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Tight Hip Flexors? Low Back Pain Relief Strengthening Exercises

Discover these little known low back pain relief strengthening exercises.  Learn how to dynamically stretch and release hip flexor tightness for athletes, beginners, bodybuilders, runners, and seniors.

How To Stretch Hip Flexors

 

 

“Why Are My Hip Flexors so Tight?” How To Stretch Hip Flexors (Release Or Strengthen?)

Post and video by Dr. Joe LaCaze, founder of RotexMotion

Concerning how to stretch hip flexors, I have seen, performed and taught every conceivable method of releasing them from tightness.

As a flexibility specialist, I stretched thousands of patients and athletes using the most popular muscle and fascial release techniques. I got so proficient with these stretch techniques, I taught seminars to other doctors and therapists…

As a neuromuscular therapist, I performed soft tissue techniques to release muscles from strain and tightness. I learned how to perform manual Trigger Point Therapy from a few masters.

As a performance enhancement specialist, I integrated PNF (Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation) stretching and neuromuscular therapy with dynamic exercise for reestablishing normal movement patterns for the muscles and fascia we worked on.

This journey was all in an effort to discover how to stretch hip flexors and release strain and tightness for two main reasons – to create more…

  1. Stability in the lower back and pelvis, and
  2. Mobility in the hips and the thoracic spine.

We have been in the habit of looking at certain muscles like how to stretch hip flexors, and thinking they are too short and tight. Here’s what we’ll cover in this post:

  • Logical thing to do with short tight muscles,
  • Primary hip flexors causing problems, &
  • 4 Reasons hips flexors are short and tight.

Logical thing to do w/ short tight muscles

In the past 15 years, with the help of some of the most renowned doctors, therapists, strength coaches, trainers and skills coaches, I have developed a much different view on how to treat these short, tight muscles. It has completely changed my understanding of how to stretch hip flexors.

If we have short, tight hip flexors, we should ask ourselves:

  • “WHY are they so short and tight?” And,
  • “WHAT are the restrictions to these muscles performing to their highest capability”?

Primary hip flexors causing problems

How To Stretch The Hip Flexor

How To Stretch The Hip Flexor: psoas major muscle

There are four primary hip flexors but the one we hear about most, the one that causes us the most problems is the psoas major muscle. When we hear or read about the psoas major, 99% of the problems associated are attributed to it being short and tight.

The psoas major is responsible for lifting the thigh once it gets to 90° (parallel the floor), and everything after that, about another 45%. So it would seem that if it is short and tight, it would easily be able to lift the thigh to its limit. That is actually opposite to what happens.

If it is short and tight, it will also be weak and won’t be able to perform its normal function to full capacity. There are also neurological reasons it won’t be able to perform, but that’s a little complicated for this article.

Important to swinging and throwing athletes, the psoas major is also responsible for stabilizing the lower back, that is where it attaches to the lower spine. If the psoas major is short, tight and weak, it does a poor job of stabilizing against dynamic rotation and puts the lower back at high risk of injury.

The lower back will also become tighter as a protective mechanism and will not completely release its tension until the psoas major is strengthened through its entire range of motion, among other things.

 

4 Reasons hips flexors are short and tight

Problem #1

There are restrictors to the movement of the psoas major. These are mainly the deep hip muscles (the deep external hip rotators) and the hamstrings.

Solution to #1

Strengthen these muscles, don’t constantly stretch them. A strong muscle is much more flexible than a weakened muscle due to constant stretching.

Problem #2

The psoas major is WEAK because it has been constantly stretched, massaged, released, etc.

Solution to #2

Since the psoas major is almost 100% responsible for lifting the thigh past 90° to about 135%, it needs to be strengthened against some sort of resistance through its entire range of motion.

Problem #3

Almost everyone in our society sits for most of our non-athletic activities – driving, working at a desk, watching TV, reading, texting, etc.

Solution to #3

If we sit as part of our lifestyle, we will probably not change that. What we CAN do is to super strengthen our glutes, hamstrings and the deep external hip rotators. Those are the opposite muscles to the sitting muscles and they will help to release them as soon as we stand up and start moving.

Problem #4

If the hip flexors are unequal in the balance of strength, they will not be able to lift the thigh symmetrically. If the psoas major is weak, a muscle called the TFL (tensor fascia lata) will pull the hip and thigh outward and will create very complicated problems that are difficult to resolve in both the hips and lower back.

Solution to #4

Strengthen the TFL and hip in internal hip rotation against a strong rotational resistance, THEN strengthen the psoas major through its full lifting action, against resistance.

For those who have access to the two RotexMotion floor models, here’s the Inward Hip Rotation exercise to accomplish this…

 

Baseball Trainers Near Me

Are you looking for 1 on 1 or small private group hitting lessons for baseball and softball players in the Fresno and Clovis, CA areas?  Or are you looking for the best private online batting instruction and swing analysis in 2022?  We do training for both adults and youth.  This 20-min part-1 video webinar will give you a little taste of what we’re about…

Increase Consistent Power In 2-Weeks: Baseball Trainers Webinar Part-1…

 

 

 

For those interested:

  • Here’s a link to sign up for our online hitting lesson program called The Feedback Lab,
  • Please text me at: 559-709-5808 (Joey) if you’re in Fresno, Clovis, or general California area to setup private 1 on 1 instruction or small private group lessons.
  • CLICK HERE for a link to Our Story and testimonials.

Here’s are the three parts:

  1. [YOU ARE HERE] Baseball Trainers Near Me? Part-1,
  2. Perfect Baseball Swing Webinar? Part-2, and
  3. Part-3 COMING SOON!!

The following is the transcript to the baseball trainers near me webinar… (about 18-minutes reading time)

Joey Myers  00:06

Get cozied up to technology over the years, because of the online thing, it is what it is.

Joey Myers  00:14

Let me let these people in. Welcome everybody that are coming in here. Some are coming in by phone.

Joey Myers  00:25

We have a lot of information today, I’m going to try and get through it really quickly, within 30 minutes. It will be good information.

Joey Myers  00:32

If you have any questions, I know, I have a lot of questions, a lot of great questions that Neil relayed over to me, from many of you. There’s a lot of them, like I said, 40-50, something like that.Baseball Trainers Near Me

Joey Myers  00:42

I’m going to do my best to really get through those quickly. Obviously, I’m not going to be able to go through them in depth, but if you have any questions after this, feel free to reach out and email me at Joey, J-O-E-Y, like Joey from friends, at hitting performance lab dot com, and I’ll have that at the end of this too. You don’t have to worry about downloading it into your brain. If you have any baseball trainers near me webinar questions, please, and I will answer them, have them ready.

 

Baseball Trainers Near Me – Our Story

Joey Myers  01:08

I think we’re adding them here. As they as they come in, we will add them. Today, we’re going to be going over something, about 2012, towards the end of 2012, is when my son, who’s now going to be turning eight in three days.

Joey Myers  01:28

When he was born, and the wife was doing the midnight, every two hours, three-hour milk feedings. I had a book called Anatomy Trains by Thomas Myers, same last name. I’m sure on the family tree, we are related in some way, but I don’t know him like I would know my brother or my uncle or anything like that.

Joey Myers  01:50

Thomas Myers’ book Anatomy Trains was something that really changed everything, how I teach hitting, and how I’m going to teach hitting, and you will hopefully get to see a little bit of that in this baseball trainers near me presentation. So again, welcome.

Joey Myers  02:04

Thank you again, Neil, for putting this thing on and keeping you already to go. Hopefully, we can get a lot of information in and if you got to go, we’re going to record this, don’t worry, we will get that out. I’ll get the recording out to Neil and he can get it out to you guys, so let’s get going.

Joey Myers  02:19

This is the baseball trainers near me seminar, teleseminar, whatever you want to call it, how to teach 100-pound hitters who consistently drive the ball 300 feet. This was something that I didn’t just cook up and create a product and go. This came to me with the results that my hitters were getting, and hitters were soon to be, what other coaches were learning, and were applying with their hitters.

Joey Myers  02:44

Brought to you by Hitting Performance Lab, that’s my website. You got Neil over at MaxBP. One of my favorite quotes is by Ralph Waldo Emerson, you might know that gentlemen,

“As to the methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles is sure to have trouble”.

Joey Myers  03:15

Now this is an important quote, because it distinguishes between methods and principles, principles are rules. Think about playing Monopoly, you got to know the rules of the game before you can play the game. The principles to hitting can come in the form of bio-mechanics, physics, engineering, those are the principles that we tend to stick with.

Joey Myers  03:42

What we’re going to be talking about today, case studies, why legs fail, and spinal engine succeeds in the power equation, discover the springy fascist secret, how to turn the spine into a safe ball crushing machine. We were talking about this with Neil, I talked to him yesterday on the phone, he was having some back pain with his baseball golf swing, and we’ll see if we can get to that in this, but I really want to focus on more of the power side, but we want to make sure the swing is safe, we will talk about that.

Joey Myers  04:17

Before we get there, let’s add some more people in here, probably have Neil do this. That’s right. Thank you for joining everybody. All right.

Joey Myers  04:35

The first question usually when you go to a wedding is how do you know the bride? How do you know the groom? So, how do I know MaxBP? Well, it first started with the Sandlot Slugger, and then MaxBP acquired Sandlot Slugger, and that’s where we connected, and I connected with Neil. That’s probably been, I don’t know, Neil can probably say on this five, seven years ago, maybe, that this happened. Is that about right, Neil?

Neil McConnell  04:58

Yes, that sounds right. We’ve been around about 11 years; Sandlot Slugger ran probably about 14 years ago. Somewhere in that mix.

Joey Myers  05:08

I know them because we started the starting lineup store dot com, where I started it back 2010. I was grouping a lot of the hitting aids that really love to work with my hitters that are proven, whether it’s through science or just data, and MaxBP, Sandlot Slugger at the time, the MaxBP is one of those hitting aids, I call them the best hitting aids in the world, on the planet. That’s how I know Neil and MaxBP.

Joey Myers  05:38

I played four years division one baseball at Fresno State from 2003, I just want to give just a little bit, I’m going to probably rush through this because I know most year, just cut to the chase. I think some of you that don’t know me, would be good to just take a gloss… Over 15 plus years in the corrective exercise industry, and those are some of the alphabet soup that I have certification wise.

Joey Myers  06:02

What’s funny is in college, I was a criminology major and I really fell in love with kinesiology. I wish if I did it over again, that’s what I would have done, but I’m mostly self-taught. I used to train people, I wrote a 2018 Amazon bestselling book, Catapult Loading System, that’s the title of this baseball trainers near me webinar.

Joey Myers  06:24

How to teach 100-pound hitters, how to consistently drive the ball 300 feet, and that started me on this journey that this stuff really works, because you really start to get in with a lot of other coaches reteaching the same information, and you really get to see this stuff.

Joey Myers  06:42

It’s not just me and my hitters, or my magic, but other coaches are able to do the same thing. I’ll have a cool little bonus for you guys, free bonus that you can grab this book at no cost on Amazon. At the end of this baseball trainers near me webinar, we’ll talk about that.

Joey Myers  06:58

We’ll get a couple more of these, about almost 30,000 online courses, lessons and books product sold online, over 333 blog posts at Hitting Performance Lab dot com, giving away over 8500 copies of Amazon best selling book…

Joey Myers  07:19

We applied human movement principles that are validated by science to hitting the ball. Like I mentioned, I played four years of division one baseball at Fresno State. I didn’t play pro ball, I didn’t play major league ball, but I played probably more than 95 and 98% of the baseball population.

Joey Myers  07:34

I don’t say that to brag, I say that most of the teaching that I teach has nothing to do with how I was taught. I do use some of that stuff. I do use some of the cues and different things like that in certain circumstances, but most of my stuff, if not all of it, is validated by science.Baseball Trainers Near Me

Joey Myers  07:53

The other thing, that we talked about is, I’m working on a new book that’s going to be published, we are working on January- February of 2021. It’s called “Swing Smarter: Science-Based Hitting Training, Built to Understand How, Why and the Reasoning Behind it”.

Joey Myers  08:09

Those are all things that we stand for and set us apart from a lot of the others that you’ve probably read, heard, watched out there, purchased their products, watched their YouTube videos.

 

Case Studies

Joey Myers  08:19

Let’s get started, case studies, so the only reason I got, I’m not here to brag, and I could give you a hundred other ones, but I want to give you an example since Neil talked about that there’s a huge smattering of different people on this call. There are parents that are just coaching their kids, there are team coaches that are coaching a group of kids from 14 to probably 30 plus in high school, professional and there are instructors out there like myself, there are probably academy owners out there.

Joey Myers  08:27

I just want to put it up front on the people that we help and how these human movement principles that are validated by science can help anybody.

Joey Myers  09:04

At 14, a 130 pound hitter that was driving the ball 385 feet and by the way that was with a hickory wood bat. That wasn’t the hot metals that everybody says, “oh they always try and explain these case studies away”.  This particular hitter, I think it’s Texas Tech, he got a full ride to Texas Tech, Hudson White is his name. I do have a blog post on him that is featured on my blog, but he’s one of them.

Joey Myers  09:31

Sixty-seven-pound hitter at the time, soaking wet. I think that 67 pounds, he had eaten a Costco chocolate muffin, that I think after he went to the doctor to get that measurement or something like that, he might have even been easy, 65 pounds before eating that muffin, but he was hitting the ball 180 plus feet and this is consistent.

Joey Myers  09:50

I always tell my hitters that I’m just the compass and the flashlight in the dark, you have to walk the path, I don’t have to walk the path for you, I’ve done that on my own. I’ve walked the path plenty of times, but now it’s the hitters that have to do that. They are 90% of this. I’m just the 10% that gives them the right direction to go.

Joey Myers  09:50

She put a lot of hard work in that summer, and she gained 10 miles an hour and ball exit speed, hitting a softball. We have an indie baseball player, he was pretty much out, he came to me, and in one hour, we increased, obviously baseball, plus 10 miles per hour and ball exit speed.

Joey Myers  09:50

This isn’t just a one flash in the pan time, 90-pound hitter driving the ball 300 feet. D-1 college fast-pitch softball player, she was a Fresno State in a summer, now with softball because the balls bigger, many you know in softball obviously, in baseball you should know bigger softball, heavier, more mass, and to gain 10 miles an hour in one summer in two and a half months is a big deal. That’s what she did, a lot of hard work.

Joey Myers  10:52

Now those things when they gain that much, the reason why, is because the principles we’re going to talk about today, the consistently power principles, and they were almost nonexistent in their swing. If you have a hitter who is nonexistent, you’re going to see these big gains using principles seen in this baseball trainers near me webinar.

Joey Myers  11:07

If you see hitters that have maybe a couple of these or one of these, you’re not going to see that kind of a gain, just because they’re not starting from zero. I want you to understand that this isn’t the norm. It’s not the norm when somebody started from zero but it’s pretty close. It’s between six and 10 miles an hour ball exit speed when they’re starting from zero, it’s what I tend to see.

Joey Myers  11:28

55-year-old slow-pitch softball optometrist online lesson, and he’s working with me and doing pretty well. I don’t have any gains on that side of it, but it’s interesting and 71-year-old senior league baseball player, I worked with him this week, he came up, he read my book, he said, “It makes sense, I love what you wrote. A lot of the other books I’ve read are hard to understand”. He’s an attorney, by the way. Attorneys usually are really into that jargon.

Joey Myers  11:55

He picked it up, he said “I love it”, it kind of come up. He’s from Ojai, in California, he drove about three and a half hours. For two days, we worked, and we increased his ball exit speed by nine miles an hour in one hour.

Joey Myers  12:09

The first day we really hit a couple of these principles hard the first day, and he gained nine miles an hour, plus, he had a little bit of back pain when we first started, and we got rid of it in his swing.

Joey Myers  12:20

Again, that’s something maybe we’ll talk about if you guys want me to. I’ve worked with major leaguers, whether it’s in person or they bought my courses and we’ve talked online through some of this stuff, professional hitters I’ve worked with in person, college, Juco, high school, junior high school, little league and senior league.

Joey Myers  12:38

This goes across the board, it doesn’t matter what level they’re at, these principles work, whether they are male or female, they work, it doesn’t matter. Human to human is basically what it works for.  And you’ll learn these principles in this baseball trainers near me webinar.

Joey Myers  12:49

If you want to get a lot of the testimonials, and that’s just probably, I think it’s 50 to 100 of them on my website, I have more, I just had been lazy to get them up, but if you go to hittingperformancelab.com, if you scroll all the way down into the footer, you’ll see the about page and you can click that, read a little bit about me, and then scroll down and there’s a ton of testimonials there. You can go check out more of those.

 

Why Legs Fail and Spinal Engine Succeeds in the Power equation

Joey Myers  13:11

Enough of that, let’s start to transition in this baseball trainers near me webinar… why the legs fail, and spinal engine succeeds in the power equation. Learning principles from water polo, maybe those of you out there have had kids that played water polo or have hitters that have played water polo. I have cousins and hitters that also did it, and the idea came to me, I ran an experiment where I wanted to have my pelvis facing forward, I was using a knob tracker, like a Zepp on my on my knob for those of you who blast motion, same thing, swing tracker.

Joey Myers  13:44

I was facing my hips forward, but I was just turning my upper body to be able to hit the ball. The experiment didn’t really turn out really well, but I tried to do it because my mobility in my spine or my shoulders and my pelvis weren’t allowing me to actually do the experiment like I should.

Joey Myers  14:02

We had the backspin tee guys, I’m really good friends with them since I met them. They did an experiment where they were jumping up and hitting a ball off the tee and dropping off of a chair hitting a ball before they hit the ground. They were doing a couple different experiments like that, and what they found was when their feet weren’t on the ground, and they were just using their shoulders in their thoracic spine, the middle of their spine, that their base when they had their feet on the ground ball exit speed…

Joey Myers  14:27

They had single-A ball players, they had indies or rookie ball, they had golfers that are hitting the ball 300 plus yards or 400 yards now and they had an eight-year professional pitcher who hits pretty well too. They were doing the experiment and they found that about 90 miles an hour was their normal control when their feet were on the ground, but when they were jumping up hitting or when they were falling and hitting, and doing their other things trying to take the lower half of the equation that their ball exit speeds were about 70 to 80% of what their control was, which was interesting.

Joey Myers  15:06

They were about 60 to 70 miles an hour versus the 90 with their feet on the ground. It got me thinking, and then somebody said, “well, that’s not a good experiment”, because you know, if you really wanted to do this, you had to hang from a harness, where your feet were hanging in, and then you hit it like that, like, well, who’s going to do that? Unless you’ve got access to a harness, like that, maybe at a farm.

Joey Myers  15:25

I was thinking, what athletes do throw or hit, from that kind of a position? I did a blog post, and it was titled “Is rotating back hip through the ball necessary for power?” Think about this baseball trainers near me webinar thought experiment.

Joey Myers  15:43

I don’t know if anybody has actually done this. I probably have to do this next summer, but think about that the fastest water polo throw, if you googled it, what do you think of that speed of that water polo ball. As you can see, the size of that ball is like a volleyball, Croatian Olympic water polo, male athlete, 60 miles an hour.

Joey Myers  16:15

As you can see floating in water, they’re not going down to the bottom and pushing up, they’re floating in water, so the lower half is minimal to almost zero friction with the lower half, so you’re not able to use a lower half like you are when you are standing on land, 60 miles an hour.

Joey Myers  16:31

Think about the pitcher, who is going down the mound, they got gravity, they got access to everything. Fastest pitcher, let’s just round it up to 100 miles an hour, so 100 miles an hour, on flat ground, falling down a mound is the fastest pitch.

Joey Myers  16:51

I know 102, 103, we can argue but say 100 easy numbers, so that water polo throw is throwing a big ball, that’s going to have an effect. Now, what happens if we put in that Croatian, male Olympic water polo player athlete, we put a baseball in his hand and have them floating in water and have them throw that baseball as hard as you can?

Joey Myers  17:13

What do you think that speed is going to be? It’s going to be a lot faster than 60 miles an hour, I can tell you. Is it going to be, instead of 60, is he going to throw at 70? Is he going to throw 80 miles an hour? Let’s be conservative and just say 70 miles an hour.

Joey Myers  17:27

You’re telling me in water, the fastest water polo thrower throws a baseball 70 miles an hour, while on land, the fastest pitcher throws 100 miles an hour. Easy numbers, 70% we can say, maybe conclude, that without ground reaction forces, that 70% of that velocity is coming from the pelvis, spine, and shoulder combination.

Joey Myers  17:56

Without ground reaction forces, we are very minimal when we’re in the pool. I say the spinal engines is responsible for about 70 to 80% of the power equation, and the lower half the legs and ground reaction forces are responsible for the other 20 to 30%. That’s what I say. Keep that in mind as we talk through this baseball trainers near me webinar and the spinal engine system.

Baseball Trainers Near Me Webinar

Betts, Arenado, & Trout. Showing ‘dem numbers!

Joey Myers  18:20

Do you recognize some of these hitters? Some of them have changed unis, or one of them at least, Mookie Betts, he’s on the Dodgers now. Nolan Arenado is in the middle, Mike Trout.

Joey Myers  18:29

Notice the pinstripe on the side of their leg and how it connects into the belt. Notice the positioning of where that is. Pelvis is already starting to open; all these hitters are at toe touch or pretty close to toe touch. Notice the numbers on their back. Now the righties, because the camera in the major leagues isn’t straight on center-field because you get to see the pitcher and the hitter, it’s slightly off center towards left.

Joey Myers  18:56

Your righties, you’re going to see probably more numbers than you would see lefties doing the same degree of rotation. This started off as showing numbers, it’s what we called it, and we will talk in a little bit how we’ve refined it to creating neck pressure but notice these in this baseball trainers near me webinar.

Joey Myers  19:12

Swing experiments results with the big three. The first of the big three is showing numbers. When I used a Zepp back in the day, now Zepp is turned in blast motions taken over and swing tracker. When I did about two- three experiments showing numbers, we found that out of 100 swings not showing numbers and 100 swing showing numbers, that bat speed was increased on average by four to six miles an hour, that’s bat speed.

Joey Myers  19:40

Bat speed is the close cousin to the ball exit speed. They are not the same, but they’re like first cousins. Without bat speed, ball exit speed probably is not going to be there. We got to be able to swing the bat somewhat hard to get the ball coming off the bat as fast. There are three others…

To be continued in Part-2 to this baseball trainers near me webinar…

Perfect Baseball Swing

Where Power Secret is & Where to Find it: Perfect Baseball Swing Webinar Part-2…

Here’s are the three parts:

  1. Baseball Trainers Near Me? Part-1,
  2. [YOU ARE HERE] Perfect Baseball Swing Webinar? Part-2, and
  3. COMING SOON!!

The following is the continued transcript to the perfect baseball swing webinar part-2… (about 18-minutes reading time)

‘Showing Numbers’ and ‘Neck Pressure’Perfect Baseball Swing

00:07

Do you recognize some of these hitters? Some of them have changed unis or one of them at least. Mookie Betts, he’s on the Dodgers now, Nolan Arenado is in the middle, Mike Trout.

00:16

Notice the pinstripe on the side of their leg and how it connects into the belt. Notice the positioning of where that is, pelvis is already starting to open. All these hitters are at toe touch or close to toe touch. Notice the numbers on their back.

00:33

Now the righties, because the camera in the major leagues isn’t straight on center-field because you have to see the pitcher and the hitter, it’s slightly off centered towards left.

00:43

Your righties, you’re going to see probably more numbers than you would see lefties doing the same degree of rotation. This started off as showing numbers, it’s what we called it. We’ll talk in a little bit how we’ve refined it to creating neck pressure. but notice these.

00:57

Perfect baseball swing webinar experiment results of the big three. The first of the Big Three is showing numbers. When I used a Zepp back in the day, now Zepp is turned in, BlastMotion taken over and SwingTracker.

01:05

When I did about two, three experiments showing numbers, we found that out of 100 swings, not showing numbers and 100 swing showing numbers that that speed was increased on average by four to six miles an hour. That’s bat speed.

01:27

Bat speed is the close cousin to ball exit speed, they are not the same, but they’re like first cousins. Without bat speed, ball exit speed probably is not going to be there, we got to be able to swing the bat somewhat hard to get the ball coming off the bat as fast.

01:46

Here are three others, you can probably notice these ones again, jerseys might have changed. JD Martinez, on the left, you have Aaron Judge in the middle, and you have Altuve on the right.

01:57

I know I’m as big against the whole cheating thing, as probably many of you are with Houston, the Astros back in 2019. But Altuve, being 5’6, 5’7, he does a lot of these mechanical things correctly. Regardless of whether you knew the pitchers coming or not, he still got to be able to hit it, as far as he does, which I think that year up, you hit 30 plus… 35, even with the playoffs in the World Series, I think he got close to 40 home runs that year.

02:32

Even though you know it’s coming, the guy is 5’6, he’s not Judge who is 6’8. You can’t just write the guy off for “Oh, he’s gifted”. There’s a lot of things that he’s doing in his swing that are very effective when it comes to this perfect baseball swing webinar – spinal engine mechanics. That was showing numbers.

‘Hiding Hands’ from the Pitcher

02:51

The second part, it was the third part, we’re going to get to the second part of the big three and the second one of the big three, but the other one is we call hiding the hands from the pitcher.

03:01

A lot of times what you will see is at the start of the swing, you’ll see the hitter’s hands, and then by toe touch as you can see, all three of these hitters are pretty much a toe touch or right at toe touch. You’re not seeing their hands, they’re hiding them.

03:15

You can see Judge, they’re kind of behind his head over here, Altuve is the same, JD Martinez behind his head, but from where they start with their hands, where their hands are at. Before the pitcher starts or gets in the wind up to when they’re at landing, there’s this move the hands to go back, and it’s not towards the catcher, it’s actually back at an angle behind the hitters heel or over the hitters back heel, that’s where the hands need to go.

03:43

We see this idea of hiding the hands, now in the swing experiments with that, we found between a one to three mile an hour average increase in bat speed with hiding the hands versus not hiding the hands.

Perfect Baseball Swing Webinar: Spinal Engine Mechanics

03:59

The second one we’ll talk about here in a second, it’s called downhill shoulder angle, but I wanted to go into the three basic principles of locomotion. There were three books that ruin my life when it comes to hitting in a good way.

04:13

The first one I mentioned was Thomas Myers book Anatomy Trains. The second one was called Dynamic Body by Dr. Erik Dalton, D-A-L-T-O-N. It was a collaboration of different authors that were all along the same lines of springy fascia, Spinal Engine and locomotion, that kind of stuff.

04:30

In that book, Dynamic Body, I found Dr. Serge Gracovetsky’s book The Spinal Engine. This is out of the spinal engine, the little thing on the right, which he’s talking about a pitcher and talking about side bending, which is downhill shoulder angle, and he talks about axial rotation, which basically means shoulders moving opposite of the pelvis.

04:30

When we walk as humans. our left leg comes forward when our right arm comes forward and the opposite happens. Left arm comes forward our right leg comes forward. That is axial rotation, your shoulders turn opposite your pelvis, and it’s like this gear shift that just does this when we walk, our shoulders and our pelvis and they move opposite each other, almost like winding it up, unwinding, winding, unwinding.

05:15

The axial rotation, shoulder, pelvis separation, the side bend, or downhill shoulders, and then the third move of the spine is flexion extension. If you go into an arch, you’re extending your spine, you’re hyper extending your spine, if you just stand in neutral, your lower back has a slight curve to it, or at least it should, if it does not, then we’ve had surgery to correct something we put pins in or something, or maybe we’ve got a lower back that’s compromised, but we should have a slight curve in the lower back.

05:46

Dr. Serge Gracovetsky calls it “lordosis”. Just standing there in neutral, with that curve in your lower back, you already have extension in your back, it’s not hyper-extension, it’s just extension.

06:00

Flexion would be if you were doing a crunch, and you were to go the opposite direction and you flex your spine. You think about whales, they go this way with their tail, right? That’s flexion extension of the spine, sharks go side bend, you see this right here, they do a little bit of both, but that’s the good example of side bending.

06:17

We use all three of those when we walk. We already have lordosis or that little bend in the lower back. We drop our shoulder into a side bend, and that helps us to initiate the axial rotation where right arm comes forward as the left leg comes forward.

06:31

The story that really got me with this was Dr. Serge had a patient, you see this gentleman on the left, he was born without any arms or legs. He walked on what’s called the ischium the bottom of the pelvis, and you can see him here in this perfect baseball swing webinar.

06:50

What he did was he hooked up electrodes, not to shock him but to measure his muscle activation and his ligament activation. He said if you watch and you can go on YouTube, and you can put in Dr. Serge Gracovetsky, try and spell it the best you can.

07:07

It’s kind of a goofy name, spinal engine, and he’s got a video on there that’s like an hour long, and you can watch I think it’s around the four-minute mark or three-and-a-half-minute mark, his show has a video of this gentleman locomoting.

07:21

What’s crazy, if you remember, this is from birth, this wasn’t the guy who had arms and legs until he was 18, got in a car accident or got a bad disease or virus or something where he had to be amputated, he was born this way. It was from the start.

07:36

If you covered the lower half of his pelvis to know he didn’t have legs and you watched him move, you would swear he had legs. That begs the premise locomotion is from the beginning.

07:51

As we start going from baby crawling or rocking, crawling to standing to walking, we learn how to locomote this way, this is the best way how to locomote. This gentleman really opened my eyes to wow there must be something here and where it got me to reverse engineer the swing.

Perfect Baseball Swing Webinar: Springy Fascia Secret

08:13

Discover the springy fascia secret. Springy fascia for those of you that don’t know out there, we got bones, we got muscles, but did you know, we have connective tissue? Part of that connective tissue is called fascia.

08:25

What is connective tissue? Tendons, ligaments, fascia, to cotton candy or spider web-like material that your bones and muscles float in. It gives muscles their shape if you’ve gone to the grocery store and bought a bag of tangerines in that, that fishnet type of bag, think of the tangerines as your bones, muscles, and your organs, and the bag being the fascia, so it gives muscles their shape.

08:52

Myofascia or fascia, if you’ve done myofascia release on a foam roll, you probably felt the pain especially if you do your IT band of that fascia when it gets really tight and clogged up. Cotton candy and spider web-like material, it’s made up of mostly collagen and elastin fibers, mostly collagen, but there’s elastin in there, collagen is very springy.

09:12

You’ve seen the Kardashians, how springy it is because they inject it in their face and their butt and everything else. It keeps everything nice and plump and tight. Bones and muscles float in this web, they’re composed of compression and tension forces.

09:27

You see a couple of these things you probably recognize as a kid or if you bought these for your kid, that Chinese finger trap and the geometric toys, although I don’t know about the Chinese finger traps nowadays, unless you go to some arcade and you can win tickets and get some of those things. Never thought you’d be learning about Chinese finger traps in a perfect baseball swing webinar!

09:42

The idea is compression forces a brick stacked up on top of a brick pushing down, each push against each other tension forces would be like a boom crane and you have the cable. You got the big wrecking ball at the bottom of the cable. You got the structure, the boom crane.

09:58

There’s a tension force being exerted on it by the structure of the boom crane and the wrecking ball itself. We have both of these forces, fascia that are acting within our body at all times and resembles more of this toy on the left, this kid’s toy, when you push one side of that toy down, it kind of shifts and changes it, one side opens up as you push on the other side. We got those two forces that fascia is into.

10:27

In Thomas Myers’ Anatomy Trains, we have three different systems. According to him, we have the neural which is brain spinal cord stuff, the fluid, which is your veins and your heart, and then we have the third one, and hopefully, if you got kids there, there’s no naked pictures here, but it can be a little bit unnerving.

10:47

We have a fiber system, which looks like this, they did a lot of cadaver work. This is what the fascial system looks like. It’s not just something that is magic and floats, they have done a ton of research on this, and this is your fiber system or your fascial net, it’s what Thomas Myers refers to this as.

Finger Flick & Wringing Towel Effect

11:05

What I want you to do is do a finger flick test. Thomas Myers came up or this is where I read this from. To show you the power of the springy fascia spinal engine system, what I want you to do, if you’re seated, I want you to take your right hand or your left hand, whatever your dominant, whatever hand is dominant, I want you to put it on your leg on the thigh of whatever side leg, I want you to take your index finger, and I want you to just pick it up by itself and try and slam it as hard as you can on your leg, do it three times, pick it up, slam it, pick it up and slam it.

11:38

That’s an example of muscle using muscle to do it. Now we’re going to use only the ligament, I want you to take your opposite hand, pull the right finger, or mine is right finger, pull your index finger back as far as you can, and let it snap against your leg, you might be able to hear it on the camera, on the computer three times.

12:01

That is an example of a 100% ligament driving that, you can probably already tell that you’re going to bet a bigger snap than you are when you’re using your finger muscles.

12:11

The last one is I want you to use a combination of both, use a combination of the elastic or collagen, the ligament tissue, you’re going to pull the finger back and as you release the finger, I want you to slam it. I found that that hurts a lot more than the other two.

12:31

What we talked about in the swing is we’re using a little bit of both, we’re using more of the ligament tissue, which makes it safe on the body, and then we’re using some of the muscle, the muscle isn’t required, but it does help.

12:45

When we talk about strength conditioning programs and that kind of stuff, that helps, but we want to make sure we get our hitters moving correctly first.  A must you’re learning in this perfect baseball swing webinar.

12:53

The other metaphor I like to use is the wringing towel effect. Imagine we got a wringing towel, like you see me in the picture, I got my bat here and to wring a towel, you got to turn one hand one way and the other hand the other way.

13:05

When we combine the springy fascia and the spinal engine, instead of two hands, like we only have two, if I had a third hand like Squidward on Sponge-Bob, I have a third hand down here facing the same direction as the one on top.

13:18

The one on top is my head and my neck, my C spine cervical. The one in the middle is my shoulder and my thoracic spine, the middle part of your spine, the 12 vertebrae, the bottom one is your pelvis and your lower lumbar, the head and your lower back, turn the same direction, they’re turning the same direction.

13:38

It’s the one in the middle, the shoulders and the thoracic spine are turning the opposite. Imagine a wringing towel, except with two hands, we’re using three like Squidward. As you can see here in this video, this is what we’re doing with the spine and we’re doing it in a safe manner.

13:54

Again, returning to our hitters here. We talked about all these guys, neck pressure, AKA showing the numbers. When it comes to the pressure, what we’re talking about is taking the head and we anchor the head in a tracking position, because when I used to teach this is just showing numbers that hitters were showing too much of their numbers, and now they weren’t able to see the ball.

14:16

We make sure that their head is the anchor and anchors in a tracking position, the shoulder, the front shoulder comes underneath the chin, possibly even past the chin as far as it can go, as far as the neck will allow the shoulder to go.

14:31

Wherever the shoulder stops, you got to stop, because then we start to pull the head off the ball. When we say neck pressure, that’s what we’re referring to. Head anchors show front shoulder comes underneath until it stops at landing.

14:47

At stride landing as you see what these hitters here, this is what they’re all doing. You can see what their head and I encourage you to go out on YouTube and go start looking for this. You’re going to see it, you’re going to see the head anchor, you’re going to see the shoulder coming underneath, that’s the first one of the big three in this perfect baseball swing webinar.

‘Downhill Shoulders’

15:03

The second one, we talked about the side bend or down shoulders. The experiment we did on this added on average when we had down shoulders versus flat shoulders added, on average four miles an hour of bat speed, and again, bat speed ball exit speed, they’re similar, not the same, but without bat speed, you’re not going to have ball exit speed.

15:23

You can see four these hitters right here, Miguel Cabrera, on the left, you can see JD Martinez in the middle, on the top Mike Trout in the middle, in the bottom and you got a new guy this last year, you probably all have seen him, he had a good year this year, Fernando Tatis Jr.

15:39

You have this slight downward shoulder angle, and I say slight. In golf, you’re going to see an extreme just because where the ball is. In baseball or softball, we can’t be quite that down because we got to be able to hit balls up in the zone.

15:52

When I say slight, I’m talking about 6 to 10 degrees down, it’s not a lot. I tell my hitters, this is 90 degrees, and then, 45 degrees, 22 and a half degrees, 12.25 degrees, it’s really small, but you can see the back shoulder is above the front shoulder slightly. You can see with Trout on the bottom, I know that picture is a little farther off.

16:15

You can see with Miggy, he’s about eight degrees, nine degrees. JD is probably around that six to eight degrees. Tatis is about six to eight degrees, and Trout is around that same.

16:27

Hiding hands, we talked about this already, so we won’t go too far into it. Hiding the hands here you can see also, we talked about being safe with the lower back.

Last but not least in this Perfect Baseball Swing Webinar: ‘Hollow Position’

16:39

What we do is we don’t like what we call Donald Duck butt or those of you that know Dr. Kelly Starrett from mobilityWOD used to be and now I can’t remember what he changed it to, but taking the pelvis acting like the pelvis is a bowl of water, and we don’t want to spill water on our front of our toes.

16:55

We don’t want to tilt our pelvis to water spilling forward, we want to tilt our pelvis or our water spilling on our heels. What you can see here, not so much with Betts, you can see Arenado you can see this belt loops are almost flat.

17:09

When you see the belt loops in more of an angle and that also depends on the hip hinge that the hitters taken as well but with Arenado you can see almost more of a flat, he’s taken the curve out of his lower back because he is spilling water on his heels.

17:23

Trout, you can see the same, he’s flattened it. Judge he might be a little bit curved. Altuve, you can see the same thing, and if I had a picture of Josh Donaldson, you would see flat when he gets at the height of his leg kick, his pelvis is flat.

17:41

If we go into a hyper extended position, what that does is that pushes the vertebrae of the lower back together. That’s not bad in itself, we see gymnast when they are swinging back and forth, they’re going from global flexion to global extension, flexion would be flexing the lower back, extension would be when they come through the bar and they’re extending into like a global arch position, that’s okay.

18:03

The problem is since we hit, we have to turn and rotate, we have to, so if you’re overarching, your lower back or your hitter’s back and then you turn, you arch turn, arch turn.

18:16

It’s not going to show up in your younger hitters, but as they get into high school, junior high, high school on up, they’re going to start experiencing back pain. What we do when we flex, when we spill water on our heels, and the term we use with our hitters is we take the belt buckle in the belly button, and we try and bring those two points together.

18:35

We hold those two points together through the turn, even into the finish because some hitters will release it into their follow through and they’ll get into that arch again, we’re still turning as we’re arching, we don’t want to do that.

18:47

If you can do the pinch, we call it the hollow pinch. If you look on YouTube and just look up hollow position, or hollow exercise, you’ll get some cool gymnastic exercises to strengthen that, but we want our hitters to maintain the short distance between the belly button and the belt buckle as we’re turning.

19:05

Now, when you do that, the opposite happens to the vertebrae when you’re arching, you give space or traction between the vertebrae, and now when you turn, you don’t have that friction you’re not bone on bone turning.

19:16

Over time, obviously it’s a lot safer, and it doesn’t take away from performance at all. The swing experiments we did on that, I think it added one mile an hour on average, it didn’t add a lot, but it makes the spine safe and when the spine is safe the brain is always about survival. It doesn’t care if you can hit a 4- or 500-foot home run or in softball, a 300-foot home run, it doesn’t care about your performance.

19:36

It cares about surviving, it cares about keeping your body safe, and if there’s an issue with your lower back or your knee, your ankle, your shoulder, it’s going to say, “You know what, Neil? I can’t let you go 100% on your swing performance, I have to cut you down about 80%”, depending on the severity of the issue, and Neil was talking about his lower back was hurting him in the golf.

To be continued in Part- to this perfect baseball swing webinar…

Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

Pitching Instruction: 3 Simple Factors to Great Hitting (Madison Bumgarner Approved)

 

Pitching Instruction Secrets For Hitters (Madison Bumgarner)

Madison Bumgarner using human movement science in the 2014 World Series. What can hitters learn from him?

I want to focus on Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants, and how the pitching instruction he’s received may help hitters develop repeatable power.  Pitching instruction for hitters!

I read somewhere that when Ted Williams was asked how a hitter could get more efficient with their swing.  He responded by saying to study a pitcher’s delivery.  In this pitching instruction for hitters post, we’ll look at 3 human movement laws, the:

  1. Head start,
  2. Spinning ice skater, and
  3. Compressed spring.

 

The Head Start

Pitching Instruction Secrets For Hitters (Madison Bumgarner)

Madison Bumgarner “falling” photo courtesy: HNGN.com

Known to proven movement science as the Conservation of Linear Momentum, aka Forward Momentum (FoMo) or the Un-Weighting Principle.  Madison Bumgarner employs Gravitational Forces with a nice easy fall down the mound.  Gravity doesn’t care if you’re a Shot Putter…Trapeze Artist…Lacrosse player…or a hitter.  As sure as the sun rises and sets, Gravity will be there to flow-with OR fight a hitter’s movements.  Here’s what happens when we:

  • FIGHT Gravitational Forces (wide no-stride, sit back) – Reciprocal Inhibition occurs.  Muscles and connective tissues typically used to accelerate movements will reverse, slowing them down.
  • FLOW-with Gravitational Forces (FoMo) – Free ride.  Makes the Final Turn seem easier.  Increases max bat speed.  And turns a hitter’s body into a projectile missile.  Thanks Bob Hall from Canada for the latter metaphor!

Madison Bumgarner Pitching Instruction for Hitters Factor #1: Mad-Bum has a nice easy fall down the mound with minimal push with the back leg.  Too much push activates Reciprocal Inhibition.  Hitters employ a fall by committing the body-weight to the stride leg at landing, or the Fight Position.

 

The Spinning Ice Skater

Known to proven movement science as the Conservation of Angular Momentum.  Madison Bumgarner is also known as the Candor.  As you can see from the photo of him above, his arms are stretched completely away from his body.  Imagine an ice skater who jumps off the ice, bringing her arms in, and spinning really fast.  She’s increasing what’s called her angular momentum, or rotational speed.

Now, imagine the same ice skater as she’s falling back to the ice from her jump, and she lengthens out her arms and one of her legs to slow down her body’s rotation.

This is referred to as increasing her moment of inertia, or inertial force.  You can’t maximize both rotational speed and inertial force at the same time.  They have an inverse relationship.  When one is up, the other is down.  Although, we can optimize both…

Madison Bumgarner Pitching Instruction for Hitters Factor #2:  Mad-Bum opens his “wings” like a condor right before his torso begins rotation.  As his torso starts rotating, he bends at the elbows and cuts his inertial force in half.  This gives his turning speed a boost.  Hitters like Hunter Pence, can do this by keeping a slight bend in the front arm at the initiation of the Final Turn.  Once the barrel’s on the plane of the pitch, then it becomes more important to increase inertial force (extending the front arm) rather than turning speed.

 

The Compressed Spring

Pitching Instruction Secrets For Hitters (Madison Bumgarner)

Madison Bumgarner showing his numbers photo courtesy: MLB.com

According to Thomas Myers (no relation) from AnatomyTrains.com, fascia is:

Fascia is the biological fabric that holds us together. Fascia is the 3-D spider web of fibrous, gluey, and wet proteins that hold them all together in their proper placement. Understanding fascia is essential to the dance between stability and movement – crucial in high performance, central in recovery from injury and disability, and ever-present in our daily life from our embryological beginnings to the last breath we take.”

Fascia is to the human body like steel is to the building industry.  It’s very stiff and resist immediate change in shape.  CLICK HERE to see if Andrew McCutchen loads this springy connective tissue.

Madison Bumgarner Pitching Instruction for Hitters Factor #3: 

Mad-Bum compresses the spring in two ways:

  1. Slight uphill shoulder angle, and
  2. Shows hitter his numbers.

A hitter like Hunter Pence will do this slightly different in three ways:

  1. Slight downhill shoulder angle,
  2. Shows pitcher his numbers, and
  3. Hides the hands from the pitcher.
Hitting Training For Baseball & Softball Swing Trainers | Hitting Performance Lab

In This Baseball Hitting Video Spine Mistake,

 

We’re going over:

  • The One-Joint Rule (how-to test “Spinal Integrity”, also known as head and spine alignment),
  • Spine Engine Theory (how ALL athletic movement is driven), and
  • Tensegrity, OR Tension Integrity (discover how explosive the body’s own natural springiness can be).

Here’s a video of Physical Therapist Dr. Kelly Starrett of MobilityWOD.com demonstrating the One-Joint Rule:

In case you missed it, in the above video, Dr. Kelly Starrett said:

“Hinging at one of the segments [vertebraes in the neck]…when we put a hinge across the central nervous system, the body recognizes that as a primary insult, or threat to the body, because you’re basically guillotining or kinking the nervous system.  You’ve kinked ‘the tube’, so it [force production] just drops off.”

He also mentioned:

“The spine has major potential to decrease your force production.”

Here’s video of 2013 NL MVP Andrew McCutchen breaking his head and spine alignment.  This is actually a semi-common hitting power mistake made by quite a few of my young hitters – as you’ll see in a bit.  Scary to think that Andrew McCutchen was bleeding force at impact with the numbers he put up this past year:

Baseball Hitting Video Spine Mistake Andrew McCutchen

Watch Cutch’s chin nod to his chest at and through contact…

The first baseball hitting video spine mistake was leaked from The Truth About Explosive Rotational Power online video course.  This is all a part of the human movement rules.  As you can see, breaking our spinal integrity at contact can have a bleeding force effect on performance.