And yes, momentum is what allows a pitcher to throw harder by generating force off of the rubber and a batter to develop more bat speed with force off of this back foot.

Power is he rate at which work is done (how fast energy is produced or consumed).  Most of are familiar with the term horse power. Horse power was derived from measurements of the rate of work a typical horse could produce. Power does not directly relate to speed of an object. Momentum does.

What is momentum? Momentum is the property of an object determined by both its mass (mass is not the weight of an object, mass is determined by how hard it is to get an object to move or stop) and velocity. We all have an intuitive feeling of what momentum is. Trying to stop a truck going 50 MPH is not the same as catching a fastball at he same speed. The truck is thousands of times more massive. A trunk then has thousands of times more momentum.

All objects have mass. A baseball weighs 5 Oz but that’s not the measure of its mass (it would have the same mass in outer space yet weigh nothing). Remember mass is the property of the object which resists motion. I can take a steel ball the size of a baseball that weighs about 9 pounds. That same steel ball would weigh nothing in outer space but it is still 30 times more massive than the baseball.

When you combine mass and velocity together you have momentum.

How does an object get velocity. When you apply force to any object and that object moves, you are creating velocity. Velocity is movement and direction. The more force the more movement. The longer the force is applied, the faster he object will go. To develop the highest velocity requires the highest force for the longest time. Ten pounds of force applied for one second will create the same change in momentum as five pounds of force for two seconds.

Momentum can be used to increase velocity without applying force. If I can find a way to change/increase my leverage, I can create more velocity without any additional force. This becomes one of the fundamental principles of maximizing a pitchers or hitters velocity.

What this simple experiment (and this is an actual experiment) demonstrates are the principals of the conservation of momentum and the principle of leverage. Conservation of momentum means what I have before the collision has to equal what I have after (I'm assuming no losses, which for the above system is a reasonable assumption). Intuitively it makes sense that if one end comes to a stop, the other end might speed up. What's even more amazing is this velocity increase is instantaneous. It happens at the instant the cart is stopping.  If the pole was tapered, so that the center of mass is located 2 feet from the bottom (6 foot long pole). The center of mass would slow down even more at impact but the top would be going 12 MPH!!!!

All of this is happening from the initial push I gave to the cart. I did not touch it along its roll to the block. This experiment is basic science (also called mechanics). It also shows the basis principles that explains why studies have demonstrated a pitcher developing force at he rubber can turn that (momentum) into velocity at realize.

How does this apply to pitching? Think of the lower body as the cart. The skeletal structure as the 2x4. The lower body move out like the cart (foot produces force against the rubber to develop momentum). At foot plant the lower body comes to a stop. The upper body flexes over the plant. Sounds a lot like our little experiment.

In the pitching forum, I cite a research study ("Characteristic ground-reaction forces in baseball pitching", by MacWilliams, Bruce A., Choi, Tony, Perezous, Mark K., Chao, Edmund Y.S. McFarland, Edward G. American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, Jan-Feb 1998) that makes the following conclusions:

"The tendency of all pitchers in the study to develop high levels of force in the direction of the pitch, combined with the finding that pitchers who developed the largest forces (normalized to body weight) threw fastest, seems to contradict the theory that pitching is a "controlled fall." The pitching motion depends on significant contributions from the lower limbs to create forward impetus. The exact contributions of each segment to the pitching motion will require further study using a complex multi-segmental dynamic model.

Based on this study, we hypothesize that the push-off forces in the direction of the pitch initiate the forward momentum of the entire body. The greater this magnitude, the more kinetic energy there is in the direction of the pitch. Similarly, the vertical push-off component (i.e.height of leg lift, Max) can be used to generate potential energy, which can be transformed into kinetic energy at later stages. The landing leg serves as an anchor in transforming the forward and vertical momentum into rotational components; posteriorly directed forces at the landing foot reflect an overall balance of the inertial forces of the body moving forward to create ball velocities."

One can only wonder what motivates those who say that it is not possible to increase velocity by developing force at the rubber and then claim the studies that validate this are somehow wrong. To me it "smacks" of   the same mentality of those who participated in "witch hunts" (false accusations to support their own beliefs and to punish those who dared to disagree) three hundred years ago. It also shows a total lack of understanding of the pitching bio-mechanical process (they treat symptoms and not the real problems). The saddest part of all is many young pitchers will never reach their potential because of ignorance and self promotion.

Next time I will continue and explain in greater detail how the principles discussed become the kinetic chain and "whip effect".

To be continued.

Max