How to Throw a Change Up Pitch : Elbow Up Drill for Change Up Pitches

Hi my name is Mike Lumley on behalf of Expert Village I'm here to teach you pitching. Right
now we want to start and when we want to throw the ball, we want to make sure that we lead
out with our elbow and release it out front. So in this drill we are going to stand up
nice and tall and sit up tall on our knees, elbows up as high as our shoulder and out
in front of our shoulder. All we are trying to do with this drill is work on our release
and put a little bit of zip on the ball. (pitching the ball) Okay, so here we are trying to remember
we are staying only about five yards apart and with the younger kids we can get a little
bit closer. We don't want to get to a point that kids are moving their upper body to throw.
So you want to make sure that the shoulders stay square and we are just using our wrist
and our arm. (pitching the ball back and forth) The next phase of ours is what we call a mechanical
breakdown getting ourselves working on just our upper bodies. So what we are working on
here is balance, keeping our shoulders square on our target and separation on this area.
So first thing we want to do is obviously get into our grip and we get ourselves set
up. So as we are going to pitch we are going to take our glove in our hands together right
at our chest. We are going to make sure on our lower body that our leg is squared off
and directed right at our target. A lot of mistakes that kids make is they sit down here,
get a little lazy and what we are trying to do that kind of takes away from the mechanics
the end results. So we want to really make sure that we stay within what we finish off
in our mechanics. So we are going to take hands together and make sure our shoulder,
front shoulder is pointed right at our target so that would be the first phase almost a
set up of it. Next one is going to be our separation so we take our hands down by our
belts and we are going to separate up. So what we want to try to do is get the lead
elbow pointing at our target and as high as our shoulder, my back elbow at least as high
as my shoulder with our fingers pointed up. So a little analogy or rhyme is thumb to thigh,
when we separate and knuckles to sky. It is very important that our knuckles face up and
not palm up.