What’s Wrong With The Baseball Pitching Towel Drill?
One of the most popular baseball pitching drills is the famous towel drill. The baseball pitching towel drill has I believe two purposes. One apparently is designed to improve the ability of the pitcher to develop more arm extension out in front in an effort to get his throwing arm closer to the hitter.
The second reason for doing the baseball pitching towel drill apparently is designed to help with body and arm alignment…therefor creating better overall control.
In my observation there is a big problem with using the the baseball pitching towel drill in any effort to improve pitching mechanics or in using it for the two mentioned reasons.
If you videotape most successful pitchers from the direct side angle—third base for a RH pitcher and first base angle for a LH pitcher you will notice that these pitchers will release the ball with the arm fully extended and the hand and ball out over their front foot.
When you videotape a pitcher's mechanics from the side angle using a towel you will notice that the position of the trunk and throwing hand will be much more horizontal and more inline with the pitcher's head than up above his head when his arm gets to full extension. The pitcher's trunk will flex forward sooner and therefor he will lose trunk rotation. And trunk rotation must happen prior to trunk flexion in order to create arm speed since it is trunk rotation speed that determines arm speed.
This early trunk flexion in exchange for trunk rotation happens because the pitcher holds onto the towel and is more concerned with extension of his arm and hand out in front than anything else. However, the only way that any pitcher can gain more extension is from more explosive mechanics and a longer stride. You cannot get it with just entending the arm more out in front because you will have to lose trunk rotation speed. This is a big mechanical fault that will reduce velocity.
No action of the towel drill will transfer to actually throwing a baseball. You just cannot fool the body into thinking that a towel feels like a baseball…especially since the pitcher holds on to the towel and while actually throwing the any pitch… releases the baseball.
The pitcher's body will interpret the pitching towel drill as a completely different movement than releasing a baseball. So the pitcher will get either no transfer benefit or more likely will get a negative transfer because the emphasis on more extension causes a loss of trunk rotation speed and therefor negatively effects a pitcher's overall body timing sequence.
And this is the problem with many drills. The drill does not transfer to baseball pitching a baseball at full intensity. So these types of drills can have a very detrimental effect on a pitcher developing better mechanics which is the exact opposite effect of why the drill was developed in the first place.
Remember that baseball pitching is a simple "two-phase" motor skill with "no" natural breaks. Whenever a pitcher does a drill he must do it in isolation of using all the body's moving forces. Trying to then reinsert that part back into the whole delivery is disruptive and can have negative effects.
Before a pitcher does any kind of drill he should ask himself—how can this movement done in isolation (at maybe a slower speed) be effectively reinserted back into the full delivery at game speed? Most of the time it can't.
And this is why many drills do not stick over time. The only place that drills may be used with effectiveness is during initial learning of basic mechanics by a beginner.
The quicker pitchers get away from drills the more effective they will be. It is much more effective to make adjustments in the context of the full delivery. Then the body understands the needed adjustment and can more easily change.
If you have questions on any phase of pitching—mechanics, strength and conditioning, mental training, strategy send those questions to dickmills@gmail.com and I will answer them here.
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