It's all in the Hips

While trying to decipher the complexities and various explanations for increasing stride length and finding the elusive ‘back leg drive’, I suddenly came to the realization that everything I need to know about maximizing the efficacy of my delivery can be found in the immortal words of Chubbs from Happy Gilmore:

“It’s all in the hips.”

Much like Happy Gilmore needed to use his hips in order to gain some semblance of a putting stroke and snatch the vaunted yellow jacket away from Shooter McGavin’s grasp, I needed to understand that powerful hip extension is the key to getting back leg drive, lengthening my stride and increasing my velocity.

Elongating my stride just for the hell of it is completely useless. I could float towards the plate with a dainty hop and step like I was channelling my inner Natalie Portman in Black Swan and it wouldn’t make a difference whatsoever in my velocity.

Without a violent extension of my left hip, everything else in my delivery becomes an afterthought and I’m forced to rely solely on the amount of arm speed I can generate for pitch velocity. It’s a chicken or the egg type argument. The hip extension catalyzes the increase in stride length; not the other way around.

Two things, besides Chubbs’ words ringing in my ears, helped me to fully understand the mechanics of a powerful pitching motion: analyzing video of top MLB pitchers’ deliveries like I was poring over the Zapruder film and my own knowledge of exercise physiology and biomechanics.

Without getting into too much nerdy detail, to properly lift large loads from the ground to an overhead position one must execute a powerful extension of the hips to move the weight skyward. It takes a tremendous amount of speed and power—not to mention coordination—to rapidly open and close the hip joint. To generate that power, you have to drive your feet into the ground as the hip extends.

That last point is what turned the lightbulb on for me during Thursday’s throwing session. I was toying with that fast hip extension with mixed results. Sometimes it resulted in nice ‘pop’ on my fastball, other times it seemed to hurt my velocity; like I wasn’t fully reaping the benefits from the extension and it didn’t feel all that powerful.

I started to think about driving my back foot into the ground as I extended my left hip and exploded towards the plate. Then the velocity started to come back on the fastball. Plus, my stride increased significantly as a result.

This “new” delivery still lacks consistency—I am unable to replicate it at will—but I now know what it’s supposed to feel like and I can self-correct any mechanical issues that arise. Interestingly, while my velocity fluctuates, depending on the accuracy and power of the hip drive, the control and command of my offspeed pitches have improved greatly.

Although I’m not sure of the exact reasoning behind this (not that I’m going to complain), I’m sure it has something to do with a more consistent, lower release point due to the increased stride length.

Quick tryout update: I’ve decided to wait until April before I embark on any further independent league tryouts. I emailed the team that was holding the March open tryout and didn’t get a good feeling from the response I received.

First off, the tryout is being held in an indoor facility in Indiana, which means that I wouldn’t be throwing in a real game situation like the Fort Myers tryout. Plus, I asked the team if I would be throwing to live hitters or just throwing a bullpen session. The response was the following: “We can see everything we need to see from a pitcher in a bullpen.”

This is basically code for “all we care about is velocity.” Thus, I’m not driving nine hours to throw 20 pitches in a bullpen only to be told thanks, but no thanks because I can’t throw ninety miles an hour.

So, I’m going to wait until April, really work on my mechanics and throw with increasing frequency over the next few weeks, and hopefully hit the road with that elusive independent league calibre fastball up my sleeve.