Category Archives: Coaching
Confidence game
Coaching 101 dictates that a coach’s job is to help his/her players build their confidence. This is true in any sport, but it’s especially true in softball. The game is built on failure — as the saying goes, a hitter who fails 7 out of 10 times is an all-star — which means there is already a huge potential for negative feelings to brew. Coaches are supposed to build their players’ confidence to help them get through the tough times, and perhaps even avoid some of them. As they say, whether you think you can or your think you can’t, you are correct.
Not every coach seems to get that, however. Some seem not to know better, some have their own personal agenda, and some, well, I have no idea why they do what they do, but they seem to go out of their way to undermine their players’ confidence.
Bobby Knight is a good example of a coach who didn’t seem to know any better. From the outside it seemed like he thought that by constantly railing on his players he could drive better performance out of them. It worked to some extent, no doubt. But you have to wonder if maybe some of those players would’ve been even better if they had been built up instead of torn down. Even the Navy SEALs have abandoned the “tear them down and build them up” training for one that is based on confidence.
Then there are those with their own personal agenda. They will put down players not with a goal of trying to get more out of them or because they think it will be good for the team long-term, but because of some personal need or grudge they hold.
A good example is something that happened to one of my pitching students with her travel team last summer. This is a girl who is both very talented and very dedicated, by the way. She had joined the previous Fall, with promises of the opportunities this “higher level” team would provide. She did the training and conditioning with them, traveling roughly two hours each way a couple of nights a week plus weekends. She also came for lessons one a week and made great improvements there too. It looked like she was all set for a great summer. Then came the other shoe.
Turns out the team’s “pitching coach” was also the father of another pitcher. The other kid didn’t throw quite as hard as my student, nor was she able to throw anything other than a fastball as I understand it. So the “pitching coach” started setting up a situation where his daughter could succeed and my student would fail.
He made hitting spots with the fastball the main criteria for success. Not whether the pitcher could strike people out, get people out, keep them off the bases, or win ballgames. It was about hitting the exact location he called.
Now, hitting your spots is important to be sure. But it’s not the be-all and end-all of pitching. Just as their are no style points for hitting, throwing to a specific location in and of itself doesn’t guarantee success. Speed, movement, and cleverness all play into it too.
In any case, my student would have what most would consider a successful outing — 1 to 2 strikeouts per inning, few runs allowed. But instead of being congratulated for doing well she was being put down for not hitting the locations the pitching coach had called. (The fact that she was successful without hitting the locations probably indicates the pitch calls weren’t necessarily great ones, but that’s a story for another day.)
After a while, the pitcher lost confidence. She became very discouraged and by the end of May was ready to quit. The end of May, not even the summer! Her dad told her to hang in there, and did his best to bolster her confidence. He’d bring her to me for an occasional lesson too, not so much for the physical side but so I could help her rebuild her confidence too. The upshot is, when they got to Nationals, the team found that the pitchers they’d been using no longer could get the job done, they called upon my student, and she wound up doing very well. If she was good enough to win at Nationals, why not the rest of the season?
Today she is playing for a different team where they know how to handle players. By the way, she was 13 at the time all the negative stuff was going on. Hope that “pitching coach” felt like a big man, lording it over a 13 year old.
It is difficult to fathom why some coaches feel the need to destroy confidence but they do. Maybe they weren’t hugged enough as children. Maybe they’re unhappy and feel the need to let that unhappiness trickle down. Maybe putting others down builds their own egos. Who knows?
Whatever it is, it’s detrimental to their teams, and against the basic mission of being a coach — especially a coach of teens and younger players. A smart coach will do all he/she can to build player confidence and help them become the best they can be. He/she will look for the good in each player and build on it, rather than always looking for what’s wrong and putting them down. That’s the way you win games. And championships.
Managing v. leading
This is a subject that probably doesn’t get covered enough. It cuts right to the core of what a coach can do versus what coaches often limit themselves to doing.
There is a big difference between managing players and leading them. Managing players involves setting up tournaments, setting up practices, making sure everyone knows the team rules, putting together a lineup, changing players, and other tactical types of tasks. It is a very valuable function to be sure, and many coaches put their emphasis on trying to do those tasks well. But it isn’t leadership.
Leadership is about motivating players, getting them to believe in themselves, teaching them to do the right things (even if it means you might lose a game), and generally how to conduct themselves as human beings. Think of it this way: management is putting players in the positions where they can make the best contributions. Leadership is helping them find a way to improve their games to increase their contributions to the team.
A manager will remove a pitcher when she starts to get a hit. A leader will make sure that when she leaves her confidence remains high.
When they’re playing poorly, a manager will try to get his team going by yelling at them to “get their attention.” A leader will work hard to make sure that players understand it’s the responsibility of each player to do her very best every time she steps out on the field.
A manager will teach her players her “system” and try to get them to fit into it. A leader will adjust what she does on the field to suit the players she has. For example, a manager will place a lot of importance on pitchers getting strikeouts, even if she doesn’t have a dominant pitcher. A leader will recognize she doesn’t have a dominant pitcher and will come up with a new strategy to help the team win — usually shoring up the defense and/or putting extra time into hitting.
A manager see his players as chess pieces to be moved around the board. A leader sees his players as human beings, each with her own hopes, fears, desires, and goals. He will do his best to figure out what each player needs, and will work to build a relationship with each one.
A manager usually has a coaching style. A leader has as many coaching styles as she has players. This is not to say she favors one over another. To the contrary, she treats each one equally, according to her needs. Those who need positive reinforcement get it. Those who need an occasional kick in the pants get it. Those who need things explained in depth get it, while those who just need quick marching orders get what they need and are sent on their way.
The long and short of it is, every team has a manager. But not every team has a leader. To determine which you are, think about your relationship with your players. Do they comply with what you say because they have no choice, or do they look to you for guidance? The former is a manager, the latter is a leader. Do your players tolerate you the way they do hot and humid weather, or do they genuinely enjoy playing for you? The former is the sign of a manager. The latter is the sign of a leader.
It’s a lot tougher to be a leader than a manager. Being a leader means you need to question yourself constantly, and be aware of what’s happening around you. Being a manager only requires fulfilling the tasks that are part of your job. Being a leader, however, is much more rewarding in the long run, because while managers can help their teams win, leaders help the individuals on those team grow — both as players and as human beings.
So which are you?
Fear of failure, fear of losing drives bad decisions
Guess it’s about time for my annual rant on this topic. It’s a shame, because this line of thinking really limits kids in so many aspects of their lives — especially their ability to become fully functional adults.
If you watch what goes on in classrooms, on ballfields, and just about anywhere else in America these days you’ll see a very familiar phenomenon. We here in America hate to lose, and hate to either fail ourselves or see our kids fail. Now, that in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. We should want to win, and we should want to succeed. The problem is we want it so much that we’re willing to accept winning and success at any cost — especially the cost of longer-term success.
Look what’s happened in the schools. At one time schools held their students accountable to tough standards. Teachers would teach, students would learn. If the students didn’t hold up their end of the bargain they’d fail the class. They might even get left behind a grade if they failed enough.
Today, we don’t fail students anymore. We believe it’s bad for their self-esteem. Instead, we lower the requirements to make it easier for them to pass the class. If that doesn’t work, we lower the standards some more. We teach kids to learn how to pass the test instead of how to think. It’s no wonder America is falling behind in academic pursuits, especially math and science.
The same thing happens with fastpitch softball. If a pitcher struggles to get the ball over, well-meaning but ill-informed coaches will tell them to “slow it down and get it over.” Never mind that you’re destroying the mechanics that pitcher has worked so hard to acquire, and that it will probably throw her off for the next few games besides. It’s more important to win that game today, so just do whatever it takes to make it a strike.
The same goes with hitters. How many coaches have told their hitters not to worry about hitting the ball hard, just make contact? Well, if you substitute the word “outs” for contact you’ll be saying pretty much the same thing. It’s not that taking a good, aggressive swing is harder than taking a “contact” swing. It’s that the player hasn’t worked enough on her aggressive swing to make it easy. It is definitely easier to swing lightly and just try to put the bat on the ball. You won’t strike out as often, maybe. But you also won’t be developing the foundation you’re going to need later on in the game. At that point, you’ll have to completely relearn your swing — if you can. If not, you’ll probably be done playing before you should be. All because someone didn’t want you to strike out too often when you were eight.
It isn’t easy to watch our kids fail. But sometimes it’s necessary. Pain is a good teacher. If you stick your hand in a fire and feel no pain, you won’t know to pull it back out before all the skin burns off. If you lower the bar on pitching, hitting, throwing, etc. then players have no real incentive to work harder and learn to do things the right way.
Yes, it’s difficult to watch your pitcher walking batter after batter. If it happens, take her out and let someone else “just get it over.” If the pitcher is serious, she’ll work at not having that experience again. If the hitter has a good swing but isn’t hitting the ball with it, check if she needs glasses. If not, be patient. When she does start hitting it, and she will, she’ll do more for you than all your contact/out hitters.
Trust me. Nobody hates losing more than I do. But it’s part of the learning process. Give kids a safe environment to fail while trying to be their very best and they won’t disappoint you. Kids are resilient, overall. Dumb it all down for them, though, and ultimately you’ll wind up disappointing them.
From the bad ideas dept.: ASA forcing coaches to take their instructional program
I know this is true in the Chicago area, and based on what I’ve heard from other coaches I think it’s universal: the ASA is now requiring at least one coach from every team to complete their ACE program if the team plans to compete in state/metro/national tournaments. Here in the Chicago area, the Metro tournament is a requirement if you’re planning on going to any of the various nationals, so if you have any ambition about playing on a bigger stage you have to go there.
I have no idea what ASA thinks they’re doing. This is an organization that is facing increasing pressure from rival sanctioning bodies such as FAST, NSA, USSSA and others. Rather than reacting like a regular company would to competitive market pressures and becoming more customer-friendly, if anything this move is making them less customer-friendly.
I wonder how many coaches are going to look at it and say “forget it, I’ll just focus on another organization?” The top programs won’t of course, but you don’t build a business solely by focusing on the captive audience. Any business, any religion, any anything where people have a choice knows you have to make what you’re offering attractive to the newbies and non-believers so you can increase your ranks. That’s marketing 101. But this move goes beyond that.
Our Mundelein Thunder organization is an ASA “shop,” so we’re planning to do it. But trying to Git R done has been a nightmare. One of my fellow coaches has been trying to get it organized. He went to the ASA site to find out what to do, and all they say is contact your local commissioner. He contacted our local commissioner (who probably has better things to do than this) and it took a while to get a response. When it finally came, it was a link to a login that requires a user name and password that wasn’t furnished. We’re still trying to find out if we have to attend a class somewhere, go online, get something in the mail, whatever.
The father of one of my pitching students lives in Wisconsin, and he said there was one class being offered for the year there. All the coaches went to somebody’s house and gathered around a small computer or TV screen to watch a DVD. Then they took the test. He said his understanding was if he missed that class (which he almost did) he was out of luck for the year. For the year! Plenty of time for him to find other nationals to attend.
But here’s the kicker. I was ACE-certified several years ago. In fact, I went through two levels of it. I would’ve done more but ASA never notified me that it was time for the next one and I just plain forgot. The training itself was so rudimentary as to be laughable. Even a first-year coach could probably pass the test without watching the video. So there really isn’t much benefit, unless they’ve changed it. You’ll learn a lot more by attending the National Sports Clinics, or the NFCA Coach’s College. As for the general (non-softball) coaching principles, you’re better off attending an ASEP class.
I’m told there is a lot of focus on the rules. Hmmmm. I wonder if the umpires are being required to take the same class? I can’t tell you how many umpires I’ve run into at ASA-sanctioned tournaments who don’t know basic ASA rules such as those for courtesy runners. Twice in 2007 I was told I couldn’t use a courtesy runner for a pitcher or catcher with less than two outs, even though the rule book clearly states you can. That’s just one example off the top of my head. There are others as well. When you argue this is the ASA rule the umpire doesn’t want to hear it, and doesn’t want to consult a rule book, even in the dugout, so you wind up getting screwed.
Now imagine ASA is going to train more coaches to know the rules. They’re just asking for trouble. Before they worry about the coaches they ought to seriously look at how they’re certifying umpires. Don’t even get me started on enforcement of pitching rules.
Bottom line is this just looks like a bad idea on many levels. It may have good intentions, but we all know what the road to Hell is paved with.
Seeing the lasting effect
Sometimes as coaches we wonder what the long-term affects of what we do are. Sure, we see when we win a game, or when a team has a good time during the season, or when a player we coached goes on to greater success elsewhere. But we don’t always know what sort of an effect we have on someone’s life generally until something nice happens.
One of those things has occurred. As many of you know I am part of the Mundelein Thunder travel softball organization. Each fall and winter we run player clinics that are open not only to our own players, but to any softball player who would like to work on her skills. About one-third to one-half of the participants any given year come from outside our program — mostly from our local rec league.
There is a young lady named Julia who participated in our clinics for several years. She was a rec league player. We talked to her and her dad about her playing travel ball, but her first love was dance and she couldn’t devote the time that travel softball required. Fair enough. After watching her move through some of the warm-up exercises we do you could see that dance was a big part of her life.
In any case, once players reach high school age, IHSA rules prevent them from participating in the type of clinics we offer. I found out last night, though, that she called the president of our organization, Bill T’Niemi, and asked if she could help out as one of our junior coaches, working with the younger kids to help them in the same way she’d been helped before.
Of course the answer was an emphastic yes. How cool is it that she wants to do this? After all, it’s not like our organization was the major part of her softball experience. But obviously she must’ve felt like she received some sort of value or she wouldn’t be asking.
Yes, she is getting service hours out of it. But there are lots of things she could’ve done to get those, and many would’ve required a lot less of her. But Julia has chosen to spend another set of Saturday mornings with us, this time passing on what she learned and helping younger kids have a great experience with the game of softball.
They don’t give trophies for that kind of thing. But it sure is nice to know we made an impression and fulfilled the mission every team is supposed to have, of helping players develop not only their softball skills but themselves as people.
Blindly following what the “best” players do
One of the most common pieces of advice regarding how to perform sports skills is to look at what the best players do. It stands to reason that the best players must by definition have the best technique or the best execution. How else could they be the best?
The truth of this philosophy may be somewhat different. The way athletes perform is at least partially a product of their training. In other words, some of what they do is what they have been trained to do, whether that’s right or wrong. Simply observing them doesn’t necessarily mean the techniques you’re picking up are optimum. They are what they are.
Here’s an extreme case from another sport. Up until around 1968 there was a particular technique used by the best high jumpers in the world. If you studied film of pretty much any high jumper, you would see him/her approach the bar, push up off the inside foot, drive the outside leg up, then when the body is at its peak kick the trailing leg up and over. This was the standard. By watching film you could find the little subtleties that made the best high jumpers capable of getting the highest.
Then came a guy named Dick Fosbury. He didn’t worry about what the best in the world were doing. Instead, he tried to figure out how best to use his body. What he came up with was a very different technique, one that had him turning his back to the bar, leaping up, and going over head-first. People thought he was crazy. Many thought the technique was dangerous, with a potential to break the neck of the high jumper. But he wound up winning a gold medal in the Olympics. Today the Fosbury Flop is the standard for high jumpers.
The point is that had Dick Fosbury focused all his efforts on what the best in the world did at the time he never would’ve been able to innovate a new and better technique.
Closer to home, many Major League Baseball hitters will put their back elbows up in their stances, despite the fact that it doesn’t do anything positive and can actually be detrimental. But somewhere along the way, some coach told them to do it, and it just became their habit. They learned to overcome it by getting into a better position at launch. But if you just watched them you’d assume it was an important part of what they do.
Observing top players is certainly valuable. But it isn’t gospel. It’s still important to think things through and make sure what you’re seeing is the best way to do things. Put your time into comparing what you’re seeing to the way the body works more effectively and you’ll get your best bang for the buck.
Is the elite athlete the proper standard to measure by?
Often times on various Web sites and forums you’ll see reference to the elite athlete. Generally the comments are in comparison to regular players. Experts and wannabe experts alike will talk about how elite athletes do this, or elite athletes do that. Or they’ll say every player should do X because that’s what elite athletes do. Most of all, they’ll imply that anyone who doesn’t approach the game like an elite athlete is doing things wrong.
The assumption is that everyone who plays the game wants to be an elite athlete. The truth is, they don’t. I’d guess the vast majority of players want to be good, and want to be successful within the area or level in which they play. But that’s not the same as being an elite athlete.
There’s nothing wrong with that. Being an elite athlete requires a few things, not the least of which is some outstanding DNA. It also requires an incredible level of dedication — the kind that has pitchers pitching every day not because they’re told to, but because they want to. The kind that has athletes following tough training regiments because it’s their means to the end they desire, not because their coach or parent tells them to.
Think of it this way: all soldiers in the military undergo a tremendous amount of training. Yet even within the military there are elite units, such as Army Rangers, Green Berets, Navy SEALs, etc. These soliders and sailors volunteer to undergo a higher level of training and sacrifice more because of a deep drive within them. That doesn’t mean the standard line soldier is less valuable or not worthwhile. Not at all. They just have different goals and drives.
Being an elite player isn’t for everyone. That’s ok. Each player needs to find his/her own level, and do what it takes to meet his/her own goals. It doesn’t mean it’s ok to slack off completely or let your team down. If that’s your attitude you shouldn’t be in a team sport. But it does mean that if your training regimine falls short of the elite athlete, it’s ok. Do what it takes to achieve your goals.
Turning the ball backwards
Sorry about the lack of recent posts. I’ve been traveling a lot for business the last few weeks, which sounds like fun but really isn’t. Fortunately, both time in the last two weeks that I was stuck on the tarmac for a couple of hours there was no one in the seat beside me so I could relax and invade that space without feeling bad about it.
Traveling has also cost me a fair amount of lesson time. I haven’t seen most of my Tuesday students since November, which I feel very bad about. But as long as my day job pays most of the bills there’s not a lot I can do about it. Sort of the real world version of a bad umpire.
Mixed into all of that was a couple of days at the National Sports Clinics watching presentations by several high-level coaches. One of them was Deb Hartwig, a former top catcher and D1 coach who now has her own instructional business. Nobody makes her take non-softball business trips, that’s for sure!
In any case, she brought up something very interesting about throwing. The conventional way of teaching throwing is to have the player bring the ball back behind the body, turn it to face backwards (ball to the wall), and then bring it forward. I know I’ve taught that for years. But she said if you watch video you’ll see nobody really throws that way. According to Coach Hartwig, what really happens is the ball faces down when the arm goes back, then comes up and forward as the throw occurs.
It certainly makes sense. If you think about making a quick throw, you’re going to want the wrist to stay loose. As the arm comes back a loose wrist will tend to make the ball face down. You’d have to use some tension to actually pull it up to face the “wall.” The ball facing down would actually seem more efficient.
Of course, I hate to take anything on face value, so I’m going to work on finding some video of baseball and softball players throwing, slow it down, and see what they actually do. Although I’ve taught “ball to the wall” for years, if there’s a better way I’m all for it! Especially if it helps create a few more outs.
Catchers calling their own games
That’s a topic I find very interesting. There seems to be a lot of resistance in a lot of circles to allowing catchers to call pitches. From my own personal experience I’ve seen a lot of coaches squatting on buckets at the front of the dugout, frantically signaling pitches. When I’ve watched on TV in the Women’s College World Series I’ve seen the same thing — coaches calling the pitches.
In the college game I suppose the rationale is that they have all the charts on the opposing hitters, that they know all the weaknesses and thus can make better decisions. I guess you can make an argument for that. Yet often it seems like the person in the dugout calling the pitches used to be a player. If her coaches never let her call pitches when she played, when exactly did she learn? How did she become such an expert between the time she played and now? Or was she maybe, just maybe, perfectly capable of doing it before, only she wasn’t allowed to?
In the youth game the thinking must be that the catchers don’t know enough to call pitches. How could a mere kid know more than the coach? Forget the fact that the coach is most likely not a professional coach with tons of experience in it. It’s just too important of a function to leave to a player.
Either way, that’s bunk. Calling pitches is not rocket science. It’s a skillset that can be learned like anything else. Coaches who don’t allow catchers to call the game are doing them a disservice. As long as the signals are coming in from the dugout the catcher is never going to learn the nuances of the game. She’s merely going to throw down the number of fingers she’s told to throw down, without learning why.
That doesn’t mean you have to stop cold turkey and throw your catchers to the wolves. If your catcher has never called a game before, start her with an inning. Go over what you want — how you want to mix fastballs and changes if that’s all your pitcher has. If the pitcher has more pitches, give her some ideas of what to throw when.
Why bother? Because the catcher can see things the coach can’t. She knows (or should know) what the umpire is calling. She knows whether the curve ball that got crushed was hit because the hitter hit well or the curve ball didn’t break. She can probably also tell where the pitcher’s head is because she’s looking right at her.
If that’s not enough, here’s a nother good reason: you want your players to think. Coaches who try to control every aspect of the game and their players wind up with a lot of brain dead players. Then they get mad when their players make mistakes. How are they going to learn to think for themselves if they never get the chance?
The answer is they won’t. Coaches, give your catchers the opportunity to start calling their own games. They just might surprise you.
How legends get formed
Rich found that amusing as did I, because the pitcher being referred to is one of my students, and I had just gunned her with my Jugs gun around 54-56 consistently. She hit 57 once if I recall correctly. I’ve done this long enough to know that pitchers don’t increase speed by seven mph in a week, no matter how pumped up they are.
I actually spoke to the girl and her dad about it and found out where the 63 mph figure came from. It was off a Glove Radar. I think those are great little devices — I used to own one before the part that holds the lacing in place broke — if used properly. They’re good for getting approximate readings, and for comparing against itself. But you can’t take it for gospel.
It’s very easy to get a false reading, especially if you move the glove toward the ball as it comes in. Like any Doppler radar, it depends on sending out a signal, having the signal bounce back, and comparing the times. If you move the glove toward the ball you close the distance the ball has to travel and change the timing.
The dad and the girl laughed when they heard the story. They hadn’t put much stock in the reading at the time, and still don’t. But obviously others do.
Rich theorizes that people like to have their kids associated with top-level players, so saying your daughter plays on a team with a pitcher throwing 63 mph certainly fits that bill. There’s nothing nasty about it. It’s more a case of being willing to believe in something you want to believe. But the more these things get repeated, the more they become legend.
Hopefully it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. She certainly has the ability and the desire to get there. But she’s not quite there yet. Still, it’s funny to see how legends get started.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 