How to Create Hip and Shoulder Disassociation in Your Throw

Hip and Shoulder Disassociation or separation is the action of moving the hips and shoulders in opposite directions. The ability to achieve more separation is proven as a key contributor to increase velocity when throwing a football or baseball. In this post, we will be going over how to achieve more separation in your upper and lower body when throwing.

To start, you want to pivot off the back leg as you take the first step to throw the football. You can slightly open your step to the side to promote more disassociation but most importantly the back foot needs to pivot while the front foot is hitting the ground. When the back foot pivots or rotates the front foot should naturally rotate or open towards the target. 

Side note: I commonly see the mistake of overcoaching the front foot rotation by coaching the foot should be pointing towards the target. While that is not wrong the action should happen from rotation created through the back leg, not the front foot. (A significant difference)

Now while the lower body is opening or rotating towards the target, the upper body should be disassociating or rotating back. The best way to do this in my experience is by pushing the ball back or over-emphasizing closing the front shoulder. The reason I say closed is because the front shoulder is close off from the target or facing away as opposed to opened up which I used in the last paragraph would be facing towards the target. This ability to open towards the target in the lower body while simultaneously keeping the front shoulder closed is what creates the hip and shoulder separation.