It Should Not Be That Hard

Sometimes I have to keep a sense of humor. A relatively new pitching student wanted me to look at her drop for the first time. It was causing her shoulder and back to hurt. After watching it a couple of times, three things became obvious. The pitch was not moving, the spin was entirely wrong, and parts of her core were going in a lot of different directions.

No wonder it hurt.
I asked her to explain what she had been taught. Unfortunately she was told to shorten her stride, lean forward, lift her shoulder up and over the pitch, roll the shoulder forward, twist the ball like a doorknob, push the thumb down, square the shoulders back to the catcher and then drop the front shoulder to force the ball down. All of this was to occur in 1/8 of a second.
Three minutes later we had eliminated most of those actions, helped her understand body position, and let her hips trigger the action. We placed a strap across the lane, five feet in front of the plate at a height of 25 inches. The ball kept flying across the strap and diving wickedly onto the plate. She felt no pain, was blown away by the result, and felt effortless throwing the pitch.
When we work with hitters, we try to keep it simple. Relax, put the hands in the right place, let the hips trigger. Simple is better and it allows the hitter to be short to the ball, long and relaxed through the zone. Yet, with pitching, some people seem to feel that the key is to make it as tight and complicated as possible.
A new pitcher came to us whose speed had not increased for three years and her movement was nonexistent. She also had a lot of pain in the shoulder and the L5 vertebra. I cringed while watching her pitch. I asked her to explain the motion, step-by-step. She was to bend at the waist to start, turn her shoulder, no backswing allowed, come up with her glove arm locked toward the target, try to open her body, land, dig the back foot into the ground and then let it pop forward, square the shoulders back to the catcher, and then pull the palm upward till the elbow pointed to the catcher. All of this is 1/8 of a second. Are you kidding?
All sport is built upon natural motion. We compete at things we do naturally, like running, jumping, swimming, and throwing. These are things our bodies were naturally designed to do. We can refine these skills, but there is no need to re-invent them. Everything natural about the previous kid’s movement had been removed and she was trying to memorize an entirely foreign and stressful motion. After watching her pitch two pitches I made a promise. If we did not eliminate the pain and increase her speed by 3 miles per hour in this first lesson, they would not have to pay. At the end of the session her father was so excited that he wanted to pay double. It was so much fun that I would have gladly cut the price in half, so we stayed with the original fee.
As another example, if your hitter is struggling at the plate, if she is trying to memorize seven different steps, if she looks mechanical and is uncomfortable in the box, it is time to look for someone who can streamline the approach, allowing her to use her body in smooth and natural ways. Great hitting coaches tell me they spend most of their time peeling back the layers so they can deal with the real issues that prevent things from occurring efficiently. Most of the barriers were created by well-meaning people adding unnecessary steps.
The same is true with pitching. IT SHOULD NOT BE THAT HARD!! The moving pitches are the easiest for us to teach. If she struggles to learn breaking pitches it tends to be one of the following issues:
-Her basic foundations are not yet right. If the fastball is not crisp and efficient, you add to the problems when you introduce new and different footwork and body positions required for pitches.
-She is being taught the wrong pitch for her natural tendencies. Too many people try to force a kid into a pitch which is the teacher’s favorite instead of working toward the student’s strength.
-She is being taught by someone who doesn’t understand pitching very well. You can frustrate this kid or injure her very quickly.
If a pitch is hard for a kid to learn, it is almost always one of the above issues. By the way, do not confuse movement with location. If you cannot easily see the ball change directions dramatically, that is not movement. That is location. You should be able to see the pitch defy logic, she should learn it easily, and she should feel it. If this is not the case you have to be the parent, so start asking tough questions. You only get one chance to raise your pitcher in a way that allows her to reach her potential.