How To Play Baseball: The Gather Position

What I am going to ask Jeff to do now is turn sideways, he is already done his transfer step pivot now, he is in a gather position. This is where he gathers all his energy, what I like to do is point out a couple of checkpoints. I want to make sure that his hands are centered in his body. And on height we want is the front leg at least waist high, foot relaxed under the knee. He is going to concentrate on his balance on the inside part of his back leg, the right leg here, or maybe over the inside part of his back foot. What I do not want to see is this where he starts leaning back here. I want him tall, okay and leg up and as we mention in our fundamental mechanical drill form this point on he is going to separate tee tack, throw, follow through, go. Stay right there, you will notice where his right foot went. We will going to measure that in a minute and see if he has got the proper height, come back Jay, one more time, here we go, ready. Leg up, what we want to do is maybe show the batter, just low around his separate shoulder, we do not want to be open, we want our shoulders level little around as if you are showing that and pointing the hip pocket, again, we are going to stay close when he steps rights, finish, go. What we are going to do now is I am going smooth this out and I am going to determine which way or direction Jeff is striding. First I ask him to get his ready position, give me a transfer step, pivot, get a position, and I am going to ask him to hold it. What I am going to do is mark a line from the inside part of his— Straight out or straight as I can, what I want him to do with his stride leg is to land either somewhere in this vicinity here, or maybe a little bit on there, we do not want it too open nor we want it too close because then he is throwing against his body, okay, let us start over. Let us go for wind up, here we go, ready? (Demo) And you see Jeffrey landing a little bit close, so what we ask him to do is try to get hips open and get to the left for one. Here we go Jay, one more time. (Demo) Much better, a little wide that time, one more time, make sure you line up in the same spot, okay, there we go. Excellent, you will notice he finished this time with his body here to the left line which assures me he is getting his hips through the ball and he is not pitching his self at all. You can see that the feeder is already to throw, give me a good took, took, his hips are bounding him up, he cannot do that, now step away to the left, now he is driving too far, his front side is going to flaw open, he is going to create some arm drill. The best place to be right here to the left are almost on the line. When we look at a stride, he stir on the side, what I want to see maybe is the knee, bring the foot back or even back more and then the nose right here where some most right here. The knee is been load of nose, and then the foot is below the knee. Not bad, one more time. Okay, here we go, let us try a little pitch. Excellent, finish it off, good. Again in a gather position, check the hand, the front legs, position the foot, see if he got his balance here, is he leaning back, he needs a work on his posture and get the leg up. Then also check his stride, once he finishes out, we do not want him close nor we want him too far over. That is working on a gather position.