The Tree Pose Throw is a drill we’ve been using with our pitchers and outfielders for the past few years and really like how it helps clean up their lower body mechanics and timing between throwing arm and stride.
It’s basically a yoga pose start, but we found that if we add a stride and throw, it also helps athletes create better linear direction towards the target, lead leg patterning, rear femur internal rotation movement and trunk resistance against the pelvis, before the trunk then aggressively rotates and accelerates through ball release.
There are tons of pieces of information that come with this drill that can help determine where an athlete may be inefficient. That is why we love this type of movement pattern integrated into a throw!
We Only Use 3 Verbal Cues, OMG!!!
The 1st verbal cue we use is Stride Straight at the Target. This helps set their direction and allows the lead hip to stay externally rotated during the stride. Without really thinking about it, their trunk will work back against the stride until lead foot contact occurs. This helps increase resistance and tension between the pelvis and torso…known as the Hip to Trunk Relationship.
The 2nd verbal cue we use is Disassociate the Stride Leg from the Trail Leg. This helps the athlete increase their stride without releasing the back foot too early, helping to enhance the Hip to Trunk Relationship. This disassociation is critical to minimizing early trunk rotation!
The 3rd verbal cue we use is Delay the Arm Until Stride Occurs. Now, this is a tricky one because each athlete has their own mechanism of arm pathway initiation and what’s comfortable for them. Also, there are plenty of athletes that bring their arm back at different points in their stride, so it’s difficult to truly dictate when the athlete should initiate their arm pathway.
So, if you have an athlete that brings their arm back too early, they must hold that loaded position until the latter portion of the stride before releasing the arm and letting it move into and through external rotation to ball release. Of course the play will dictate how fast this pathway must occur!
Final Thoughts
Remember, The Tree Pose Throw isn’t just constrained to a baseball or softball! You can utilize overload and underload implements such as weighted balls or medicine balls to help refine the throwing sequence! Give it a try!
You can find all of our programming, progressions and throwing drill videos w/ voiceovers in the High Level Throwing Baseball and Softball Edition Books!
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