Pitching w/ arm too close to body

[Lemon~Lefty023]

So my 15 y/o has been pitching for a while and in the past year or so has developed this problem where she pitches too close to her hip and as a result her elbow hits off her side and the ball shoots to the left. (She's left handed) From what I can tell it's not her back hip getting in the way, but her arm in a bad slot. Any suggestion?

 

[CoachJD]

Is she pulling straight down instead of completing the back side of the circle?

 

[Lemon~Lefty023]

Not that we can tell...I think she just practiced the motion so much when she was first starting and her old coach had told her to stop at her hip so she would hit the side of her leg and now she pitches too close to her body because of that muscle memory.

 

[Fluid Fastpitch]

Video please, Pitching too close to the hip is not usually a problem. There's probably something else going on.

 

[4Martini]

My daughter has a similar issue. It developed this winter and in retrospect I think was a result of learning a curve. Her elbow was getting stuck behind her and her strike % plummeted.

We switched coaches since she was not progressing. We are seeing huge improvements - lots of wall drills (in her case her arm was crossing over behind her- so learning muscle memory of not letting it drift back and not over flexing her elbow). Lots of long toss. A scap strengthening routine. She also has some rubber ball drills focusing on different parts of her arm slot. A month of really hard work and she is looking a lot better. Convincing her the fix was in dedication to the details was the hardest part. My phone probably has taken 500 videos in the past month to look at arm slot.

 

[CoachJD]

Video please, Pitching too close to the hip is not usually a problem. There's probably something else going on.

What I think is going on is she's pulling her arm down (think pulling on a chain light switch) instead of completing the back side of the circle, so her elbow is jamming into her side. It's not really that the arm is too close to the body. You're right that we need video though.

 

[Lemon~Lefty023]

Here's a link to a Video album there's like 7 or 8 slow motion videos on it...I'm not sure if this will work

 

[sluggers]

She is fixated on avoiding the hip. Her posture is not good. She is leaning to the left and sticking her butt out.

Getting back to basics: Hitting or brushing the hip with the arm is GOOD. Hitting or brushing the hip with the ball is BAD.

The best pitchers in the world brush the hip. This is a video of two great pitchers, Sarah Pauly and Cat Osterman.



She needs to stand up straight and "stack" her body. (Stacking the body: Head over shoulders, shoulders over torso, torso over hips, hips over legs.)

Correcting the ball hitting the hips is not magic. It's practice. She'll eventually get to a point where her arm slot is perfect. Not much room for error, but it can be done.

As an added benefit, when she gets this right, the batter won't be able to see the ball until it's released. I.e., the batter can't track the ball around the entire circle.

 

[Ken B]

 

[sluggers]

@Ken B
Great job with the pictures.

Her torso is ahead of her legs, so she's dragging her arm, right?

(IMHO, this kid needs some work, but she looks like she could be great. I like her intensity.)