in great positions to be successful. Hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult tasks to perform in sports, and with that in mind, experts have long-debated the biomechanics of hitting in baseball. Timing is agreed upon as being a crucial piece in being a successful hitter, but while it is crucial, it is not imperative!

Great hitters will be late on the fastball and out in front of sliders; they are human, too. With correct timing hitters are able to get themselves in the strongest position at the point of contact. The pitcher throwing off-speed is trying to pull the hitter out of position! A hitter is in thestrongest position when the back elbow is tucked at a 90 degree angle into the back hip at contact.

Ideally, every hitter wants to be in Pujols’ position. However, even the great hitters have trouble getting to this position consistently. Further illustrating the difficulties of being on time, let’s consider the physics of baseball. A study performed by Yale professor, Dr. Robert Adair, detailed the amount of time from release point to the plate. A 90 mph pitch will arrive at the plate in 400 milliseconds. During that time a hitter must recognize the pitch type and location and get to astrong contact position.

According to Professor Adair’s illustration, it takes a hitter 150 milliseconds to complete a swing at 80 mph. This leaves the hitter roughly 250 milliseconds to locate the ball, process, decide, and start the swing. Professor Adair’s study helps piece together the physics and how difficult being on time is for a hitter. However, there are other variables that were not included in the study that can disrupt timing for the hitter. Let’s review some of these variables:

• Pitch velocity
• Pitch type (2-seam, 4-seam, change-up, slider, curveball, cutter, splitter, etc)
• Arm speed variability
• Arm angle and release point
• Pitcher’s method of delivery (windup, stretch, slide step, left hand pitcher hang and read, etc)
• Variability of the hitter’s bat velocity
• Situational hitting (hit and run, hitting behind runner at second, sac fly)

Professor Adair’s study does not include human variability. At any time, the pitcher can change his delivery and pitch velocity, which affects the timing aspect of the hitter. Professor Adair’s statistics are of one pitch! Each pitch thrown by a pitcher in a game is unique! It almost seems humanly impossible to be on time consistently. I can guarantee that the best hitters in the game aren’t always on time, yet they still manage to eclipse the .300 average mark. Hitting a baseball now becomes an equation of probability. After all, pitch recognition is a guess! It has been said that hitters lose track of the baseball within 5 feet of the plate….. so now what? Hitting a baseball now becomes an educated guess! You are starting your swing where you THINK the ball will be.

“Great hitters get the barrel on plane earlier and keep the barrel on plane longer than average hitters.”

Keeping the barrel in the bat plane is just as important as having great timing. I have already established that timing isn’t the be-all, end-all for becoming a great hitter. It’s the positions hitters put themselves in when their timing is off that allows for eclipsing the .300 average mark. Touching on a quick side note, I believe that contact percentage is a mark of a great hitter, not just overall batting average. In 1941, Joe DiMaggio set the hit streak record at 56 games, a record that may never be broken. Do you think that a contact percentage of 97% had anything to do with setting the record? I think so, as Joe only struck out 13 times!

Using Video Analysis to Determine Bat Plane 

Cressey Performance pitching instructor, Matt Blake, utilizes the Right View Pro system when evaluating mechanics. For the purpose of discussing bat plane I have taken images from RVP to help illustrate the importance of the bat plane and how it relates to timing. The first image we will look at is MLB’s Triple Crown winner, Miguel Cabrera.

*Note: Red = pitch line/bat plane, Blue = distance knee traveled from start to contact, Green = Barrel from start to contact.

In this image, Cabrera is not in a great point of contact position, but he did great things during his swing to allow himself to stay on the plane. His contact position is out front and he is slightly early, which is why his back elbow is extended. Result? Line drive single to left field. Cabrera was able to maintain a good position to hit because of his ability to keep the barrel in the bat plane past his strongest point of contact. Cabrera’s success is not based off of having perfect timing, but instead putting himself in a position to be successful. So, how does he get the barrel to the plane early and stay through, even past the optimal point of contact? I think this is a question hitting coaches have been trying to figure out for decades. For the sake of keeping this short, let’s examine a few key components.

Early to the Bat Plane

Getting the barrel to the beginning of the bat plane is driven by the back elbow. Upon toe touch and heel plant, Cabrera’s first move is with the hips, which allows for the elbow to get clearance to move directly to the back hip. In being direct with the elbow, Cabrera avoids having an elongated swing.

Optimal Contact Position

A contact position with the back elbow flexed and tucked tightly to the body will allow for optimal power.

Consider the sport of boxing. Great knockout punches are not performed with full extension; rather, the punches land with flexion in the elbow because it is a stronger point of contact. This idea is evident in baseball, too!

Keeping the Barrel in the Bat Plane

Consider Cabrera’s lower body as the key ingredient in keeping the barrel in the bat plane. The distance his back knee travels allows him to keep his barrel in the bat plane, and in this case, past his ideal point of contact. If Cabrera “squishes the bug”, he either rolls over or his barrel is out of the bat plane by the time the ball reaches him. There are other factors that help Cabrera stay in plane, such as elbow extension. However, if we want optimal power, we do not want to have elbow extension to occur before contact. Cabrera’s ability to keep the barrel in the bat plane past the point of contact is what makes him a cut above most major leaguers and the reason he won a Triple Crown. On the flip side, if Cabrera were to be late with his timing, his barrel in this particular swing is in plane starting at the back of the plate; giving him an opportunity to be successful.

Timing is Only a Piece of the Puzzle

Timing is an important component of hitting, but raw hitting mechanics should take precedence over addressing uncontrollable variables against which players compete. In low levels of baseball, players can get away with not being in the bat plane like Cabrera is. Why? A majority of lower level pitchers have one or two pitches they can control, and a majority of strikes are thrown over the heart of the plate. The debate over linear, extension-based, and rotational hitting approaches can be saved for future discussions. Regardless of the hitting philosophy, keeping the barrel in the bat plane before and after optimal contact position increases the probability of making contact with the ball.

References: www.Baseball-Reference.com

Stephen Strasburg Arm Inefficiencies :: Select Conditioning Accessories

September 30, 2012

Stephen Strasburg Arm Inefficiencies

Filed under: General Topics — admin @ 2:26 pm

This is a continuation of my last blog regarding the Washington Nationals and their decision to shut down their ace, Stephen Strasburg, despite the pennant race and the upcoming MLB playoffs. This decision shows that the Nationals organization, as is the case with many (perhaps most) organizations, doesn’t understand why pitchers get injured. In my opinion, the Nationals have decided to take the approach that pitchers only have a certain number of “bullets” in their arm and therefore they better limit the number that Strasburg throws the season after his Tommy John surgery.
The Nationals have failed to realize the most crucial point in this entire ordeal: Strasburg was injured not simply because he threw too many innings (or too many pitches) but because of the inefficiencies in his arm action. Strasburg has some fundamental flaws with his delivery that are ultimately responsible for his injury. By not trying to correct his delivery, and instead just capping how many innings he can perform the delivery, is the equivalent of telling a drunk driver he can only drive a short distance, as opposed to making him sober up before driving at all. It might lower the odds of injury or something bad happening, but will not eliminate it.
The flaws with Strasburg’s delivery primarily stem from his arm action. While it is quite obvious that he can generate serious torque and power from his arm action, it also generates a lot of stress. There are two primary issues with his arm action. First, when he breaks his arms he has what some would call a rising elbow (or inverted “W”). This means his hand is below his elbow as it climbs upward. Mark Prior had this type of arm action and we all know the struggles he had staying healthy.

For anyone questioning why this an improper movement, I encourage them to force their arm into that type of position. Put your hand below your elbow and raise your elbow toward the sky as far as possible. How does this feel? Natural? I don’t think so. I know when I do it I can feel the pinch and uncomfortableness in my shoulder, and I am making the movement slowly and in a controlled fashion. Imagine if that movement was accompanied by the stress involved in throwing a mid-90s fastball and is repeated thousands of times throughout a season. It is not surprise that it can lead to injury.
It is true that this movement puts stress on the shoulder, so some of you might be wondering how this can lead to an elbow injury in a pitcher. Well the stress on the elbow occurs due to the rapid turnover of the arm. Let me clarify this: when the arm is in an inverted “W” the forearm is below the elbow as the elbow continues to rise going into foot strike. Then, as the elbow reaches its highest point and foot strike occurs, the arm has to uncoil out of this position and go into external rotation for delivery of the ball. This rapid movement at extreme angles – the forearm below the elbow directly into forearm above the elbow and the elbow leading the ball – creates extreme stress on the elbow. Many people would call this a “banging” of the elbow as the arm goes into full external rotation.


Now let’s compare the extreme movement of Strasburg’s arm action to another hard throwing young pitcher in the Major Leagues – Felix Hernandez. Notice the position of Hernandez’s arm during the stride and going into foot strike. The forearm/hand/ball is not below the elbow but is instead even to or above it making for a much easier transition/movement into the lay back of external rotation. This puts a lot less stress on the elbow and prevents the extreme “bang out.”
The second serious issue with Strasburg’s arm action that should be a cause of concern for the Nationals is the way he decelerates his arm. All of us involved with baseball know that throwing hard is in some ways a double-edged sword. The harder you throw the better, but the greater the risk of injury as well. A pitcher throwing 95 has to do a much better job decelerating his arm than a pitcher throwing 75. Both have the same amount of time and distance to slow down the arm but the 95 mph thrower’s arm is traveling a great deal faster.
Strasburg is by all accounts an extremely hard thrower, yet does a poor job of slowing his arm down after release. There are two essential parts to deceleration after release. The first is pronating the arm, which is a natural occurrence in the body, but is something that can be trained and improved. A pitcher wants to pronate as soon as possible after the ball leaves the hand because this helps begin the deceleration process. Second, a pitcher should never let his arm extend straight out across his body after release. In order to accomplish this, the pitcher needs to keep his torso rotating around his front leg so that the entire body is slowing down the arm and the energy from the throw can dissipate throughout the back.
Now let’s address Strasburg’s pronation. He appears to be late in pronating after the ball has been released from his hand. Compare Strasburg to another hard thrower like Matt Cain. These two pictures seem to be taken at almost the exact same moment, yet Cain is fully pronated with his pinky facing up to the sky while Strasburg’s hand is still parallel with the ground, as the pinky is not facing upward at all. The sooner a pitcher can pronate the earlier the arm can begin to decelerate.




The later pronation that Strasburg has contributes to his next flaw. He allows his arm to straighten out across his body during his follow through which places a great deal of stress on his arm. One reason for this is because Strasburg does not continue to rotate his torso after he has released the ball. If the trunk stops rotating then the arm, which is still traveling at a high rate of speed, will be forced to slow down on its own, and the only way it can accomplish this is by straightening out across the body causing a banging to occur at both the elbow and the shoulder. Compare Strasburg with Nolan Ryan for example. Look at how Nolan’s arm still has flex to it and seems to be relaxed as well as how rotated the torso is. Strasburg’s arm is completely straight across his body and his torso is upright.








The combination of these flaws – the climbing of the elbow creating an inverted “W”, late/poor pronation, and a lack of torso rotation causing a banging out of the arm across the body after release – are the underlying reasons Strasburg was injured. Without correcting these two flaws he will again suffer arm injuries despite the pitch count limits, inning limits, or any other restrictive throwing type conditions. Hopefully Strasburg will be able to correct these inefficiencies, either innately or by the proper drills focusing on these problems.
Athletes at the Texas Baseball Ranch are already performing drills to correct such problems. Check out some of my prior blogs to read about such drills.
Until next time,
Brian Oates
Brian@Oatesspecialties.com

Strength Training: Trap Bar Deadlift :: Select Conditioning Accessories

November 20, 2010

Strength Training: Trap Bar Deadlift

Filed under: General Topics — admin @ 9:50 am

On several occasions I talked about improving flexibility, mobility, and stability in athletes. While I believe these are the most important areas for athletes to concentrate on in order to stay healthy and improve performance there is another aspect of training that I have not talked about much—power.

Power is important to athletes in all sports but the reason I haven’t really addressed it much to this point is because it is the one area of training that seems to be targeted by ALL coaches. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent in a weight room forced to do mindless repetitions with as much weight as I could possibly move. Because of this, most athletes need to concentrate on other aspects of training.

Athletes in different sports need to train specifically for the movements and demands of their sport. Offensive linemen, for example, need to have a great deal of linear upper body strength and therefore an activity such as a bench press is great for training that. Other athletes do not need that type of strength and therefore the bench press offers limited benefits for a rotational game such as baseball.

The biggest problem with most strength programs for sports is that they are not tailored to that sport. The root of the problem stems from the fact that many coaches are football coaches and coach baseball and other sports on the side. While not every lift or exercise in the weight room is beneficial to all athletes there are certain exercises that can be utilized that universally benefits athletes.

One such exercise is the deadlift. The deadlift is great because it is an explosive movement that targets the lower half. Specifically it targets the lower back, glutes, and hamstrings. These are large muscle groups that control a great majority of movements that an athlete makes. One reason the deadlift is such a great exercise is because it requires the athlete to generate strength and power in a lowered position before he springs upward with the weight.

Here is what Eric Cressey, renowned strength coach and owner of Cressey Performance, had to say about the benefits of the deadlift: “…the deadlift is the single, most effective movement for training the posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings, adductor magnus, and lumbar erectors). The posterior chain is of paramount importance to high-level performance…The glutes and hamstrings are all fast-twitch fibers with a lot of strength, speed, and size potential—potential you’ll never realize without deadlift variations.”

Athletes are frequently in a lowered, crouched position and are required to explode up into the air. Think of a shortstop jumping for a line drive, a receiver leaping for a pass, and even to some degree a pitcher as he is generating his pelvic load and then explodes toward home plate.

Here is a video of Eric Cressey himself demonstrating a deadlift.

Deadlifts are an explosive exercise that an athlete can use to target his fast twitch muscles.  One of my biggest problems with a lot of weight room training is that it is not explosive and doesn’t help athletes become quicker and more athletic. But after watching Eric perform deadlifts it is apparent that the exercise is a fast and explosive motion. It targets the same muscles used when running, jumping, and other activities that require the athlete to go from still to full speed.

Many of you may have noticed that the bar Eric used was not a normal straight bar but instead is open in the middle for the athlete to stand in. This product is called the Olympic Trap Bar. It is superior to a straight bar because it creates more room for the knees to pass through while recruiting the legs and glutes and helps to protect the back. It is much easier to keep good form while standing in the middle of the Trap Bar as opposed to using a straight bar. I highly encourage you all to try and implement using the Trap Bar into your workouts.

As with all exercises, especially weight room exercises, it is important that the athlete use proper form. Proper form consists in part of keeping the shoulders back, abs tight, and back straight. But before you perform deadlift exercises it is important to discuss proper form with a strength coach or somebody knowledgeable in weight training.

Until next time,

Brian Oates

Brian@Oatesspecialties.com

Back in my What I Learned in 2010 feature, I made the following observation: Babe Ruth hit a ton of homeruns in spite of being a seemingly out-of-shape fat guy. I've seen more than dozen pitchers throw well above 90 mph without even being able to vertical jump 23 inches. What gives? Well, these athletes are just incredibly efficient – and powerful – in the transverse and frontal planes. Would being an elite sprinter make one a successful hitter or pitcher? Of course not, yet most strength and conditioning coaches train their rotational sport athletes as if they were trying to elevate them to elite status in a sagittal-plane dominant sport. They assume that general exercises like squats, deadlifts, and Olympic lifts will simply carry over once an athlete starts throwing or hitting. And, to some degree, they do carry over because of the involved structures and systemic training effect, but I think that there's a way to tighten up the learning loop. People think I'm crazy when I say that we don't Olympic lift our baseball players. We also don't do much vertical jumping. At the end of the day, jumping high doesn't really matter that much. Rotating fast and moving laterally quickly does, though, so we focus our power-oriented work on rotational medicine ball drills and lots of laterally-directed jumping/landing, and supplement it with lifting and sprinting. I reiterated these thoughts a few weeks ago with my post, Why Baseball Players Shouldn't Olympic Lift. This kicked off some heated debates, so I thought I'd contact Graeme Lehman for an interview on the topic. As a brief background, back in 2010 - just a few months after I had the aforementioned article published - Graeme informed me that he was actually in the process of researching this very topic for his master's thesis. Today, we're fortunate to have him here to discuss his findings and their practical applications. EC: Thanks for agreeing to do this interview, Graeme. Can you start off by telling me a bit about both your baseball and educational backgrounds? GL: First of all, thank you for asking me to do this interview; it is an honor to be a guest on your site, which I have used as an educational resource for years. Baseball has always been my sport of choice despite growing up in Edmonton, Alberta during the 80s with the best hockey team ever assembled playing in my back yard (five Stanley Cups in seven years). I was fortunate enough to secure a scholarship to play baseball in North Dakota, but the school I attended didn’t have a kinesiology program, so I chose the major that I thought would afford me the best chance of getting a job, a degree in business administration. Ironically, and perhaps fatefully, my business degree got me a job as the manager of a small personal training studio. One day a trainer didn’t show up and I was thrown into the fire. This first experience in a strength coach setting fueled a new found desire to educate myself about the world of exercise science. I read everything I could get my hands on including all of the articles that guys like you, Mike Robertson, Chad Waterbury, Mike Boyle wrote for T-Nation. I was hooked, and in 2006, I became a CSCS, and just one year later I was enrolled in a graduate school at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Dr. David Behm’s Kinesiology program. Since my collegiate days in ND, I have been both a baseball coach and strength coach for various individuals and teams including two years as the S&C for the UBC Thunderbirds. I have also continued playing in various men’s leagues in order to test out my own theories and keep chasing the dream hoping to become the next Jim Morris. In case you’re trying to follow along with the various places I lived, they were: 1- Edmonton, Alberta (cold) 2- Jamestown, North Dakota (cold & windy) 3- St. John’s, Newfoundland (cold, windy and wet) 4- Vancouver, British Columbia (wet) Living in these less than ideal climates has really made me excited about the work you do and the results you get in snowy Hudson, Massachusetts. EC: How did you wind up deciding to pursue this research study, and what was the hypothesis that you were testing? GL: My initial reasoning was quite simple: I wanted to help baseball players throw harder. As a strength coach, I thought that improving lower body power would be one of the best ways to achieve this goal. This led me to question: “what kind of lower body power can be improved in order to have a better chance of carrying over from the weight room to the baseball diamond?” In the past, scores from traditional tests like vertical jump, broad jump and 60-yard dash times have not had any significant correlation to throwing velocity (Spaniol 1997). This made some sense because I have known some guys that I wouldn’t call “athletic” but could still throw gas. Mechanics obviously play a huge roll, but there is some research that stress’ the importance of lower body power in creating throwing velocity. MacWilllams et al. (1998) showed that higher levels of force production by the back leg in the direction towards the plate led to higher wrist/ball velocity. While Matsuo et al. (2001) showed that what happens to a pitchers front knee between the time the front foot hits the ground and the time the ball is released is the key differentiator between “low” and “high” velocity throwing groups. Those that had the ability to extend their knee rather than going into further flexion threw harder. So, it’s pretty easy to see that each leg is performing independent actions in a number of planes which don’t carry over to traditional bi-lateral sagittal. Thus, the principal of specificity was not taken into account and I know from your research, Eric, that you hate it when this principal is ignored. It became obvious that we should be including tests which look at independent leg action, different planes of motion along with different kinds of strength (concentric, isometric, isometric). EC: What kind of subjects did you have participating in the study, and what challenges did you face in dealing with them? GL: My subjects were all male college level baseball players from two different teams. In total, I had 42 subjects who were approximately 19.8 years old and 183.3 cm tall and weighed 83.1 kg. The biggest challenge was to create a list of tests which covered a wide spectrum of lower body power qualities to complement traditional running and jumping tests, which I also included. Each test also had to be easily reproduced by any strength or baseball coach in order to make this information user-friendly. EC: Please describe your methods and the results you attained. GL: We split up the athletes into left and right handed subjects and we measured throwing velocity was in two ways: (1) Stationary throwing - similar to a pitcher throwing from the stretch. (2) Shuffle approach - similar to a third basemen making a strong throw across the diamond. This gave us four different groups. The throwing velocities from each group were correlated against the results of each lower body power test along with height and weight, looking for any significance. While there were was some correlation to body weight and med ball throws in one or two of the groups, only one test batted 1.000: the lateral to medial jump. This was the only test that was performed in the frontal plane. Here is what this test looks likes. Stand on one leg then jump towards your midline in the frontal plane. Land with both feet together at the same time and take the measurement from the closest body part (lateral edge of the inside foot) to the starting line. Since the lateral to medial jump score of the same side leg to the throwing arm (right leg for righties) went 4 for 4 in showing a positive correlation in each group, we made the conclusion that power is plane specific. This was one of these “duh” moments because it makes obvious sense. If I can have more energy going towards my target, I have a better chance to transferring more energy up the kinetic chain to my throwing arm. If the rules didn’t stop me I would crow hop every time I pitched (like a Trevor Bauer warm-up) pitch trying to get as much as energy as I can going towards my target. The pitching coach in me wants to warn against the young pitcher reading this and going out and trying jump towards the plate in order to boost their fastball. While it is important to initiate energy towards your target you need to be strong enough to capture and transfer that energy towards. If you aren’t strong enough on the front side you will exhibit what we in the business call an energy leak, just like the “low throwing velocity group from Matsuo’s study. [Note from EC: for more reading on this front, check out my series, Increasing Pitching Velocity: What Stride Length Means and How to Improve It - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.] EC: Okay, these are all well and good, but let’s talk practical applications. What can coaches take away from your research to immediately make their baseball strength and conditioning programs better? GL: I think this helps us make smarter decisions in what we need to add/emphasize in our programs, and what we can subtract/deemphasize. Basically, we need to add more exercises that will improve frontal plane power and subtract some of the exercises that don’t. For example, hang cleans and drop jumps might help increase vertical jumping ability, but if goal is to throw 90mph these might not be the best use of our limited amount of time and energy. The hard part about training the frontal plane is that your options are limited by traditional weight training. We need to think outside of the box like Bret Contreras did with his hip thrust in trying to improve running speed. Exercises that I would say to add or emphasis would be band resisted lateral jumps and lateral sled dragging since they are both performed in the frontal plane. On the flip side, if we spend time working on creating more energy, we also have to think about how we can absorb it and ultimately transfer it to the baseball. This makes me think that single-leg training is very important, so we need to emphasize qualities like concentric strength for the back leg and eccentric strength for the lead leg. EC: How about future research? What do we need to study next in order to build on these findings to continue to improve our understanding of long-term management of overhead throwing athletes, particularly pitchers? GL: The next step would be to create a long-term study where a group of experienced baseball players train for 4-8 weeks. One group would include some frontal plane movements and the other wouldn’t. Test both pre and post throwing velocity and you’ve got another study. I wish I had the resources to do this, but I also don’t feel very ethical having some young baseball players not using these any frontal plane movements. I think that these results also point to the fact that throwing a baseball is a full body movement. If we can get our pitchers throwing more like athletes and harness the power created by the lower body, we can eliminate some stress from the throwing arm keeping more baseball players in the game. EC: Thank you very much for your great insights. Where can my readers find more from you? GL: Thank you again for having me. I have a blog where I translate some of the geeky exercise science research related to baseball into Layman’s terms (cheesy use of my last name but it works). My goal there is to cover the gaps between the research lab, weight room and baseball field so that more players and coaches can benefit from all the information that is available. You can also find me at Inside Performance, which is an awesome indoor baseball training facility in North Vancouver (possibly the rainiest place in the world) where I work as a S&C coach.

Accepting Force and Creating Force :: Select Conditioning Accessories

October 14, 2012

Accepting Force and Creating Force

Filed under: General Topics — admin @ 10:58 am

I was recently on Eric Cressey’s blog and while reading a post of his entitled “11 Random Thoughts on Baseball Strength and Conditioning,” I really liked one of his “thoughts” and wanted to elaborate on it and adopt it as one of my blog posts. Eric discusses the concept of “accepting force” in the effort to increase pitching/throwing velocity. What does this mean? Eric is talking about the ability to harness the applied force that your body is already capable of producing and thereby channeling it through the ball. For example, many pitchers are weak functionally, such as through the core, hips, and lower half (such as in the glutes).

Due to this weakness, the pitcher loses the energy/force that he has created during his delivery and is thereby losing velocity.  The most common example that I have seen (and Eric discusses as well) is the pitcher that collapses on his landing leg because he lacks the strength to stay firm on it. This collapsing, often called leaking, is seen when the pitcher’s knee continues to move forward (toward the plate) while the pitcher is delivering the ball. This is not, of course, done intentionally, but instead occurs because the pitcher lacks the glute, quad, and/or hamstring strength to support the weight and momentum of the body and therefore has to give as opposed to remain firm. This doesn’t provide for a firm anchor in order to rotate the body over and therefore energy is being lost through the lower half that could have traveled up the body and through the arm to the ball.

Here are two slow motion videos of hard throwers Justin Verlander and Felix Hernandez. Verlander’s landing leg actually goes from slightly bent to straight, the opposite of leaking (which increases the force he is able to produce coming over it from his upper body), while Hernandez’s leg remains firm. 

Eric makes a great point about “accepting force” in that a pitcher who has “leakage” issues already has more velocity inside his body that he is not realizing. Despite not utilizing all the force the pitcher is already capable of creating, coaches and players alike are all too often worried about creating more force by means of weighted balls, long toss, and the like. Of course, generating more force is always desirable, but it can be in vein if a player works so hard to create more force only for it to leak out through a collapsing landing leg. I think the point Eric is trying to make is that what such a player needs to do is focus not solely on creating new/more force, but also in harnessing the force that is already within him more effectively.

Coach Ron Wolforth at the Texas Baseball Ranch often talks about the concept of “massive, simultaneous action.” Not too long ago I read a newsletter by Jill Wolforth discussing this concept and how they embrace it at the Texas Baseball Ranch. This philosophy can be summarized succinctly:

The power to rapid growth is in (1) doing a massive number of things and (2) doing them simultaneously.

The point of this approach is to get away from doing things in a sequential, step by step process – which is how we are generally taught to do things from a very early age. Applying this concept to this blog topic, an athlete should not JUST try to increase the force he is able to generate during his motion, nor should an athlete JUST try to harness the force already within him by improving the strength and stability of his lower half/glutes/core. Instead, the most effective way to increase velocity in the quickest amount of time is to target BOTH. Improve your functional weaknesses in order to better harness or accept the force your body is already capable of generating, while at the same time work on increasing your ability to generate more force. The combination of the two will lead to exponential gains and improvement.

This approach is how a player can make large gains in a short amount of time. Wondering how you can improve the strength of you lower half? Check out this previous blog. Want to know some ways to increase your arm speed/generate more force? Check out this previous blog.