Pressure Sensor - Creating the Back Leg Load

Featuring Justin Stone, one of the most in demand private instructors in the country. Justin teaches approximately 3,000 players from across the United States each year and teaches hitting, defense, pitching, and catching at Elite.

If your Swing Catalyst Baseball system includes the pressure pad on the back plate, it will identify where the force in the swing is coming from in your back shoe. We know that good back leg loading force comes from the posterior chain. That's your hamstrings and your glutes. Well, this also comes from the back half of the foot. 

So if you can imagine, I draw a line right through the middle of my shoe through the instep. We want that pressure to come from the back half of my shoe, not the front. And what that will include is a good loading force that is maintained through my positive move. This is going to allow us for a good tempo, which often leads to good sequencing as well as good adjustability because I'm controlling my body in the forward advance. 

We see that players that get into this good loading mechanism on the back half of the shoe, the heat sensor, the heat map on this pressure pad is going to show up in a brighter red color. 

I categorize this into these different groups when I look at the back foot loading force: 

• Players that get to a back heal load

• Players that get to a whole shoe load

And in a whole shoe load, we're going to see more yellow, orange, and red throughout the entire shoe on the heat map. 

But we'll also see that players get to a ball of the foot or a “toe low” to the front half of the shoe. And at that time we'll see the front part of the shoe ending up in a red color and sometimes the back half of the foot is nonexistent, and there goes a problem.

Now we're going to have players that are pushing from their toes, usually coming up out of their Z force, coming up out of their legs, during the loading mechanism. 

What that means is they're taking energy away from their lower half and they're coming out of their loading mechanism early. This leads to players pushing off their toes. It also leads to sped up-tempo, which, of course, is going to ruin sequencing, getting players to skip the sequence in their lower half and fire directly from the top.

Finally, that leads to poor adjustability because players that are rushing forward lose control of their body during the forward advance and struggle then on any off-speed pitch. 

Watch full video here: https://youtu.be/KR2etjfPwOw

About the Author

Cameron Hobson is a mechanical engineer by training with a background as a professional sports athlete. He helps people improve human performance through the development of modern technology products.

Featuring: Justin Stone is one of the most in-demand private instructors in the country.  Justin teaches approximately 3,000 players from across the United States each year and teaches hitting, defense, pitching, and catching at Elite. Justin was a two sport Division 1 athlete in college at Eastern Illinois University as a starter in both baseball and football.