Author Archives: Ken Krause
Congratulations to Mary Chamberlain, pitcher of the week
Gotta love Facebook for keeping up with people. This week I saw that one of my long-time students, freshman Mary Chamberlain, was named Pitcher of the Week at Blackburn College. The honor came during their Spring trip to Myrtle Beach, SC.
Mary is a great player and a great person. Nice to see her getting this kind of accolade so early in her career. I’m sure it’s the first of many!
Incredible blog post on the value of losing
Saw a reference to this blog post show up in my Twitter feed today, courtesy of @jbmthinks, and just had to pass it along even though it’s not directly about fastpitch softball. It tells the tale of Olympic skiier Edie Thys Morgan and how she ultimately learned more from losing than winning — and how losing made her a champion.
Yes, no doubt as a parent it’s hard to watch your child lose, especially if it seems to be turning into a habit. I’ve certainly been there. We all want our own kids and our players to win and experience success. Yet if they’re constantly the big fish in the small pond, sooner or later there will be a day of reckoning when they run up against other big fish who are better-prepared.
We’ve certainly all seen those tales of woe. A kid who was always the big gun (and therefore didn’t have to work at it) gets passed by one who may not be as athletically gifted but has a better work ethic. It can be a real shocker for that player who is used to winning.
The same goes for teams that play in tournaments or leagues that don’t challenge them so they can brag about how many trophies they won. We’ve all known them as well. If you’re going to get better you have to challenge yourself, even if it means going home early on Sunday now and then. Because again, sooner or later you’ll have to face that level of competition and it could be a real shocker if you haven’t truly paid your dues.
In any case, check out the article. I think you’ll find it really strikes a chord.
Why I like working with 12U-14U fastpitch players
Sorry, this took a little longer than planned, but here is the second in my series of articles on what I like about working with different age levels of fastpitch softball players. The first installment covered the very young players, essentially up to 10U. Today we’re talking about the next level, which I’ve pegged as 12U-14U — which is basically the pre-high school group.
To me that’s the most critical age for instruction, the one where doing a good job means you can really make a huge long-term difference. While you’re also setting a good foundation when working with the younger group, they can still get away with weaker technique. At this age, however, the difference between well-trained and poorly trained (or untrained) players really begins to show up.
As a rule, girls in this age group are starting to get more command of their bodies. Yes, they are often changing, but they still tend to feel more comfortable with themselves which means they can cut loose a little more. Their coordination is also improving at this point, and they are getting stronger. All of those things contribute to achieving good results.
Often they are aware that other players are improving as well, so they are motivated to try new things in order to become better players. They usually have some rivalries or things to prove, which also helps keep them working hard.
At this age most have gotten past their initial shyness so as a coach you can talk with them a little more. They’re becoming interested in more adult things (TV shows, movies, books, music, etc.) so you can base your relationship with them on more than just softball.
If you treat them right, girls at this age level are more willing to run through a wall for you. (Of course if you don’t they’ll shut you out completely.) They don’t have the distractions of boyfriends, jobs, college plans and all the other things of high schoolers so you can get more of their attention on the field or in a lesson.
There are some downsides though, too. If they experienced success in the past, even if it was just being a big fish in a small pond, they may be reluctant to listen or change what they’re doing to improve. Their limited experience has shown them that they are the best player in the league, so they assume that translates across the board.
It doesn’t, as they will eventually find out. I’ve seen plenty of kids who loved being studs in their rec league only to find out they went to the bottom of the pile in high school when they had to compete against experienced travel ball players.
As anyone who has had or been a 12 to 14 year old girl knows, they can also get some real attitudes on them. If they don’t want to be somewhere or doing something it’s not too tough to tell. That can get frustrating as you can see the potential but know it will never be unlocked until they lose the attitude and start listening. For those with helicopter parents you often have to break down that inward focus so they can learn to be a real part of a team.
Still, I’ve found those are the minority. Most are sponges, eagerly learning, and they really appreciate you not just telling them what to do but showing or explaining why it needs to be done.
Again, for a softball player this is a critical time. You can give players at this age a huge advantage going forward, teaching them skills and strategies that their peers will have to learn much later. Instead of catching up, they’ll be the ones showing well. And that’s a beautiful thing to see.
Ok, now it’s your turn. Why do you like coaching this age group? What challenges have you found? Having done it would you do it again?
Why I like working with young players
I was thinking about this the other day. I have a mix of students ranging from the 9/10 year old range all the way up through HS seniors. So I thought it might be fun to look at what’s good (and not so good) about working with those different age groups. Starting with the youngest players today.
What I like about working with them is they tend to be open books. What I mean by that is they usually haven’t acquired the bad habits (or ingrained bad teaching) that some of the older players face.
Very young players are usually eager to learn. Most of the time they don’t resist new things but instead try their best to do whatever you ask of them. They don’t need a lot of background information on why you’re trying to get them to do something, although I have had a few who have that natural curiosity (which I like, by the way).
They also tend to be a lot of fun to work with. Some are shy, so if you can get a smile out of them you’re doing well. Others are chatty. They’ll tell you whatever is on their minds, from news of their new puppy to something that happened at school. When I’ve had a bad day at my day job, just being around them can pick me up. They really are the Fountain of Youth.
The downside is sometimes it’s tough for them to pick up on how to do what you want them to do. They haven’t mastered their bodies yet, and their bodies may have already started going through some changes. Also, the attention span can wander quickly. You’ll be rolling through a half hour lesson when suddenly you realize you’ve accomplished all you’re going to accomplish for that day, and you still have 10 minutes to go in the lesson.
As a result of all that the learning curve tends to be a bit slower. It can take a lot of repetition for them to get a skill down because they just aren’t capable of the deep practice older kids can achieve. And every now and then you get one with an attitude, but those are pretty rare. And I doubt it has much to do with their age.
Some don’t like working with young players because of all the heavy lifting you have to do. It isn’t easy, and it does require patience. But if you can get past that it really is fun, especially when they do get the hang of it. You really feel like you’ve accomplished something.
So those are my thoughts. What do all of you think? I know there are a lot of coaches who read this blog. Let’s get some dialog going on the upsides (and downsides) of working with young players. I’d love to learn from you too.
It’s fun to be impressed now and then
The other night I was doing a fastpitch softball pitching lesson with a girl named Kristi Gandy, a longtime student of mine and one of the pitching studettes in the area. Kristi is a high school senior who will be pitching at Lake Forest College next year, and will likely be spending lots of extra time playing in post-season tournaments with them.
For most of her lessons this year Kristi’s brother Jim has been enlisted to catch. (They have a reciprocity agreement, as she catches for his baseball pitching lessons too). But the other night, she had a new catcher, a girl named Amanda whom I’d met once before when she came out to observe one of our team practices.
Now, I have to admit that given what I do in my off-hours I tend to be pretty hyper-intensive about technique. I like things to be done a certain way, and while I don’t spend a lot of time with the catchers who come in to work with my pitching students I do notice what they do.
So it was a real pleasure to watch Amanda catch. Her stances were excellent, as was her glove work, her blocking, and just about anything else you’d care to observe. I was pleasantly impressed with her.
Afterwards I decided to let her know. I complimented her and asked her who her instructor was. She said it was Laura Matthews, one of the coaches at Lake Forest College, which is how she was hooked up with Kristi. Her hitting coach is Joe Kinsella, the head coach there, and one of his assistants works with her on catching.
I see a lot of bad technique taught by people who you think ought to know what they’re doing, so it’s nice to see excellent technique being taught now and then. What was most impressive was learning afterwards that Amanda is in 8th grade. Here she is, not even in high school, and doing a great job catching for one of the top pitchers in the area, and a senior to boot.
Can’t wait to see where she is as a player in four years!
Fastpitch softball hitting game — High Fives
One of the challenges of teaching fastpitch hitting, either in lessons or in a team setting, is getting some game-like pressure into practice. After all, just about anyone can look good in the cage when they’re relaxed. But when there’s something on the line it can be a whole different ballgame (so to speak).
Tonight I had that situation with a couple of hitters. I wanted to give them a little bit of skin in the game to see how they handled the pressure, and have a little fun while we were at it. So I came up with High Fives.
The rules are pretty basic. You can use a pitching machine, front toss or some other method of delivering the ball. You make the pitch, and if the hitter hits a line drive or strong fly ball she gets a point. If she swings and misses, fouls it off or hits a pop-up or weak grounder she loses a point. A strong ground ball is neutral — it doesn’t gain or lose her a point.
Score is kept in the same manner you use for basic card counting in Blackjack. (Originally I was going to make the game 21, but realized it could take forever to finish.) So if she hits a line drive with the first pitch, it’s +1. A fly ball on the next pitch is +2. A pop-up on the next pitch takes it back to +1 and so forth. You can also go into negative numbers, i,e, -1, -2.
Five is the magic number, which gives the game its name. If the hitter gets to -5 the game is over and she owes you five pushups. On the other hand, if she gets to +5, the game is over and you owe her five pushups. The hitters usually get pretty excited when they win and you have to drop and give them five.
Now, you don’t have to use the same exact scoring system I use. You can adjust it to the types of hits you’re trying to achieve.
If you’re looking for a way to spice up hitting practice give this game a try. Just be sure you’re ready to pay up!
Are you training Seal Team Six?
Let me start by saying there are a lot of wonderful fastpitch softball coaches out there in the world. They really do put their players first, and while they may be demanding they aren’t over the top.
Then there are the coaches who act like they’re training Navy Seal Team Six. They favor long practices, brutal conditioning (think about the scene in Norway in Miracle) and yelling/screaming constantly at their players to perform. Woe unto the youngster who makes a mistake and dares not to be perfect.
Why? What possible good could that do? The fact is you’re not planning to storm any beaches or hunt down any fugitives in the remote mountains of Central Asia. You’re going to play softball.
It’s important to have standards and to want your players to become all they can be. But making them miserable shouldn’t be part of the deal.
Keep things in perspective. It’s a game and games are supposed to be fun. Work hard, but keep it in perspective. Your teams will perform better and everyone will be a whole lot happier.
Sometimes they just miss the point
I was at a lesson tonight (as usual) and got to talking to the parents of one of my students. They have been excited to see the progress their daughter has made, especially since we started back up in late September, and then they told me an amusing story.
There are four pitchers on their daughter’s 12U team (including her). My student actually could be playing 10U but moved up.
Anyway, at a recent practice the pitchers were all warming up, and one of the coaches pointed out that my student was the only one not doing wrist snap drills. Her mom and dad said, “Yes, that’s right” and smiled. (For me, wrist snaps as warm ups are a total waste of time, as I’ve written in previous blog posts.)
Her parents told me the other pitchers go through this elaborate warm-up sequence before pitching. Their daughter is often pitching for 25 minutes (or at least seems like it) before the others get started.
So then I asked the big question: how is she doing compared to the others? Because if she’s not doing what they’re doing, you’d hope she’s doing better.
She is. And that’s the funny thing to me. Despite being younger and smaller than the others, apparently she throws harder and more accurately. If that’s the case, and she’s doing something different from the others, maybe it’s time to question what the others are doing instead?
Just sayin’.
There’s more to rotation than merely turning
It seems to be pretty well-established in most fastpitch softball circles these days that rotation is a critical, must-have element of good hitting. Yet it’s important to keep in mind that the mere act of rotating itself doesn’t guarantee success. When you rotate, you actually have to do something, i.e. generate power with it.
As a hitting instructor I see it all the time. Players understand that they have to “turn on the ball.” Yet they do it in a way that looks good in slow motion video but doesn’t actually accomplish what it’s supposed to accomplish.
The idea of rotation in hitting is to recruit the big muscles — thighs, butt, core, back, chest, etc. — to help move the mass of the bat. Those muscles create power and batspeed. The smaller muscles in the arms can then be focused on getting the bat head on-plane with the ball and making fine adjustments. But when the big muscles aren’t used, hitters have to depend on the smaller muscles to get the bat moving, which means they’re less capable of making adjustments. They also don’t hit the ball as hard.
However you go about it, rotating the hips has to be an aggressive, ballistic movement, not an easy turn into position. I will tell hitters to “pop the hips” to get them more aggressive. It’s not just about speed — the body has to be used properly, driving the back side up and around the front side — but assuming the right things are happening “pop the hips” gets the idea of being more aggressive.
Another thing a quick, powerful rotation does is give the hitter more time to see the ball before committing the bat to the swing. If the hitter can cut the time of rotation in half, that extra time can be added to the time he/she has to see the path of the ball (and if he/she is really good its rotation), which helps the hitter make a better final decision on where to take the bat.
I tell hitters I always want to see them making their positive move (striding as I teach it, although a forward shift with no stride also counts) and at least starting hip rotation on every pitch. Sometimes they worry that they’re going to swing at a bad pitch, but when they do it they see committing to strong rotation on every pitch actually makes it easier to hold back on a bad pitch because they can start the bat at the ball later.
When they make the powerful hip turn they also see how the ball jumps off the bat at contact. It just gets easier to hit well. Maybe when you’re moving faster overall you have less time to take yourself out of a good hit — you’ve gathered the info you need and now you’re just executing, reducing the act to see ball/hit ball.
Something you want to watch out for is the “rotation” that is more about turning the back leg than driving the back hip forward. The old “squish the bug” cue is the worst example of it, but there are other ways that are less than optimal as well. If the thigh bone (femur for those who like medical terms) is primarily rotating in the hip socket you don’t have rotation.
Instead, you want the back hip to drive forward around the front hip and into the ball, which at the point of contact generally results in the back foot being up on the toe with the heel pointed at the sky rather than the catcher. (Mark, I’ll save you the trouble — see these videos for some good examples.) I say generally because you’ll always be able to find cases where it doesn’t happen, but those are more the exceptions where a hitter has to make an unexpected adjustment, such as an inside pitch that gets to them more quickly than they were ready for.
The point is just turning isn’t enough. To really be successful with it, the hitter has to practice and become confident in his/her ability to rotate quickly and powerfully in order to maximize the swing.
Now it’s your turn. What have you observed in hitters when it comes to rotation? How have you gotten them to commit to doing it more powerfully? And what kind of results did you see?
The real measure of an instructor
Had some time on a cold, snowy day to ponder an issue that perplexes many parents of fastpitch players — how to choose a private instructor.
One tried and true thing many people do is look at the top players in their area and assume that whoever coached those players up can do the same for their kid. Maybe that’s true. But it’s no guarantee.
In my mind, the real measure isn’t the coach’s top students — the kids just dripping with athleticism who blow everyone away. It’s the ones with average ability/athleticism who become successful that you ought to look at. Here’s why.
The outstanding athletes will probably be successful no matter who their instructor is. Sure, some instructors will take them farther than others, but the raw material has to be there first. As they say in the computer world, garbage in/garbage out.
The average ability players, though, test the instructor’s ability to take those student to the limit of what they can do. Which means there’s a far greater likelihood that that instructor will be able to do the same for your player, especially early in her career.
When you see a player who isn’t tremendously gifted standing out on the field, that’s a kid who has been coached up. That’s the instructor you’ll want to seek out. And if your player does have that little something extra, odds are the same magic will work for her too. Only a little better.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 