5 Things You Should Correct: In Order of Importance

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5 Things You Should Correct: In Order of Importance

Do you ever think when looking at your player, “That looks funny, but I’m not sure how to correct it?” Or your watching your daughter pitch and you know about three mechanics pitchers are supposed to perform. You try to correct all three simultaneously and wonder why she can’t do it? How long will it take for her to change?

I’m writing this for beginner parents, mostly because parents of experienced pitchers have been attending lessons. They know exactly what their daughter needs practice, even if they don’t quite understand exactly why. I’d say the latter is a good-enough start.

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Why You Should Forget About Winning Games From Mr. Miyagi

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Why You Should Forget About Winning Games From Mr. Miyagi

Unless you are a member of the Kobra Kai dojo, you understand that “winning isn’t everything.” But are you showing no mercy in our fall ball games in spite of that understanding?

Travel coaches struggle with getting the most out of their pitchers due to the lengthy schedule of the year-long season. Fall ball (especially because of the pandemic) is becoming more meaningful these days. It’s overwhelming when it seems like every single game is important. If coaches make their goal to win each tournament and each game with little regard as to how to get there, pitcher development can become stunted and players peak early or not at all.

I offer an alternative.

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3 Fun Stats About Pitching

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3 Fun Stats About Pitching

Missy Lombardi was trying to figure out what made Michigan so dominant in 2015. As the head coach of Oaklahoma she was battling the WCWS eventual runner-up. She came up with these three factors. Then, with the help of her sports psychologist, invented a way to chart the points. Lombardi found that three things determine the dominance of a pitcher:

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How to Fairly Evaluate Pitchers in a Tryout

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How to Fairly Evaluate Pitchers in a Tryout

If you are coaching a team you know how hard it is to evaluate a big group of pitchers at tryouts. First, there's never enough time. Second, it's impossible to tell how a pitcher will perform in games. Third, it's difficult not to get swept up in the lure of a pitcher who seems fast and can throw strikes. Will fast and down the middle be enough at your level?

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How to Explain Internal Rotation to Your Daughter

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How to Explain Internal Rotation to Your Daughter

The main indicator or arm speed is hand speed. Obviously, it's the only part of a pitcher's body that touches the ball and it has to be equally as fast as the speed she wishes to deliver it. If you follow even one pitching coach on social media besides me you’ll see the main topic discussed is something called “internal rotation.”

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What Should I Tell My Daughter During Games?

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What Should I Tell My Daughter During Games?

I see the pain in parents’ eyes. Their daughter is finally getting her chance to pitch and she’s throwing ball after ball, nowhere near strike zone. They wonder how this can be...in practice yesterday she pitched great! In last week’s game she seemed to be more accurate. There must be something wrong with her mechanics, they think.

What can parents say to help a pitcher throw more strikes during a game, especially when they know she is capable of it?

Firstly, sometimes parents get the last part of this concept wrong. Here is a blog I wrote to help you & her decipher objectively what she is capable of at any given moment. Once this is sorted out, most of the stress goes away for everyone. Improper expectations is the largest source, in my opinion, of disappointment, anger, and failure during performances.

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Why People Love to Hate Practice

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Why People Love to Hate Practice

Parents always want to know: How can I teach my daughter the value of working hard without pushing her so much she wants to quit? How will I know if her goals are her own, not mine for her? How do I help without affecting our relationship in a negative way?

“How To Get Your Daughter to Practice” was one of the top-ten opened email newsletters I’ve ever sent out. I love this topic so much.

I was a kid who felt very guilty that I didn’t want to practice. I didn’t feel like it. I was led to believe that if I wanted to be good, creating a goal would be motivation enough. However, for some reason that was not working in real life. It turns out, there are reasons why creating goals as your only motivation doesn’t work. You need to create systems.

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A Point-by-Point Guide to High School: From the Coaches

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A Point-by-Point Guide to High School: From the Coaches

When I tried out for my high school softball team I simply showed up on the prescribed date and time. I carried my spikes and glove in my hand. I did what I was told. I observed the skills of the other girls and measured myself against them. What chance do I have? How hard are the coaches making me work? Do I like this? Are the girls nice?

Never once did I think bigger than that. I didn’t think about winning a championship. I didn’t ponder what made a good team, or what I could do to be a good leader. In hindsight I wish I would have. To those of you who are reading this, I’d suggest thinking of these things. Whether you are in 5th grade, going to college next year, or in high school, the following will be valuable.

We had the opportunity to interview the Whitney Young Coach, Mike Hinrichs and the Ridgewood Coach, Ken Juarasz about how they’ve built their program, what they expect of players, and how to buy in.

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How to Master Power in 4 Simple Drills

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How to Master Power in 4 Simple Drills

When learning, a lot of players look like this the pitcher on the right: leaning forward and her back leg has not moved towards the target by the time the ball is being released. When a pitcher throws “all arm”, this is what is happening mechanically. 

What’s more powerful, sprinting forward or jumping sideways? Just as a sprinter leaves the block, pitchers are sprinters leaving the mound. The fastest way to run to the finish line is forward, not sideways. 

If a pitcher can put herself in a good position at 3 o’clock (top pictures), she sets herself up for the rest of the motion. If not, it can be very difficult to correct her mistakes mid-pitch.

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How To Sell Hard Work To A Skeptic

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How To Sell Hard Work To A Skeptic

For experienced pitchers, year-round training should be divided into sections including the off-season, pre-season and in-season. They each serve their specific purpose. In the offseason (October through December), experienced athletes should learn new movement pitches and make major changes to mechanics if necessary. These two things affect accuracy, so the offseason is the best time to adjust.

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How Not to Develop Pitchers

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How Not to Develop Pitchers

It's not about winning, it's about HOW you win and challenging yourself.  Even if her team would have lost the lesson stands strong. Coach Hanning was preparing Jennie to reach her potential, an Olympian and NCAA National Champion, not a summer ball tournament champ.

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How to Win Big with Habit-Formation

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How to Win Big with Habit-Formation

In our pitching school, we give away pins every session to a select few students. They say, “Commit to the Process.” To earn one, a pitcher must do any sort of pitching practice every single day between lessons to earn a star for her team. Then, over the span of a 10-week off-season, if she’s able to accumulate all 70 days of consistent work, she earns the pin. This is quite a feat, to say the least.

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A Productive Rant About Release Point

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A Productive Rant About Release Point

One of the least effective ways to help a pitcher develop better accuracy is to instruct them to "release sooner" or "release later." Her arm is moving too fast to make such small movements intentionally, especially for a young person who has little body awareness. Secondly, athletes respond better to “external cues” which are conveyed by relating their body to something outside of themselves, like a target in the distance, or the ground, or the sky.

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Build a Pitching Staff - Not a Hierarchy

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Build a Pitching Staff - Not a Hierarchy

If you are coaching a team with more than one pitcher (hint, hint that's you) you're going to need to develop your group as a staff, not just as individuals waiting their turn. When you create depth you'll get the most out of each pitcher, teach teamwork, and be able to overcome the day when your number one pitcher and sole hope is struggling. I said when, not if.

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9 Signs You Need Help With Mechanics

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9 Signs You Need Help With Mechanics

Think back to your last golf round. What type of player are you? Are you praying that you'll hit your next shot in the air, or are you calculating the difference between the 5 and 6 iron? Are you just trying keep up with the rest of your group, or are you visualizing the angle of your draw?

These questions show a clear difference in competency level. One person is competing while the other is focused on skill development, without knowing what skill needs to be developed. She just knows she has to get the ball over there, with no idea how.

Without mechanical competence, your daughter's only thoughts will be, “Please throw a strike and don’t embarrass myself!” as opposed to, “I’m going to strike this girl out with a low fastball then and outside change.” Unfortunately, pitchers will go through this thought process their whole career unless they learn and practice. As a young player, I received instruction on how to pitch, but did not practice. So my “worried” thinking went all the way through the end of high school. Not until college did I put the work into grooving my mechanics.

So, in an effort to help girls of all levels learn to actually “play” softball, here is a list of 9 circumstances when you know your daughter needs mechanical help.

  1. You think your daughter can pitch without learning how to do it.

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Why We Forget: How Our Mechanics Slip Away

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Why We Forget: How Our Mechanics Slip Away

I was working with my personal trainer, Mondale, on posterior chain strength. He explained the short circuit of exercises I was going to do, then told me to go ahead and start. I did the first one, then completely forgot the other two exercises and looked at him with an “uh-oh emoji, help” face. Was I not listening? Was it too much information for my brain that only got 5 hours of sleep?

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8 Ways You Can Build Pitching Staff Unity

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8 Ways You Can Build Pitching Staff Unity

In order for a player to want to change for her team, or at least live up to her existing role, she needs to be encouraged. There are a bunch of ways to get her excited about the role that she has or the role she wants to accomplish. These are some ideas I have learned from college, travel, and high school coaches I have met along the way. 


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How to Prevent the Downward Spiral

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How to Prevent the Downward Spiral

I hear it all the time, “Is there some kind of trick that I can use during a game to prevent me from going into a downward spiral?” It’s frustrating (and even more confusing) to start off well and then lose this “groove” later in the game.

While at first it seems sometimes coaches over-analyze what could have happened…”she got tired”, “she lost it mentally”, “she stopped performing her mechanics properly,” and so on, at second thought, I believe this is an under-analysis or a faulty analysis without proper work on the back end to diagnose issues and adjust practice accordingly. In order to identify the issue take a cue from college teams. They are always recording a huge amount of stats throughout the games. For them, there is no “guessing” when it comes to the issues they face during game time. They try to make it as objective, and therefore easy, as possible to make decisions.

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How To Be Obsessed With Your Little League

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How To Be Obsessed With Your Little League

No one on her team could throw a strike so the games were very long and uneventful. A number of parents started asking me to instruct but I saw myself as an executive in the corporate world. Now, as a small business owner running a pitching school with over 160 students, I’m often to help little leagues find a way to make the quality of pitching better. If girls can pitch strikes, then the batters can hit, and the fielders can field.

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Do You Have A Clueless Coach?

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Do You Have A Clueless Coach?

I’d like a make a plea for parent-coaches to attend coach’s clinics. Here are 6 reasons why:

  • Leverage: I you send 12 kids on your team to a one-hour pitching clinic the total cost at $50 per kid = $600!! Also add 12 hours of your players’ time. Or, you go to a defensive clinic for one hour at the total cost of $50, with no extra time for the kids. Teach them what you learned during regular practice hours.

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