How to Improve your Front Side Resistance

By Carly | January 27, 2014

Last week I talked about front side resistance and why it’s important. This week, I’m going to tell you how to make yours better.

Here’s a quick recap:

GIF-abbott-frontside GIF-jill-frontside

In short, you have to stay behind that imaginary line that comes straight up from your landing foot in order to throw with maximum velocity/pitch effectiveness. Read the last post for more details.

Many pitchers DO NOT stay behind that line. How do you fix that?

Strengthening exercises

Your problem is caused by weakness, probably lack of hip stability. No amount of pitching practice is going to correct that completely; you MUST address the weakness.


In the above videos, Joe explains hip stability and demonstrates some exercises to improve it. Stability and flexibility are NOT the same. Watch the videos for more info.

In this video, Joe demonstrates some awesome medicine ball exercises. Notice how…

  • His head does not move toward the wall
  • He gets the power to throw the ball into the wall by coming up tall and resisting with his hips, not throwing his upper body forward. He makes a stable foundation for his arms to whip past (hey, sounds like windmill pitching!)
  • In the standing version, you can see him generating power by pushing OFF his back foot and INTO his front foot, keeping his body balanced in the middle
  • His hips do NOT rotate to face the wall completely; only a max of about 45 degrees.
  • He throws the ball straight INTO the wall, not UP the wall.

 

Posted in Lower Body, Pitching Basics, Strength Training, Windmill Pitching and tagged , ,