Hip Shoulder Separation by the best pitching coach in Naperville

There will always be the debate in pitching circles on how to increase a pitcher’s velocity and promote the saftest protocols in doing so. The one thing that basically every pitching mind can agree on is when a pitcher is able to maximize their hip shoulder separation, they will throw at their peak velocity and be able to do so without maximizing the total force they must put into the pitch to achieve this.  The best pitching coach in Naperville, Spades Pitching, has this as a core philosophy for all of our athletes.

This is not to say that pitchers will great hip shoulder separation have pristine mechanical work or are less at risk of a major injury. We know there are many factors that go into that, such as posture, head angle, arm angle, tempo, functional strength, and others. Those concpets are things that Spades, the best pitching coach in Naperville also focus on with our athletes. However, when we look at the greats who had long pitching careers: Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, CC Sabathia, Bob Gibson, they all had elite hip shoulder separation.

So, what is hip shoulder separation? At its core, this is how long a pitcher can delay his shoulders from squaring up over his hips to release the pitch. Once we enter foot strike, our hips must start to swivel forward towards the catcher to deliver the ball. However, the longer we can keep our shoulders perpendicular to our hips, the harder we will throw as a pitcher and without having to implement maximum effort. Think of this almost as a slingshot. We create all the ground force through our legs, the big stretch through our core just channels up into our arm as it whips through to deliver the ball.

From a health standpoint, when a pitcher doesn’t have to put “everything” he has into a pitch it takes stress off the shoulder and elbow. We also notice that when a pitcher “hinges”, meaning their shoulder and hip come through at the same time this usually comes with poor posture and an unnatural arm slot. Both add additional stressors into the shoulder and elbow of our pitcher. The best pitching coach in Naperville, Spades Pitching, is adamant about lower as much stress on those two regions as much as possible for our athletes.

Across our social media channels, we have several videos demonstrating how to properly perform some of our favorite drills to help a pitcher develop hip shoulder separation.  Some of our go to’s at Spades Pitching are the QB drill, The Wall Drill and fogel work. At Spades Pitching, the best pitching coach in Naperville, we want all of our athletes to achieve their velocity potential but only in the safest manner possible. If that means we shave a couple of ticks off the gun but our guy will pitch injury free into his 30’s, than that’s what we want to see.