Hey guys, welcome back to D one pitching mechanics coach Missoni This is video number four in our series on how to use your mechanics to maximize velocity. I will state this up front. Obviously the delivery is one whole unit, I've broken this down into five things so you can analyze yourself, you can understand the principles, you can coach yourself and review your own video. But obviously, everything that we do relates to everything else. So I am breaking it down. But the you know, the delivery is is one full unit.

And what we're going to talk about here is everything from foot plant. So when our foot lands here to our finish in our release, and again, I'm a big believer in how the finish is all dictated by the beginning. What do I mean by that? Well, if any of you play golf, you've seen a good golfer have a nice backswing, and a great finish and follow through. But occasionally you've seen bad golfers have a bad beginning and then a bad fit. Push, right.

Same with the swing, someone who has a great start of the swing and a great beginning is going to have a nice swing. somebody that has a problem up front. If you really can't correct it, you got to set the wheels in motion to start. So if everything's gone right prior, a lot of this should take care of itself. But over the years I've been coaching I've seen what I would call leaks in velocity through from foot plan on down. Okay, so let's go back just quickly recap we want early momentum, we want to drop into our backside as we go forward, we want to get the proper stride length lower half opens and upper half stays closed here.

Now this is where I'm going to turn to this side and talk specifically about my front leg. I am have no velocity, wind up no velocity. Now, when my foot comes off the ground, as my foot comes off the ground, I build velocity. When I get back to the ground. I now have max the max velocity. Now it has to translate out my hand through a release.

Okay? So imagine a hitter doing this. Imagine a hitter swinging and having his front knee bent, you would say, clearly that hitter has lost power. Why do we straighten out our front leg here, it brings power through the hips in the core and out the barrel, hockey, golf, lacrosse, tennis, it's transferring power from the lower half to the upper. And pitching of course is identical. Okay.

So one of the things when you analyze your video, you're going to want to make sure one of two things must happen and if not, we have to determine why. And I can give you some drills to work on it. So the first thing is, once I land here, you should draw a line you should be able to draw a line with with a telestrator software or whatever you might have or just eyeball it that my front knee should never come forward after landing. So if I land and my front knee comes forward, that is a loss of passion. are staying in my legs that will not come out my upper body. So at the bare minimum, my once I plant, nothing should move forward that should allow my hips to rotate and my backside to come around and pardon my wire here but I'm hard wired in to get you better sound and I'm pitching with a wire and to bring you the best possible video.

So don't worry about that wire, don't let it distract you. So what we're looking at here is to land through here, it's the front side firming to allow the backside to come through. Okay, where this goes wrong for a lot of guys is again, if they're at balance, they have no momentum, no power, they really drive off. They're not strong enough or flexible enough to handle this push and then weight goes into the front leg. loss of power. If you use the momentum and then drop into the back side with the right stride level.

Now you're able to land and then ultimately this is what we want. We want to post up. We want this front leg through release. Now some guys will do it after, which again is acceptable provided this knee doesn't move forward, the hardest throwers, and you'll see on the video links I have Verlander. There's Chapman. There's Trevor Bauer.

There's all these guys that I've analyzed. And you'll see at through the release position, the front leg posts up and the back leg comes through. posting up is crucial. Sometimes it's a mechanical thing you haven't done. A lot of times it's strength and flexibility. Guys, no matter what your age is, listen to your mom's stretch.

You should stretch after a workout after a practice assisted stretching, meaning get a partner, get a belt, get a tube, get a towel and work on your stretching. Take a yoga class, get a yoga DVD flexibility is crucial. There are no big linemen like pitchers, tall, lean, strong, flexible pitchers, okay? So some drills to go over that. Back to the med ball. The great part again with the med ball is the med ball self teaches to throw a 10 pound object, our body must do it right.

So you're not going to throw a med ball anywhere, any distance with any velocity velocity with a bent front knee. With a five pounds ball, you can get away with it because it's still gonna come out your hand with decent velocity but not your max velocity. So we can do the following drills we can land be in our landing two point position. We can be here we could work on how to get back open hips, keep the upper body closed, fire the med ball and follow through. Again, we're pushing it not throwing it. So drill number one would be just that at the landing position.

Slight rock back fire the hips, follow through post up on the front leg. Then the next drill, start with the leg in the air, a little momentum, come down land, fire the med ball and you will post up if you video yourself. You will see that to throw this med ball Your front leg will post up. So you don't have to think about it. What you need to do is feel it. What that means is throw the ball 510 times a day more if you have time and feel what your body must do to fire this med ball and then continue to have that same feeling.

With the five ounce baseball that's what we call intentional practice. That means practice with full thought on what you're doing not on class or on the we are on girls are on texting, it's full attention to what you're doing. Okay. And then you can take it through the full delivery so you're in your stretcher, wind up, take it all the way through land fire, and your front leg will post up with this med ball. Must get a med ball guys. Now, another good drill.

You can do it while throwing. For the purposes of this I'm just going to use a towel for the filming. Throwing up the mound. Indoor mountain like this dirt mountain, doesn't matter. You can do all those drills. You can start here you can do med ball for that matter, baseball into a net towel.

Whatever works, do them all okay? And you work on delivering up the mound, why up the mound, because the front side is higher, it's way tougher to post up working up the mountain, it's gonna put pressure on your hamstrings, your glutes, your lower back. And if you can drill it in up the mound, and all those things. So here's a, here's a another drill leg up in the air momentum up and finish. If you can do it up the mound by the time you go back the other way, it should be way easier. So up the mountain deliveries are great.

This segments not about curveballs or change ups and whatnot. But throwing up the mountain on your off speed pitches is a great practice drill as well. Okay, so depending on where your mount is, you should have the opportunity to do that. So, front leg posting up is is really crucial. Now, the rest of the delivery, I'm going to go Back to our front angle terms of talking about the rest of the, the delivery from footplant on, okay, at footplant I should be my elbow should be up as high as my shoulder. So regardless of arm path, which we'll talk about that last segment, when I get down to footplant my elbow should be as high as my shoulder.

Okay, now, posting up well and all that part in the beginning will help me get out forward enough. Now the follow through. Let's talk first about the arm and then about the follow through. Where should my arm be high three quarters over the top three quarters sidearm. It goes where it goes. I could put up on video and I will on the online thing for different guys that throw it completely different angles.

It just depends on where it is right for you. Lincecum over the top Pedro Martinez way down low Randy Johnson Lowe. To me, it's almost the non coach. It's a non teach if you do everything properly The way you do it wherever your arm winds up is the right fit for you. And if you ever want to test your velocity and moving around a little you can. But I think it's more than just about the velocity in terms of your arm position.

It's where you are comfortable and can get people out. So that to me is not something that gets tremendously coached. It's something that happens over the course of the delivery. In addition, with that, same with your finish. The finish to me, relates back to the beginning, so I hate to keep using my punching examples, but I'm going to stick with it. If I take a light tap to somebody, light, little friendly tap.

Do I have a big finish? No, I didn't put anything into it. And therefore there's no finish to be had. Okay? If I try to crush somebody or something, and I take a tremendous punch and get everything into it like I'm furious, and I punch, am I going to follow through that punch? Yes.

Do I have to think about it? No. So the follow through really shouldn't be coachable. It's you can analyze it because it determines what happens prior but in and of itself, it's not coachable. If I have a balanced position short stride, and I throw like this of course I'm not gonna follow through with a finish so your coach is gonna yell, you got to finish Well, now you're all of a sudden going to do this and you're going to force a finish. But at the same time, nothing prior got corrected and it's just you're you're appeasing a coach.

Okay. Last piece on this topic very dear to me, is how you should completely wind up and what position you should wind up. And you notice so far yet? I haven't talked anything about the glove side. We'll cover that during the arm action piece. But how should I wind up?

Well, I know one guy who wound up in the position most of you are coached in, he delivered he took a little hop and he wound up like this is a guy named Greg Maddux, Greg Maddux my all time favorite just got in the Hall of Fame. 118 straight gold gloves. The man could feel the man could also deal 88 mile an hour moving fast balls it hit it off the end of The bat, you get jam he needed to feel this position. So if you truly end up in that position, that's fantastic. But I watched this past World Series and not one pitcher on both teams, which is about 20 pitchers that got work in that series, not one of them finished in what we consider that classic fielding position. They all finished with the backside, pass the front leg, that's me for a lefty, or for the righty is the backside through here.

Why? Because they're put so much into the delivery, that that's what the body needed to do to decelerate and finish the pitch and get the hips all the way through. So unless someone is tremendously falling off, which would be a posture position through the stride, if someone's falling off way over to the side, we have ourselves a problem. But if someone is through here and then falls off that way, that means to me that person is thrown with maximum intensity. So I would not worry in the least bit about that. Okay.

So just to recap, we've talked about what the body should do from footplant through to finish, we must firm up the knee, or post up, ideally, at least from up the knee, gave you some drills to do that. And then I talked about the finish. So the last segment will be on ARM action. Everything we're doing is about producing arm speed, arm speed equals ball speed. Okay, so thanks for watching this video, the one pitching mechanics and I'm coach Missoni. Thank you