Ideal Stride Length For Pitchers?

This is one of those questions we often hear. First, if anyone gives you certain rule for ideal distance, it should make you feel uncomfortable. If someone wants to shorten your stride length for some arbitrary reason, people who have quick answers to questions that have many variables make me nervous.

There is a way to test a pitcher for ideal stride length, but that’s a discussion for another day. And, if we do proper strength/flexibility training, her ideal stride length will again increase, so it’s always a moving target.

Let’s start at the beginning. How far should you stride? As far as humanly possible as long as she can keep the back leg underneath. Many people shorten strides because their knowledge is limited. Frankly, I want all power in the hips. There are times when we shorten stride length very temporarily while we work on a specific issue, but once that is settled, we want to get right back out there. With our daughters, everything was built around stride length. Our older daughter was only 5’7”, but she was often outside the 8 foot circle. That is a huge advantage.
Let me give you three reasons stride length is huge to us:

1-For every foot you increase stride length, it decreases the amount of time between the ball leaving the hand and the time it strikes the catcher’s mitt. If you do the math, for every 12 inches a stride is increased, it decreases the reaction time of the batter equivalent to increasing your speed 3 miles per hour. That is significant!

2-Staying with the math, the average pitch slows down by three-miles per hour from the time it leaves the pitcher’s hand until it reaches the plate. This decrease is multiplied with distance. In other words, the longer the ball is in the air, the more the resistance of the air fighting against the ball. If you can increase stride length by a foot, you cut down on the amount of time/distance that friction, created by the air, has to work on the ball. A short stride automatically invites more resistance created by the air.

3-If you can get the kind of stride length we desire, your body has to be beautifully synchronized, which means your actual speed is likely to increase, so you get both…the appearance of speed and actual speed. Many people shorten stride length because they do not know how to get the body in sync. If your elbows and knees are all over the place, a long stride can create huge issues. Instead of taking away a huge asset, stride length, why not work on correcting the issues instead? It’s better, stronger, and far healthier for the pitcher.

4-Okay, let me give you one more bonus factor. If you stride really far, and if you are strong enough to really stick the landing, you create more landing resistance, which works through the core to create powerful leg drive through the finish.

Before you think stride length is the answer to all of her woes, realize that our Instructors spend a huge amount of training in order to do this in healthy fashion. If the kid twists her core at landing, if she leaves her back leg far behind, if her arms or legs are flailing, of it she has heavy impact on the ground at landing, increasing stride length will do more harm than good. Trying to put wings on a bulldozer will not make it fly.

Teach her to fly and watch her soar. It is a very technical subject. If you or your instructor has questions, let us know.