Baseball Player Magazine

Since the dawn of baseball a few things remain unchanged. As fans, one of those things is the fascination with hard throwers. There is something about an effortless, 90+ fastball that draws our attention. How does a person go about throwing 90+ and make it seem effortless? As cliché it sounds, it’s all in the hips. Most amateur ballplayers do not use their hips and lower half to the max. Many players believe by pushing off the rubber they are now using their legs, but that is not the case. Although it may look like big leaguers are pushing off the rubber, they are actually falling toward home-plate.

Now here is where it gets a little complex. Here are two scientific terms that are commonly used in sports; torque and equilibrium. Torque is defined as the measure of a force’s tendency to produce torsion and rotation about an axis, or simply put, a rotational force. Equilibrium is defined as a stable situation in which forces cancel one another. So what happens to an object that has been offset due to torque? The answer is that it will try to return to its stable state as quickly as possible. How does this phenomenon relate to pitching? Think of a pitchers body to be a combination of many levers and fulcrums, and the energy created in one system transfers into the next and so on and so forth. This transfer of energy is called the kinetic chain. The objective of any pitcher is to create the most effortless and powerful kinetic chain possible, given his or her physical abilities.

Although there are many components to this kinetic chain, I am only going to touch upon the first and most important component of the chain, the hip load. The hip load begins as the thrower starts to lift their leg, whether it’s from the wind up or stretch. As the lead leg is lifted, the majority of the throwers weight should be shifted onto the back leg (power leg), while the majority of this weight is being shifted back, the lead knee should still be on its way to the peak of the “leg lift”. Just as the leg lift reaches its peak, the front hip will rotate away from the target while the back hip is being pushed out towards the target. This will trigger a slow and controlled fall towards the target with the hips leading. The more the hips lead, the more torque you can create. Just as this controlled fall begins, the lead leg will begin to straighten out, with the lead foot in dorsi flexion and pointing away from the target. This will ensure that you have completely coiled your hips and kept the weight back. 

To elaborate on the question I put forth in the second paragraph, the hip load is the action that is displacing our body’s state of equilibrium; via torque (hip rotation). The potential energy created in this first motion will be transferred into the core, then the upper torso (scapula/chest), then into the throwing arm, and finally into the ball as kinetic energy. So the more the hips lead, the more potential energy is created. If one can utilize all of that potential energy they will have an effortless and powerful delivery and be able to reach their maximum velocity.