This is not an official Life in the Fastpitch Lane product review, but rather just something I wanted to share. I’ve been getting catalogs from Championship Productions filled with all sorts of fastpitch softball DVDs for a few years now.

I love looking through them, but usually don’t buy because I’ve already spent a small fortune on those sorts of materials. But one group I’ve had my eye on for a few years has been their All Access series, where you get to go behind the scenes of the practices for various college teams and see what they do.

They run around $100 each so not a decision one would make lightly. But I finally broke down and purchased two of them — the UCLA outdoor practice with Kelly Inouye-Perez, which I believe is the first one they did, and the University of St. Thomas indoor session with John Tschida.

I’ve watched them both now, and I can say they were well worth the money spent. Not to mention the time invested. The UCLA video runs across two DVDs and about four hours, whereas the UST set is on three videos and probably ran closer to six. I didn’t watch either in one sitting.

It’s fun to see how they structure their practices, what they spend time on, how they interact with their players and even how they use the facilities. I was personally gratified by the fact that many of the things they did are things I’m already doing, both with my team and with my students.

Still, I sat there with my smartphone writing down ideas for different activities or different approaches to the same skills. As with most training DVDs, at times a particular activity went on too long. In my mind once you’ve made the point move on rather than showing endless repetitions. Still, if you double-time it you can get through the dull spots and move on to the next thing.

Whether you’re a beginning coach or a grizzled veteran like me I think you’ll find these DVDs worthwhile. With the holidays coming up I’m hoping to pick up a couple more. Hint hint.