Progressing Pitchers Hip Mobility

Sometimes the way in which we attempt to gain more range of motion or become more mobile gets tricky. We see videos online of people doing some pretty funky moves – doing the splits with kettle-bells or movement flows for their hips – and think to ourselves “yeah I’ll go ahead and try that tomorrow.” What usually ends up happening is we quickly find out that we simply don’t have the range of motion necessary, try to fight through the position anyways, and wake up being in worse shape than we were before we started. Instead, we should be viewing acquiring mobility with a logical and stepwise plan.

What is preached at Functional Range Systems, and what we adhere to in-house at Baseball Development Group, is that we must first acknowledge what ranges are necessary for the particular movement the athlete needs. That is, we start with how much range of motion a thrower needs in their hips and then assess what they have. If they do not possess an adequate amount of range of motion – passively and actively – we will intervene. The goal, however, isn’t to just throw them into a movement that we know they cannot control, but to first start by addressing the range that is deficient!

Pitchers Hip Mobility

Consider addressing a pitchers hip mobility; in this case internal rotation. We will start by throwing an exercise at them in that specific range and by which we will only be challenging that range (an isometric exercise is a great start). Once we have improved that deficiency, we can progressively add in more difficult movement at the hip. Maybe that means isolating movement to the out range of motion. Only once we have mastered using that newly acquired internal rotation will we make things more complex and ask the hip to perform it in conjunction with other parts of our body. This, usually, is where we place 90-90 hip transitions. In essence, we want to establish the range and then progressively make things harder. ASSESS. IMPROVE. TRAIN.

Sometimes the way in which we attempt to gain more range of motion or become more mobile gets tricky. We see videos online of people doing some pretty funky moves – doing the splits with kettle-bells or movement flows for their hips – and think to ourselves “yeah I’ll go ahead and try that tomorrow.”

What usually ends up happening is we quickly find out that we simply don’t have the range of motion necessary, try to fight through the position anyways, and wake up being in worse shape than we were before we started. Instead, we should be viewing acquiring mobility with a logical and stepwise plan.

What is preached at Functional Range Systems, and what we adhere to in-house at Baseball Development Group, is that we must first acknowledge what ranges are necessary for the particular movement the athlete needs. That is, we start with how much range of motion a thrower needs in their hips and then assess what they have.

If they do not possess an adequate amount of range of motion – passively and actively – we will intervene. The goal, however, isn’t to just throw them into a movement that we know they cannot control, but to first start by addressing the range that is deficient!

Pitchers Hip Mobility

Consider addressing a pitchers hip mobility; in this case internal rotation. We will start by throwing an exercise at them in that specific range and by which we will only be challenging that range (an isometric exercise is a great start).

Once we have improved that deficiency, we can progressively add in more difficult movement at the hip. Maybe that means isolating movement to the out range of motion. Only once we have mastered using that newly acquired internal rotation will we make things more complex and ask the hip to perform it in conjunction with other parts of our body.

This, usually, is where we place 90-90 hip transitions. In essence, we want to establish the range and then progressively make things harder. ASSESS. IMPROVE. TRAIN.