The Need for Mobility - Increase Your Hip Internal Rotation

A few months ago I had an athlete come in complaining about his swing. Specifically, rotating with his swing. I asked a few more questions and uncovered he got back into his hip good but lacked creating internal rotation at the hip. I got him on the table and sure enough he had about 10 degrees of range in both hips.

This is an issue because as a hitter shifts his weight forward and internally rotates the back leg, if they can't access the range needed then the sequence of the swing gets thrown off and compensations happen(the same can be said for extension at the hip).This in return doesn't allow the full amount of force that can be put into the bat to occur, increases the likelihood of injury, and can throw off accuracy of the swing.

A concept I like to think about with a repeatable delivery is Bernstien's repetition without repetition. This concept essentially says a novice's delivery will be different everytime and where they make contact will be all over the place. A pro will have the same initial setup and there may be slight variances in the delivery of the ball but for the most part the delivery will be repeatable leading to similar accuracy. Now, lets take this concept and add a blockage in the delivery. Like a lack of internal rotation at the hip. That is going to add more variance to the delivery because now the force traveling from the ground up has to find a way around that blockage. That causes a chain reaction and makes the energy have to take a detour or find a compensation to continue the task. We want to remove the blockage to allow for smooth passage. Here are a few things we did to allow that.

We started with breathing. This allows for temporary changes in range of motion. Here is a video discussing a little more of breathing increasing ROM

With this information in mind, here are couple exercises to allow this.

This first option is a good one to use if the athlete has a hard time getting full exhalation of the lunges. This position gets them to hunch over and collapse the lower ribs inward to get full exhalation.

This next one is a good option if they know how to get full exhalation and we need to get a little more posterior pelvic tilt. I chose this exercise. Sometimes the lack of space in the hips limiting motion is the structures being in a position limiting that. The hips having an aneterior pelvic tilt is a position that will limit the hips. The position in the video promotes a nuetral pelvis and stability of the nervous system allowing for range.

From here then we can centrate the joint more. This creates further stability unlocking mobility. What we did here is below

Sometimes, we can skip the above exercises and go straight to the one below.

We don't want to crank the athlete into any particular position. If they are having issues with a bone block or the muscles not allowing motion where we want it, they will compensate not allowing true internal rotation. It depends more about the individual needs. Take that into consideration with the sequence of the prep work you do.

Once the joint is centrated and motion has increased then we can start to load it, so we can create lasting change.

Here are the results

We got about a 15* change in one session. From here, to create actual change we will need to touch base with some of these exercises in the warm up to create space and continue to load exercises like the Stagger Stance RDL.

Over time this will remove the block, as long as there isn't something structurally involved, and allow a powerful, efficient and consistent swing.

This was a case study, meaning it was a study of one. Every situation can be different and you want to take that into account.

Give these a try and let me know how it works out. Thank you for reading today's blog, hopefully this provided value.