Think of the kinetic chain as a sequencing of events moving through your body, so how
you can take your energy and efficiently move it through your body.
And it’s not just through your joints although we’re going to work from the ground up.
Meaning, from our ankle to our knee, knee to our hip, hip to our shoulder, shoulder
to elbow, elbow to wrist and out through the fingers.
But it’s also our nervous system because our nervous system controls our muscles, which
controls the movement of our joints.
So how can we take that and sequence the energy or the events that are going to happen in
the pitching delivery down the mount?
That’s the kinetic chain, moving the energy through up the body and out through the hand.
So it all starts by creating force.
We’re creating energy that we’ll try to transfer through our kinetic chain down the
mount.
So how do we create force?
We create through the ground.
It’s called ground force.
Now, we know that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
So if we’re pushing energy into the ground and this like – almost like we’re trying
to push the world away from us.
We’re going to have an equal and opposite reaction because we’re not really going
to be able to push the world away from us.
We’re going to have that reaction this way, going down the mount.
And that’s how we create ground force in the beginning of our delivery.
So what are we going to do with this energy that we’re creating from the ground that
we want to put through our kinetic chain out through our fingers and through the baseball
to our target?
Well, before we get into that, you have to understand the center mass which is this part
of your body right here.
The way I like to think about it is we’re like a ball of energy and the main part of
our ball is right here and our energy is going to expand up.
Everything is influenced by our center mass.
Everything, our arms, everything is influenced by that.
So our main goal is to get the center mass moving down the mount efficiently.
Of course, we’re creating the energy here in the ground but our main goal is to leverage
the center mass as much as possible.
So how do we sequence this energy around our center mass so that we can efficiently transfer
the energy through our kinetic chain?
Well, it comes through sequencing and separation.
We actually want to create some separation between each action because everything is
going to have a reaction to it.
Meaning, if I’m creating energy this way coming down the mount, my upper body is going
to be staying back.
But when I efficiently transfer that energy, the reaction to that will be coming forward.
So I don’t want to try to create energy through different part – different stages
in the delivery.
I want the energy to be a reaction of the energy I’ve created earlier in each sequence.
So, I’m going to break down the sequencing right here in the delivery.
First is going to be a linear movement or a leg drive when we’re creating our ground
force going forward.
So we create our energy coming forward or we get that energy through ground force, ankle
extension, knee extension, hip extension.
So now, we’re going to be this way.
And the separation we want to get from here, the energy came this way and now, we want
to have a little bit of a lag, right?
There’s going to be some way to react the energy to continue to react to this energy
that we’ve created.
So now, we’re going to be in this position and this is called hip to shoulder separation.
And from this position, we want to let that energy react to the energy that we’ve just
created down the mount.
So the more separation we can get here from our hips to our shoulders, the more reaction
of energy that we can have unwinding towards the mount.
So now, we got more rotational energy as we’re coming towards the mount.
The next part of the sequence is going to be external rotation because as we come out
of hip to shoulder separation, as we start turning, I’ll start to bring my chest forward
and this arm is actually going to lay back and will begin to external rotation.
I can’t do it moving – standing still here.
But if I can get back to as much as 180 degrees which is almost flat back compared to where
my shoulder angle is, then that’s going to be the reaction to the release of my hip
to shoulder separation.
Meaning, I get here and this is going to be laid back.
Now, I have this reaction that I’ve got to finish to finish the pitch.
And the external rotation part of the delivery is like a catapult and this is going to be
the fastest part of the pitching delivery.
So from laid back to here is going to be the fastest part of the pitching delivery.
A lot of younger pitchers I see will leave their energy in their pitching delivery.
Meaning, all the energy that they’ve created if any, some guys use their legs very well
when they’re pitching but all the energy that they do create, there’s a lot of ways
for guys to leave that energy out.
Now, good pitchers will efficiently transfer all that energy through their delivery into
their kinetic chain.
But great pitchers can multiply that force when they’re pitching on the mount.
An example of multiplying your force is say if you have 3 inches from your center mass
to your hip and your arm is 30 inches long.
If you divide 30 by 3 inches, you’re going to get a multiplier of 10.
So that means for every mile an hour that you can increase your hip rotation, if you’re
leveraging your arm correctly, you can get 10 times that out of your throwing velocity.
Meaning, you increase hip velocity one mile an hour, you get 10 mile an hour here.
So you can see it’s not just about separation.
It’s about the speed in which you can unwind everything coming back together.
Now, there’s one last part to this whole creation of energy in the kinetic chain while
pitching and it’s leveraging the energy.
Now, if we were a sprinter and we were sprinting in a straight line and I wanted to go as fast
as I could in a straight line, I’m going to create energy pretty similar to the way
we pitch through kinetic chain or our center mass and I’m creating energy.
But the problem is here, it’s not a problem for sprinters because this is what they’re
trying to do but they’re trying to keep that energy moving.
So they keep moving.
So they’re not trying to leverage their energy in any way.
In pitching, we don’t want to keep moving.
We don’t want to throw the ball and keep running towards the batter, right?
We want the moving thing to keep moving towards the batter and be the baseball.
And we want the baseball to have the most energy that we can give it.
So we’re trying to take all of this energy that we’ve created and put it through the
baseball.
And in order to do that efficiently, we have to leverage all the energy that we’ve created
and get it out through our fingertips somehow.
So this is how you leverage your energy in the pitching delivery.
For your linear energy, the first thing that we’ve talked about, you’re going to bring
some of your front leg and as you pitch against it, you’ll see a lot of the higher velocity
pitchers when they pitch, they’re very straight and strong in their front leg so when they
get to release point, that leg is almost straight if not fully straight right here.
So they are pitching against this front leg.
They’re using it to stop the energy because they’re moving straighter, we want to continue.
But we don’t do that.
We want to stop the energy.
So you’ll see those high velocity pitchers with a straight leg pitching against it, it’s
almost like a pole vault.
If a guy was going to go pole vault, you run that stick in the ground and stop and that’s
what gives them the energy to catapult him over the high bar.
The same idea here.
We want to stop our energy so that we can transfer – keep transferring it through
our kinetic chain.
So the next sequence is the rotational energy.
So how do we leverage the rotational energy?
We do this by blocking off.
So if I was pitching to you and I just continue to rotate, I got here and I just went.
I’m not blocking anything off.
My energy just keeps leaking up, leaking, leaking, leaking, leaking all the way.
So I’ve got to stop this.
We’ve got to block off or what I call blocking off our energy.
So when we’re pitching, we want to stop this from continuing to go out.
So what you’ll see a lot of the higher velocity pitchers do when they’re pitching is they
get to here and they block off.
This is about as far rotational after they get to scap load.
Boom!
They drop that elbow and now they stop.
They’re not rotating any further this way.
Now, everything comes back in a line.
So this is the leveraging of energy on the rotational energy.
They stop.
Now, everything is back in a line going forward.
So we stop the rotation and keep the energy going through our kinetic chain.
Now, the last sequence that we talked about was the external rotation.
So now, we have to leverage this as well.
How do we leverage the external rotation?
Is by releasing the ball.
So this this the final stage and we’re going to create all of our energy and take everything
that we’ve transferred from the inside part of our back foot all the way up our leg all
the way into our center mass all the way up through our shoulder, elbow, and now out through
the release point.
So when we leverage this, we’re going to go from our external rotation and out through
our fingertips.
And if we do it well enough, we can take the energy that we’ve created.
Get it going faster and get everything efficiently through the baseball at the base point.
Now, we don’t stop at release point like we do with our other types of leveraging our
energies.
But we do decelerate after we’ve released the ball.
So after you released that ball, it’s going to be an extension of your arm at release
point which is going to be like the stopping of the energy.
But after that, we’re going to have to decelerate because we can’t just stop as we can.
If we’ve created enough energy, there’s no way you go and just stop right here, right?
But you’re trying to.
That’s pretty much what you’re trying to do and you’re decelerating after you
throw that ball.
So you want to get here, release, and you decelerate with an internal rotation of your
shoulder.
So in a nutshell, the way I like to think about creating energy and sequencing your
energy through kinetic chain is by thinking inside a linear movement followed by rotational
movement back into a linear movement again.
And then just leveraging the energy the best you can while trying to create speed and timing
through these movements.
Separation is a big part.
Speed is a big part.
Timing is a huge part and obviously, it’s all about creating energy from the ground
down.
If you like to learn more about the pitching delivery and everything that happens within
the delivery and how to get the most out of your pitching mechanics, check out my program,
Pitching 365 version 2.
Part of that program, we break down the mechanics totally from start to finish and how you can
work on them to get better at these movements.
Also in there is a strength conditioning program, drills, the philosophy of pitching, how to
attack batter, everything you need to become a great pitcher is going to be in that program.
So check it out at the link below and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you have any comments or questions, please let me know.
Leave them below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.