Brychanus
* Ace Member *
I've been working a lot on smoothing out form and learning little lessons to reduce stresses on the body while trying to tighten things up & reproduce good form changes.
Bradley Williams' form has become interesting to me again in that context. His motion is so clean, minimalistic, and fluid. There are quite a few players now either directly inspired by his form or doing something very similar (of the three there, I think Williams has a couple more desirable smooth mechanics).
I have seen Williams clocking in at70mph on coverage, and it looks like he'll be throwing for a long time. I just wanted to raise him as a case example to share a few things I'm learning and see what others may have learned & think.
First lesson
Something I'm learning this week is from Williams' "off" arm swim move, which a few other players share. It's somewhere between a Gibson-like forward and deep swim and the Marc Jarvis hand-on-the-thigh swim. The "swim" part is more subtle than some off arm moves, but it is there and is nicely aligned with his posture in the swing.
I have been having an old habit popping up from before my rebuild where my off hand wants to reach way too far forward ("into my front pocket"), pulling my arm away from my hip and screwing up my alignments. I tried a lot of options but the pesky habit kept coming back.
I found that the Bradley-esque swim is nice because I'm worrying less about what my lower arm is doing. I tend to "overcook" the arm action less because all I'm doing is getting my off elbow pinned toward the hip, and the swim part rolls through more naturally with better body alignment and fluidity, just like I'm actually swimming. It helps me get some of the nice compact feel I felt with the Marc Jarvis-like move but feels a little less bunched and more ergonomic with my long torso, short-limbed body type.
I'm also finding that just visualizing the very smooth upper body action helps "calm" my mechanics a bit and feel like I'm "rolling" through the swing.
Bradley Williams' form has become interesting to me again in that context. His motion is so clean, minimalistic, and fluid. There are quite a few players now either directly inspired by his form or doing something very similar (of the three there, I think Williams has a couple more desirable smooth mechanics).
I have seen Williams clocking in at70mph on coverage, and it looks like he'll be throwing for a long time. I just wanted to raise him as a case example to share a few things I'm learning and see what others may have learned & think.
First lesson
Something I'm learning this week is from Williams' "off" arm swim move, which a few other players share. It's somewhere between a Gibson-like forward and deep swim and the Marc Jarvis hand-on-the-thigh swim. The "swim" part is more subtle than some off arm moves, but it is there and is nicely aligned with his posture in the swing.
I have been having an old habit popping up from before my rebuild where my off hand wants to reach way too far forward ("into my front pocket"), pulling my arm away from my hip and screwing up my alignments. I tried a lot of options but the pesky habit kept coming back.
I found that the Bradley-esque swim is nice because I'm worrying less about what my lower arm is doing. I tend to "overcook" the arm action less because all I'm doing is getting my off elbow pinned toward the hip, and the swim part rolls through more naturally with better body alignment and fluidity, just like I'm actually swimming. It helps me get some of the nice compact feel I felt with the Marc Jarvis-like move but feels a little less bunched and more ergonomic with my long torso, short-limbed body type.
I'm also finding that just visualizing the very smooth upper body action helps "calm" my mechanics a bit and feel like I'm "rolling" through the swing.
