Why Pitching Drills Are An Indication Of Poor Pitching Instruction

How can you recognize good or bad pitching instruction so you do not waste time or money?

Here is an example of an instructor who is simply wasting a pitcher’s valuable time on a practice activity that has no value for improving pitching mechanics. In the majority of cases, pitching drills should only be used with beginner pitchers. Once a pitcher has build a basic delivery he never needs to go back to using pitching drills.

Pitching drills create slow and robotic pitchers who lack velocity.

In this video, notice that the instructor has the pitcher kneeling on the ground. Secondly, the focus is on putting the throwing arm in a position and practicing this position that never occurs while pitching. Why would you have a pitcher practice something that never occurs to help him improve his mechanics.

Why I stopped using pitching drills…forever

In 2004 I read the sports science research that proves why pitching drills are detrimental to improving pitching mechanics. The reason is that pitching is a two-phase motor skill with no natural breaks once you start to move toward the plate. Pitching drills isolate small actions that interfere with learning the full motion. That is why I eliminated pitching drills from our instructional DVD program and why pitchers are seeing big improvements in pitching velocity because of that.

The instructor explains that he is teaching the “leading with the elbow. “The real question is what causes the elbow to lead in pitching? It is the explosive rotation of the trunk which forces the throwing arm to rotate within the shoulder socket with the end result being that the elbow leads the hand into the acceleration phase going into ball release.

The rotation of the arm within the shoulder socket is one of the fastest human movements in all of sports. To practice having the arm move slow such as with this drill without the use of the lower body or the rotation of the trunk makes little sense.

Unfortunately, again, too many instructors spend time on what the arm is doing rather than focusing on how the body delivers the arm for more velocity and less stress.

In most cases parents should be able to recognize whether what their sons are doing for practice makes common sense or not.

Those who are paying for instruction where the instructors is doing pitching drills to improve mechanics are wasting time and money.

Pitching is a full body activity. The focus must always be on using the body to deliver the arm since the arm does not produce velocity but is used mainly for ball control.