What's up softball parents, players, coaches! This is coach Dan Blewett thank
you for checking on my youtube channel I've got a lot of throwing videos
tutorials stuff like that for the mental side through throwing mechanics for
throwing velocity these are some of my specialties as a former professional
pitcher and baseball softball Khadem e owner so in today's video we are going
to cover basically why some players throw sidearm because I get asked a lot
of times from softball and baseball parents hey my daughter throws you know
kind of low it doesn't look the same as other players its sidearm okay do we
need to fix this I feel like we need to fix it so usually my answer is that most
young players throw sidearm because they have problems with their mechanics and
then sidearm allows them to still get the job kind of done but most of those
players when we improve their mechanics their arm slot will usually climb up
from somewhere in here to somewhere a little bit more quote unquote normal
slightly over top now as an infielder there is no essentially there is no
normal there's a default which is like hey I got a ball in the hole I
backhanded it and I have to throw a missile the first base to get this girl
the default arm slot is kind of just over the top the one you would throw
your absolute hardest if you did like knock down an airplane out of the sky
right if you're doing that you wouldn't throw a sidearm
so usually your best velocity is over top but as an infielder all the other
arm slots are different tools so when someone says hey is sidearm bad you
don't want to say without seeing them first that yeah sidearm is terrible like
you know you should never learn that first some people in the number one
naturally throw really well sidearm you see it in baseball some of the best
pitchers in the world like Chris Sale Madison Bumgarner are lower arm slot
pitchers and then most though are a little bit higher up and then the same
thing goes with infielders in baseball and softball that they're just gonna use
the the correct arm slot to get the job done so sometimes that's over top again
like deep in the hole backhand boom and then on the run towards first when
they're going to their right it might be a really low arm slot because that's
what the the demands call for okay so that being said if your default throwing
mechanics look something like this we're kind of low there's probably
something wrong and we do probably want to improve on that so I'm going to talk
today I know this has been a little bit of a long-winded explanation but the
back story behind what you're doing and why you're doing it is really important
so let's get into his sidearm good or bad and what are some of the reasons
that sidearm throwers and softball have that sort of issue okay so there's a
handful of reasons that you might throw sidearm because your mechanics are off
so the first one is this so when you feel the ground ball and you scoop it up
to your center hopefully it's gonna be a lot like hitting where our right foot is
gonna be our plant leg and then our left foots gonna come in front and there's
gonna be more weight in our back leg until it transfers into our front so
when you hit if you land on your front foot
you're gonna lunge at the ball and you're gonna have very little power and
you're not going to just get many hits in general the same thing is true when
you throw when you vacuum it up it's going to be right foot weights gonna
stay back and then we're gonna have level shoulders for the most part
towards first because we have more weight in our back leg so when we do
that our arm can fall and now we can go over top a lot better we get to use our
front side just like in hitting and drive the ball in in this instance when
we're throwing we're gonna use our front side to sort of pull us up and over top
so a lot of players they don't have strong hips and what happens is the
aníbal leaking and the more their weights here when they're ready to throw
so what happens when that happens is that basically they don't get to use
their front side and so then they end up spinning off the ball and then their arm
slot drops and then the reason this happens is because when my front
shoulders are low I can't use this this doesn't make sense it's like a next move
so what my body tends to do is say okay I can't really go up and down anymore so
instead I'm going to fire my hips sideways I'm gonna make up for it that's
typically why the arm comes out low okay so the next reason why players
accidentally throw sidearm and softball is that essentially they fly open too
soon with their upper body so what flying open means this is also similar
to hitting there's a lot of parallels between the two if you step in the
bucket when you're hitting like this your hips have opened and a lot of your
power has already gone out sort of the back door when you're throwing if you do
the same where I've landed and you can see my warbird Academy logo
this was my baseball and softball academy if you can see it if it's
already angled forward a little bit I've already wasted some of my hips so now
because I don't have as much power anymore my body's gonna fire around the
ball extra hard and my arms gonna typically go with it when I land closed
like this or from the side here this position now my chest is facing slightly
back or the worst sideways now I get to go up and over top I get the full power
of my hips and my front side and my core so basically if you spend some of that
energy in the air you rotate a little bit too soon like this and you're flying
open now you don't have much left so your body will spin to try to produce
more power and catch up so that's the other really really big reason that
players end up throwing sidearm because they spend too much of their energy in
the air and they land like this and now they sling around it if they stay closed
and then their front arm falls boom now they can get more into it the other big
reason that they throw sidearm is because they're just a little bit too
linear and they don't have much of a mentum towards their target so if I'm
moving towards you I gobble up a ground ball and then I'm getting a lot of
momentum my chest and my front side are gonna be moving towards my target and
it's naturally gonna want to come a little bit more up over top if I don't
move my feet very well which a lot of players do they just sort of stand like
this they don't have that linear momentum and so now producing a spin is
the easiest way to get again some available power so the big thing with
players and I saw this when I visited the Dominican Republic I watched a lot
of young baseball players who were exceptional at all the fundamentals one
of the things they really did well and this is one of the reason I think so
many Dominican players in baseball throw so hard is that they always move their
feet they're constantly moving their feet and so when they get a ground ball
basically what happens is they vacuum it up and moving their feet quick and then
so their entire body moves as a system it's all very much in sync and
everything can sort of flow together whereas a lot of American players in
both baseball and softball they tend to just be flat-footed and then their
body's trying to produce power however it can and it struggles to do that so
then it ends up spinning and this is what happens but when you have a lot of
extra momentum from moving your chest will tend to go forward and when your
chest tends to move towards your target your arm will go over the ball a lot
better okay the other main reason that softball
players tend to throw side on by accident is because they don't do what's
called a scat pinch they don't pull their shoulder blades back very well so
if you feel the ground ball and now you're here where your elbows in front
of your body instead of being back here you'll tend to just either throw a dart
your elbow will get a little bit low and then you'll kind of shove it like that
so a lot of the same problems apply but this is more of a mechanical issue with
how the hands break because we want to go back like a bow and arrow and if we
don't if we just sort of go like this now we shot put it and it's either
coming out from like here or from there so it can be a mechanical issue with
your hand break as well and that can be tough to figure out you know which of
these issues is causing the sidearm throw and so this is where being a good
scientist comes in if you use a parent or as a coach have a player who's there
throwing mechanics looks suspect and you feel like they need to be fixed getting
out your iPhone or your Samsung or whatever and using that 120 frames per
second or that 240 frames per second camera setting getting some video and
seeing if you can spot some of these things I'm talking about if you can do
that then you could say hey I don't think you throw a sidearm just because
we need to yell at you more to get your arm up I think you throw a sidearm
because you leak so far and you're on your front foot and then everything sort
of comes in behind it so it's really about what the cause is not what the
actual symptom is we all know that you know if you're really low energy your
sluggish it's probably because the food you eat you don't need just like a shot
of caffeine right you've eat healthier food you exercise
more then you suddenly have more energy you don't want to just replace it with
just a caffeine caffeine pill or a cup of call
for your redbull so let's talk about a little bit how you can work on this so
one of the best drills and this is going to be you're gonna need more of an
in-depth sort of mechanics review if you really want to get to the bottom if you
to get to the bottom of the issue if you're struggling well what do you
really want to do first is see where your weight is so one drill that I
really like it's called the hop hop pause drill that's what I call it it's
something that I use a ton and I'm basically just gonna feel the ground
ball here I'm gonna hop to my right foot and I'm gonna pause and then after that
I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna throw so by doing the pause what happens is
that basically it's forcing me to stabilize on my back leg and then more
that way it's gonna stay back as I go through my throw and most players that I
do this with they'll do this they try to do the hop pause and they're just
falling right away because they're used to shifting their weight super early so
I'm here pause and I go so I hope this video helped throwing sidearm is
sometimes a really tough issue to diagnose and a tackle but it's usually
one of these number one through four tips that I kind of gave today that it's
something not just the arm slot itself it's usually the weight shift if they're
flying open all those sort of things and you want to try to be again a good
scientist going through different variables to try to figure out which one
is maybe causing the issue okay thanks so much for watching today definitely
check out the links in my description below
I've got softball online courses so if you're looking to diagnose and fix your
own mechanics I've got it of course that does that it's called she's got a cannon
I have templates for teams I've got lots of different stuff thanks again for
watching and I'll see you in the next video