[quote=“pcarnette”]Now that my son has been doing the NPA Towel drill for a while, I had some follow up questions:
When he lifts his leg, I am telling him to pretend his glove and leg work together as a sort of pulley system where the glove goes up and the leg lift follows. Is this a good idea?[/quote]
Some coaches/instructors deal with that element of the delivery but I generally don’t as I believe things like the timing and path of the hand movements varies slightly from pitcher to pitcher. The lower half gets the body moving and that determines the timing of the whole delivery. That’s the part I prefer to instruct. The individual elements of the delivery have to fit into the overall timing of the whole delivery and I generally prefer to let each pitcher figure those out.
My opinion is that unless the movement can truly be attributed to some problem, this is a matter of personal style. As such, it’s a non-teach.
I think it does take a certain amount of strength in the body to do this well. But it could also be that he just isn’t used to the feeling of falling down so he needs more reps. It could also be that he’s trying to make too big of an adjustment and needs to dial it back a bit.
I think you are correct but, regarding his tendency, I think that is fairly normal. Again, lots of reps to get comfortable and maybe dial things back a bit. Sometimes it’s better to make multiple small adjustments that one big one.