Some how I knew you would be the first to respond. Thank you for not disapointing me.

Do you agree/disagree with my opening premise:

"IF you can maintain proper synchronization (arm passing through high cock position at front foot plant) and balance. Most of Dick's theories assume that you are not able to get to the proper position at foot plant (high cock). If you can maintain proper synchronization and balance, the faster your delivery, the harder you can throw."? Everything Isaid is based on that opening statement.

I deal with athletes who are looking to attain their maximum athletic potential (the Russians call it PASM: Process of Attaining Sports Mastery). All of the points you bring up are true under certain conditions (wrong mechanics/execution). What undermines your credibility is your statement about hip rotation; "You talk about the hips reaching maximum rotational velocity before foot plant to be the desired approach. I disagree. To make this point……" Steve, maximum rotational hip velocity is reached by Major League Pitchers BEFORE foot plant. I am not talking about maximum final rotation. I am talking about velocity. If you can not see this on your VCR, there is little hope of you understanding the rest of what follows. We use bio mechanical video analysis to measure velocity of the hips. The hips reach maximum velocity BEFORE foot plant. If my word is not enough, consider this. Bio mechanists agree with the kinetic chain principle. This principle applies to ballistic (throwing/swinging ) events. It states that to develop maximum velocity each link in the chain (feet, legs, hips, torso, shoulders, upper arm, elbow, wrist, hand) builds successively on the link preceding it and to obtain maximum transfer that link must connect at the previous links point of maximum velocity. Look at your VCR again. At foot plant (foot plant is when weight is on front foot, this is not the same as foot touch) the elbow is/starts moving forward. This means the upper body link is in motion. For maximum transfer, the hips are at or have passed through maximum velocity. I seriously doubt you or you son have the ability to distinguish proper hip rotation in you experiment because it appears you do not to understand the above principles.

Let me take your points one at a time.

First you missed my overview statement; "assumes pitcher maintains synchronization and balance". This automatically precludes arm problems due to dragging the arm through. I gave you some examples of pitchers who rotate significantly past the plane of rubber to home plate. Take a look a Tom Glavine (60 degrees past, shows entire back to hitter) or Billy Wagner (about 40 degrees) or Pedro Martinez (about 30 degrees). All majoe league pitcher hyper flex to some degree. You can’t get there (Major Leagues) if you don’t. Unless you have stretch in shoulder (rotator cuff/lat) area you will never obtain your maximum velocity. This is based on the myotatic/stretch reflex and stored energy in tendon/muscle effects. For more info on this see works of Paavvo Komi. All power pitchers hyper flex. Hyper flex and dragging the arm is bad. Hyper flex and proper arm synchronization is maximum velocity.

Some pitcher do this. Louis Tiant was a good example of losing sight of the batter. Look at Nomo (Dodgers) or Guzzman (Blue Jays). These are extreme cases of over rotation but they are pitching in the major leagues and throwing hard. Remember I am talking about reaching the highest level of performance. Also remember that not all the pitchers out there are 6’5" tall and weigh 220 pounds. We keep hearing about Mark Wholters and his transformation. I know a sports physiologist who also knows Mark Wholters. We were talking about his being taught to throw harder. His statement to me was "Cripes, anybody with half a brain can take a guy 6’5", 225 pounds and incredible natural strength with horrible mechanics and get him throwing 10 MPH faster".

I don’t understand this statement. I do not know what you mean by trying to create more power behind him.

This statement was addressed in my opening comments. Did you miss it?

You are also missing the concept of muscle physiology, force and momentum. Muscles cannot instantly develop force (its called Rate of Force development; RFD) or stop force development. Also the higher the force, the longer it takes to develop this force. If you can increase the length of time that you develop force, you will accomplish two things. Your final force at the instant of release will be higher and the total force x distance (=power) is greater and impulse (F*dT) are higher resulting in higher ball velocity at release.

Even if you kept the force constant, you would increase velocity proportional to the time (F*dT=M*dV).

This is all documented in numerous publications.

Your observation about Nolan Ryans hip rotation "He does not push off the rubber but lets the rotational force of his right hip pull his right leg off the rubber. He flexes his posting leg a lot to keep his weight back and steps out quite far" is partially true.

The amount of forward momentum compared to rotational momentum is about 7:1 (7 times more forward momentum compared to rotational). What is really pulling his foot off is his continued upper body forward momentum combined with his hip flexor/abdominal bending forward trying to maintain as high a upper body velocity that the shoulder can use as the arm uncoils (kinetic chain/summation of velocities).

Your observation are insightful but as I stated in my original post. If you do not have the proper equipment or training you can be deceived in what you think you are seeing.

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