What's up guys? Coach Madden, YouGoProBaseball.com here with Brent
Pourciau, Top Velocity and we're gonna talk about today two things in the
pitching delivery, hip to shoulder separation and early trunk rotation, can
you talk about what they are how guys can fix it and how they can get better
at it yes so basically this is going to relate to how when do you initiate your
upper body to throw the ball basically so typically when you hit fun foot
strike that's the time to start your upper body throwing I like to break it
into two phases I call the stride phase from lifto front foot strike and then
the throwing phase from front foot strike to pitch release so we're really
talking about that second phase the throwing phase when we land
pitchers typically high velocity pitchers or healthy pitchers typically
have more hip to shoulder separation that means if this is my hips and this
is my hip orientation typically when we land they're open and the shoulders are
closed so I'll have separation specifically from back hip to back
shoulder that pulled apart and separated and like I said studies show high
velocity pitchers have a larger what they call a margin of win their hip
speeds peak to win their shoulder speeds peak so more separation or what they
call separation timing which gives them time to transfer more energy into their
trunk and their arm to go through the arm path a lot of things happening the
when you don't have good hip to shoulder separation it's not always the case but
a lot of times it's because you're an early trunk rotator so I always say the
opposite of hips are shoulder separation is early trunk rotation because a late
trunk rotation is a better chance you have more hip to shoulder separation so
what's early trunk rotation when I land if my shoulders aren't closed and
separated and I've already tucked and I'm pulling my chest open I'm early
trunk rotating so when you land if your glove is down in and you see your chest
pushing out you're an early trunk rotator and what's going to happen is
your arms gonna get forced to grow earlier and if your arm wasn't up in the
arm cock position and going into abduction then your arms gonna get
caught dragging and studies say it's it's work typically most of the arm
injury comes from the early trunk rotation so a lot of people when I say
hey you're early trunk rotating because you're
tucking that glove as you land you're doing this they say how do I fix it I
say you've got to learn to separate your hips and shoulder so you got to learn
how to shoulder separation a lot of people ask me how do you learn it or how
do you train I understand it coach but how do I train it well we have these
drills with medicine balls and the reason these medicine balls work because
you throw them with two hands it forces you to not fly open because you're
holding the ball two hands flying open is usually pulling your arms apart when
you hold them together it doesn't allow you to early trunk rotates so just in
the fact that the act of holding a med ball with two hands and throwing makes
you stay closed or separated so but what we do is we also start them with the
back hip open and the shoulder closed so you're already in separation and then
you drive through that movement and you delay the trunk you pull the ball back
and then you throw their excellent drills and they're called my separation
drills they're excellent drills to teaching you better hip to shoulder
separation awesome two things one thing I tell my guys too
and I think this is a thing that's been coached into some players at an early
ages point the shoulders or point at your target and this is getting them
very linear with their shoulders so they're not putting themselves in a good
position to get that hip to shoulder separation so what I tell my guys is to
separate at 45 degrees or more closed up you'll see a lot of major league guys
righties separating straight at third-base almost and that's gonna put
you in a better position to when you unwind that you're gonna be able to get
better hip to shoulder separation I think that's a great point John's making
with the shoulder orientation that the thing is is if you if you're in say my
separation throw and you're in telling rotate it and you're closing off so that
45 degrees which is a great it's a great position to put your upper body you
still need to make sure your hip is engaged and forward so if if you're not
if you're coming through the pitching delivery and you're in the lateral
position and you're doing this yeah you're separating just need to make sure
that that hip gets through and gets open to drive your back shoulder and that's
the key here I always tell guys really what we're
trying to do is we're trying to pull this back shoulder around to launch our
arm there's two ways we can do that we can do that by driving ahead the back
hip from the back order and it stretches and then pulls it
along or if I don't drive my back hip then I typically have to go here to pull
my back shoulder around and what do you think this is if I do this early early
trunk rotation so there's really only to me one way of doing this ground up and
it's driving the back hip ahead of the back shoulder to then carry all the
energy forward as opposed to the glove side trying to take over and do it and
that's why I tell guys be careful with SCAP loading because SCAP loading can
pull it apart right and make it drag SCAP loading works as long as it's
separated as long as we're separating we can scape load but if we're not
separating and we're doing this then we're just we're early trunk rotating
dragon arm and we're gonna have problems the second point that I wanted to make
before that I forgot was when looking at this when trying to identify this at
least one way that I like to look at it is from the front angle and look at when
the player's front knee stops moving whether it be out this way or forward
and then see where they are behind their body if they're good in a good spot
you're gonna see it behind their head right if they're here obviously in front
of their head or straight behind not enough hips shoulder separation what how
do you yeah that's a good point I always tell guys you rarely play catch with a
hard thrower and you see the ball here the whole time I don't think that ever
happens every time you play catch with a hard thrower it's like this right it's
here and then they go so I think that's very important it's just don't forget
how your hips work with that your hips have to be driving as you give in to
that close shoulder orientation and you know one other point that I want to
leave you guys with is sometimes we get too mechanical as pitchers and actually
a lot of times we do yeah and one thing I want you to think of too is just as a
little kid like if I were if I were to tell you two rare backhand throw a ball
what would you do you would you would lean back a little bit and you would
talk back this way right that's how you put yourself in a good position for hip
to shoulder separation you rare back if you're trying to throw faster and hip to
shoulder separation is going to help you throw faster just rare back don't don't
overthink it I know we're working on things we're trying to improve our
mechanics but try to be an athlete on the map
I always I'm gonna say the same thing like like you're punching a guy
related to punching you're gonna punch the guy chest open like this what are
you gonna do you're gonna go boom right the same thing I think think of it
I tell you right now when you take pitchy mechanics into another context
with the same physics it just makes sense like I get all these guys in here
I'm teaching them how to drive through their back hip and delay their trunk
because they all want to they want to put their front side down so early I
said well what if you were a hitter doing the same thing and then once you
tuned in there I goes oh for some reason it makes more sense with hitting than
when you show them how to how it works the pitching or with boxing it's the
same thing sometimes you got to take it out of it and to another skill and take
it out of context and see it in a different respect funny how similar they
are yeah when you break it down so that's one great part of well two great
parts was talking about early trunk rotation as well but we made a video
with four tips to instantly increase your pitching velocity really good stuff
it's kind of the big ideas around Brent's program that if you're a pitcher
and you want to increase your pitching velocity you definitely want to check it
out click the first link in the description below it's gonna take you to
a page where you enter your first name and your email and then we'll send you
over that video if you'll watch it and you implement this stuff you're gonna
see some results and some really good stuff so definitely check that one out
great stuff thank you thank you