The lower half in the pitching delivery is one of the most talked about topics when it comes to pitching or any movement regarding rotation. You do not need to spend a ton of time around a baseball field to hear a coach or a dad from the stands say, “get into your legs” or “use your legs.” Or maybe you heard it from your local pitching coach giving you a lesson and thought to yourself, “I am using my legs, what are you talking about?”
In the early 2000s, stride length was king for the lower half. With pitchers like Tim Lincecum being one of the most used examples for stride length advocates. If you played baseball in the 90’s or mid 2000’s you likely had a pitching coach stand way too far away from you and handed you a towel and tell you to hit his glove that he’s holding up for you. Or maybe you had a pitching coach have you stand a couple feet away from the wall, get you into leg lift and then tell you reach with that front hip to get the power angle. If you’re like me, you took the phase “use your legs” as push as hard as you can with your back leg to get your stride length. This was the point in time where triple extension was thought as the key to throwing hard. Early triple extension leads to the entire delivery being out of sync, yes there are pitchers that get away with it, but they are the elite compensators that everyone talks about. The lower half’s job is to set up the upper half in the best position to rotate by front foot strike. As far as looking at video, it is very easy to identify someone with early torso rotation. I’m sure you fell into the same trap as me and thought, “I’ll just stay closed longer and that will solve my issue.” This is the wrong way to look at it. In reality, you are just putting a band-aid on the result instead of addressing the underlying issue that is causing the early torso rotation. For simplicity’s sake, the lower half can be separated into three phases. The first phase is the hinge. The second phase is rotation around the hinge. The last phase is rotation into a fixed front hip.
We will just Jacob DeGrom as our lower half example. Notice how his first move after leg lift is hips back, not knee/hips squatting.
The hinge has become a very popular term as of recently and unfortunately it is also misinterpreted most of the time. The hinge sets up how the lower half will function. It is the most important part of the lower half in my opinion. When talking about misinterpretation of the hinge, many times it will be looked at as a squat, or more is better. Lower or more is not always better, you aren’t using your legs more the lower you get, you are just getting yourself stuck in flexion and disrupting how the lower half is going to move. The hinge is as simple as it looks, flexion at the hip with slight internal rotation of the hip that is hinging. Many times, athletes will confuse the front hip counterrotating as the rear hip hinging. The hinge is a proximal to distal movement, so the hips will always bend before the knee bends in a well-executed hinge. For the athletes who are squatty or just aren’t hinging, you’ll see many compensations for that such as the first move being early triple extension, or the back hip getting stuck into flexion. Yes, these are common issues that everyone can identify, but just like early torso rotation, you can’t tell an athlete to just not push and expect them to do that if they are still squatting. Early triple extension is caused because the body has no other option at that point in time. Yes, more force into the ground can lead to higher throwing velocities, but only if it is well timed and if you are pushing hard into the ground early it will not be well timed.
This brings us to the next phase which is the rotation around the hinge. Around the hinge is the most important part of this phase. Rotation will occur no matter what in a throw but if it not around a hinge, either the lead leg will have to reach and open early, or the upper half will open early because of how the hips are oriented. The rotation around the hinge occurs from holding the hinge in the linear portion of the delivery. The hips will rotate as soon as the time comes, so do not worry about physically trying to rotate the hip. This is also a proximal to distal movement. Many have heard the cue or feel of “punch the back knee to the ground,” rotation is not caused by the back knee rotating, it is cause by the hip rotating. If you are punching the back knee down to the ground, you are just getting yourself into an unnecessary amount of hip internal rotation. Like any cue, this cue can work but the back hip does not rotate due to the back knee rotating. This is the phase where you will see triple extension in the back hip, but that is extension caused by rotation, not rotation caused by extension. Everything in the delivery happens due to the movements prior. While many issues can be either physical or mechanical, trail leg hip flexion after front foot strike is caused because of how the previous movements in the delivery take place.
This video is a perfect example of both rotation around the hinge and rotating into a fix lead hip. Notice how he does not extend before he rotates his back hip. The extension is due to the rotation and linear momentum not forced extension. His lead hip stays stable after front foot strike until after release.
The final phase is rotating into a fixed lead hip. Again, this is a byproduct of what happens in the delivery beforehand. Your lead leg is dependent on how the back hip is working, we do not want the lead hip to working independently to open the back hip. You’ll see this happen a lot with pitchers who spin off to the side or have a lot of trail leg flexion. When they land, the lead hip keeps spinning open instead of having the back hip rotate into that fixed lead hip. A fixed lead hip helps the upper half have enough time to decelerate after release. It gives the shoulders more room to continue rotating and allows the arm to get into pronation after release to protect the bicep and anterior shoulder.
Ultimately, everything in the delivery is connected and sequenced based from the move before. For guidance on perfecting your lower half, contact training@connected-performance.com