Top 5 Ways To Increase Hip To Shoulder Separation
Pitchers are always asking, “What are some of the best ways I can increase hip to shoulder separation?”. So, here are the top 5 ways to increase hip to shoulder separation. If you don’t know what hip to shoulder separation is, go back and read this article on hip to shoulder separation. Remember, it’s almost never one thing that you need to improve. After multiple assessments to determine where you have deficiencies as an athlete, we put together a systematic approach to improve your weaknesses. For hip to shoulder separation it is a combination of improving your movement/mobility, hip extension power, core strength/stability, and improving your biomechanics with plyometrics and ballistic exercises.
Mobility
Mobility to maximize hip to shoulder separation is very important. Three of the most important ranges we like for assessing our athletes is hip internal rotation (HIR), hip extension (HE) and trunk rotation (TR) to throwing arm side. These measurements will give a pretty good indication if an athlete has the range of motion needed to obtain adequate hip to shoulder separation. In our database, 90+ MPH arms average 28 degrees HIR, 15 degrees HE and 62 degrees TR. This means spending time working on your hip, trunk and thoracic mobility plays a big role in your velocity and health.
Hip Extension Power
We talk at length about building power for baseball and how important it is. More specifically we need to talk about hip extension power. The glutes and hamstrings are the primary hip extensor muscles. The glute is also one of the biggest if not thee biggest horsepower producer in your body. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that you develop a ton of hip extension power. In order to maximize hip to shoulder separation and the kinematic sequence the pelvis needs to peak first. It takes a ton of single leg power to accelerate your body off of one leg and power the pelvis completely open at front foot strike. The glute plays a large role in having the hip extension power needed to achieve an open pelvis position at foot strike. It is extremely important to build hip extension power with exercises like reverse leg press, power cleans, various plyometrics, sprints, loaded sprints and various glute activation exercises.
Core Strength/Stability
Core strength/stability needs to be a huge focus in your training. It will allow you to transfer freakish amounts of horse power between your lower half and upper half in the pitching delivery. Elite core strength/stability will not only help the athlete gain even more separation, it will also provide the muscular stiffness/strength to maintain the coil until front foot strike. This is going to trigger all the energy produced through the trunk and core to be stored and then launched late into pitch release, developing a much more explosive and more efficient throw. This results in a later more efficient arm path/arm speed, as well as a significantly greater velocity threshold. Most of your core strength/stability will come from compound lifts like back squat, deadlift, power cleans, overhead press etc., but you also need to utilize many auxiliary exercises to challenge the core in flexion/extension as well as rotation and anti rotation.
Single Leg Plyometrics
Single leg plyometrics are another vital component to optimizing hip to shoulder separation. Researchers and most coaches agree that plyometric training is an excellent method of choice to improve athleticism and enhance leg power. As we discussed earlier about developing hip extension power, it takes a ton of single leg power to accelerate the body down the mound and power the pelvis open at front foot strike. Single leg plyometrics utilize the stretch shortening cycle (eccentric, isometric, concentric), help bridge the gap between speed and strength, increase rate of force development, improve reactive strength, and help athletes improve the efficiency of explosive movements. Incorporating single leg plyometrics into your training will help you develop a monster back leg drive to optimize your ability to separate your hips from shoulders in your pitching delivery.
Ballistic Exercises
Ballistic exercises have a number of benefits. It enables a wide variety of workouts to be executed sport specifically, allows athletes to train in all 3 planes (frontal, sagittal, and also transverse) of human motion, and also develops explosive, rotational power that simulates the pitching delivery. Because of their ability to mimic the pitching delivery, it allows the athlete to develop the motor control needed to maximize hip to shoulder separation. This is of huge value because it doesn’t have the same stress of throwing a baseball. So, you can work on your pitching mechanics while simultaneously building more power through the kinetic chain with no added stress to the throwing arm.
Summary
If you need to improve hip to shoulder separation. You should be incorporating this into your training. Mobility, hip extension power, core strength stability, single leg power and learning the motor control are all important to developing elite separation. The key is knowing what you specifically need to focus on. Every athlete will need to work on these, but you may need more work on single leg power than mobility or vice versa. Or maybe you need more mobility work than power etc. It all comes down to knowing what you personally need to get better at.
If you want to learn more please follow us on social media (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,) @stevenguadagni (Youtube) @5toolsportsscience and feel free to send in video of your pitching or hitting mechanics for a free analysis. If you want to train with us we have several options. Come down for Long Term Training at our facility, Remote 1 on 1 Online Training from home or The 5 Tool Prospect Manual and Nutrition Manual. Learn how to optimize your mechanics and perform at the highest level possible! Hope you guys enjoyed the article. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions.