There is an interesting article in the current issue of DIE ZEIT (weekly newspaper) about world-class tennis players - about loneliness, isolation and burn-out. It deals with how super talents are torn away from their environment at the age of 16 and put into a professional setting. The decisive factor here is that there is no space or time for friends.
I found the following sentence by the author, Andrea Petkovic, a former professional tennis player, particularly telling: "The fanatasies want your soul, a few body parts (either shoulder or knee), and your private life, but have no intention of giving anything in return except a few bags of money. "*.
The consultants, doctors, agents and trainers decide that the talent's time is too precious, the body too fragile. These are people who are not interested in people, but in their performance. They evaluate the athlete based on their rankings at tournaments - yes, I'm still in tennis 😉 The athlete receives their performance-based self-worth from them.
The soul, the spirit and therefore mental health, which is crucial for long-term performance, are pushed into the background. While friends are busy and supportive with their A-levels, finding themselves on trips abroad or choosing a course of study TOGETHER, the top performer is surrounded by bloodsuckers who want to advance their sporting career. However, a 16-year-old needs to interact with friends, regardless of their sporting performance, in order to stay sane - this is where their socially mediated self-worth comes from. Who am I, and if so, how many?*
So if a 16-18 year old decides to pursue a career in baseball polo, he is sacrificing socializing with like-minded people in favor of relentless profit, while an athlete who has his sights set on college will attend regular school - with friends - until the age of 18. Hopefully, this athlete will then go on to college in the USA. Again, a lot of like-minded people who are barely older than our player.
The combination of competitive sport and studies enables them to work on their own coping mechanisms, dealing with adversity, in exchange with others. If a professional career should then follow after college, at around 22 years of age, the athlete is equipped with considerably more tools emotionally, mentally and athletically to master his new situation. If a professional career doesn't follow college, you were probably the wrong choice at 16 to 18.
Instead of self-doubt and connection difficulties in everyday life after 3-4 unsatisfactory years in professional baseball, you might have a college baseball career behind you and a bachelor's degree in your pocket - not bad either - neither for the performance-mediated nor for the socially mediated self-esteem.
This blog post was posted in Feb. 2012. During that time I was approaching the final stages of my personal version of chasing the dream of playing professional baseball, not worrying about the future, working odd jobs just to make enough to get by. In other words, I actually WAS living the (a) dream (I still am, just a different version). Either way, I had finished my second stint as a (unusually old) US college player. A year later, went back to Yuma, AZ to play in the Arizona Winter League ( I think it was run by the Golden League) - a one month pay to play league with a chance of getting picked up by one of the teams for the actual season. While I didn't end up on the list of signed players, I had a blast during the one month season and leading up to it. Without further ado, here is the original post about Sunday baseball in Mexico with my friend Kuz.
Passport in pocket at all times
The van
I made it back and I brought some pictures with me. Day two in Mexico wasn't particulary spectacular, as it has gotten pretty routine for me to get in a van and drive to Mexico to play baseball on a fenced in, smoothly draged patch of desert. It has also gotten pretty routine for me to listen to my English speaking teammates to find out what the manager wants me to do, since he doesn't speak English.That's the reason I didn't see anything out of the ordinary when I went in to pitch the seventh inning of an 11:1 ballgame, just as I was told by several English speaking teammates.
I was peacefully munching on my Mexican food (I don't know the difference between tacos, burritos, tortillas and what ever else there is), when people started wondering where the manager had gone. I didn't notice, but apparently he had left in the seventh inning because he was pissed off. I was going through all kinds of scenarios in my head that could have possibly pissed him off, but I couldn't find anything plausible. Sure, I walked two guys, we couldn't get the shutout and we might have misplayed a ball or two, but from the first pich on, every person in the ballpark knew who was going to win this game. The only question was by how much.
Food place
Chewy, the owner, was a little hesitant at first, but then he explained that because "the pitcher, what's his name, Clemens, went in without him ever telling him to". My bad.
Because we now didn't have a manager, Chewy had to announce a new one. His choice was Bocho. Bocho is my favorite player on this team. Bocho is our first baseman and reminds me a lot of "The Dude". He calls me "Roger" and thinks Clemens is my last name. His long ponytail doesn't exactly make him look like your prototypical athlete, but when you watch him move around on the field you can tell he must have been a pretty good ball player in his heyday, and still is.
Dugout
Bocho wants everyone to be happy and get along, so his first announcement as the new manager was: "lose or win, everybody is going to play!" He asked every player and all the pitchers what position they wanted to play and he granted every wish, which didn't sit too well with everyone - our opponents wanted to quit when Kuz, a left handed pitcher, played short.
I certainly didn't complain, since I got to play first base, but most importantly, I'd get an AB. So I ran out there to my position, hoping the first guy would hit the ball to me. The first batter was a lefty and since they were behind fastballs all day, I didn't expect to see much action. WHACK! Before I realized what had happened, my body took over. 17 years of baseball and millions of groundballs proved to be good for something. Next thing I know, my body is parallel to the ground in full extention, knocking down the one hop bullet racing down the line. I couldn't hide my smile, but the excitement about the play was mostly shared between me and the pitcher.
Kuz and me
The next batter was Kuz's time to shine. He too, got a rocket hit in his direction at short. Instead of being a hero, he selflessly let the ball bounce off his glove, forearm and chest, sacrificing his one shot at glory to set the stage for the White Flamingo, as I am known in the state of Baja California. The runner that Kuz let get on base, forced me to hold him at the bag and put me in a spot where I was about a body's lenght away from where the next ball was about to be hit. This time it was a righty, but it was bullet as well. You guessed right - I laid out again and made the second spectular play in the same inning, this time to my right.
The two other balls that I scooped out of the dirt, a highlight in itself for your average first baseman, over the course of the rest of the game were just the icing on the cake.
With the Arizona Winter Leauge "Spring Camp" already in progress, I'm probably going to have to call it a season in Mexico for 2012. In the AWL all the players are chasing the much higher paying jobs in the independent baseball leagues of America. And it's really not that hard to get in: "all you have to do is throw about 86-87, spot the fastball, consistantly be able to pitch inside and throw a breaking ball for a strike - Be able to throw a 2-0 breaking ball for a strike.", that's how simple it is to get signed, according to one of the coaches. Really, that's all I need to do? That sounds so much easier than pumping 94 without knowing where it's going.
Arizona truly is a baseball paradise. It's little bit like I had always envisioned the United States to be like - baseball around the corner no matter where you go. It's certainly true for Phoenix and Yuma, the two cities I have been fortunate enough to be around long enough to experience it. It also helps knowing the right people.
It starts with my long time friend and mentor, Larry Smith. For a few years in a row now, I have made sure to visit him around this time of the year to sit back and let him show me around the fairytale world he has made a career in. Of course, baseball here is a business, but it's a lot of fun to be around. I could probably fill a whole book with amazing things he has enabled me to experience. It starts by having a chance to work out on a baseball field every day and goes all the way hanging out at the spring training complex of the Oakland A's
Of course, with Larry you don't walk through the gate - you park in the players parking lot and walk straight into the big league clubhouse, where the day starts off with small talk with the coaches. A walk on the field while the players warm up is no big deal. A few introductions to a few players, such as Rich Harden, (that was a few years ago) later, one of the pitchers, Marcus McBeth, comes over to me to show me how he throws his change up. Larry had asked him to do so earlier. During that time he politely sends away autograph hunters.
One day he even took me and my brother in the bullpen at the spring training stadium before a game, where we hung out for a little bit until Rickey Henderson came over to shake our hands. He apologized that he hadn't come over earlier. Rickey Henderson!!!
Those are just a few of the things that happen day in and day out, when you get a chance to spend time with Larry Smith in Phoenix. I think you can understand why I love to come back every year.
Last year, I played at Arizona Western College in Yuma. Yuma is not Phoenix, but there is still more than enough baseball. Benji Molina is an AWC alum and so is Sergio Romo - I got to meet them both last year. I also got the chance to pitch against Jose Canseco and his brother last May, but that could be a whole blog post in itself.
the vanbreakfast placethe fieldthis tree behind leftfield was apparently an obivious choice...
I know, this is a long introduction, I hope you haven't gotten bored reading it by now, but I want to give you a feel for what's going on here. Anyway, because there is so much baseball here, and because Yuma is the home of the Arizona Winter League in which I will participate this Feb., I decided to come back. One of the assistant coaches from AWC last year, James "Kuz" Kuzniak, a baseball fanatic like myself, is another good guy to know if you want to get a chance to play as much as possible. He was the one who suggested we go and see if Canseco was at the stadium, and he was also the one who invited me to come play with his team in Mexico.
Passport in pocket - just as instructedKuz and me in 2011 or so
Mexico? What? Wait, is that even safe? How can I just come and play? After all, it's supposedly professional baseball... "Don't worry, just don't talk to anyone and keep your passport with you at all times in case we have to run..." Ok... sounds safe enough, let's go!
So off we went, on a beautiful (what else in Arizona) Sunday morning, to pick up a few players. We stopped at a pretty nice house, where we had to get out of the car. I got to meet a nice man who gave me a T-shirt (our jersey) and Kuz some money to buy us all breakfast. I later learned that he was the owner of the team. We all switched into a van in which we crossed the border, where we met up with more players. With five players in the van now, we pulled over to the side of the road, right next to a spot where a lot of Mexicans hung out in their trucks and grilled some meat. Not for a second did I think that this was a place where you can buy food and eat. I was wrong and that's where we had breakfast.
A little later we arrived at the baseball field. I could see dugouts, a backstop and an outfield fence, but nothing else that resembled a baseball field. No grass, no bases, no homeplate, no opponent, just a lot of sand. Now I understood what the throw down bases in the back of van were for. Some players chatted, some made business selling cleats and pants, and a few started warming up. Not long into our "pre game preparations", the umpire came over to tell us that we were starting in five minutes. The manager called us together to read the lineup and give us a few instructions - in Spanish, of course. Now I know how Japanese players must feel like in a foreign country - very relaxed, because if you don't understand a word you have nothing to worry about!
During the course of the game, with the help of a translator, they asked me if I was a pitcher, which I confirmed. Kuz, our starter, was cruising for the most part of the day. After the sixth, with the score 4:3, they told me that I was going in if anyone got on base. Kuz got the first batter to fly out. After that, a man got on, but he stayed in the game. He got the second out before another guy got on. Now it was my turn. With a one run lead in the last inning (7 inning game) and two men on, I only had two choices. Get the next guy, save the game and be a hero, or be chased out of Mexico with nothing but my passport in my back pocket.
During my warmup pitches, I had to spend the first few to find a good spot on the rubber. The mound wasn't exactly in good shape. My fastball felt good, I threw strikes and I had a little zip on it. The slider wasn't so good and I opted to not even throw a changeup. After all, my game plan was simple. Throw three fastballs as hard as I could and strike the kid out. Don't even worry about facing another hitter, no way I wanted to do that in this situation. The first pitch was strike one, right down broadway. Strike two was a nasty moving two seamer on the outside corner for a swinging strike two. 0-2, almost there - let's throw it even harder! Ball high, not what I wanted, but not a bad pitch in this situation. Ok, let's throw it hard again, but for a strike. Ball high, 2-2. Uh-oh, don't lose him now, I don't want to be chased off the field! I basically closed my eyes and threw thte next pitch as hard as I could again. When I opened my eyes, the ball was already in the glove and the kid had just finished his swing - strike three. The game was over and I had my first save in Mexico in my pocket, right next to my passport.
After we had won game 2 with the same score, a nice, older looking man came over and handed every one money. I got 40$ out of the gig and as you can imagine, I was pretty happy. The whole car ride home, however, the rest of the players complained about how underpaid they were. Life as a professional ballplayer...
Well, my dear readers, I have bills to pay make ends meet. That means I have to get off this couch and start preparing for my next game in Mexcio this Sunday! Thanks for stopping by, and if you don't hear from me after Sunday, you know what happened...
Spoiler: There are many, many things that contribute to this, and this article is only about a tiny fraction of them.
Pitching delivery is very complex and has many individual biomechanical sections and parts. Because there are so many parts, it is not so easy to find out which biomechanical characteristics are actually responsible for speed, movement and control.
In principle, forces and speeds correlate much more strongly with throwing speed than positions that can be easily recognized in photos, for example. Roughly speaking, this means that it is not whoever looks better in the photo, but whoever moves faster, throws harder. However, it can be assumed that better positions generally allow faster movements. So it's not all that different after all.
What is scapretraction?
One of the few correlations between such a position and throwing speed is horizontal abduction. Other terms for this are "scapload" or "scap retraction".
It sounds very complicated at first, but it's relatively easy to explain: it's about how far the elbow is pulled behind the line of the shoulder.
Particular attention is paid to the following characteristics: The maximum value, the value at footplant, and subsequently how long the horizontal abduction can be maintained. (It should be noted, however, that values determined using different measurement methods are not as comparable as values determined using the same method - ideally under the same conditions).
For pitchers under 75mph, the average horizontal abduction at FC was 35.6 degrees, and for pitchers over 87mph it was 53.8 degrees.
The exact correlations are much more complicated (more details can be found here: https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/2019/02/biomechanics-rewind-look-numbers-last-six-months/), but it can be said very roughly - and really only very roughly - that pitchers who throw harder also have more horizontal abduction on average. Conversely, of course, this does not mean that everyone who reaches 53.8 degrees of scapretraction will automatically throw over 87mph, nor that everyone who has less than 35 degrees of scapretration cannot throw faster than 75mph... However, the probability that this is the case is high.
What are the benefits of Scapretraction?
The retracted elbow is what is most noticeable. Less visible, but much more important, is what happens to the shoulder blade.
It is pulled backwards along the ribcage. This allows it to tilt backwards better, which supports maximum external rotation - the layback. It also facilitates the extension of the thoracic spine, which also simplifies the layback and subsequent acceleration. This is very important for healthy and efficient throwing.
The arm therefore has more time to spend in the layback position and a longer acceleration path. A longer acceleration path allows higher speeds with less acceleration, which reduces the peak load on the arm. You can therefore throw faster and with less strain.
Why does a longer acceleration distance reduce the load peaks?
Let's think of acceleration in a car. But to make it clearer, let's take negative acceleration, i.e. braking. If I want to get from 100 to 0 and have 10 seconds to do so, that's no problem for the body. We have all done this many times. But if you want to do it in less than a second (by driving into a wall, for example), it leaves permanent marks on the body.
Of course, fewer forces act during the throw, and the acceleration distance is not increased 10-fold. The effects are much less drastic, but the principle is the same.
How do I improve Scapretraction?
First of all, the necessary flexibility and mobility must be present. The large and small pectoral muscles, as well as the saw muscle, must therefore be long enough and be able to release precisely (trigger points, stretching exercises for the chest)
At the same time, the rhomboids and trapezius muscles must be sufficiently trained to be able to pull the shoulder blade towards the spine (rowing exercises, "band-pullaparts").
Plyoball pivot pickoffs, plyoball scapretraction throws and roll-in throws are particularly suitable for improving movement coordination in the throwing motion.
However, avoid paying particular attention to it during the throw - this is almost impossible and can negatively affect the timing of your throw. Instead, try to prepare your body for this movement so that it allows and uses it during the throw.
Most arm injuries occur at the start of the season(https://mikereinold.com/mlb-tommy-john-injuries/). It is reasonable to assume that the strain during this time is often too high for the players' fitness level. For this reason, it is very important not to throw too much too quickly. If you do, it very often leads to arm pain.
But what is the best way to build up the arm? How much should you throw, how often and how quickly should you increase? To answer this, we need to expand a little.
To know how much strain you can put on an athlete without risking injury, I need to know how much strain they are used to. This is called the chronic load. It indicates how much stress the athlete has been exposed to on average (simplified) in the last four weeks. For a runner, for example, this would be kilometers. They should therefore be able to easily cope with this load today (the acute load), plus a little more. The acute load is the load of the last 7 days. The interesting question is: how much is "a little more"?
If you divide the acute workload by the chronic workload, you get a ratio. This is known as the acute to chronic workload ratio (ACWR).
Across all sports, it has been found that the increase in load can be controlled very well via the ratio of chronic to acute load (A/C ration). This makes it relatively easy to subsequently observe how the injury frequency changes with the ACWR.
In order to do the same for throwers, it is best to know the load of a throw. If you know this, you can simply multiply it by the number of throws and you will get your daily load. The problem, however, is that not every throw causes the same amount of strain.
That's exactly what I did. To keep the ratio of the acute load to the chronic load (the A/C ratio) around or below 1.5 over the 6-8 week on-ramp phase (see next page), I adjusted the load for each day and calculated the ACWR. This is how I arrived at the number of throws and distances for each day.
After the onramp phase, the arm is fit enough to have sufficient scope to work on the mound at higher intensities and to continue building up the chronic load.
The graph shows a few important values. The green line is ACWR. If possible, it should lie between the two red lines.
In the first few days, the ACWR is significantly higher than the target - there are mathematical reasons for this. Since the chronic load is zero at the beginning (or very low even after a few adjustments and weighting), the ratio must be correspondingly high. In reality, however, the arm/body of a healthy athlete is never completely unfit for exercise. For this reason, the starting point is also the most "arbitrary" in this calculation. Even after that, the ACWR keeps jumping over the red line. I consider this to be justifiable for the following reasons:
If you don't allow this, you have to increase the program over many more weeks. A 12-week onramp program before pitchers go to the mound is not realistic and is more appropriate after injuries. You may lose more pitchers to boredom than to injury 😉
The shorter the break from throwing, the fitter the arm is. Even after one (or more) month(s) break(s) from throwing, the arm load capacity does not drop completely to the level of untrained people. However, since the chronic load is measured over 4 weeks, this would be the assumption in the model and therefore never works optimally in the first few days.
The lower the absolute daily load for these overloads, the less drastic the effects of the overload. In the beginning, a handful of litters to 120 can mean a calculated overload. I think we can agree that "one more litter" is unlikely to be the cause of overload dislocation. In this model, a few extra throws at the beginning of the program can give exactly this impression. But I think that's an exaggeration.
Exceeding the ACWR does not mean an immediate injury - merely an increase in risk. As already indicated, the amount and duration of the overrun must also be taken into account.
The goal is to minimize the risk of injury at an acceptable cost, not eliminate it at all costs. An overly cautious approach might still be a little "safer," but it costs more in performance gains and, most importantly, is extremely monotonous. What pitcher wants to throw slowly with hardly any progress for many many weeks?
The blue bars represent the daily load. These will be considerably higher later during matches than during this onramp phase. The orange line represents the chronic load - this will also continue to increase after the onramp phase.
The higher the chronic load, the higher the fitness level. A higher fitness level enables more pitches per day and week without risking overload. This in turn enables more, and above all better quality, training on the mound and more or longer matches.
The model has some limitations that could be reduced, for example, by continuous individual measurements of each pitch (for example with a PULSE sensor) or at least by creating further and more accurate approximations. However, as a basic framework for an on-ramp phase for healthy pitchers, it seems to be a sensible first step.
You can find detailed instructions for implementation here and here.
Plyoballs can be used in many different ways - we have described a few areas of application here.
So that you can get straight into training with your new plyoballs, you get your first small plyoball routine for free. In the PDF you will find a block of exercises that you can incorporate directly into your training 3 times a week before throwing. The exercises are perfect for getting started and cover most of the necessary areas for initial improvements in throwing technique and arm fitness.
The cool thing is that it's not just a list of exercises. The exercises are also provided with links or QR codes that take you to a more detailed explanation and a video.
The pivot pickoffs are complex, but they also bring a lot of added value. They are a very good exercise to improve the armaction and cement a good armaction.
Especially when performed with plyo balls, the increased proprioceptive feedback can improve arm movement particularly well.
The exercise improves the timing and path of the pick-up phase, i.e. the phase in which the hand goes upwards.
Another focus of the exercise is the driveline phase. This is the phase in which the shoulder, elbow and hand successively accelerate towards home plate.
As the hips are already very open in relation to the upper body in the starting position, the body gets to know and use the position of the hip-shoulder separation.
Depending on how the exercise is performed, a greater focus can also be placed on scap retraction.
Setup
Throwing arm foot is in front, approx. shoulder width apart.
Hip to (front side of throwing arm): Advanced version
Hips open, toes pointing towards the target: Easier because there is less rotation. If the upper body rotates more than 90 degrees to the target, then you should start further closed.
Hands in front of chest: More advanced, preferred version, also works more on scap retraction.
Hand starts "next to ear", palm facing the ear (supinated into external rotation): Simplified version, focused mainly on path timing of elbow extension and shoulder rotation and pronation.
Execution
Pivot Pickoffs
Arm by the ear: start counter-rotation. At the start of the upper body opening, the hand should be supinated to allow external rotation.
With arm action:
Start counter-rotation, elbow pulls back.
Hand stays inside the elbow or gets there on the way up at the latest.
Elbow moves to shoulder height while hand remains supinated. The palm of the hand points towards the ear.
The glove arm pulls towards the chest and starts the upper body rotation towards the target. The throwing arm shoulder is rotated towards the target, at the same time the arm moves into maximum external rotation.
Then the arm is stretched and the shoulder and forearm rotate inwards.
To ensure an optimal driveline, the finish is with the hand on the front thigh.
Balls
For most players, 2kg and 1kg balls are the most suitable for this exercise. For some players, however, the 2kg ball is too heavy and the quality of execution suffers. The movement is then not fluid and the ball is often pushed. For these players, it is advisable to only do the exercise with the 1kg ball. The 1k and 450g balls are best suited to junior players.
In this video, I'll show you what your remote pitching training program looks like in the Bridge app. If you have any questions, write them in the comments! You can find the programs here.
You can find more details about the programs here.
A particularly strong driving motivation for me as a coach is to offer the players the baseball environment that I have always wanted. Together with Markus Solbach and Markus Winkler, I have finally been able to implement one of these things - an all-encompassing offseason pitching program.
Not only do we have concentrated know-how from many years as players and coaches - it is even delivered directly to your cell phone! There is no easier way to implement a program when the coach is not on site.
For each day, you will receive your throwing program and strength/conditioning program, with all the details that leave (virtually) no questions unanswered, directly on your cell phone. The only question is - are you going to do it or not?
The Offseason Pitching Program is available in two versions - a 12-week version that mainly prepares you for the season, and an 18-week version that also includes a development block.
Calendar overview
Workout preview
Training block
Drill
Calendar
Throwing drills
Throwing drills
Throwing training block
Documentation
The 12-week version contains the following phases:
On Ramp- Getting the arm fit, learning drills and making initial adjustments - both mechanically and physiologically. The increase in workload was derived from the findings of numerous studies in the field of general and throwing-specific workload management. We have even created our own model that can (approximately) represent different scenarios with the associated risk of injury - but that's a topic for another blog post.
Mound Blend - Getting used to the mound and transferring what you have learned to the mound
Blend to Season - The final touches before the season
Required training equipment
Necessary:
Baseball
Plyoball set (2kg, minimum: 1kg, 450g, 225g, 250g, 100g)
The 18-week version contains the following phases:
On Ramp- Get the arm fit, learn drills and make initial adjustments - both mechanically and physiologically.
Mound Blend - Getting used to the mound and transferring what you have learned to the mound
Command - Work on your command and document your progress (alternatively, you could dedicate the command bullpens to improving your pitch arsenal, for example)
Blend to Season - The final touches before the season
Required training equipment
Necessary:
Baseball
Plyoball set (2kg, minimum: 1kg, 450g, 225g, 250g, 100g)
Driveline Command Balls or 6oz and 4oz ball (for command training)
The drills
Each training day includes a section of pitching drills. These are largely based on the methods of backwards chaining and chunking (dividing the movement into individual parts, starting at the end of the movement) and differential learning (creating deviations that lead to small inefficiencies in order to challenge you to find the optimal solution). We often create the deviations (variability) using different heavy and large balls(plyocare balls), which lead to different speeds and increased or decreased perception of the movement (proprioceptive feedback). The training equipment is used in more or less restricted forms of movement (to improve various areas of the throw in a reinforced and isolated manner or to bring all parts together and make them interact).
Training program options
You can opt for the following versions to make the whole thing even more suitable for you:
If you want the program to be even more tailored to you, we can determine your starting point via a (remote) assessment and then adapt the drills, phases and focus points exactly to you (initially only the pitching part). But if you want this, you should hurry - the offseason should start in mid-November, and there are only limited spots!
The step-back throws of the Plyo Ball Exercises are a regression of the rocker throws and should be placed in the middle of the sequence of the drill series, as they already have considerably more degrees of freedom than pivot pickoffs and rollins. With step-backs, the weight is also shifted and the hips must be rotated with the correct timing.
Focal points
The exercise is ideal for teaching players to load the rear hip and shift the body's center of gravity.
Execution
The exercise is very simple but effective. From the stretch position, the player takes a small step backwards (over a fictitious or actual rubber), sinking a little into the back leg, from where he performs the stride and throw as normal.
The "step-back" is actually just a step - not a jump, neither backwards nor forwards.
Focus points
The main focus of the exercise is to load the rear hip and not to stretch too early when stepping forward. The upper body should remain "stacked" during the step, i.e. the head should be approximately above the belt buckle.
Further focus points:
Sequencing: accelerate (rotate) the hips into the landing and keep the upper body closed when landing.
Lead-Leg-Block: After the front foot has landed, the knee should not bend any further, but remain rigid or extend. The knee should also be behind the foot.
Balls
The exercise is repeated once each with the 450g, 225g, 150g and 100g ball for several sets.
