As soon as a player is able to throw with a good arm circle, has decent posture, and throws at her fullest effort she's ready to learn the change up and movement pitches.
Even 10 year-olds can learn movement pitches. If I were to wait until a pitcher perfected her fastball to teach her a curveball, we might be waiting until she is a high school or even college!
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?
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreIt'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.
Read MoreAre you trying out for a travel ball team this summer? Most tryouts are within the next month or so, and you’ll have to be prepared with questions before you commit. Too many parents and players sign up for a year-long obligation are left feeling dissatisfied with their choice, only because they didn’t know what things to consider before they tried out.
The first thing to do is have a discussion with your daughter. Share ideas with each other about what her long-term softball goals are. As you know, pitching requires a parent/player partnership. Your support and advice is imperative to your daughter's success. If you aren’t into it, she won’t have a chance of reaching her potential. You can get a good idea of her ambitions if she talks more about hanging out with friends than trying to get more playing time.
Read MoreThink 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.
You think your daughter can pitch without learning how to do it.
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.
Read MoreDo you ever notice when a pitcher sometimes falls over forward after she pitches? She looks like she’s off balance. You’ll hear a coach yell out after every few balls, “Stand tall!”
This has to do with her stride and how she is failing to harness all of the power she created through her drive off of the mound. Harnessing your power with your stride is equally as important as gaining momentum. Strides are for resistance, balance, and accuracy. If, you want to gain velocity, you must practice a great stride.
Read MoreThe most successful pitchers have involved parents. This can be tricky, because that means you’ll have to put a high percentage of effort as well. That’s why I call it a partnership. It’s best if you both decide to take on the challenge together.
If you want to give her the opportunity to reach her full potential, you'll have to catch for her - a lot. Here are a few catching techniques to get you through the times when you don't quite feel like getting out there with her.
Read MoreFor example, when throwing a rise ball, a pitcher must deliver the ball on the “upswing” of her arm circle, meaning a little bit later. To make it easier to get her palm underneath the ball and facing the sky, she must lean her body back towards second base at delivery. The reverse is true for a drop ball. She must lean forward to get her hand on top of the ball, palm facing downwards.
Once her body position and ball trajectory is correct, the Magnus Effect becomes relevant.
Read MoreThe best pre-motions, or "take-aways" as I call them, are simple ones. Pitchers prepare themselves for success by performing a take-away that doesn't result in mistakes later in the delivery. When making up for a mechanical mistake during the motion, such as a crooked arm circle, the price she pays is a loss of speed.
Read MoreTo moms and dads who obsess over YouTube pitching videos: I’ve been there to. You love the “forearm fire,” Bill Hillhouse, and Amanda Scarborough’s Power Drive.
Bill Hillhouse promotes a cross-bodied follow through to the opposite-side shoulder. Below I will clarify what he means when he talks about this and why I teach something else. The follow through others teach is a straight-arm one with the hand pointing to the target at the end. I call this the “hand-shake” follow-through. I teach most players to point their elbows, not hands, to the target, referred to as “hello elbow.” I’ll discuss each follow throughs and what they mean to your pitcher.
Read MoreAt the beginning of a pitcher’s journey, parents sometimes ask me for honest evaluations of their daughters. They ask me if it’s worth putting the time, money, and effort into pitching if she won’t get to play on her team this year. Some would like to know if I think she has the potential to play at the highest level.
I would never discourage anyone from learning to pitch because they probably weren’t going to pitch in the Olympics, but I do believe there are certain attributes and life circumstances a player must posses to play in college.
Read MoreIn college you'll rarely see a player sitting on the bench doing nothing during a game. When I played at Ithaca College, every player on the team was always cheering, clapping, or doing something in a supportive role when on the bench. Your positive attitude can anchor the “spirit of sport” in your team.
Last week our mental game lesson was about Charlie Morton, a 37-year old pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays who started the last game of the 2019 World Series. At the time his ERA is .57 and only made his first all-star game two years before that. If Morton would have won that night, he would have tied a record by posting eight consecutive winning postseason starts.
When asked about this wonderful run, he said,
Read MoreIf you are in 8th or 9th grade and participated in a travel tournament where you supplied your email address, you might have gotten a call from a college reciting company. The NCSA, or Next College Student Athlete, is one the many companies that can help you get “seen” by a college coach. They are armed with an excellent sales force full of ex-successful college athletes, some of which you might have even been coached by or got lessons from (not me, I’m just sayin).
Read MoreIn the softball world, obsession about finding the “edge” over the competition or trying to find the “motivation” to get out and practice, causes us to overlook the important role of inspiration.
How are motivation and inspiration different? I think inspiration has to do with feelings, excitement, and creativity. It has to do with a person allowing an outside force to act within him or herself.
Motivation, on the other hand, is about will. It’s about habits and is self-imposed through some sort of discipline.
I was inspired to play as a young girl by my uncle, who’s passion and joy around the sport became contagious. His daughter, my cousin, had the same drive . All the games I had to watch inspired me with her competitiveness. It seems cool to care.
Read MoreThis summer we held class at a beautiful personal training and yoga studio called “Practice Chicago” in Lincoln Park. What a fitting name, right?! As you know, I love when pitchers practice, but I never looked at practice the way described in @practicechicago’s recent Instagram post:
“When an activity becomes a practice it shifts from something you are doing at a point in time to an ongoing process of becoming. The former lends itself to “good” or “bad” judgments, forgetfulness, and discontinuity. The latter lends itself to integration, continuous learning, and wholeness.”
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