What's up! Coach Dan Blewett here. Today we're gonna talk about how to throw a
great curveball and if you don't know how to throw a curveball this is going
to be a big step up I also have an amazing online course so definitely
check that out as well but today I'm gonna give you five really big tips that
are gonna be extremely important in your development of the pitch
okay so let's jump right into it number one let's talk about your grip so your
curveball grip is not the most important thing let me just get that out of the
way right now Clayton Kershaw his grip is gonna be
mostly the same as my grip as mostly the same as a twelve-year-olds grip it's not
the grip that makes the pitch now the grip is really key in helping you get
comfortable with it so if you have one grip maybe you can spin a little bit
better than another but ultimately the grip is not what produces an incredible
curveball all major leaguers throw very similar deviations of the same grip
definitely understand that the grip is important in helping you find your
personal best way but it's not gonna be the NBL end-all be-all and if your crit
ball is not very good it's probably not the grips fault so let's talk curveball
grips so the biggest thing here is getting the middle finger to come up
this seam here and then the thumb is typically gonna be on the inside down
there this way we're going over top the ball like that and catching on the
inside of this seam and underneath the seams of thumb is gonna help us do that
so with the curveball grip we've got a bunch of different variations you can
just go just like this and this finger can stay on top without putting any
pressure on it we can cross it over we can stick it up
we can knuckle it or we can dig it so any of those grips
are fine it's completely your personal preference on what you choose to use
second let's talk about this spin of the pitch
we don't want pressure going through the center of the ball the reason we don't
want that is because you want all the pressure on the edge to produce topspin
topspin spins forward this is the spin axis that we want we want the ball
spinning directly in the in the direction that's traveling either to 12
6 or 1/7 orientation the way a curveball breaks is that as its traveling say this
way if it spins with a good fast spin rate and a good spin a good clean spin
axis then what happens is it creates a high pressure zone on the top a low
pressures on the bottom and the high pressure air pushes the curveball down
so the faster the ball spins and the better the spinner or the the better the
spin axis is those two factors are what create a higher high pressure zone and a
lower low-pressure zone that's gonna force the curveball down better it's
gonna make it break faster so the faster you can spin the ball and the more
cleanly you can spin the ball with one axis those are two factors that are
gonna majorly impact your curveball all right next let's talk about how hard
you should throw a curveball this one's simple throw it as hard as you can
possibly throw it and this is something that's difficult you have to really
focus on it every year when I was getting ready for spring training I had
to work hard to throw my curveball harder and harder and harder I would use
the radar gun as a tool knowing that if I was throwing 88 in the bullpen or 90
in the bullpen that I needed my curveball to be something like 15%
slower than my fastball so if I was throwing 90 my goal is that my curveball
was always in the 75 to 80 range trying to throw it as hard as I possibly could
and the reason that we wanna throw a curveball as hard as we can is a couple
reasons number one the curveball is a deceptive pitch the batter is gonna
think it's a fastball until it's not so when you throw it slower it has to take
a higher trajectory initially so then make it still under the strike zone so
when we throw our curveball the harder you can throw it the longer it's going
to basically track down the fast balls path making it look like a fastball a
lot longer so when you throw your curveball slow or if you're gonna throw
for a strike it has to go up before it comes down but the harder you throw it
the less it has to go up before down that's the basic thing you need to
understand number two is the physics of the pitch in general the faster you
throw it the more that Magnus effect takes effect and the more so the Magnus
effect is the high pressure low pressure thing we discussed so the harder you
throw it the more physics and the air pressure and all that stuff is going to
push the pitch down so you throw a slow curve even if it had tremendous spin it
would not break as sharply looking at in the hitters perception is if you threw
it slower so again you always want to throw the curveball as fast as you
possibly can both for deception purposes for trajectory purposes and for actual
break purposes the faster you throw it the more the high pressure low pressure
zone is going to take effect and that's gonna push the pitch down and that's
what a curveball essentially is number four how does the curve will actually
come off your fingertips I teach kids to try to get their fingernails to the
front to try to release the ball like this it doesn't actually happen like
that but that's a good way to think about it when you're throwing a
curveball so what you don't want to do is be off to the side and throw the
quote-unquote little-league curve little italy-- curve is when we get around it
the big league curve is when we get to the front of it again our goal is to
produce forward spin and so when you think I'm trying to produce topspin
whether it's 12 6 or 1 7 or if you're lefty if it's a 11 5 we're trying to get
to the front of the ball so we can spin it the best we can if we're thinking oh
I want to get my fingers around it because that's what actually happens
when we're throwing it you're probably gonna start to mix in too much side spin
and the things gonna get sloppy it's not gonna break as sharply so make sure when
you're thinking about throwing the pitch that you're trying to get in front of
the ball you're trying to eat your fingernails towards the target and that
basically our goal is to get out in front here even if we know that in slow
motion our fingers are gonna slip to the side of it and then sort of write it at
the end to understand that what you can think about in trying to cue yourself to
throwing a better curveball and what actually happens they can be different
as long as your goal is to produce the desired outcome okay number five this is
the biggest thing how do you throw a better curveball you have to just throw
it but the biggest thing about throwing it is having a partner who can give you
feedback so the process I work with we don't have a ton of fancy drills I've
taught tons of kids curve balls and a lot of them have really
good ones the process is not some bunch of tricks and and weird drills and weird
devices it's about me as coach catching you over and over giving you feedback
about the spin about the shape and about where your arm is in space so the big
part of the process is playing catch with someone who must be maybe better
than you who is maybe a coach or who can just give you feedback and you know
based on what your parameters are so ask your coach say hey my ball is supposed
to spin like this you'll see this if you see this tell me please I don't want to
see my hand go out here you should see my hand go out in front you should see
the ball spinning like this if you see the ball spinning like this please let
me know having a really good catch partner who can tell you oh that one was
sharper that one was softer that one was kind of slur vien shape those are really
important things so and the other thing is on you as a pitcher as a pitcher it's
up to you to understand what the shape of your curveball should look like what
it should look like when it's good what it looks like when it's bad and that
also comes from feedback but it comes from understanding it so if we know that
my best curveballs a 12-6 or my best curveballs a17 then if I
start to see it breaking two to eight I need to mentally pick that up because
I'm focused and make an adjustment so the it's not just the grip it's not just
understanding the physics it's not just the cues in your head it's about really
paying attention it's about getting feedback from you and your pet your
catch partner to try to make an adjustment on every single pitch so
hopefully this video on how to throw a curveball helped you if you enjoyed the
video please like it share with a friend subscribe the channel definitely check
out the links in the description below I have a full online curveball course it's
got like 20 plus videos it's here on YouTube there's links to it check it out
it's gonna take you step-by-step on all the other things I just talked about so
definitely check that out and I'll see you in the next video!