I’ve been talking about the mental state of players the last month with many parents. I like to check in and see what everyone is thinking, and how we can keep incorporating pitching and motivation into family’s lives.

You know I say it constantly. Pitching is a skill that needs to be developed year-round. If you fail to recognize this, you’ll be very sorely disappointed at the result, and the money, time, energy you invested in 1 month to 5 years of lessons.

The last thing we want is those Wisconsinites and Hoosiers to kick our butts in tournaments since they’ve been able to socialize more than us!! Don’t let this happen Illinois!!

How is your daughter supposed to know how to talk about her performance? What should she say? What does “good” even mean? Surely there’s a thoughtful way to converse about her game so she can grow. After all, sports are the perfect setting to learn how to deal with adversity, unfairness, and physical discomfort. They can inspire her, show her what she's made of, and help her do things she never thought she could do. To sort out these lessons, have these questions ready for your “car talk” after a game or practice.

Paige believes that there needs to be a training environment set every day with a priority in brain stimulation. That means that your practices should include external motivation, competitive challenges, and high standards of expectation to perform or complete a “reach-task.” These are all of  the reasons that I have developed pitching school instead of giving individual lessons. 

For starters, one of the concepts she discussed is at the crux of who I am and what I believe about becoming elite.  In fact, the name of our pitching school, Practice Pro, was derived because of my steep belief in this tenet that she discussed: dedicating ample time to independent practice to build and reinforce a skill.  This concept was popularized in a book called Outliers which states that “it takes 10,000 hours to master a single skill.” Coach Cassady broke down to us how that applies to your development as a pitcher: nearly 80% of your 10,000 hours will be pitches thrown in independence…

For those of you who are high school age and above that are striving for bigger improvement gains in the new year, I believe there are pieces that S2 Breakthrough can do to help.  With their “threshold assessment” that they offer, you can learn about your personal movement patterns as well as your body’s strength and mobility limitations through video and sensor technology that will evaluate your individual biomechanics.  Understanding how your body moves within the motion will help you and me take you to new heights at Practice-Pro Pitching School this year.  

The first of the three presenters that I’d like to share what I learned from is Rita Lynn Gilman.  She is a private lessons pitching instructor out of Virginia who coaches young women in grade school, middle school, and high school.   She has had some of the most successful collegiate pitchers to come through her ranks, including Lacy Waldrop, 2014 Player of the Year (All-American Pitcher from Florida State).

Being able to transfer that energy into the ball at a consistent release point is arguably the most difficult (but maybe the most important) component to developing maximum velocity and accuracy.  In fact, if you watch most pitchers on video, social media, etc…. you will see that there is a breakdown in perfect mechanics at this end point of the motion.  Transferring of energy is lost, body positioning is off, release points are inconsistent, or resistance isn’t applied.  However, in those same videos, the beginning and middle parts of the motion can look pretty darn good.  Hmmmmm… Why is that?

I just spent an amazing 4 days at the greatest show on earth: the NFCA (National Fast-pitch Coaches Association) Convention, which took place in San Antonio, Texas this year.

Though the JW Marriott property was probably one of the most impressive properties I have ever seen -and the speakers who presented on pitching were extremely knowledgeable, interesting, and helpful-  in the spirit of the Christmas/Holiday Season, I would be remiss in withholding the most important thing I witnessed at convention to share with you all: Perseverance & Friendship.

Contrary to popular belief, accuracy is only a byproduct of a lesson. The real goal of a lesson is to "build a repeatable motion." One is part of the process, and one is the actual outcome. As you know, you can't control an outcome, but only your effort that goes into it. How, then, can you best use your time in lessons to achieve both your process goal (build a repeatable motion) and your outcome goal (throw more strikes)? If you feel like there have been times where you haven't gathered enough takeaways from your lesson and aren't sure what to work on, read ahead.

There was something different happening on this team which I never experienced. It was cool to try hard. The players didn't tolerate others who didn't hustle. It wasn't the coach who had influence over attitudes, it was my peers. This was a completely new concept to me, growing up on teams where players bonded over complaining about or disobeying the coach. How many car rides home did I take where we talked about how I wasn't being treated fairly? This team seemed different. Athletes were on the same "side" as the coach.