Pitching Chat

This past Sunday, I had the opportunity to join Josh Boggs of PitchMechanics101.com for his weekly Pitching Chat Podcast. We were able to touch on the article I wrote for his site, Stacking the Hips, as well as hip and arm mobility, the Inverted W and developing as a coach. Big thanks to Josh for letting me come on his show and share some of the things we teach in our program. Have a listen!

 

You can follow Josh on Twitter @PitchMechanics and listen to past episodes of the podcast here.

Until Next Time...

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Stacking the Hips

Want to generate momentum and great direction down the mound? “Stack ‘em”! 

This is a common statement our pitchers will hear me say, in our program we talk often about stacking the hips (hip drive, pelvic loading, etc.). Now the first question to answer is why do we talk about it and what does it do for you?

In an ideal delivery, the hips work separately from the torso during the stride phase. A disconnection needs to occur for proper torso rotation to take place. The hips have to go first, with the torso close to follow. Some of the verbal cues [which I try not use a ton of] are, “show the back pocket” or “drive the back hip through the front hip”. For the record, I'm more a fan of pitchers physically learning how to move, rather than learning how to listen [to cues]. When done correctly, the athlete should feel either a pinch in the back hip and/or pressure on the inside part of their lead leg.

In a recent #PitchingChat, Marcus Stroman was brought up, how his hips load before peak leg lift is achieved. I think Stroman is a great model for momentum, mainly because of the force he creates into the ground - he creates diagonal force into the ground, rather than vertical: