Baseball Pitching Mechanics—How To Lose Power You Can’t Get In The Weight Room

When it comes to baseball pitching mechanics watch closely how much that the back knee is flexed upon landing. As you know the back leg should be as close to full extension as possible.

If upon landing it looks like the back leg has too much flexion—the knee is forced down toward the ground by the early rotation of the hips rather than nearly fully extended then you know there will be a power loss from the lower body because there will be no tension and the pelvis will be slowed down.

Remember baseball pitching mechanics is a sideways activity. If the lower body rotates too early then you lose power. Early rotation will get the back foot heel coming up off the ground too soon. How the back leg performs once the pitcher gets his front foot down will indicate if he started properly or not. And most pitchers lose power because they do not understand how to get started with correct timing.

If the back leg does not develop enough tension because the pitcher starts poorly then the pelvis will not rotate fast enough. That means the trunk loses rotational forces which means the pitcher loses arm speed.

I see this all the time. The cause of poor baseball pitching mechanics is that youth, high school pitchers ( and many college) do not know how to move sideways using their hips. They try to gain power from the legs. But they won’t get it there.

Most of these pitchers also have poor core strength which creates pelvic tilt and also prevents good trunk rotatioinal speed.

Nothing is more pitching specific than doing a skater lunge onto one leg and then onto the other. That builds outside hip and inside hip strength—and core strength as well.

Pitchers for the most part cannot fix these movement problems by doing more weight room leg exercises. Or certainly not doing drills.

This is a big, big problem. If you son has this problem and a good majority do, does it make sense to think that he will get anything out of the weight room, doing hours of long toss or wasting time throwing weighted baseballs!

Fix the lower body if you want to see some magic! How the lower body performs will indicate whether the pitcher throws hard or not.

If a pitcher has good core strength but is weak in both the bench press or squats and can move his body sideways off his back leg with explosiveness and lands in a good position he can throw hard.

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.

If you want an explosive body and explosive mechanics you need to get my Free Report at www.pitching.nexcess.net. We won’t waste your time. We show you how to recognize exactly what is holding back most pitchers…find the problem—fix the problem. I show you a comparison between two high school pitchers and a major league pitcher who throws mid to upper nineties. You will see the biggest problem that reduces velocity in the majority of pitchers.