Timmy: Drive Leg
The drive leg is a misnomer. You’re not going to drive. You’re going to use gravity — which pulls us down the mound at the same tempo everywhere on planet earth — to fall towards the target while setting up the hips to clear properly so that you can pull the knuckleball through the slot for the perfect release.
Drive Leg Mechanics
#1: Load Glute, not Quad.
To be an elite pitcher, you need to know the difference between the loading the glute and loading the quad when that front foot comes off the ground. Loading the wrong muscles will setup weak hip rotation leading you to improperly push the knuckleball. Loading the proper muscles will have you throwing the ball harder, healther and nastier!
#2: Don't Drift Knee Over Toe.
You need to develop strength as a pitcher. In fact, pitchers are now the biggest and strongest on the field because strength allows you to maintain the proper positions throughout the delivery. As you fall down the mound, you need to keep your back knee from shooting out over your toe which will mess with your direction and hip rotation.
#3: Guide Yourself With Back Knee.
You might hear the term “vertical shin angle” when watching pitching videos online. We don’t NEED to keep a vertical shin, but we do need to guide our falling body to the plate by nudging our back knee towards second base. This gets our direction right and sets us up for proper hip rotation at the right time.
#4: Rotate Hip with Back Knee Before Landing.
Draw a straight line from your back hip to your back foot. The knee outside that line — towards second base — is holding the hip back from rotation. Once the knee hits that line, the back hip begins to rotate. And slamming the knee down towards the ground below that line completes back hip rotation which needs to happen with the front foot in the air before landing.
#5: Let Go of Ground Behind You.
This one is controversial, but it is a law of lower half biomechanics that you need to let go of the ground behind you when you rotate your back hip. Otherwise, you risk rotating around two points in space rather than one point — your front hip — and that could have you accelerating the knuckleball behind your body which is a recipe for disaster.