Where you position your foot on the Pitchers rubber could impact how your body is moving when you throw the baseball and impact the end result. Here you’ll see an example of how it can impact your bodies movements. This athlete was struggling with “yanking” the baseball which basically means “cutting” the fastball or just missing extreme glove side. He was really inconsistent with his pitches and was growing very frustrated. Instead of thinking of a “mechanical” solution to this I simply wanted to give him something that in theory should control his direction. He was setting his foot somewhere in the middle-right side of the rubber. This setup forces you to hold onto the ball longer in order for you to throw it say middle-middle. This is a great setup for guys who have the ability to make those adjustments due to the deception it can potentially create for the hitter.

The goal here was to become more consistent. See the brain sometimes tricks the body into thinking the adjustment has to be extreme which in reality adjustments in this game are very minor. But this was the reason for the drastic glove side misses. When he sets up far left side now his brain sends a signal to his body saying they don’t have to adjust to compensate for any misdirection because his hand path is already lined up linear with the plate. He goes on to have better fastball command this entire lesson.

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Now I’m not saying that everyone should do this but I do want to encourage individuals to look at what is realistic. What I mean by that is are you someone that struggles with consistency in the strike zone? Maybe that’s where we would look at something minor like this. This is a prime example of identifying your misses. In this case the consistent misses were glove side yank. Which immediately told me he’s cutting himself off.. well then it was trying to find “why” was he cutting himself off. It’s little things like that that really make a difference in development. Give the athlete the tools so he’s better equipped to make adjustments in the future.