Until You Know How It Feels, How Can You Make it Happen?

When a student makes the switch to our system, the first thing we ask is “How should your hips feel when you pitch; tight, loose, powerful, or neutral?” We ask the same question about her shoulders. Over and over, they look at us like we are from another planet.

If a kid has no idea how she should feel when she does it correctly, how can she ever get there? Frankly, most instructors cannot answer that first question. However, when I present that question to great hitting coaches, they immediately give the correct response. This is just one of the reasons why hitting usually dominates the game today.
I will never forget talking to our older daughter about a narrow win that determined the conference lead when she was a junior in college. At a particularly important time in the game, she allowed a single. Four days after that game, she casually explained that she missed the timing on a tiny nuance in her takeoff and the chain of events caused a very slight difference in the hips, which affected the break just enough to allow the hitter to make slight contact with the ball. Because she knew why it happened she was able to relax and take care of the next batter.
Are we suggesting that we want a bunch of robots that go through the motion step-by-step? Absolutely not. That is exactly the problem we see with new kids. Someone told them they want to hold the ball up here, snap it at the back hip, jerk the wrist up to here, etc. I sat at the NFCA Convention in December, where all of the college coaches go. They presented a detailed video study of the most elite pitchers in college history. One of the things that shocked the presenter was that not one of the top pitchers released at her back hip…NOT ONE! This surprised many of the college coaches, yet two of our Certified Instructors at the table were shocked that they were just now realizing this. We knew this many years ago. And, we knew that, if you start a kid that regimented in tight, jerky, memorized movements in the upper body, you spend the rest of her career trying to figure out why she looks so tense that she cannot get her legs involved in the pitch.
Until she knows how it should feel, how can she ever get there? Until someone knows how it should feel, how can they teach her? Put away the internet videos, the weighted balls PLEASE, the assortment of gadgets people promise will make her better but usually destroy her ability to understand and feel the desired movements. For once, use the most important tool in her arsenal: her innate ability as a female to sense, feel, adjust, and to move naturally, powerfully, and efficiently.
So many kids are way “over-coached” and given far too little credit for their ability to feel proper movements and sense the best ways to get there. That feeling starts in the hips. If someone started in the upper body, creating jerky and tight movements, it can explain why the lower body is eliminated from the pitch and she has no sense of how to use it.