Author Archives: Ken Krause
Game to teach softball players how to slide
Sliding is one of those softball skills that can be a problem for some players. Many who have the issue are afraid of getting hurt so they avoid it at all costs. That can be a problem in a game, where a good slide (versus running all the way to the base) can mean the difference between safe or out.
How do you get them to overcome that fear? Part of it is teaching them good technique. If they’re confident they won’t hurt themselves too badly they’ll be more likely to give it a try. Still, doing it in practice is one thing. Doing it in a game, well, that’s something else.
This fall I was working with a team that had several players who didn’t like to slide. That led me to create a game that not only gave them lots of practice but made it fun.
Of course, before we played the game we worked on basic technique. I took them into the outfield and had them take their cleats off. That was important so they wouldn’t catch a cleat and turn or break an ankle.
We set up two lines, with a base about 20 feet away. We went over the technique, stressing the importance of running full speed and then driving out instead of sitting straight down. That when on for 15 minutes or so, when everyone was at least giving it a try. Then we did a few other things before coming to the game.
For that, we set four or five bases spaced somewhat randomly, i.e. not in a square. Then it was basically a game of tag. The rules were simple.
One person was “it,” just as in regular tag. If you were standing on a base you were safe. But, and here’s the important part, only two people could be on a base at any given time. There were more than eight players, so that meant some were always off a base. You could run to a base to be safe, but in order to occupy it you had to slide. Once the “free” player slid in, one of the players who had been on the base had to get off. She could not come back to that base, but she could go to another. If the player didn’t slide, she wasn’t safe on the base and could be tagged. If a player was tagged by “it” she became the new “it.”
Once the element of competition was introduced, the players forgot their fear. They were so focused on not being it they were sliding freely and frequently. They were also laughing and having fun. It was great conditioning too – they were huffing and puffing after all the running.
I was told it translated into their next game – a couple of players who hadn’t been willing to slide before did it – and were safe.
If you have players who don’t like to slide give this game a try. I think you’ll like the results.
Now it’s your turn. Have you had any players who didn’t like sliding? What did you do to help them?
Solid softball mechanics a key to confidence
We talk a lot about the importance of confidence in softball – particularly for hitters, but in every aspect of the sport. There’s no doubt that it makes a difference.
But when it comes to ensuring our players have confidence, many are at a loss. There are plenty of tricks and techniques you can use to up the mental game. But there’s one that often gets ignored.
It’s good mechanics. The root cause of a lack of confidence is often uncertainty about one’s technique. If you’re not sure of what you’re doing, you’re very likely to become nervous and filled with self-doubt. On the other hand, if you’ve put in the work and believe you have good technique, you’re far more likely to be confident.
This is where quality instruction and quality practice come in. You want to learn good mechanics – the kind you see successful players use – from someone who knows how to teach it. But that’s only half the battle.
The other half is to work at it until you internalize it – in other words until you can do it without thinking about it. Those good mechanics should be as natural as breathing.
If you’ve put in the work, you’re far more likely to be confident. And if you’re confident you’ll perform. And if you perform you’ll be more confident. May the circle remain unbroken!
It doesn’t necessarily work immediately with everyone. But sooner or later it will. For those who have put in the work but are still uncertain (this especially happens with younger players), remind them that they HAVE put in the work and tell them to take that out onto the field with them.
It’s like they say in Remember the Titans – it’s like Novocain. Give it time, it always works.
The hitting sequence – hips, shoulders, bat
While this is nothing particularly revolutionary or even new for some, when it comes to softball hitting it can’t be emphasized enough. There is a very specific sequence or order for the movements in the swing: first come the hips, then the shoulders, then the bat.
The reason I bring it up is that it’s easy for players to slip back into old habits – ones that are hard notice unless you work with hitters all the time. Usually the hitters know the proper sequence as well. Yet there’s something about holding that bat in your hands that makes hitters want to get it going too early.
When I’m teaching lessons, sometimes I will see a player who normally hits with good power struggling to make strong contact. Upon closer examination, I’ll see that the shoulders are turning either along with the hips, or even slightly ahead of the hips. There is a certain look to the swing when the upper body is getting ahead, even by a little bit.
At that point, I will ask the hitters “what’s the sequence?” She’ll repeat it back: hips, shoulders, bat. Once she has everything going in the right order, the power returns and all is right with the world.
Getting the body parts moving in the right order is critical for quality at bats. Remember that sequence – hips, shoulders, bat. It absolutely makes a difference.
More on overuse injuries
A couple of posts ago I wrote about the problems of overuse injuries in youth sports, including fastpitch softball. It’s a phenomenon that’s growing, often due to a combination of specializing in one sport too early and not taking breaks.
Since that time I’ve found a couple of other articles that also talk about this issue. Both are from the Science Daily website. The first is this one, which quotes some sports medicine specialists who talk about the value of playing multiple sports.
The more interesting one to me, though, was this one, which says that nearly 30 percent of all college athlete injuries are a result of overuse. It goes on to say “a majority of overuse injuries (62 percent) occurred in females athletes, according to a new study published in the current edition of the Journal of Athletic Training, the National Athletic Trainers’ Association scientific publication.” And, it says, field hockey, softball, soccer and volleyball have the highest rates of overuse injuries.
Think about that. We’re not talking about young children anymore. These are collegiate athletes, many of whom are no doubt getting money for school in exchange for playing. Their muscles have matured, as have their bone structures – and their knowledge of their own bodies.
How does this happen? A big part of it is coaches driven to win because their jobs depend on it. They run drills over and over, and conduct extended practice sessions – as much as the NCAA rules will allow. They throw their #1 pitcher game after game, because of course the fastpitch pitching motion is “natural” and therefore requires no rest. Yeah, right.
The big problem is not just the injury itself according to the article. It’s also the toll it takes psychologically on the players. Once these overuse injuries occur, they can affect recovery time and performance.
We’re not talking about sore arms after the first practice. While that’s not a good thing, it can happen if your players aren’t in game shape. But they can recover quickly from these problems with a little rest. Overuse injuries tend to linger, though. And the more you over-use, the worse the issue gets.
If you’re a coach, it’s important to be aware of these risks. Conducting brutal four-hour practices may not be getting you where you want to go; it may be hurting you. Instead, try running two-hour practices that are more efficient in their use of time.
If you’re a parent and you’re seeing this type of injury in your daughter, don’t just sit idly by. Speak up. Show the coach some of these articles and let him/her know the risks. Because if you don’t and your daughter ends up unable to play, the coach will find someone else. The game must go on. In the meantime, your daughter will be watching from the sidelines. Perhaps in a sling.
Repetition in softball doesn’t always equal improvement
One of the most common ways of practicing fastpitch softball is to perform lots and lots of repetitions of the same skill. The idea is that if a little bit is good, more is better.
Yet the truth is that’s not always so. Yes, building skills does require repetition. But that doesn’t mean you have to do one hundred reps of the same skill in a row. In fact, that approach can work against you depending on how engaged the player is.
You see, as the saying goes, practice doesn’t make perfect; it just makes permanent. Say you decide you’re going to hit 100 balls to a player to field. On the first 25-50 her brain is engaged, her motor is running, and she’s all enthused. Then for the next 50, her brain shuts down and her technique starts getting a little sloppy.
Which half of the drill do you think is going to stick with her? There’s a good chance it’s the second half because it’s the last thing she did.
Honestly, it’s better to do 50, or even 25, great repetitions than some good and some bad. What you want to be doing is building an automatic approach – building up the myelin that tells the muscles what to do faster than you can consciously think it. When that occurs, the player has a much better chance of executing the skill during a game. When you do some good and some bad, the myelin never has the chance to build properly and the brain can get mixed messages.
One other good reason to do fewer reps of one skill is it allows you to work in additional skills. And as we all know, there never seems to be enough time for everything you want to do.
How many is the right number? It varies by player. Some can only handle a small number before losing focus. Others can seemingly go all day. You need to judge that by the individual players.
If you’re working with one player (perhaps your own daughter), it’s pretty easy to adjust to her focus level. If you’re working with a team, it gets a little tougher. In those cases, try grouping players by focus level rather than raw skill level. It may mean a bit of an unbalanced practice – some players working on more things than others – but it will also mean a more productive practice.
The key is to remember that your team really will play like you practice. Keep it sharp and you’ll like the results on the field much better.
Be sure you’re not drinking the sand
Ok, you’re probably wondering what drinking sand has to do with softball. The phrase comes from the movie The American President, and was written by one of my all-time favorite screenwriters – Aaron Sorkin.
At one point the President (played by Michael Douglas) is speaking with his speech writer, who is encouraging the President to speak out about accusations from his opponent because the opponent is the only one talking. The writer (played by Michael J Fox) tells him people are so thirsty for leadership they’ll crawl through the desert to a mirage, and when they find there’s no water they’ll drink the sand.
To which the President replies, “People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.”
Brilliant, and I find it happens a lot in the softball world. There are a lot of antiquated or just plain poor techniques being taught by coaches and instructors. But parents willingly pay good money for their kids to learn them because they don’t know the difference.
As a player, or the parent of one, it’s important to do your research. Don’t assume because this person presents themselves as an instructor, or even a former player, that they actually know how to teach your daughter to succeed. Some of the most convincing people out there are the ones who know the least. And the ones who claim the most impact on their students are often the ones who contributed the least.
Learn as much as you can, and compare what you hear to what you see the best players in the world doing. Not what they say they do, but what they actually do in a game. If it doesn’t match up, run.
The other one you’ll want to be careful with are the people who insist if you play in their program you should take lessons from them. While there are some advantages if, say, your pitching coach is also a coach with your team, it’s not an absolute. Anyone who forces you to go to a particular instructor doesn’t have your best interest at heart – they have their own.
Ultimately, you want to get the best instruction you can find. Don’t drink the sand. Make sure you can tell the difference between good and poor instruction and you’ll find your investment pays off a lot better.
Overuse injuries in youth softball growing
Saw an article today that my local paper picked up from the San Francisco Chronicle , talking about how injuries have exploded in youth sports in the past few years. The big culprit? Overuse, driving largely by kids specializing in one sport year-round rather than playing different sports.
That’s certainly an issue in the fastpitch softball world. I hear these stories all the time about the schedules even 10U players are playing. The goal seems to be to get in at least 100 games in a season. In the Northern climes, they’ll play 5-6 tournaments in the fall – basically from the start of September through the end of October. Then there are some indoor games, followed by a tournament every weekend from the first weekend in April through the end of Jly.
Down South, where the weather stays warm year-round, they basically take off December for the holidays and that’s about it.
I don’t know about where you live, but where I am the high school season can be even tougher. Games every day, Monday – Friday, and often a double-header on Saturday. If you only have one pitcher, she’s going to see a lot of action. For those whose high school seasons are in the spring, that heavy schedule is then followed by playing pretty much every weekend in June and July.
That’s a lot of repetitive motion, which is generally how overuse injuries occur. According to the article, what makes it tougher for softball, baseball and golf is that these are very arm and shoulder-oriented sports, so they put a lot of stress on the joints.
According to the article, this didn’t happen so much when kids were playing different sports throughout the year. The motions for, say, basketball are different than those of softball, so the body had a chance to rest and recuperate from the softball-specific stress.
And no, this isn’t a “girl thing.” It’s actually more pronounced in baseball because of the overhand throwing motion pitchers use. But since this is a softball blog (at least most of the time) we’re sticking with that.
In today’s culture, it’s getting tougher and tougher for kids NOT to specialize. There’s the pressure to be on the “right” (read: most competitive) team so they can get some of that college money. If you’re not willing to devote 24×7 to that high-level softball team, they don’t want you, and by implication you’ll never get that D1 scholarship.
But what toll is it taking? An organization called Stop Sports Injuries is trying to provide some answers. They’re going to medical professionals, especially those who specialize in youth sports injuries, to find out about the trends and get their recommendations. You can see their softball-specific data sheet here.
One thing they recommend, which is going to cause all sorts of anguish among coaches who believe winning is everything, is some pretty strict pitch count limitations for pitchers. That old myth about the softball pitching motion being “safe,” which means you can ride one pitcher game after game for an entire tournament, is just that – a myth. At 10U-12U they recommend a limit of 65 pitches per game, and no more than 95 pitches a day over two days. No pitching at all on the third day. At 15U and above, the numbers “only” go up to 100 pitches per game, 140 total per day in the first two days, and 100 for the third day. That’s way less than a lot of pitchers actually pitch during the season.
Again, this isn’t only for pitchers. Catchers and other position players are running the same risks, just with different body parts. Our bodies weren’t designed for the type of repetitive motions being demanded of youth players these days. The kind of cross-training created by participating in multiple sports rather than spending all your time on one encourages better overall development, and protects players from wearing down – mentally as well as physically.
Whether you agree with the exact numbers, this is important information for both parents and coaches to understand. There needs to be a mindset/cultural change if we’re really going to help our kids become all they can be – and keep them healthy. I recommend that all parents and coaches follow the links in this post and become better-informed about the risks. It might just be the best thing you do for your daughter/players this year.
New softball-based comedy web series
You just never know what you’re going to find when you open up the ol’ mailbag.
The other day I received an email from a former player and coach named Sarah McLean telling me about a new web comedy series called 3 Strikes that she has developed. It’s about a professional softball player who is suspended from her team due to anger issues and has to attend anger management classes. She ends up coaching at a high school, where her intensity meets up with the current generation of players.
Sounds like it could be fun. It’s the first and only program dedicated 100 percent to softball.
If you’d like to learn more, check out this link: www.indiegogo.com/projects/3-strikes-web-series/x/511293 It’s a quick video that shows a few clips. It’s also her site with an appeal for funding.
If you like what you see, how about throwing a little support Sarah’s way?
Dailies: softball improvement comes little by little
For some of you softball veterans this may be old hat. But for the rest, I want to tell you about a routine called “dailies” that can make a huge improvement in your fielding.
Basically, dailies consist of short hop practice. There are different variations, but the routine we used this past summer consisted of 10-20 short hops right in front, then 10-20 to the forehand side and 10-20 to the backhand side.
The purpose is to work on your glove skills. You can do them on one or two knees, or from a standing (but low) position. I’ll talk about the mechanics a little more in a moment.
As the name implies, you do these exercises daily. With my team this past summer, we would do them at the start of every practice, and thanks to my assistant coaches they became part of our routine before every game.
What was interesting is it wasn’t necessarily the coaches who said the girls got better. The players themselves felt like their skills had improved. Not with the first or second time, but as a result of doing them over and over. They felt more confident fielding balls on the ground, and were more sure-handed as a result. Doesn’t mean we never made any errors. But we made very few on ground balls.
Ok, now for a little more on the mechanics. Dailies are something you do with a partner. Have the partners set up about 10 feet apart facing each other. We always started with straight-in balls. Most of the time the players were kneeling facing each other, although they can also do it from a fielding position on their feet.
The partner with the ball throws it to the partner across from her, making the ball bounce about a foot or so in front of her. The fielding partner reaches out to get the ball, and attempts to catch the bottom. This is as opposed to catching the back of the ball and giving with it. Reaching out to catch the bottom of the ball right after it bounces allows the player to play the ball instead of the other way around.
After completing the ones straight in, the partners turn with their throwing side knee down. They can either be to the forehand or backhand side first. Assuming both partners throw with the same hand, have them line up with their glove-side feet across from each other. In other words, if both are right-handed, they should line up their left feet across from each other. They then bounce the ball to the outside of their partner’s foot.
Something to emphasize on the forehand and backhand work is to use one hand, not two. When you’re reaching for a ball, you can reach farther by extending your glove hand and keeping your throwing hand back.
Dailies take a little time during practice – I usually allowed 10 minutes – but they’re worth it. Incorporate them into your routine, and emphasize quality repetitions, and watch your fielding improve.
Now I want to hear from you. Have your tried dailies? If so did you get the same results? And if any of my coaches are reading this, please share your impressions of them!
The problem with playing down
Now that fall ball is cranking up in earnest, teams are beginning to test themselves in games and find out who they really are. Some are finding they are better than they thought; others are finding they have a lot of work to do.
One of the things you’re likely to see are some serious mismatches in playing ability. If it happens because better teams didn’t know there would be a wide range of ability that’s one thing. But if they’re playing down just to trophy hunt, they’re doing themselves a disservice.
One of the biggest problems with playing below your actual level is it gives you a false sense of how good you are. Sure, you may be defeating or even blowing out teams that don’t hit, field or pitch too well. The trouble is that can lead you to think you don’t have to work on those aspects of the game yourself so much. After all, you’re winning, right? So you must be good.
Think again. Because one day you’ll run into a team that has been playing at the proper level. Maybe they haven’t won as many games as you have. But when you meet them head to head you find out that they’ve developed their skills because they’ve had to in order to compete.
Winning alone is not the measure of a good team. You also have to look at who you’re playing. Play at the right level — one where you have to be at your best to win — and you’ll develop your team better and faster. And you’ll help your players become all they can be.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 