Drop & Drive? Tall & Fall? Do This Instead.

what's going on guys today we're going to talk about why I'm not a huge fan of either drop and drive or tall and fall as descriptors of elite lower half mechanics but first if you guys are new to this channel I'm Ben Brewster co-founder of TR Athletics we do both in-house and remote baseball player development coaching for thousands of high school college and professional pitches first off here's why I'm not a fan of either drop and drive or tall and fall drop and drive when I think of that General phrase that General saying I think there are some good things but when I think of drop and drive what I first think of is that initial move being down being drop and the drive being a push or an extension so that's the very first thing I think of I think of balance points drop extend I think that's how a lot of players will interpret that queue again some guys will interpret that and end up with Elite mechanics throwing 95 100 mph but I think in the majority that doesn't do a very good job of describing what's actually going on so again not a fan of that because there's no weight initial weight shift happening if your first move is just to drop and then the extension phase the drive phase a lot of players will misinterpret what that actually means and again when you get overly extended you lose the ability to actually rotate and send that energy up the chain and actually get any of that momentum and energy out and around into the arm and ultimately into the ball wasted energy wasted effort when guys adopt that pushing uh extension dominant back leg when it comes to tall and fall it's almost the opposite so as as opposed to having an overactive over engaged back leg that's pushing and extending what you have is basically an underactive back leg where guys will just lift and fall tall and fall to me indicates zero back leg involvement zero tension really no like loading action in the back leg just lift and fall I think of somebody like Tyler glass now when he was in the minor leagues and he was throwing 5 6 miles hour slower than he is currently before he thre 100 mph and really just no back leg involvement just falling so this typically goes hand in hand with guys that come to a balance point and they kind of just reach the hips forward and fall what should we do instead if we're not going to do tall and fall not drop and drop again knowing those are cues that will be interpreted differently by every different player that hears them some players will interpret that and they will have very high quality efficient mechanics others that's where the concern lies where guys will misinterpret what they're trying to do with their lower half mechanics and ultimately end up underachieving as players as result so what should we do instead now it's not as catchy but I think it does a better job actually describing what's going on so there's four parts when it comes to the lower half mechanics we're not going to get into the upper half mechanics but from lower half mechanics there's four parts there's the drift phase there's the hinge and linear move phase drift hinge linear move and then there's the rotate phase rotating into landing and then there's the block phase into ball release so from Landing into ball release where that lead leg extends so let's break that down one piece at a time and talk about from a physics standpoint and a conceptual standpoint why this is important for the most efficient hard throwing pitchers in the world and then also a couple cues on what it should typically feel like a disclaimer here is that not every single successful Pro pitcher Hall of Fame pitcher will necessarily do every single one of these phases perfectly right you can have guys that don't do a great job drifting but rotate really well or they don't do a great job rotating really well but they block really well or they drift really well but they don't do a good job actually catching the hinge or have a great linear move and so there's all sorts of ways to compensate with levers with athleticism with strength and different parts in the delivery so this is not a set of hard and fast rules this is just studying thousands of the most efficient pitches in the world what are the general principles that the V majority of them stick to and it's a framework for identifying and understanding mechanics so that being said let's start with the drift phase well the problem with a balance point is that typically when guys come to a balance point and they do all these sorts of drills the very next move is to reach the hips forward and so what happens when you reach the hips forward from a balance point is you actually lose that stack position between the pelvis and between the Torso and so as you come to a balance point the very next move tends to be reaching the hips forward at that point we've given up all the available range of motion in that back hip so we have a certain amount of range in this back hip call it 30° this is called hip abduction a duction if we tip our hips forward we have given up effectively all the range that we have in that back hip before we've even moved anywhere so from here what can you do you can fall and so you can either fall or you can fall and then last second try to jump using your quad but the as far as at the hip you're not going to be able to rotate well and you're either going to get that range of motion from the from the Quad from the knee from jumping and extending or you're just going to fall down the mou so balance points typically don't work as well because most guys will go from the balance point into that reaching move with the hip so the drift is a subtle move the drift is just getting the center of mass going forward it's a very subtle move and again you might have like a noan Ryan big leg lift you might have a Clayton Kershaw where he's just subtle drift and then go it's going to look different depending on the guy but the idea is just getting the center of mass going forward ever so slightly and what this does is actually you save up that range of motion in your back hip until you've actually shifted your weight forward away from the rubber so right here my weight is completely over my back foot I haven't shifted at all when I get my weight out front now when I actually get into my lower half and I drop and I find tension it actually accelerates you forward when you just stay back here and you drop you don't go anywhere and so it's really important to have that very subtle forward move so that when you drop everything accelerates forward and you actually create a more lateral Force vector that sends you towards the target as far as what to feel with the drift this is a very subtle move and so I like to coach it with step back throws so that you can actually feel yourself getting out front without losing the backside so if you feel like you're just lifting and you're completely losing your backside you just feel like you're falling you're doing too much it's a very subtle move so that's the drift it gets everything going forward the next phase of this is the hinge or the linear move phase and so you've gotten everything going forward you've gotten your Center Mass shifted forward a couple inches the next phase is making sure you haven't actually lost the back leg so you still have that stable back foot position you still have that stable back leg stable ground anchor and good posture so you still have your torso over top of your pelvis as you shift it from here we're actually going to find tension in the back side now why tension if you can load and wind rotational tension through the back hip now we have created that three-dimensional stability to the ground now we actually have something that we can unload from our pelvis if you never actually create any sort of tension here your pelvis is essentially just like in no man's land as far as being able to actually produce power out of a stable position it's kind of like the saying you can't shoot a cannon out of a canoe we're trying to actually get that canoe to be anchored to something and so we want this foot to be stable and we want to be wound up in that stable point of tension riding it down the mound as long as we can with a stacked torso and pelvic posture from here now we actually have something stable to rotate out if this leg is just back here there's no real stability you're in your quad you don't have the same stability to rotate out of couple helpful cues when it comes to the hinge of the linear move one we've already talked about how we don't want to be overactive with the back leg so it's not about putting as much force as you can into the ground jumping off the rubber it's more about finding that point of tension and riding It Forward once you found it it's just riding It Forward riding the pelvis in that closed Zack position forward as long as you can but it's not this aggressive how much force can I put into into the rubber Type move it's finding that point of tension and it's riding it guys who don't have as much range of motion in the back hip as they load tension right they might end up that's that's the extent of the range of motion they have and so they're end they're going to end up in a little bit more of a vertical Shin position because their range of motion that they have they're out of range right there somebody like myself with more hip internal rotation that range is going to represent potentially a more lateral Shin angle or more coil over the backside so it's going to look different depending on your body structure depending on your mechanics next phase is the rotate phase I like to think of this more As relaxing the hips into landing relaxing the hips into rotation but the rotate phase is extremely crucial because we've shifted the center Mass we've built linear momentum towards the target but we have to figure out how to get this linear linear momentum and actually get that out and around into the ball how do we get that into the arm and get that into the baseball the answer is through rotation we're not just going to jump linearly and just crash forward we need to somehow convert that into rotation so that that energy can funnel the chain think of it like a tornado from the ground up so we're taking this linear move we need to somehow convert that into rotation convert it into angular momentum from linear momentum how do we do that we do that from having wound tension so you actually have to something stable to rotate out of just before landing again you watch what the hardest throwers in the world do the most efficient throwers in the world do they're closed off relatively late into the delivery but by Landing they've allow the hips to to relax and pop open into landing and so that rotation typically is somewhere around 45° the hips aren't Landing completely open they're not Landing closed they're popping open at the last second somewhere around 45° give or take I used to think that to rotate was to aggressively spin my hips as hard as I possibly could and that that would help me throw harder but if you again look at what the hardest throwers do it's a smooth fluid unwinding it's not an aggressive forced muscled move from the hips and so after I'd gone through a number of back injuries and slowly figured this out is I realized it was way more of just relaxing the hips into landing so drift ride tension pop the hips open and because that's more of a relaxed move now it doesn't bring the Torso with it if you try to if you try to fire everything at once it brings the Torso with it if you're able to relax now you can actually let the hips come because this is relaxed the shoulders stay back now you can actively fire the Torso and be able to generate that separation now you can create that slingshot effect so the rotate phase extremely important I Ty will recommend guys think of relaxing the hips into landing not powering the hips into landing and the fourth phase is the block phase now the block phase will happen automatically if you've done everything else right to that point I'm not a huge fan of consciously teaching guys to try to force that block to happen because this block is not happening as a result of firing the quad this block is actually happening as a result of you've landed so you now have a firm anchor into the ground the hips are 45° open you've relaxed properly so the shoulders are able to stay closed the tors is able to stay close now as the hips rotate into that stable ground anchor watch what this side of the pelvis does as it rotates this pelvis is fixed to this end of my my femur my leg bone here so as this rotates it actually pulls on the femur it pulls again fixed Point pelvis is rotating and it pulls that leg into extension and so the block actually happens automatically as a result of completing that rotation over your front side not as a result of actively pushing or contract AC in the quad so again I'm not a fan of all those drills where guys are trying to force the lead leg block this way because it happens automatically if you just rotate if you rotate that lead leg will extend automatically as a byproduct so I know I've thrown a lot at you guys uh in this video but actually getting into some of the drills and other cues and how to work on these things it's a little beyond the scope of this video we've done tons of videos on this channel talking about how to work on the drift different drills for the hinge different drills to work on rotation in the blocking phase so if you're interested we'll drop links to some of those videos down below if you guys enjoyed this video go ahead subscribe to this channel give us a thumbs up and drop a comment down below if you have suggestions for future videos hopefully you guys took something away from this video and I'll see you next time thanks again [Music] [Music]