Monthly Archives: May 2026
Improvement Often Comes In Small Increments
If ’80s training montages have taught us anything, it’s that going from bum or has-been to champion isn’t complicated. You work really hard for a few weeks and before you know it you go from barely functional in whatever sport you’re trying to do to ready to take on the world.
Unfortunately, reality looks a little different – a fact many coaches, parents, and players seem not to understand.
The truth is if you’re expecting miracle improvements after a handful of lessons or practices you’re setting yourself up for a huge disappointment. Because most of the time improvement doesn’t occur in chunks; it happens in small increments.
Take overhand throwing for example. You look at a player and she is standing face-forward the entire time, holding the ball about ear-high and pushing it toward her target. Or maybe she turns her body some and then kind of randomly slings the ball in a motion that vaguely resembles the Kraken attacking the Black Pearl.
You work with her on getting her body into the right position, taking the ball back properly, getting her elbow set at the right height, finding a good arm slot, and releasing with a whipping motion. Then she starts to get the hang of it and looks pretty good.
Problem solved, right?
Probably not. Even if she works at it on her own, the odds of her retaining all those movement changes from this practice or lesson to the next one are pretty small.
The reason is the old pattern is already pretty ingrained, because that’s the movement pattern her body figured out for itself to solve the issue or throwing the ball from here to there. It’s going to take time for the new pattern to settle in – even if she practices.
And if she doesn’t, or doesn’t practice enough, or doesn’t practice with her brain actively engaged? It’s going to take even longer, because every rep she does do will likely be reinforcing the old movement pattern rather than replacing it.
The same is true for any skill – pitching, hitting, fielding, sliding, etc. As humans we tend to be most comfortable with what we know.
This is true even if we are willing to change – which most people aren’t, at least at the subconscious level.
The problem comes when expectations don’t match realities. If you’re expecting a coach or instructor to help your hitter go from striking out to hitting bombs in a couple of weeks, or your pitcher to gain 8-10 mph or go from walking 8 hitters a game to not giving up any walks after a handful of lessons you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
Instead, the changes will most likely come slowly. You may not even notice them at first, but they will be there.
As you continue they will become more obvious. That doesn’t necessarily mean a great outcome, but it will be trending that way.
So for a hitter, it might be she goes from no or weak contact to hitting the ball hard – right at someone. She still doesn’t get on base, but the contact is better.
In time, the law of averages will kick in and those hard hit balls will start finding gaps between fielders, the strikeouts will go down, and she will be a lot more confident every time she strides to the plate.
Pitchers will start throwing a little harder and a little more accurately. Fewer opposing hitters will get on base, the strikeouts will go up, and she will carry herself with a self-assuredness you haven’t seen before.
So as you start getting more serious and putting in the work keep that in mind. You may not see the improvement at first, but if the player is working at it, and receiving good, quality coaching, the improvement will come.
Hang in there and trust the process. Because from small improvements, larger ones will come.
Take One Last, Sweet Look Around
The weather has gone from wet and chilly to pleasant and sunny (or brutally hot, depending on where you live). Senior night festivities have come and gone.
Conference tournaments have started and in many cases finished. State tournaments are looming.
Yes, it’s that bittersweet time of the year, because it doesn’t just mean the end of the high school softball season. It means the end of high school softball for some players period, and for all too many the end of their softball careers.
You remember how it all started, maybe with a flyer from the school announcing rec league tee ball or coach pitch softball. Your daughter brought it home and said, “Can I?” and you said, “Sure, why not?” After all, it’s just a few weeks April through June, and not much of a time commitment even then.
Hah! Little did you know.
Then came the first travel team, with tournaments on a few weekends turning into tournaments practically every weekend. Trips within a 25-mile radius that were drive in and drive out turned into trips out of state, maybe even across the country, with hotel stays and the other accompanying expenses.
Soon it was consuming much of your time and disposable resources, but you didn’t mind. It was fun to watch your daughter do what she loves.
Yes, there were some bumps along the way. Maybe it was a batting slump. Or a stretch where it seemed like she made more errors than plays, or couldn’t find a radioactive plate with a Geiger counter if she was pitching.
It may have even been a coach who thought yelling and screaming = motivation. Or a group of girls with which your daughter just wasn’t a good fit.
But all of that was minor compared to all the great times you spent watching your daughter play the sport she loves – and all the car rides to and from the field where you not only talked about softball (hopefully in a positive, “wasn’t that fun?” way) but also got to know her better as a person because the two of you were trapped together for hours on end. She shared her hopes, dreams, frustrations, feelings and more in a way she probably wouldn’t have at home.
Now, however, those days are pretty much behind you. You will watch your daughter put on her uniform, lace up her cleats, grab her bat bag, and head out to the field like she has so many times before.
But instead of thinking ahead to where you have to be next weekend, this will be it – your last chance to watch her play in a competitive situation, where every pitch feels like life and death and every triumph is magnified 10-fold.
Sure, as you tried to balance the responsibilities of life with the pleasure of watching your daughter play it all seemed like it was just one mad rush from one event to the next. But soon there will be no need to rush, because you have nowhere special to be today. Next Saturday morning you can sleep in.
Then all that gear will be gathering dust in a closet the way your vehicle used to gather diamond dirt in every crevice. Maybe she’ll grab her glove and bat and play now and then with her friends in a slow pitch league.
But it won’t be the same.
So before it’s all over, remember to take in the aroma of that fresh-cut grass and the sensation of the warm sun on your skin as you wait for the game to begin. Appreciate the feeling of dust blowing onto arms and a face lightly coated with sweat, coating you with grime that never quite seems to wash off, and the sound of cleats crunching on the infield dirt or clattering on the concrete dugout floor.
Not to mention the challenge of washing deep ground dirt out of bright white pants because some idiot coach thought white pants look good. (Guilty!)
Savor every last bit of it. Because when it’s over it’s over.
And when the last out as been recorded, take a moment before you pack up the camp chairs and the snacks and the blankets and everything else you’ve carried from field to field these many years. Burn it into your mind.
Years from now you’ll remember these as some of the best years of your life. Because they were.
Good luck to all the graduates – and their families!
Top photo credit; Michelle Josko
IN Softball or INTO Softball: There’s a Difference
I’ve been listening to a lot of Dr. Rob Gilbert’s Success Hotline calls and the accompanying podcast lately. If you’re not familiar with Dr. Gilbert he’s a sports psychology professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
If you’re not listening to him you should be, because he has a lot of great insights on how athletes, or anyone for that matter, can train themselves to be more successful. Thank you to my friend Linda Lensch, the pitching coach at Montclair State, for turning me on to him.
One thing I heard Dr. Gilbert ask recently is a question that is really critical to an athlete’s or a coach’s or anyone’s approach to whatever they do. In our case, though, we will limit it to softball.
The question is, are you IN softball, or are you INTO softball?
What’s the difference you ask? It’s huge. .
Let’s take practice and ask the same question: are you IN practice or INTO practice? In other words, did you show up and are being compliant with whatever the coach says? Or are you really digging in and giving your best effort on every repetition, trying to maximize the value of the drill or the exercise or whatever it is you’re doing?
If you’re at a private lesson, are you going through the motions and/or putting in a little effort, or are you really engaged in whatever the activity is? Are you trying to get through the lesson or really trying to get better?
If you’re playing a game, are you just sort of there, doing what you’re comfortable with and playing it safe or are you pushing yourself to play as well as you can.
You get the idea. But there’s more to it than that, because there are two ways to approach being INTO practice, lessons, games, etc.
If you are INTO the event, are you INTO it some of the time or are you INTO it ALL of the time?
It’s easy to put it into cruise control while you’re doing warm-ups or repeating a drill you’ve done a thousand times before or especially until the game gets critical. The sameness breeds a certain level of mindlessness as you cover the same things over and over or have gaps between plays.
But if you really want to be great at something you can’t approach it like it’s a light switch, turning it on and off depending on whether you feel like giving an effort. You need to be present and mindful (to use what I think is still the current term) on every repetition or every play to take yourself to the next level.
I admit that it’s difficult to be INTO it all the time. While the action of plays may be fast, the game of fastpitch softball moves at a slow pace relative to sports such as basketball or soccer or hockey.
There’s a lot of downtime between plays, and it’s easy to fall into the distractions trap. It’s also easy to decide that what you’re being asked to do is too hard or too unfamiliar and you’d rather do it your way.
But remember if you do what you always do you get what you always get. What you don’t get is better.
For that you have to be willing, even eager, to do more. And a big part of that is being INTO whatever it is you’re doing, not just some of the time but all of the time.
The good news is you don’t need anyone else’s help to get yourself to be INTO what you’re doing all the time. It’s a choice you alone can make.
While I’ve been taking this idea from the athlete’s point of view, it applies to coaches too. (Let’s see how many continue to cheer “right on!” when I apply it to them.)
If you’re going to be IN practice you can keep doing the same general practice plan over and over. You can even buy generic practice plans on the Internet and follow them to the letter.
If you’re IN a game, you can keep the same lineup from the beginning of the season to the end and follow the same strategies over and over regardless of how they work. That’s the easy way to go.
But if you’re INTO practice you’ll take an objective look at what your team does well in games, as well as what it struggles with, and tailor the practice to what they need to do to get better. If you’re INTO games you’ll use data and look at how other coaches are structuring their lineups or the in-game strategies (including pitch-calling sequences) they’re using to decide if perhaps you need to change it up.
Here’s the thing: most people aren’t really INTO games or practices because it’s difficult. It’s much easier to just be IN the game or practice and give a little effort now and then – or maybe none at all – and check it off the list.
But if you really want to become the best version of yourself as a player or coach, don’t just be IN softball. Be INTO it.
And not just sometimes but all the time. You’ll like the results much better.
True Confession: I Can’t Make You Better
This is a tough admission but I think after all these years of coaching it’s time for me to drop a major truth bomb. And that truth bomb is: I can’t make you/your daughter better.
Shocking, I know, but hear me out I’ve spent a lot of time instructing fastpitch softball players, and even more time studying the latest research and thinking on the subject as well as what the best players in the world actually do (versus what they say they do sometimes).
Yet for all that work and effort, I am admitting that I can’t make the students who come to me better.
I can show them how to perform various skills. I can explain and demonstrate the movements required to perform at a higher level. I can offer corrections to help shortcut the learning process.
I can help them understand the “why” behind the “what” to make it easier to internalize and execute the necessary techniques. I can even help them overcome a crisis of confidence when adversity strikes.
But for all that knowledge and experience, I still can’t make them better. Because in order for students to get better, they have to take an action.
The first action is to listen to and try to understand what I’m telling them. That might seem obvious, but it’s actually not.
Any honest instructor will tell you they’ve had students who showed up to lessons but didn’t want to listen to what that instructor said. They wanted to do it their way.
In my case, I’ve had “students” who, when I said “here, try this” would give me a side eye as if to say, “You can’t make me do that.”
And they were correct. I can’t.
Of course, if you want to keep doing it your way that’s fine, but you’re going to stay where you are instead of getting better. And pretty soon you won’t see progress and decide to move on to the next coach whose instruction you don’t want to follow either.
The second action is to get off your butt and actually work on what the instructor told you during the lesson and whatever homework you’ve been given.
Taking lessons is a good thing, and it’s even better when you’re interested in learning. But the time in-between lessons is where the real magic happens.
Not working between lessons is like buying a really nice car but never actually getting in and driving it. It may look beautiful in the driveway or the garage, but you’re not going anywhere.
The specific actions you take once you decide to take action are also important. For example, a pitcher who is having trouble with accuracy probably doesn’t need to be throwing from the full distance.
She needs to move in closer and work on her release – including the way the arm and hand approach release, the exact point where she releases the ball, and what her hand and forearm do at that precise moment. All of those factors can and will affect where the ball goes.
If the pitcher moves in close she can rid herself of all the distractions of the rest of the pitching movement and just focus on the part that’s doing her in – the release. And the great thing about that is she doesn’t even need a field or facility, a catcher, or much of anything else.
A bucket of balls and a net to throw to, or even a rolled up pair of socks and a handy wall, will give her everything she needs to work on those movements and lock them in.
The same goes for a hitter. Let’s say that hitter is having trouble keeping her hands from leading the swing (instead of letting her body turn first).
She can work slowly on that part of the swing while shooting a video of what she’s doing so she can check. If she doesn’t have access to a phone or other camera, she can look in a mirror.
She doesn’t need a bat or the space to swing it either. She can take a sawed off dowel rod or the core from a roll of paper towels with some rags stuffed in it to work on getting her sequence so ingrained that when she gets back on the tee or even faces a live pitcher again it happens automatically.
That’s the type of work it takes to get better. But I can’t make you do any of that, which is why I say I can’t make you better.
Going back to our car analogy, the instructor or coach is like the GPS system for getting better. He or she can tell a student turn-by-turn how to get started and how to get to her destination.
But it’s up to that student to get in the car, start driving, and then follow those directions. Otherwise she’s either not going anywhere or putting herself at risk of following a path that will take her even further away from her destination.
So again, I fully admit can’t make you better. You have to do that. I can only show you the way.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 