Semester is over, back to the grind...
I stopped working on the form for a little bit due to the school semester getting busier, but I am back now and ready to keep working. I've messed around with a few things here and there, but there are a couple of main ideas that I am working on.
1 - For the RHBH, I am still not bracing properly against my plant leg. My bad habit is that I currently try to spin out of the brace to let the body come through instead of bracing/throwing against the plant. To work on this I've done a bunch of bilateral work (LHFH, RHFH, LHBH, RHBH) to transfer the feeling of when I brace for the RHFH to the RHBH. When I'm throwing forehands, I'm definitely not trying to twist or spin or anything out of the brace, instead it is a nice brace against the left leg which allows everything to come through naturally. I know my forehand mechanics are better than my backhands because I'm consistently throwing around ~350-380 forehand while I may throw a backhand further than that once in a while. From my understanding, this generally isn't the case, and the power potential for the BH is more than the FH. This is how I know I haven't capped out my BH potential yet.
2 - For the RHBH, my throwing arm still collapses like I'm trying to spin a frisbee out of it. My throwing arm integrity breaks down instead of creating a nice whip that follows parallel with the swing plane. I've resorted to trying to think of it as swinging the handle of the hammer targetwards, or swinging a baseball bat. This has helped with keeping the arm on a better plane.
Here is a video of me doing a few hammer drills with both sides of my body: https://youtu.be/92JA3OARW1M
At first I do LHFH and RHFH walking straight to the target, not crossing my legs at all, similar to if I was bowling. After that, I try to take a more lateral approach like I'm throwing a submarine pitch. After that, I do some LHBH and RHBH with the hammer to see if I can keep that same bracing feeling from the previous throw with the backhand. From what I can tell, my lower body mechanics work far better in the FH throw. For some reason, my body works better with the left hand/right leg and right hand/left leg brace compared to same arm/leg brace.
I stopped working on the form for a little bit due to the school semester getting busier, but I am back now and ready to keep working. I've messed around with a few things here and there, but there are a couple of main ideas that I am working on.
1 - For the RHBH, I am still not bracing properly against my plant leg. My bad habit is that I currently try to spin out of the brace to let the body come through instead of bracing/throwing against the plant. To work on this I've done a bunch of bilateral work (LHFH, RHFH, LHBH, RHBH) to transfer the feeling of when I brace for the RHFH to the RHBH. When I'm throwing forehands, I'm definitely not trying to twist or spin or anything out of the brace, instead it is a nice brace against the left leg which allows everything to come through naturally. I know my forehand mechanics are better than my backhands because I'm consistently throwing around ~350-380 forehand while I may throw a backhand further than that once in a while. From my understanding, this generally isn't the case, and the power potential for the BH is more than the FH. This is how I know I haven't capped out my BH potential yet.
2 - For the RHBH, my throwing arm still collapses like I'm trying to spin a frisbee out of it. My throwing arm integrity breaks down instead of creating a nice whip that follows parallel with the swing plane. I've resorted to trying to think of it as swinging the handle of the hammer targetwards, or swinging a baseball bat. This has helped with keeping the arm on a better plane.
Here is a video of me doing a few hammer drills with both sides of my body: https://youtu.be/92JA3OARW1M
At first I do LHFH and RHFH walking straight to the target, not crossing my legs at all, similar to if I was bowling. After that, I try to take a more lateral approach like I'm throwing a submarine pitch. After that, I do some LHBH and RHBH with the hammer to see if I can keep that same bracing feeling from the previous throw with the backhand. From what I can tell, my lower body mechanics work far better in the FH throw. For some reason, my body works better with the left hand/right leg and right hand/left leg brace compared to same arm/leg brace.