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.

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.

One of the most common pieces of advice given to fastpitch softball players (and their parents) is to look at what the best players in the world do, and then do that. While there is definitely a lot of value to that advice, especially when you’re early in the learning curve, it also has its limitations.

Basically, if all anyone does is imitate what’s already known, or analyze what people already do, progress stops. Innovation and improvement doesn’t come from seeing what’s already there. It comes from thinking “Is there a better way?” and moving away from the conventional wisdom.

A great (and often-used) example is Dick Fosbury, the high jumper who introduced the “Fosbury Flop.” Back in the 1960s, the best high jumpers in the world used a technique where they would run up to the bar from the side, push off of one leg, and then scissor kick their way over it. All the efforts in the sport were expended trying to figure out ways to improve on that technique a little more in order to get higher.

Well, almost all. Fosbury had the courage to not imitate all the others, but instead try something revolutionary – turning completely around at launch and going over the bar head and neck first. The rest is history. These days, any high jumper at a high competitive level does the Fosbury flop.

The same potential exists in our sport – if you’re willing to ask “why” things are done a certain way instead of just following the crowd. Rather than simply looking at video of what great hitters, pitchers, fielders, etc. do, innovators take that starting point and ask “is that the most optimal way to use your body?”

Innovators ask “what if?” and try something different. It may not always work out, but they’re in good company. Thomas Edison said he made 10,000 light bulbs before he found the one that worked. And that basic design lasted more than 100 years – at least until someone else said “why can’t we make a compact fluorescent bulb instead?

The idea of “what is” versus “what could be” reminds me of the often-quoted study of softball pitchers in the 1996 Olympics by Dr. Shery L. Werner. Many people look at her findings and conclude that what she describes is the correct method of pitching. Yet that wasn’t the purpose of the study.

The purpose of the study was to see what these elite-level pitchers did, and to see what they had in common. That, however, doesn’t say whether what they’re doing is optimal. In order to determine what’s optimal you have to take the same group of pitchers and try any number of alternative techniques to see which ones produce the best results.

For all we know, finishing with the hips at 45 to 52 degrees may not be the best way to finish. Or it might. The only thing we know is that’s what those pitchers did. It would take a lot more experimentation to conclude whether it’s optimal; you’d have to try different methods and measure the results – of course giving each pitcher a sufficient amount of time to master each of the alternative techniques. Truth is, we’ll probably have to wait for androids to be invented before you can run that experiment conclusively.

In the meantime, we need to be more than “monkey see, monkey do.” Don’t be afraid to thoughtfully break the mold now and then to see if going against the crowd rather than blindly following it produces better results.

You may wind up right back where you started. Or you could end up being the next Dick Fosbury. And wouldn’t that look great on a softball coaching resume?

Now it’s your turn. Have you ever gone against the conventional wisdom? If so why, and what were the results?

Back in March I wrote about a different team concept I was doing this summer. In case you don’t feel like following the link, it was called the IOMT Castaways – IOMT standing for Island of Misfit Toys. The team was put together by invitation, and was made up of girls I’d either coached before on a team or who were pitching or hitting students of mine. (Some were both, too.)

The primary credential to be on the team (which led to the name) was having been underrated or under-appreciated on another team. Perhaps it was a school team where they were overlooked for varsity, or not given a chance to compete for their primary position. Perhaps it was a travel team that passed on them, or one that took them and then didn’t play them or constantly criticized them.

Whatever it was, these were essentially players that other coaches didn’t think much of but that I thought could play ball. We also looked hard at the kind of people they were. We wanted not just quality ballplayers but good teammates with good parents. We also made it clear that the goal of this team wasn’t college exposure. It was to give girls who just love playing softball an opportunity to play purely for the love of the game. )Truth is there were a couple of girls I knew who had all those other qualities but were still interested in pursuing college scholarships, so I suggested they play on a team that had that goal.)

In any case, we just finished up the season last Sunday. So how did the experiment go? Were we able to take these “castaways” from other teams and train them up to be competitive, or was it a nice idea that fell apart in the execution?

I’m glad to say it was actually a very successful season. We played a mix of sanctioned tournaments (A, B and open), and finished with a record of 21-14 across seven weekends. In our tournaments we earned one second place finish, two thirds and a consolation championship. Considering I would’ve been happy with any one of those results, to have achieved so much in a single year was outstanding.

Perhaps my favorite story came from one of our players, who knows some of the families in the host organization for one of the tournaments we played in. It was a USSSA A tournament where we took third, and came within a run of going to the championship game. Apparently we were quite the talk of the tournament. Everyone was asking “Who the (heck) are the Castaways, and where did they come from?” Of course, our Florida-like uniforms certainly helped keep the mystery alive.

More importantly, and I think anyone who has ever coached girls can appreciate this, we had no drama. None. There were no hurt feelings, no cliques, no catty remarks behind people’s backs. Our Castaways genuinely liked each, and embraced their differences and the quirks of their teammates. It was one of the happiest teams I’ve ever been around – at least until our last game was over, at which point there were many tears shed for the end of their careers, and the end of all of our time together.

The only regret our whole coaching staff had was that we started it at 18U instead of 14U. We couldn’t help but wonder what we might’ve been able to accomplish with them with a couple more years together. Often your better teams are those with at least a core of players who have been together for a while. Almost everyone on our team knew someone from having played with them before, but it was hardly a familiar group to start. To see them bond they way they did, and most likely make friends for life, was an amazing thing.

So there you have it. Proof that with the right group of players, the Castaways concept works. There are no plans for an IOMT Castaways in 2014. But I’m keeping the organization alive. It’s sort of like the Three Amigos. Whenever another group of players need a positive, supportive atmosphere where they can get an opportunity to show what they can really do, the Castaways will be there for them. And hey, who knows? Maybe a couple of the original Castaways will come back and coach.

As a general rule, I strive to keep myself out on the front end of the softball world. I’m constantly looking for new information and new ways of doing things.

There is one area, however, where I am pretty much “old school” – how I view opponents when we’re playing. Normally I’m a pretty friendly person. But when I’m coaching I tend to be rather, shall we say, focused and intense.

I am a competitor. I always have been. As the Billy Beane character says in the movie Moneyball, I hate losing more than I like winning. So when my team is playing, I’m not particularly interested in meeting new people and making new friends.

In fact, I can’t really understand those who are. I’ve seen plenty of coaches who like to come up and chat as though we’re just hanging out at a bar somewhere watching a game neither of us has a stake in. I’ll respond politely, usually. But I still don’t get it.

When we’re playing I’m not interested in being your friend or chatting about the weather. I’m interested in figuring out how to beat your team and not a whole lot else.

I dunno. Maybe it’s a character flaw. But at this point in my life, and my coaching career, I don’t see it changing.

So what about you coaches? Do you like chatting with the opponents? Or are you more like me and view them as an obstacle to be overcome and dispatched without prejudice?

Actually, this doesn’t just apply to softball coaching. It also applies to work, and family, and just about any other interaction. But it’s something to keep in mind:

The biggest mistake in coaching is insisting on proving you’re right in face of all evidence to the contrary.

Yet it seems to go on all the time. Coaches will stubbornly adhere to a certain strategy or way of playing even though it doesn’t work. Or they’ll set a lineup and stay with it even though it’s not producing runs – or wins.

One of my biggest pet peeves is coaches who make a decision at the beginning of the season  (sometimes even before the season) about the abilities of their players, and never bother to notice which players have improved and which ones haven’t.

Whatever it is, they may think it makes them important, or awesome. But it only hurts the players and the team.

It’s good to have opinions and convictions. But not to the point where you do things just to prove you’re right. Instead, be sure to constantly evaluate what you’re doing, and don’t be afraid to make changes for the better.

There is a tendency in all sports, not just fastpitch softball, to look for players who look like the best athletes. It makes sense on one level. You’d think the better the athlete the better the player will be.

But that isn’t always necessarily true, as evidenced by a post on Daniel Coyles’ The Talent Code blog. In it he takes a look back to the 2000 NFL Combine, and one player in particular. It was a quarterback who didn’t show too well in the tests they put players through.

He was fairly slow, running the 40 yard dash in about 5.2 seconds. (Understand that 4.8 is considered slow for an NFL player.) He didn’t have a bad arm, but it didn’t knock anyone out either. Still, one NFL team saw something in his character and thought he might just the right man for them.

The team was the New England Patriots, and the quarterback was Tom Brady. If you know anything about football, and probably even if you don’t, you know it was a pretty good selection.

You see, there’s a lot more to being a player than just athletic ability. Character plays a big part in an individual’s and a team’s success – especially in fastpitch softball, where there is so much adversity and failure. If you don’t have players of high character, they’re going to crumble pretty quickly under the pressure.

The IOMT Castaways

As at least some of the readers of this blog know, I am coaching an 18U team this year called the IOMT Castaways. IOMT stands for Island Of Misfit Toys. I recruited every single player on it, based not just on athletic ability but on character.

They’re misfit toys because somewhere along the way some coach didn’t think very much of them, but I believe they can play. For the most part they’re not going to impress anyone with their time against a stopwatch, or the way they walk onto the field. But it doesn’t matter, because when the game is on they can flat out play!

The most important thing, at least so far, is how much they enjoy being together and playing together. Because of their individual histories there are no egos here, no one yelling at a teammate, none of the drama that often goes with the territory. Instead, they’re playing for the love of the game – as it should be.

It’s always tempting to go for that great athlete. But a lot of great athletes fail. In my book, and even at the professional level, character counts for more. Choose wisely and you can’t go wrong.