‼️ Pitching Mechanical Assessment‼️

1️⃣ Foot Mechanics & Drive Leg: The back foot provides key insight into body direction and rotational movement, influencing kinematic sequencing (hip-shoulder separation) and overall mechanics. This impacts timing and body control.

2️⃣ Ankle Dorsiflexion: Limited ankle mobility affects heel connection and stride mechanics. Poor dorsiflexion often leads to “quad-dominant” throwers, which works for some athletes but doesn’t work for others. It can make it harder to maintain proper stride progression and pelvic stability. Focusing on the adductors helps improve the drive leg and rotational function.

3️⃣ Heel Connection Loss: Poor dorsiflexion can cause a loss of heel connection, shifting weight onto the toes which in some cases with athletes, they tend to then fight rotation or fight across their body because their first initial movement was tipping too much towards their toes where they now have to redirect their rotational direction losing out on the linear component of the throwing delivery. Again some athletes do a better job at compensating and re routing their body even if they lose heel connection a bit too early in the delivery to still produce elite stuff where some other athletes will have a harder time with their mechanics where reverse engineering or shifting their focus as to how they re learn the skill of lower half mechanics which can help in the long run 

4️⃣ Kinematic Sequencing: The goal is to improve the timing of hip to shoulder separation or the skill of one’s ability to disassociate the pelvis from the upper half. This overall can dramatically help enhance one’s velocity and command. The better we can enhance this skill the better we will be when it comes to health. The more disruption we have in the kinetic chain, the more we pull the arm away from early trunk rotation, the longer we get with the arm only increases the distraction forces that happens in the throw which can dramatically increase the risk of injury. So, overall when assessing mechanics starting from the ground up can give us great understanding as to how one’s sequences his body and moves down the mound.