This drill is a good one to teach your athlete about weight transfer. It can be added to the other two throwing drills we have spoken about or to substitute in your rotation of drills to keep it fresh. During this drill your players need to back up a little because we are going to throw faster than in the other drills. Make sure your team is lubed up well and ready to let the ball go before starting this. To do this drill, we are going to hip to the lead foot, taking a small hop forward before hopping back to the throwing side leg. Now, we are going to teach our athlete to hesitate on that back leg for a short time. How long, about the time it takes to snap your fingers. Let’s talk about what the players doing during that hesitation. We should encourage them to really slow it down to “feel” the body weight loaded on the throwing leg side, And, we want to teach them to push down into the ground before driving forward. Wow, this is going to be enlightening, career changing to your athlete. It is something called ground reaction force, it is important to athletes, especially our pitchers and hitters. We will talk about that later in simplified terms. Let’s get back to executing the drill; we have hopped back, pushed down into the ground and now we begin to drive forward towards the target, our throwing hand separating from the glove-on time- our hands works the Magic Circle- back to forward in an efficient manner, unfurling forward as we release the ball out in front of your face, fingers behind the ball. The ball peels off the fingertips creating powerful backspin. When you watch the video, watch the lead leg, it stops or blocks your momentum from going any further this is extremely important. Have fun, doing this one. Take 10-12 reps and really slow it down when initiating this into your practices..
Tag: baseball
grip it and rip it
Throwing an object is fun thing to do. Being able to throw a ball well, is a coveted skill. Throwing a softball or baseball with speed and accuracy is poetry in motion to me. Throwing is a full body exercise – a toe nails to finger nails movement- if you will. It takes some coordination to do it correctly. Before we begin I want to say how important it is to teach all your players a proper warm up routine and how important it is that we as coaches and parents insist that it is done before we throw the baseball, softball or football, every time. One of the most important parts in throwing is how we grip the ball. I have worked with 8 year old and 38 years olds, softballs and baseballs. So, size matters. Many young baseball players need to use three fingers to control the ball, softball players do that too. Once the fingers are long enough, two fingers is ideal for throwing a baseball. Where we grip the ball is important. The balls have built in seams for us to grip. We want the pads of our fingers across those seams so we can backspin their ball. Science tells us that a lot of spin is good and that the aid of the spin is important too. These start with the right grip. If we turn the ball so we are looking at the “backwards c”, we would love our fingers to lay across that C with the pads of our fingers caressing the top seam. Add a third finger there is your fingers are not long enough to control the flight of the ball when you throw it. One can also turn the ball to where the seams Re closest together and grip it there. The ball still rotates well with that grip and is good for smaller hands. The thumb goes underside of the ball, bisecting the ball down the middle. Once a thrower gets good, and fingers permit, we want to tuck the thumb so that the ball rests on the side of the thumb. This allows for less friction which means more spin. These are basic grips for all. Find the one that works for you; warm up properly, grip it and rip it.
Coach Mack in the house
Coach Mack
sign stealing
Playing Catch with the Future Stars
The next generation of pitchers aren’t in the minor leagues yet, they aren’t pre arbitration players or potential free agents. They are our children who play catch in the park, who want to make the little league team, they want to be on the middle school baseball team, they want to star on the high school team. How do we as coaches and parents help get them there? We want the best for our kids. There is so much information available today on the internet or maybe we desperately listen to the arrogant parent whose child was very talented in the art of throwing the baseball or softball. Next week let’s talk about ways to make your child better at throwing. (Throwing-– to propel through the air by a forward motion of the hand and arm)
No BS Baseball 