Category Archives: Coaching
Product review: A Coach’s Guide to Training Catchers DVD
Ok, I will admit I am a little behind the times on this one. A couple of years ago (at least I think it was a couple of years ago) I received a complementary copy of a video called A Coach’s Guide to Training Catchers from Dave Weaver, owner and head instructor of the New England Catching Camp.
I sat down to watch it then without realizing how long it was. I didn’t have enough time to complete it so I stopped it and set it aside, meaning to come back to it. But then life happened, and I didn’t get back to it. Until recently, that is. A change in my work schedule has me on a train three days a week, which gave me plenty of time to give it a look.
If you’re looking for a comprehensive resource for training catchers, this is it. The DVD is 2 hours and 40 minutes long (more on that later), and covers everything from stances to receiving the ball to blocking to fielding bunts to throwing out runners. It appears to be shot during one of Coach Weaver’s camps, so the kids demonstrating are not necessarily the “best of the best,” hand-picked athletes but instead regular players. Some of them may indeed be excellent catchers, but it doesn’t appear that the video was skewed toward it like so many are. Instead, their skills are the results of training, making what’s shown more relatable to the bulk of the people toward whom the video is aimed.
I liked many of the techniques demonstrated by Coach Weaver. A good example is his take on displaying the ball for an umpire, aka framing the pitch. For many people, framing means catching the ball and then pulling it in toward the plate or making some other sort of move that is likely insulting to the umpire’s intelligence. Coach Weaver shows it as catching the part of the ball that’s furthest away from the plate, i.e. if the pitch is high, catch the top half of the ball.
The stances and blocking are pretty much the same as what I teach, so of course I like those as well. Catchers make their bones through their ability to block balls in the dirt, especially with a runner on third. All too often catchers want to “catch” those balls, which leads to disaster when the ball takes a bad hop and gets away. Coach Weaver shows how blocking the ball keeps it close, so runners (especially those on third) stay put. It takes some work to get catchers trained to let the ball hit their gear instead of trying to get it with their gloves, but it will definitely help you win a few more games.
One technique he advocates that I am not a fan of is having the throwing hand in a closed fist behind the glove with runners on base. His take is that it creates a faster transfer of the ball from the glove to the throwing hand. Honestly, I’m not convinced of that. And that comes from an ex-catcher who used to keep his throwing hand behind his glove at all times, because that’s how old I am. The Johnny Bench hand behind the shinguard didn’t come in until after I was pretty close to done. That being said, I wouldn’t stop a catcher from doing it if she’s comfortable. I’m just not sure it’s necessary. I’d need to see some hard numbers to convince me it’s the way to go.
The one thing I found as a negative to the video was it seemed a little ponderous to me. One of the reasons it runs 2 hours and 40 minutes is Coach Weaver has several kids, male and female, demonstrate the techniques. In a live setting it’s probably not a problem. On video it can feel like it’s taking forever. I actually found myself running it a 2X speed or more, which give Coach Weaver a bit of a chipmunk sound to his voice but speeds things along.
Here again, I will note that I’ve been teaching catchers for a while so a lot of the information wasn’t new to me. That may have colored my thinking as I watched it. If you’re coming at it new, all the repetition may be necessary so you can grasp the concepts. On the other hand, it’s video. If you need to see it again you can just run it back as many times as you want. A little judicious editing would be appealing in my book. Coach Weaver says he’s coming out with a new video soon, so perhaps he will incorporate that suggestion (which I have made to him directly).
It is definitely worth owning, though, especially at $39.99. Parents of young catchers, or coaches who understand the value a top-notch catcher can bring to their teams, will want to invest in this video. Catchers are the backbone of your team. Be sure that backbone is strong.
Success requires patience
I’ve talked before how we live in an “instant results” type of world. If we want popcorn we toss a bag in the microwave and three minutes later there it is. If we want to see our favorite TV show or movie we just hit the On Demand button and there it is. And so forth.
Yet it never fails to surprise me when a player or student lacks the patience to learn something new. Last night I was working with a pitcher, second lesson for her with me. Her mom brought her to me because she felt she was stalled where she was. After we worked basic mechanics and locations, I asked what other pitches she threw. She told me a changeup, so I said let’s see it.
After watching a couple I asked what type of change she was throwing. (I always ask in case what I see isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing.) She told me a handshake change. Not my favorite, personally, because to make it work I find most pitchers slow down as they go to release. So I asked if she was willing to try something different. (Normally I don’t ask, but with HS tryouts around the corner I figured I should check.) She said sure — what else was she going to say — so I showed her the backhand change.
After trying it two or three times, and having it work better each time (although not great) she said she was getting frustrated. I was shocked. I mean, how good do you think it will be throwing it three times ever? But apparently she just figured it was like instant cocoa — add a little water and you’re all set.
We continued to work at it and she got better. But I wonder how much she’s going to continue to work on it. Work being the operative word.
Learning to do anything well — pitch, hit, play an instrument, ride a bike, perform brain surgery — takes time. If you’re not willing to put in the time, you’re going to have a tough time competing. Accept getting a little better each day, as Bobby Simpson likes to say, and you’ll find yourself happier and better in the long run.
Getting players to move from static to dynamic stretching
By now it’s been pretty well established that dynamic stretching — stretches that have the body in motion — are far better for preparing teams for athletic competition than the old static stretches where you assume a position and hold it.
The big revelation is that static stretching does nothing for injury prevention (beyond adding a little flexibility), and actually turns the nervous system off, making players slower and less able to respond. Dynamic stretching turns the nervous system on, which is particularly important in a speed game such as fastpitch softball. Here’s a link to an article that explains it much more detail. (Full disclosure: I am affiliated with Softball Performance as administrator of the Discuss Fastpitch Forum community, but have nothing to do with the DVDs shown.)
Even if you buy into it as a coach, though, you may find it’s only half the battle. The tough part sometimes is getting your players to buy into it and change their old habits.
Seems hard to believe, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t think that 12 or 14 or even 18 year olds are so set in their ways that it would be difficult. But I’ve been there and know the kind of resistance you can face.
One thing you’ll often hear when you’re showing them the new, improved stretching routine is “I feel stupid.” Not sure why being in motion would make them feel any stupider than standing there holding a stretch but it often does. Perhaps it’s that your team is the only one flailing around like that, while the others do what they’ve always done. In truth that’s good news for you, because it’s giving you a competitive advantage. But only if your team is doing it.
Make the transition requires some effort on your part. First, you don’t ask the team if they want to do it. You just tell them this is what we’re doing. You’re the coach, make it mandatory, just like every other rule you have. I doubt you give players the option of whether they get low on a ground ball. Tell them this is the way it is and have done with it.
That’s how you get them to compliance. To really get the benefit, though, you have to make sure they’re really putting the effort in. Static stretching is really easy to do; it takes little effort, and your players won’t break a sweat. Dynamic stretching, however, requires a great deal more work, which is another reason they may resist. So you have to stay on them.
If I see players just going through the motions, I will stop them and demonstrate what I want done. I can still do a straight-legged kick in front and get my toes up even with my shoulders. Not sure how I can do that but I can. So I show them what I can do and tell them if they can’t beat a fat, out-of-shape old man then they’re pretty pathetic. That usually gets their attention, and they start pushing themselves more. Which is what you want.
The last thing you might hear is “It makes us too tired.” If that’s the case, tell them it sounds like they need to work on their conditioning, so you’ll be doing ladders and poles for the first part of every practice from now on so they’re not too tired to stretch properly. That usually ends that discussion. If it doesn’t, be prepared to follow through.
There are a great many benefits to dynamic stretching — too many to ignore. Make it an absolute, and pretty soon it just becomes accepted as the way your team does things. You not only get to win the battle; your team gets to improve its performance and prevent injury. It’s a victory for everyone.
Book review: The Talent Code
Here we go, as-promised, my review of the book The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. Its premise is that talent isn’t something you’re born with — it’s something you acquire over time. High performers are the result of practicing a particular way (deep practice) for 10,000 hours, or roughly 10 years.
I had heard about the book a couple of years ago, and then again recently. Howard Carrier (aka Hitter) recommended it to me too, so I figured it was time to take the plunge and added it to my Christmas list.
The book examines three parts of being a high performer. The first is the deep practicing I just mentioned. High performers tend to practice differently than most. They break down a skill into pieces, and work through the individual pieces. When they practice, the part of their body that is most fatigued at the end is their brains because of the effort they go through to understand what they’re doing. They make mistakes as part of the learning process, and each mistake takes them closer to their ultimate goal of performance.
The second part is ignition — getting the performer to perform. Getting him/her excited in a way that leads to the desire for that performance level. The final part is master coaching — someone pointing the way and helping them along.
It really is a fascinating study of the way people learn, and the way performance is brought out in some and not in others. Coyle spent a lot of time visiting talent hotspots — Brazillian soccer training, musicians on the east coast, baseball players in the Caribbean — in an attempt to look for the commonalities and see if there are particular things that make it happen.
He also looks at research that has been done on how people learn as additional datapoints. Some of it is the same as I read in Talent is Overrated, which covers some of the same ground. But each book presents a facet of the jewel, helping the reader gain a better understanding of the factors behind great performers.
The book is an easy read. Coyle’s style is to illustrate by telling stories rather than lecture, and he makes it easy to move from one topic to the next. He also adds some personal insights from his own life and family that show he not only took the intellectual pursuit, but also applied the principles himself.
If you are interested in what drives high performers to achievement, or you want to improve your own coaching to help your players, I highly recommend this book. It will give you a whole new perspective on practicing.
So, what did Softball Santa put under your tree?
Now that we’re a few days past Christmas/Channukah/Kwanzaa/Winter Solstice, I’m wondering what Softball Santa brought you. Would love to get a little dialog going on this topic. I’ll start.
I received a dozen Jugs Lite Flite balls and a dozen TCB balls . The Lite Flites are actually for vision training, not hitting. I will be marking them with the numbers 1-4 in black and red Sharpie and adding them to the ones I already have. That way the girls won’t be able to cheat by remembering which balls have already gone by and guessing by process of elimination.
The way we’ll use them is to shoot them through a Jugs pitching machine and have the girls try to identify the color and the number on the ball as it whizzes by. Sounds impossible, but actually it’s not.With a bit of practice and effort you can actually see the number as well as the color. It’s a nice, cheap imitation of the expensive Vision Trak training that uses tennis balls and a specially designed machine.
The TCB balls are for hitting, obviously. I’ve heard a lot of good things about them. If you hit them square they fly well. If you’re off a bit, they deform momentarily and you know you need to improve your bat path. I’m anxious to try them out at the next practice.
The other thing I received is a copy of the book The Talent Code . It’s about how top performers are made, not born with innate ability — and how you can create them too. Watch this space for a more detailed review.
So that’s me. What did you get? And what are you still looking to get?
Difference between coaching boys and girls – part two
We’ll skip the intro here. If you want that explanation, see this post . Let’s get right to it.
Yesterday I was using a blackboard to create a list of factors that can affect a play. I didn’t have chalk at first so I’d written the list on a piece of paper as the team called out different answers. Then when the chalk got there (thank you Pat Foley for finding it) I tried to quickly transfer the answers to the board.
As you might expect, most of the handwriting was pretty sloppy and hasty. But then, I continued to write, one of the girls said, “Look at that. It’s a perfect U.” I looked up and sure enough it was. Several of them commented on the high quality of the U, a brief discussion ensued, and all I could do was smile and shake my head.
Only girls would notice something like that.
Incidentally, they also could not get over how much my hastily scribbled “g”s looked like “s”s. Oh well. At least they liked the U.
Difference between coaching girls and boys
As pretty much any experienced fastpitch softball coach will tell you, there is a definite difference between coaching girls and boys. In fact, I’d bet anyone who has done both will agree with that.
Last night I saw another amusing example of one of those differences. I was in the middle of a lesson with a pitcher when I looked up and saw one of my hitting students (Kaylee) getting ready for her lesson, which would start in about 10 minutes.
She put up her hair, which is to be expected. But then she pulled out a small mirror to check it before putting on her helmet. That is definitely a girl thing.
I couldn’t help but smile to myself. I mentioned it to her when the lesson started. She just smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
With boys you’re lucky if they’ve showered in the last couple of days. But girls have a whole different mindset.
So what’s your favorite “coaching girls” story?
Day Three at the NFCA Coaches College
Ok, technically this is the day after Day Three. By the time I got home, a six hour drive after the class finished, I was too exhausted to do my final report. And since I knew I was taking Monday off from work anyway I figured I could let it go a day.
The final day was a relatively short (and relaxed) session, from 8:00 AM to Noon, which included getting our certificates of completion. We had covered a lot of ground in the last couple of days, so this day was really focused on pre-game, post-game, during-game situations and things like that. The instructors also answered a lot of questions from the students.
Of course, one of the cool things about this program is that it isn’t designed to be a strictly one-way lecture. There was a lot of the instructors asking us what we think, or what we would do (or have done) in such situations.
One thing I noticed is how reluctant a lot of these good coaches were to speak up, at least early on. I kind of felt bad because I was answering a lot of the questions throughout the weekend. But I also felt bad for the instructors, because I know the feeling. I think we all do. You ask your team a question, such as “What do you do when you are on first, there’s a runner on second, there is one out, and the hitter pops it up?” and all you get are blank stares. So when the silence got uncomfortable I’d chime in so the instructors weren’t left hanging. By the last day, though, more people started providing answers, which was good.
The funny thing is, there are answers, but not necessarily the RIGHT answer. Even when we looked at situations from the Womens College World Series it was tough. They’d have a still photo from the TV broadcast on-screen, say here’s the situation, what would you do? Then we’d break into groups of four or so to come up with answers.
Trouble was, there was still a lot we didn’t know. One I recall is it’s late in the game (fifth inning I believe), you’re the home team and you’re down two runs. You have runners on first and second with two outs after a hit. Do you use a pinch runner, and if so for whom?
Our group was thinking put in a rabbit for the runner on first, because she might be able to score on a ball in the gap. You figure the runner on second will already score, and she’s only one run, so it’s the trail runner who’s key. But what we didn’t know was A) do we have any real rabbits on the bench, 
can the next hitter (or a pinch hitter put a ball in the gap), C) how fast is the outfield (and how strong are their arms), etc. But hey, that’s just like a real game isn’t it?
The other cool thing in all of this is the relationship the students develop with the instructors. Carrie Dever-Boaz made a point of saying that every time she does one of these classes she’s writing down notes and learning as she goes. John Tschida and Jay Miller agreed. There is just so much to learn in our game, so many great ideas and ways to teach it, that you can’t possibly know it all. That’s what keeps it challenging.
I know I had fun. I always enjoy going to these classes, and always come out with new ideas, drills, approaches and the like. I also enjoy meeting coaches from all over and hearing about their challenges and triumphs.
But since I know some of my fellow students also are Life in the Fastpitch Lane readers and Discuss Fastpitch members, what did you-all think? What were your favorite parts of the classes? What was your experience like? If this was your first time, would you do it again?
As for me, it’s off to take my follow-on test. Wish me luck!
Day two at the NFCA Coaches College
Just got back from the NFCA Coaches College. Today was the long day. We started at 8:00 AM and finished up a little after 5:00. That’s a lot of softball talk, but it seemed to go by pretty quickly. Helps to have instructors who are polished presenters!
First off, one thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that I’ve run into a few Discuss Fastpitch Forum members. That was cool. So many of us go on there and “talk” anonymously with one another. It was nice to put faces with names, and to hear people find it valuable. If anyone else is there, stop by and say hello. I’m “Babe Ruth.” Attendees will know what that means. 
For the last hour of the class today we got to watch each of the instructors run a mini practice. It’s fun to watch someone else do it, see how they approach things and how they relate to the players – all of whom are either middle school or high school age. Got a couple of good drills, a couple of variations on some old ones, and some neat vision training ideas.
At the end they had all us coaches do a little pitching with wiffle balls and a little fungo hitting. I can safely say I nailed the pitching part, which should be no surprise. In addition to teaching pitching I usually pitch BP before games — with wiffle balls. So the drills there were pretty easy.
Fungo hitting was another story. We were supposed to hit fungos and knock balls off of tees. I was horrible! I think we each got three shots. The first one I pulled and almost hit Carrie Dever-Boaz and a young lady named Morgan who was helping out. The second one I whiffed entirely. I finally got a decent ground ball my third try. Of course it was nowhere near any of the three tees. Good thing my players weren’t there to see it. I totally cracked under the pressure, I guess.
For the classroom part we covered a lot of ground on game-day types of things, including charting (which I always intend to do but never seem to get done), evaluating opponents, game planning, coaching on the bases, things like that. I picked up some interesting ideas on how to keep players who are not in the game involved.
Here’s one: have your pitchers who are not in the game try to steal the other team’s pitching signs, and reward them if they are successful. Or have other players try to steal bunt, steal, etc. signs. Even if you don’t use the information it gives them something to do and helps them learn the game.
It’s funny, because I have random notes all over my notebook as various topics and ideas come up. There’s a lot of material to absorb, but the key is how you can apply it. Even the instructors say they don’t do all of it. But there’s plenty there for any of us to choose from, all of which will help us get better.
Tomorrow we go from 8:00 AM to Noon. Thankfully, we get an extra hour of sleep tonight so it should be doable! Then I get to drive back home.
I know I say this all the time, but anyone who has been there will agree. These are awesome courses. If you’re serious about your coaching career and helping your players, get yourself to one. You’ll quickly get hooked.
Day one at the NFCA Coaches College
Well, I’m back at it again. I am up in Minnesota for the NFCA Coaches College course 407 on Game Day coaching. Our instructors this time are Jay Miller, John Tschida and Carrie Dever-Boaz.
Today was the first day – a five-hour session that combined classroom (actually auditorium) discussions with some live observation of some local players. Lots to think about as a result.
We opened the class talking about the DP/Flex rule and how coaches can use it for more than just getting an extra player in the game. The key takeaway for me was the DP should be a player who is expendable. In other words, you have a lot of what she can do. For example, if you have a lot of speed on the team, you can make the DP a speed player. When it’s her turn to bat, you let the Flex bat for her, which takes her out of the game. If the Flex gets on base, you re-enter the DP and let her run. Of course, if you do it again the DP will be out of the game. But that’s where the idea of what you have a lot of comes in. You just put in another speed player as a sub and keep going. The Flex can go in and out for the original DP as often as you want.
We looked at some of the considerations you might want to have when you get to the park, how to warm up a team and how to put together a lineup. Watching the players was fun. Jay, John and Carrie each demonstrated a drill they use with their teams. Too bad it’s probably going to be cold going forward in the Chicago area. I have some new stuff to try!
After the class, the instructors went out to dinner with anyone who wanted to go. That was fun too. I got to sit between Jay and John, and talk to them as well as several of the other coaches attending the class. It was a good time, although I think the Blue Moons started to get to me toward the end.
Tomorrow we have to be there at 8:00 for a very long day. But you know, when you’re learning cool stuff it doesn’t seem so long!
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 