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You Can Never Break the (Kinetic) Chain
A term that has grown in popularity lately in the fastpitch softball world is the “kinetic chain.” If you’ve seen any of the many “how-to” posts or videos on Facebook groups, Instagram, Tik Tok, or other social media outlets you’ve no doubt come across the term.
You may have even nodded along as the creators talked about the importance of maintaining the kinetic chain even though you weren’t actually sure what it is. If you’re nodding along with this one you’re in luck because we’re going to define it before we get into the meat of today’s topic. You’re welcome.
Basically, the kinetic chain is an instance where the body’s muscles, joints, and nerves all work together as interconnected links to produce a complex movement. Each link works with the others to transfer energy through the body, creating a multiplying effect that improves the result of the final, intended action, such as swinging a bat or throwing a ball.
The key here is that each link in the chain has to work with the others in the context of the overall movement, and it has to do its job at the right time, i.e., in the proper sequence. If any link in the chain acts independently, or at the wrong time, it reduces instead of enhances the overall outcome.
Ok, I know that was a little complex and abstract, but I think it’s important to establish the science first so this isn’t just one of the many millions of random opinions out there masquerading as fact. Now let’s get to the fun stuff – how it applies practically to fastpitch softball.
The kinetic chain and hitting
The basic kinetic chain for quality hitting involves moving the hips first (using the big muscles in the core, the abdominals, etc.), followed by the shoulders, and finishing with the arms to deliver the bat to the ball.
Yet what you see many young and even some older hitters doing is initiating the swing with their arms and then yanking on the bat for all they’re worth to try to hit the ball hard. That works off the tee, and can even work in games at times if the hitter is reasonably strong.
But when you do that, you’re basically putting the cart before the horse. The arms are supplying the bulk (if not all) of the energy that is going into the ball, essentially choking off any energy the big muscles in the legs and torso are trying to produce.
Rather than moving a lot of energy up through the chain, that arms-based swing is limiting how much of that energy can be used – by a lot. It also reduces the body’s ability to adjust to the pitch as it’s coming in because the arms are creating an early path that gathers momentum as the bat moves forward.
It’s like firing an arrow and then trying to aim the bow. It just doesn’t work.
By keeping the kinetic chain intact the hitter has time to see the ball while she’s generating larger energy than she can with her arms alone, gathering information about where the ball is headed, and is then in a better position to direct that energy when the ball gets to her.
The same limiting factor comes into play when hitters spin their back leg in place (the old “squish the bug” cue) rather than engaging the hips. While it may appear to the naked eye that some high-level hitters do that, if you look at high-speed video you’ll see that they actually turn the hips into the ball then fall back into the “turned” position after contact.
Honestly, I’ve been fooled by that before myself, thinking that a hitter didn’t use her hips enough. But a quick video shows she actually did what she was supposed to – it just happened so quickly it was difficult to see in real time.
The kinetic chain in pitching
There are a lot of similarities between hitting and pitching as far as the kinetic chain goes. You are still doing a ground-up movement, with a firing order that moves from the hips to the shoulders to the arms.
The difference here, though, is that you’re focused on one arm, and that arm has two pieces that need to fire in order to maximize the transfer of energy (and thus ball speed). So the full sequence is hips-shoulders-upper arm-forearm.
Notice I didn’t say anything about the wrist. It does contribute to the overall pitch, but not forcefully as some people still believe.
The wrist is more of a “let it happen” than a “make it happen” contributor on most pitches. The exception, in my opinion, is the curve ball, where it does have to do a little bit of work to put the hand under the ball properly to achieve the correct spin.
After that, though, it’s still more of a “let it happen.”
What trips up many pitchers trying to achieve speed is muscling up at the shoulder, or forearm, or trying to do a hard snap upward with the wrist. Those actions may feel powerful, but not only do they not add anything to the energy transfer to the ball, they actually take away from it.
When you muscle up on any of the downstream segments it chokes off at least a part of the flow of energy. Less energy into the ball = reduced speed.
What you want instead is to allow the joints to move freely in a quick acceleration/deceleration sequence that moves the energy from one segment to another until it reaches the ball. Muscling up slows the individual piece that’s being used down, which means it has less energy to pass along to the next one.
This relaxed flow of energy is especially true for what happens with the arm. Once the hips and shoulders have stabilized (stopped turning forward), the upper arm uses the energy from the body to begin accelerating toward release.
This movement will happen much faster if it’s allowed to happen rather than the pitcher trying to force it to happen by consciously muscling the arm downward. Just accept the energy and direct it downward until the upper arm comes into contact with the ribcage.
If that happens, the sudden stop of the upper arm transfers the energy down into the lower arm, causing the forearm to accelerate suddenly until it reaches brush contact/brush trigger – the light contact of the forearm (not the elbow!) against the hip. This action causes the forearm to decelerate suddenly, delivering all that energy that was created throughout every phase of the pitch and transferring it into the ball through the fingers.
Again, any attempt to force these movements by muscling up will have the opposite effect to what is desired – it will break the kinetic chain and reduce the speed.
You see this reduction a lot with pitchers who are trying to force strikes. They slow their arms down to get the ball over the plate and then can’t figure out why they’re not throwing faster.
Then, of course, they try to muscle up the finish and not only are they throwing slower, they’re now less accurate as well. It’s a vicious circle.
By the way, all of these principles apply to overhead throwing as well, although in a slightly different manner. The concept is the same though – if you want to throw hard, you have to let the chain happen instead of trying to force movements.
Better by design
The human body is an entire system designed for one primary purpose: to keep us safe. Each movement has a particular purpose that was developed to work in concert with other movements to create the optimal whole.
So you can see why breaking the kinetic chain by imposing unnatural movements on it isn’t a great idea. Let the body work the way it’s designed to work and you’ll achieve much better results – with less wasted effort to boot!
Energy Creation: The Rolling Snowballs Corollary
This seems like an apt analogy since as I write this much of the USA is still dealing with a fair amount of snow, including many places that rarely get any. Welcome to my world, although we actually haven’t gotten much all winter.
Anyway, the other day I was trying to explain the concept of acceleration to a young pitcher. We were talking about the need for her arm to pick up speed down the back side of the circle instead of staying at one speed if she wants to throw harder.
Then an idea hit me, thanks to a childhood misspent watching Saturday morning cartoons.
“Think about a snowball rolling down a hill,” I said. “At first, the snowball is small. But as it rolls down the hill, the snowball starts picking up more snow, getting bigger and bigger. Then, when the snowball reaches the bottom and stops, the snow explodes all over the place!
“That’s what needs to happen with your pitching arm,” I continued. “As you come down the back side you start moving your arm faster, which gathers more energy like the snowball gathers snow, until the ball explodes out of your hand at the end.”
That made perfect sense to her. The more the snowball moves downhill the faster it goes and the more snow (energy) it picks up.
Ergo (love that word, rarely get to use it in a sentence), getting that arm to move faster down the back side of the circle is critical to maximizing speed. Logical, right?
But that doesn’t mean pitchers can always do it. Some will do it naturally. Others will do it once your bring it up. But some have to unlearn old movement patterns and replace them with new ones before they can execute it.
One of the best ways to help them learn that acceleration is by moving the pitcher in close to a net or tarp, having her stand with her feet and body at 45 degrees to the target, and then throwing with a full circle, emphasizing the speed on the back side of the circle. You can also do that with six or eight ounce plyo balls into a wall.
I also prefer they move their feet as they do it since body timing is also crucial to great execution.
The key here is feeling the arm moving as quickly as it can. But there’s another caveat.
To really make this work and get the acceleration, the arm has to be loose and the humerus (upper arm) has to be leading with the forearm trailing behind, i.e., throwing with whip. Moving the whole arm in one piece, as you do when you point the ball toward second base and push it down the circle, will not yield the same level of results. In fact, it could cause injuries.
Once the pitcher can execute this movement from in-close, start moving her further away and trying it again. Take your time with this process, because if you move her back too fast and she perceives the target is too far away she will start muscling it to make sure it gets there rather than letting it move naturally.
At each step, take a video and look to make sure there is at least somewhat of a bend or hook at the elbow instead of a straight arm. If not, move her back up or slow her down temporarily so she can get the proper mechanics.
Then speed it up and try again.
By the way, the energy snowball concept is not just for pitchers. This type of acceleration into release or contact is also critical for overhand throwing and hitting.
Or pretty much any other athletic skill requiring power.
Now, if you’re an adult with lots of real-world experience, all of this may seem obvious to you. You may even be wondering why I’m spending so much time on it.
But a young player, or even a young adult player, may not have the real-world understanding of basic physics or biomechanics to tie acceleration into energy production. For them, it’s helpful to put it in a context that they can easily comprehend based on what they have already seen.
Even if it comes from a Saturday morning cartoon.
If you have a player who’s struggling to understand the concept of acceleration into action, try talking about the rolling snowball. It just might break the ice with them.
My good friend Jay Bolden and I have started a new podcast called “From the Coach’s Mouth” where we interview coaches from all areas and levels of fastpitch softball as well as others who may not be fastpitch people but have lots of interesting ideas to contribute.
You can find it here on Spotify, as well as on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re searching, be sure to put the name in quotes, i.e., “From the Coach’s Mouth” so it goes directly to it.
Give it a listen and let us know what you think. And be sure to hit the Like button and subscribe to Life in the Fastpitch Lane for more content like this. Commercial over.
Snow roller photo by Perduejn, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Is Better Technique Worth the Effort?
We’ve all seen it at one time or another.
A player comes in with lots of raw ability. She can throw harder, hit farther, pitch faster, etc. that the typical player her age. Yet she looks like an unmade bed when she executes those skills.
Ah, we think, if only she had better technique. Then imagine what she could do.
So, we begin working with her to clean up her mechanics and what happens? Her measurables drop.
The speed reading on overhand throws or pitches isn’t quite as high as it was when she walked in, and maybe she’s having more trouble hitting the target than she used to. Instead of hitting bombs she’s hitting pop-ups or ground balls – or even missing the ball completely.
At that point you begin to ask yourself whether all that time spent working on improving her did her any favors.
In the short term, the obvious answer would seem to be no. As ugly as her technique was it was working for her, while what she’s doing now doesn’t seem to be.
But those early impressions can be deceptive. And in the long term, especially as the level of competition increases, the work she’s putting in now is almost guaranteed to pay off well later.
How do we know? There are a few factors.
Physics and biomechanics
The laws of physics are immutable. Unless you’re this guy.
Which means if what you’re doing takes better advantage of the laws of physics, all else being equal the outcome will be better.
The same goes for biomechanics. If you use your body in a way more in line with how it’s designed to be used, again all else being equal, you will achieve better results.
The key is all else is rarely equal. Our bodies are marvelous things, capable of doing all sorts of things.
But they also prefer to be comfortable when doing them. So if you’re comfortable with bad technique you will tend to do it with more enthusiasm/energy than you will something new.
That additional energy is often more than enough to compensate for any lack of solid application of physics or biomechanics, especially in younger players. As a result, the measurables created with weaker technique will often outshine those of the new, better technique.
The trick here is to get comfortable enough with the new mechanics so you can execute them with the same energy and enthusiasm as the old ones. That takes time – time which impatient players, coaches, and parents are often unwilling invest.
They’re looking for the “get rich quick” scheme, and when one doesn’t pay off immediately they’re on to the next. But any smart investor knows your best path to getting rich is to make targeted investments now and let time take care of the rest.
Removing randomness
Another factor that plays into it is our memories tend to be selective. Sure, that player may hit a bomb with poor technique. But we tend to forget about all the popups and easy ground balls that come between those bombs.
One of the goals of better technique, however, is to remove the randomness from the performance. Players with poor technique are often all over the place with what they do. If you compare video from one swing or one pitch to the next you may see vastly different approaches.
The goal of improving technique is to lock the player into a single set of mechanics that are easily repeatable. Once she has mastered those mechanics it’s simply a matter of learning how to apply them in various situations.
That repeatable approach enables the player to adjust more easily to whatever happens because she’s always starting from the same baseline. This consistency in approach leads to consistency in outcomes.
Greater flexibility
We also tend to filter out other factors, such as the player with poor technique hits bombs against weaker pitchers but struggles against better ones – especially if the rest of the team does too. We often see only what we want to see.
Essentially, the player’s technique works up to a certain point, then fails her miserably (most of the time anyway).
With a more organized, disciplined approach, however, she will have the flexibility to apply the technique she has as the situation requires. She’ll be able to catch up to fast pitching, and wait on slow pitching, because she understands how to adjust her technique to each situation – as opposed to yanking the bat as hard as she can in the general direction of the ball and hoping for the best.
The more the player understands how to adjust her technique to each situation, the better chance she will have for success. A disciplined, informed approach will almost always yield better results in the long term.
You get out what you put in
With all of that said, it isn’t enough to have someone show you how to do something. No matter how famous they may be or how many social media followers they have.
The player has to put in the time to learn and internalize the new technique. Otherwise it’s not going to make her better, and may even make her worse since she’s now trying to walk in two worlds at the same time.
So is better technique worth the effort? In my opinion, yes – as long as you’re willing to change what you’re doing an embrace what you’re being taught.
It can offer a huge advantage to everyone from beginners to seasoned veterans. You just have to have the patience to work through the challenges, and maybe even accept lesser performance, until you reach the pot of gold at the end of the better technique rainbow.
The Up and Down Side of Modeling Elite Players
One of the first (and most important) pieces of advice I give to parents who are trying to decide on a path for instruction for their daughters is to look at what elite-level players do. If you’re not being taught that, you should re-think what you’re doing.
Take pitchers for example. If you want to know whether you should turn the ball toward second base at the top of the circle and push it down the back side of the circle or turn it toward home and then pull it down with your palm face-up, video of elite players will give you the answer.
(SPOILER ALERT: The correct answer is pull it down. Ten points for Gryffindor if you got it right.)
Then there are hitters. Some people will tell you to swing with your bat and/or shoulders level at contact. But again, a quick Internet search of great hitters in both Major League Baseball and Power 25 fastpitch softball will show you that just ain’t so.
So does that mean you should just pick an elite-level player and model yourself after her (or him)? Not necessarily.
The thing you have to keep in mind is that elite-level players get to that level by virtue of more than their mechanics alone. There are a whole lot of other factors, beginning with their DNA, that go into making an elite player.
The hard reality is some players succeed despite their mechanics. Their athletic ability, focus, dedication, etc. is such that they can overcome even significant mechanical flaws.
Some pitchers will be hunched over and will throw their shoulders forward as they throw, even though biomechanics says they would be better off keeping their shoulder locked in around 45 degrees. But when they’re throwing 70+ mph doing what they’re doing, and racking up the Ks and Ws, most coaches aren’t going to worry it until it becomes a problem.
Does that mean you should follow their example? In a word, no. That player is succeeding in spite of her mechanics, not because of them. Us ordinary mortals can’t count on getting the same results.
The same goes for hitters who primarily rely on their upper body strength to hit for power. Somehow they have managed to make it work for them.
Most of us, however, will find if we are upper-body dominant we won’t be able to adjust to pitch speeds/location/movement. We’ll hit the ball a mile if it’s pitched where we’re swinging. But if it’s not – and the whole strategy behind pitching is to NOT pitch to a hitter’s strengths – we will likely swing and miss. A lot.
So what’s the answer? Should we try to understand and follow the mechanics of elite-level players or not?
For an answer, I would look to the wisdom of Thomas Jefferson. Yes, he died long before the first fastpitch softball game was played, but he had a pretty practical view of the world.
Jefferson could call for a sac bunt with just a twitch of his eyebrow.
One of my favorite quotes from good ol’ Tom was “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” In other words, know what’s important and what’s not.
When looking at mechanics, don’t just look at what one or two elite level players does. Look for the common threads between all of them, and see what the majority tend to do.
Also, look at what other factors may affect the success certain players are having. If your daughter is a 78 lb. stick, modeling the mechanics of a preternaturally strong, thick-bodied beast of a player probably won’t deliver the same level of success.
Your daughter is going to need incredibly clean, efficient mechanics because she needs to get every bit of her body generating energy to transfer into the ball.
If your daughter isn’t an amazing athlete – that’s ok, you can admit it – she’s probably not going to be able to get by with too many standard deviations from what is biomechanically optimal. Again, you’ll want to stick with the things elite players do that are alike rather than excusing non-standard mechanics because so-and-so does the same thing.
Seeing what elite players do and following their example is a good thing – until it’s not.
Use video of elite players to see generally what all (or at least most) tend to do so you have a path to follow. But avoid techniques or mechanics in those players that appears to be outliers.
It’s your fastest path to success.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 