what's up softball players coach Dan Blewett here today we're gonna talk
about shoulder tilt and how it impacts your arm angle and how it impacts your
softball throwing mechanics. So if you're new to my channel I'm Dan Blewett I do tons of
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here here on my snap softball channel so today's video we're gonna talk about how
your shoulder tilt impacts your arm angle which impacts where your elbow is
which is also going to impact your throwing mechanics as a whole and your
velocity so basically the concept that we're going to talk about is how this
line between shoulder to shoulder affects your arm angle and the quick
summary is this if I'm gonna throw over the top from like this arm angle here
I've got to get my shoulders tilted by using my front side to get me there but
what I commonly see is softball players don't use their front side well at all
and so what happens is they have level shoulders like this I'm not doing that
I'm just level shoulders here and now they're trying to throw over top and
this mismatch causes the elbow to bend because you can't essentially get your
arm up over top while having level shoulders but I see this all the time so
when you have level shoulders and you try to get your hand above and behind
the ball you end up just sort of making this and you dip your elbow and you push
and that's the problem that a lot of softball players have I know some of you
watching this have that issue so basically what the body wants to do is
get a match they want the shoulder line to match the arm line so if you're on
the run or if you're on the move through the infield and your shoulders are level
and you get to throw off quickly it's got to be a sidearm throw if you really
want to go over top you have to actually use your frontside and tilt your
shoulders down to get the arm up there you can't do one and not the other so if
you want to go over top you have to use your front shoulder and tilt your
shoulders to match otherwise if your shores are level you have to go sidearm
or you're gonna shove the ball like this and you're gonna have that pushy low
elbow with low velocity to go with it so let's go over
some examples I've got baseball and softball players we can go over and I'm
gonna give you a good feel for what this looks like so that you can spot at home
and hopefully make these changes to your mechanics okay so let's look at some
examples of what we're looking for here so with this player you can see that her
shoulders are slightly above level and her arm pretty much matches that angle
right it's okay there's a gentle smooth curve in her elbow which is normal
that's more of an anatomical difference but her shoulders are in straight line
with it there's no like big dip there's no big V in her arm it's pretty much
just straight across so here's a baseball guy and you'll see the same
thing it's like a dead straight line all the way down his arm from start to
finish and again that little slight bend in the elbow is a bit of an anatomical
difference where again you can see that straight line right there so he's
pulling down with his glove arm to create this tilt in his shoulders and
then that tilt is applied to his arm action here's another player she is
again good tilt she's using her glove arm to pull herself down to create that
higher arm angle and you're gonna see these higher arm angles typically in al
fielder's so this outfielder is making a strong throw and she's using her glove
arm here she's pulling down to create tilt and that's what gets her above the
ball and that helps get her elbow up and over top so here is the first mismatch
and who's actually you don't need you don't need it's nothing to see over here
these shoulders are level or they're actually almost like slightly angled
down right and so in this picture what you see is essentially her shoulders and
her upper arm are doing the right thing they're trying to match but then she's
trying to get above the ball which is a really common thing that softball
throwing routines are fraught with we don't need to do this like elbow you
know you put your elbow in your hand and you flick the ball to practice being
behind it I think there's an obsession in softball with being behind and on top
of the ball when you throw sidearm you absolutely should
be on top of the ball this doesn't look right to anyone I guarantee that even if
you don't if you're new to throwing mechanics this doesn't look right to you
it should be a long straight arm like we saw on all the other ones the rules
aren't different for sidearm they're the same and so we don't want this is the
mismatch I'm talking about we don't want the upper arm and the shoulders going
one way and the hand and forearm going another so let's watch our first video
here so this is a shortstop and she's gonna she's gonna show the same flaw to
a lesser degree but basically her shoulders are gonna be slightly angled
down because she's on the move she's getting hurt of it quick and then right
here you can already see the problem starts to develop so she's got low
shoulders her elbows coming in front a little bit her arm angle should go
pretty much straight through but instead she tries to get her hand above it and
so now we have this slight dip in the elbow and so I'm gonna restart this real
quick so basically what we're trying to accomplish is instead of forcing us to
be on top of it let our arm go to the side she's just a
little bit too high trying to get her fingertips on top and she should let
that elbow extend out a little bit farther so here's another short stop and
you're gonna see basically the same thing in part as far as her setup goes
she's got level shoulders and then if she comes through she's gonna use sorry
I skipped ahead too fast she's gonna rotate which is what most employers do
is the quickest way to throw so she's not gonna yank down with her glove arm
to create that tilt rather she's gonna get rid of it quickly so her shoulders
start to rotate but you can see that her hand goes on the side of the ball and
that's what we want when we don't have all that shoulder tilt we want to go on
the side of the ball all right so here's another example this third baseman cut
the ball off she's on the move she's got quickly and her body is gonna organize
itself to do that so she's moving and she's got a little bit of a fold at her
waist and so her shoulders as she comes through are angled slightly downward so
her elbow essentially just needs to extend out as she releases the ball but
what you'll see is she tries in her next step to get on top of it and it's
basically impossible to get on top of the ball with level shoulders that's not
what the body wants to do so because of that her elbow jumps ahead and now it's
sort of free of what her shoulders and her body is doing and now she can get on
top of it but you can see she's got this little elbow and she's pushing the ball
she's not using the rotation of her shoulders which is the fastest human
movement we want to let the body dictate where the arm goes when we use the hips
and core well it's gonna kind of just bring the arm through like a whip on its
own but we're forcing ourselves to get above it and I think this is a cultural
thing in softball where we're constantly reinforcing being on top of the ball in
some of these pregame routine drills that just aren't very effective rather
than letting girls throw sidearm and teaching them how to do it the right way
so again we want her to throw sidearm will not throw she's moving through it
that's what all the baseball guys do and it's also what some of the best throwers
and softball do but with baseball guys you'll never see them throw like that
never never never they won't be at a play Division one baseball if they throw
like that the field is too big so here's an infielder I'm gonna skip ahead a
little bit he's gonna set up almost the same way you're gonna see a ton of
similarities and as he starts to come through his shoulders are tilted even
lower and from right here he's not gonna go above the ball his hand is gonna be
delivered right out in the same way as he was before or the earth or in the
direction of his shoulders so let's restart that again so from here you're
just gonna see the arm follow or the the hand follow the elbow and he's still
through the center of the ball so he's gonna get a lot of velocity on this
throw you know as much as he can from throwing down there but he's not gonna
be around he's not gonna be cutting it he's not gonna be putting weird spin
on it he's still through the center of the ball he's just on the side of it
because that's where his arm angle is and that's okay
so let's move on here's another softball player you're gonna see the same flaws
before where she's getting rid of a quick she's rotating at her hips so she
has no shoulder tilt so she should throw this ball side arm but instead tries to
get on top of it and that's a problem so you can see the way she shoves it the
spin isn't very good it just kind of wobbles and it barely makes it there and
that's a that's a 35-foot throw here's another example this is a good throw and
you'll see just how much easier this is as she lets her form go out and around
and on the side of the ball that's what we're looking for
so we'll just go with a couple more examples here's another baseball guy and
we use the baseball guys because at the same level at the the Division one level
for softball you can throw with a lot of throwing flaws it's unfortunate at the
Division one baseball level you absolutely cannot the field is too big
and players are too fast so you basically just won't be able to play
divisional in baseball if you have major throwing flaws you certainly can't pitch
and you almost definitely can't play the infield either it's just too big of a
field so it really exposes bad mechanics and more so than the softball field does
so as this guy comes through and he's a lower arm slot pitcher I'll spoil that
for you he rotates a lot has relatively only this a slight amount of tilt
especially compared to the other baseball guy we saw earlier and again
watch his arm it's gonna be delivered to the side and he has this pretty much
dead straight from shoulder to fingertips just that slight bend in his
elbow not really a bends just like a slight curvature which again is more of
an anatomical difference so let's watch that again real quick
rotates arm goes back and then hand goes out to meet it and you'll see he's got a
good backspin on this ball it's got a really good backspin it's just that it
he's on the side of it because his arm slot is lower here's an infielder I've
already drawn a line for you again you can see the same thing no matter the
angle or how awkward the throw is the body's still organizing itself to do
what it's supposed to do it the body's smart if we let it be smart he's getting
his hand out to the side so he's got this matching shoulder tilt with arm
angle and there's back to our original and you can see shoulders slightly above
level so she's not pulling his hard down with her glove on and that's okay as
long as her arm slot matches which it does so if she doesn't have a lot of
shoulder tilt and that's okay she's got a lower arm angle that's what the body
wants to do if she pulled really hard down here then she would start to have a
higher arm slot like this player that we looked at before so the big implication
here is that we need to allow especially softball infielders to throw sidearm we
need to teach that skill because when every throw is expected to be above the
ball and we're reinforcing being behind on top of the ball from every throw
we're gonna force the body to have poor mechanics to make that happen so we're
teaching the wrong thing and it's causing some of these problems this
throw here should always be sidearm it should never be over the top the feet
are planted you're turning of the hips you're trying to get as much rotation
with the shoulders as you can to try to get some shorter hip separation this is
a quick short throw it should always be sidearm and I think one of the big
problems in softball throwing is that we're trying to get on top of the ball
and that's a teach coming from coaches at all all levels especially the youth
game so we need to allow girls to be athletic they are athletic we need to
allow them to throw the way their bodies want them to throw and that's in
accordance with their shoulder and their hip movement and the tilt that they
produce depending on their position depending on how they're moving through
the this is a great throw because she's on
the move she's not gonna take the time to really yank down with her front
shoulder she's just gonna spin and throw and that's totally fine as long as her
arm angle matches and she lets her body do what it wants to do okay so I hope
this video helped obviously you're throwing velocity and your
accuracy is really important not to mention good throwing mechanics help
keep your elbow healthy keep your shoulder healthy keeping you healthy in
general so again the concept of shoulder tilts and not being afraid to throw
sidearm is really important in softball too much we're obsessed with being above
the ball which ends up hurting us more than it helps us you can't be above the
ball if you're throwing down here if your shoulders don't have the tilt to
match we need to stop being obsessed with being above the ball as a softball
community and we just need the the fingertips essentially to follow the arm
if our fingertips are in line with our arm then we're gonna be in good shape so
I hope you enjoyed this video I hope that helped please leave a comment below
let me know what you understood didn't understood or what you'd like further
explains and I'll always respond and I'll get back to you and make a new
video to help you along wherever you are in your softball journey thanks again
for watching and I'll see you in the next video