- Hey, guys, Dan Blewett here.
And today I'm gonna teach you about the scap load,
the shoulder pinch, these different techniques
that we're thinking about in the throwing motion.
But before we do, make sure if you haven't already,
subscribe to my channel.
I've got tons of new videos each week on throwing,
on the mental side of the game,
on strength training and arm care.
So if you're interested in throwing harder
and learning how to be a better softball player,
I highly encourage you to subscribe,
and just be notified each time I put out a new free video.
So today the scap load.
If you haven't heard of this term,
you can forget it as soon as this video's over,
but what it is is the shoulder blades pulling back
when we throw.
So I don't use the term scap load.
I use the term pull your shoulder blades back
'cause it's easier for everyone to understand
and I don't like making things more complicated
than they have to be.
But with every hard-throwing player,
the shoulder blades pull back together
as the hips are starting to rotate.
So what I mean is this.
So from the side, if I'm throwing this direction,
as my hands break, and they come back,
instead of me just lifting my arm into position like this,
like the classic L-position,
I don't wanna break my hands and just lift.
It's a combination of my hand going down,
pulling back, so again from this direction here
you can see my shoulder blades really pinch.
So it's like I'm pulling my shoulder blades together
as far as I can go.
This is called, they call this a scap load.
Your scapulae, which are your shoulder blades,
are loading, they're pulling together.
They're sort of activating as muscles, right?
Muscles can contract or they can relax.
Your scaps are contracting, so they're loading.
So the scap load is important because basically
what it does is it sort of hitches the arm up
with the train of your upper body.
So you lower body starts, and that produces
your power to begin with.
After that, the hips start to rotate,
and then that power's transferred through the core.
And then, it's transferred to the arm.
But when it's time for it to get transferred to the arm,
the shoulder blades have to be pulled back.
They have to be loaded.
They have to be pinched back here,
so that, as the upper body rotates,
the arm will stay with the trunk, okay,
the upper body, and the arm will lay back,
and then go up and overtop.
What happens when we don't pinch our shoulder blades back,
or when our arm doesn't sort of hitch up
with our upper body, is that the elbow jumps in front,
and we end up pushing it with a low elbow.
So one of the common problems I see in softball players is
they throw with a low elbow.
And when we get 'em on video they look like this,
or they look like this.
So the elbow is below shoulder line.
It should be up like this where you have a smooth line
from the ball all the way down to my shoulders.
So any time we're here it's usually because
I don't see this pinch from behind.
See how you can see my right elbow.
I'm wigglin' it.
It's kind of behind my body.
There are tons of slow motion video
on baseball pitchers especially.
It's unfortunate there's not much on softball players,
but there's tons of it on baseball pitchers.
You will see them do this.
You can Google baseball pitcher scap load.
Do it.
You'll see we have tons of wings where they're pulling
back like this.
The hardest players in the world,
their shoulder blades pull back,
then as the upper body rotates, the arm goes with it,
and then it comes up over top.
So the scap load is very misunderstood.
There's a bunch of different drills.
I'll put 'em in the description below.
So if you wanna use a drill that will help fix this,
so if you're a person that breaks their hands
and lifts straight up, and doesn't have a good scap load,
and you wanna get more to here,
which will definitely increase your throwing velocity,
then definitely check out the links in the video,
because I'm gonna just send you to another YouTube video
where you can do a drill that will actually help
to fix this a lot.
I work on this a ton with both softball
and baseball players, and it's a really important concept.
So this is called the scap load.
I just call it the shoulder blade pinch,
because, again, I'm trying to use,
I'm trying to make things simple,
as simple as I can, so that everyone understands
what's going on, so that we can simplify the throwing motion
and then just make progress over time, all right?
So if you enjoyed this video, definitely give it a like,
share it, and subscribe to my channel,
because, again, I'm puttin' out new videos each week,
and I'd love for you to be a part of my channel.