In today's video. Let's talk pitching mechanics specifically.
Let's talk about what does it mean when your arm is dragging
the core of what arm dragging means?
It's predicated on good arm timing.
So when I stride as a pitcher
and I've just landed, my arm should be slightly above parallel.
It shouldn't be like this. It shouldn't be down here.
It should be somewhere right around here.
So from behind my arm is about at that point
when I've landed from my stride as a pitcher.
Okay.
So if your arm is lower than that, so say your arm is here or here or here.
When you've just touched down from your stride,
then we would say that your arm is dragging.
So why is arm dragging such a big problem?
So again, if I land well, when I'm pitching, I'm coming to the mound.
The ball is going to be slightly above parallel.
My shoulders are pulled back and then as I rotate, this immediately
lays my arm back and then I'm going to accelerate the ball forward.
Come over top and finish my pitch.
If my arm is dragging.
So again, it's like I'm landing in my arm is still here or here, God forbid,
or even this is a little bit late.
Now, as I start to rotate, what happens is my upper body is sort of a head.
My arm is trying to catch up.
And then when it's at that exact moment to deliver the baseball,
my arm is still not at the right spot to let it go.
So what happens is you lose a little bit of velocity.
You see a little bit of roundness in the way the balls release roundness very sharp
like downhill.
I accelerated the perfect moment and it's on its way downhill.
You especially see is with curveballs and sliders.
They kind of go up slightly before they go down
and they sort of have to come up as you release them.
That's not a good thing.
So the results, if your arm is dragging, is that you're breaking
balls are going to be a little softer.
They're not going to bite as sharply.
Your fastball is going to be down a tick or two miles per hour wise,
and everything is going to be a little less crisp.
And it's also going to be much harder for you to be down in the zone
with any single pitch, because, again, if your upper body is ahead of your arm
and your arm is struggling to catch up
and to get in that proper spot to release the pitch, then what happens is
it's just harder to get on top of it and drive it down to the zone.
And that means again, all your offspeed stuff is not going to be as good.
You're going to be up in the zone a lot more often
and you'll probably get hurt
a lot more often by cement mixer sliders and curve balls
that don't break very sharply or that don't get down the zone very well.
So how do you improve on a dragging arm?
How do you fix it?
Number one, understand that all pitchers, as they get tired, their arm starts
to get a little long
or their body starts to stay fast, but their arms are slow down or vice versa.
You basically can get out of sync
and your arm might start dragging late in the game
and that's why the ball starts to go up, up, up, up, up.
Because your body's just not in sync with itself.
That's normal.
And that just comes from being, you know, continue to get in shape as a pitcher.
That's why conditioning is important,
You know, lots of sprints, interval sprints, the occasional distance run.
You know, having the longevity from preseason prep,
having your your work up, your throwing progression,
getting your reps in, in your bullpens, and then also just pitching in games
enough to have good conditioning.
The other in-game adjustment is sometimes you just feel it as a pitcher
where you just feel yourself getting long and getting slow with your arm and
be like, You know what? I'm not getting on top of the ball.
I got to start moving my arm through its circle a little bit faster.
And so as you try to break your hand, you just start to move it through a circle
a little bit quicker.
That's just a little on the fly thing that pitchers learn to do over time.
When they start to feel their arm drag and slow down.
Now, as far as persistent arm dragging, this is more of like, Hey,
what does your arm action actually look like?
Is it really long?
Do you tend to stick your arm really far behind your body when you pitch?
Those are more of like long term persistent mechanical adjustments
that you would want to make.
You know, I don't believe in this ultra short arm action that you see in some in
some big league pitchers.
It's really a really small fraction of big league pitchers, but some do that.
I don't believe that arm is necessary, but I do believe that
if your arm action is really long, that is unnecessary.
So there's going to be some middle ground where you're trying to say, okay,
how can I not stick the ball behind my body so much
and maybe find a middle ground where I still have a little bit of length,
but I'm faster and it allows me to get to the top
and be here rather than being stuck behind and my arms dragging a lot.
So that's just going to come from you saying, okay, what?
Where am I right now?
What do I look like as far as arm length and how can I be a little bit
quicker and maybe not stick the ball behind myself quite so much?
There's a lot of different ways to do that,
but it's very individual and I won't go into that into this video.
But understanding arm dragging is very, very important
and it's something you really want to address.
If you see it in a pitcher's delivery.
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