You now see that in the attack, the arm moves away from the fixed center of the body. In climbing, hanging, and swinging, the hand is fixed and the center (body) moves towards the hand. This philosophy can be viewed as a simple and common sense approach, balancing projective and receptive activities. Yin and yang.

You see, this isn’t a technique problem, it is an environmental and behavioral one. What I’m really proposing is an overhaul of environments. Second to that is the arm swing technique. The arm technique I advocate simply lowers risk by starting the arm swing in a more balanced position, and it produces faster ball speed as researched thus far.

To repeat myself, the starting position we want is simple: before the hips rotate forward, the elbow is at the same height as the shoulders and palm faces the ground. From a different plane of view, the elbow should not be behind the shoulder but rather in line, or in front of, as if hugging a very wide bear. Or imagine standing in a door frame and reaching both elbows towards the sides.

How the elbow gets there, I repeat, is via the rib cage. The chest rotates “open,” bringing the arm as a passive passenger. From then on, it is a roller coaster of a ride for the arm. There is no more coaching or cueing of the arm. We want to avoid yanking the elbow back to open the chest. If we want to unload rotation from the spine, we need to load it first.

How the arm goes forward to contact the ball is via the rotation of the hips. The hips are the front engine of the roller coaster, pulling the arm along in the back for a whippy ride. The name of the roller coaster that the arm is aboard is called Inertia. Some other examples of inertia can be seen below.

INERTIA EXAMPLES

When you allow the arm to be a passenger on the Inertia roller coaster, you create a relaxed and fast arm swing powered by the entire body. After the ride is over, I like to see that the right foot, the back foot, has landed either beside or in front of the left foot. Assuming the athlete jumped with their right foot behind their left, this is just a simple check to see if they rotated in the air. If they consistently do not rotate, then I will likely intervene with some coaching cues and environments and games that promote rotation.

We are done with the sensible stuff. Now to tackle some nonsensical myths…

ARM POSITION AT CONTACT

This is typically address via either or both of the following statements:

“You’re dropping your elbow.”

Or,

“You need to reach higher.”

These cues are misguided. The brain will do whatever it takes to hit the ball. If the elbow is dropped, it is because it needs to be in order to contact the ball. These cues of adjusting the arm to contact the ball are ironically inaccurate. If the athlete is consistently making low contact with the ball, there are typically two potential causes.

One, perhaps their shoulder does not have the integrity to reach high overhead, and cuing for this invites more risk.

Secondly, perhaps where they are in relation to the ball forces them to reach low to make contact. This, then, is a spacing problem, not an arm position problem. The athlete’s perception of where he or she needs to be to contact the ball must be refined. This improvement can take place by changing the games, the sets, the net height, the ball, and asking for exaggerated changes in spatial positioning.

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Now that we’ve wiped our hands clean of that mess, on to the next — wrist snap.

Nope.

Just don’t.

Not going to go there.

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PIKING

The arm swing, nor any other overhead sport, is a pike. It just isn’t. Piking is a learned behavior and rarely something from organic self-organization. The attack is a rotation driven by the hips with very slight shades of piking. Of course, this is all beside the point. If athletes had appropriately scaled and varied environments, we’d hardly even have to coach rotation! A child who experiences lots of different activities like throwing, batting, golfing, kicking etc. (a normal childhood) will most likely rotate automatically. It will not happen the first time they try to hit a ball out of the air, but eventually it will. Especially if they keep playing other rotational games.

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Now for follow-through, or lack thereof. You would never see a soccer player try to stop their leg immediately after kicking a ball. How about tennis? Never once has a tennis player decided to stop their arm immediately after any contact. Golf? You’d be laughed off the course if you omitted your follow-through. What if a 100m sprinter just decided to come to a dead stop once they reached the finish line. Or imagine a Formula 1 car coming to a screeching stop at the finish line, from 200mph… All right, that’s all I have to say about that. Common (comical) sense, people.

What I will address, however, is positioning and variability of follow-through. We want to see a relaxed arm follow where the body brought it, which means sometimes it will go across the body; sometimes it will come by the side of the body. Variability of movement is a sign of health. When we see the arm follow through in just one way, danger looms in the shadows. We do not want to force it one direction or another. Just trust that the body knows what to do, and let it. Risk increases if we religiously abide by a follow-through that always falls to the side. The follow-through is a relaxed side-effect caused by where and how the brain has decided to hit the ball.

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I hope by now you see that there’s really a whole lot of wasted conversation and cognitive load issued by coaches, governing bodies, and regional organizations. Coaches: just get the arm in a safe starting position, then focus on creating environments that promote advancement of skill, health, and fun. Simple. Your worth is not derived by how much you say, do, or show, but by however you value it.

Unfortunately, this article still has not revealed the elephant in the room. The greatest miscreant is the schedule demanded of youth athletes. I’ve heard about certain national teams saying that their players need to be able to withstand over 1000 jumps per week. Not because it is necessary for competition schedules but because it is what the coaches demand. In some countries, culture allows it to be even higher.

No matter how perfect the arm swing is, or the environment, the schedules athletes face today are asinine. Ludicrous. Absolutely bonkers. Underwear is being worn outside the pants, and too few are noticing!

Most athletes make venture capitalist-like expenditures weekend after weekend, without having any time for investments to accrue, or even being able to afford this kind of spending! They are in debt!

This delinquent elephant carries a misunderstood expectation: the body heals, recovers, and grows quickly. It does not. The body takes a lot longer to heal than current culture believes. Next time you get a scrape on your skin, notice how long it takes to heal. The details are discussed in my book, but the rule of thumb I propose is as follows; every day of tournament play or competition needs at least double that in rest and time away from the poisonous activity. This doesn’t mean become a vegetable for those days, it just means take it easy, and don’t play the same sport you just overdosed on.

Even the best childhoods and best techniques in the world can only do so much when lowering probabilities of injury. When you change your perspective to viewing the human body as perfect, then you’re forced to look elsewhere for issues. The body is a product of over 400 million years of evolution! Most likely, our relatively infantile cultures and beliefs are the opportunities to be wrestled. Our problems arise due to user error rather than faults of the hardware (the body).

If we mix some foresight, knowledge, and discipline, we can radically improve the health of athletes in this sport. Ultimately, this responsibility falls on the shoulders of athletes and their parents. If you want to see some changes in your life, then make them. Athletes shall no longer be at the mercy of coaches. If you don’t take responsibility for your life, then who will? Sport needs to be a collaborative effort between athletes and coaches, rather than a commonly seen one-sided tyranny.

Parents, as the financiers of youth clubs and organizations, you have the opportunity to demand more sustainable and smart schedules, instead of the binged athletic weekends that are convenient for school and work schedules.

In regards to the “what” of the arm swing, I’ve covered all topics worth any words. Now we must ask the question, “how does the human organism learn best?” For that, you will have to wait for the follow up to this article. What you can do in the meantime is create and polish this tool in your toolbox. Here is my video progression series to teach you how to create this swing. However, it does not specifically address how to make it show up in the heat of competition with stalwart resilience. That is the goal of the next article. Sign up below to be notified of its release.

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