Category Archives: Coaching
Rolling the wrists
You know, people have to know their limitations. There’s nothing worse than a coach telling a player she needs to correct a problem when there’s no problem to be corrected. Well, there are a lot of worse things of course, but it’s what’s on my mind today.
Here’s a perfect example. Today one of the high school coaches told my daughter not to roll her wrists. But it’s apparent that she doesn’t know what rolling the wrists really is. Here’s a picture of her at the contact point:
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As you can see, she is palm up/palm down at contact. Here she is at extension:
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The hands are still palm up/palm down. The wrists won’t roll until long after contact, and not until after extension. Working on not rolling the wrists would be a complete waste of time.
That’s something to keep in mind. Not everyone who has the title of “coach” has the qualifications to be one. As Mark Twain used to say, “Better to keep your mouth shut and have everyone think you’re a fool than to open it and prove they’re right.”
Always like to hear the good news
Back in early April (I think) I had the opportunity to watch one of my pitching students in action. Her HS team was playing my daughter’s HS team. To say that Kristen struggled that game would not be an exaggeration. Part of it, her dad told me, was that she was nervous pitching while I was there. (That is part of the female psyche from what I’ve read — she didn’t want to disappoint her coach, whereas I was looking forward to seeing how she was doing.) In any case, between a weak defense and some control trouble it was a tough game for her. She finally came out in the last inning, replaced by a lobber.
We didn’t have a lesson that week, but she came in the following week and we got right to work. We were able to get one more in after that, and at that point I told her two things. One is that she was definitely ready to pitch, so get out there and do it with the confidence. The other was not to get frustrated if the defense struggles. Just keep pitching your game and let the rest fall as it may.
I had the opportunity to check in on her again one Monday night so I stopped by to watch her game. She was doing better but still had a rough point in one inning. Still, it was only that one inning.
Last night I received an update from dad, Joe. He told me in a recent game she struck out 17 hitters on her way to picking up a victory. She also came into another game where she struck out eight in three innings. She’s on top of the world right now.
It would’ve been easy for her to give up and say “I can’t do this.” But that’s not in her nature. Kristen stuck with it, focused on the things we identified together, and is now reaping the rewards. It doesn’t get any cooler than that.
Focused batting practice and course corrections
Had a real good example this week of the difference focused batting practice can make, especially during the season. Last Sunday, my friend and fellow coach Rich Youngman and I got together with four girls — our two daughters, plus two other girls who currently or have played for us in the past — to do a little BP. All had been struggling with their hitting to one degree or another. Two of the girls were really struggling in their high school seasons, while the other two were not hitting to their satisfaction. There were two girls from each of two high schools so it was all perfectly legal. Don’t bother calling the IHSA!
We set up a pitching machine and just rotated through them. As each girl came to the plate, Rich and I evaluated their mechanics and offered some suggestions. We had them focus on specific things they needed to do, and I videoed them for later study.
In each case they started out hitting rather anemically, much like their game performance. But as we worked through the mechanics, they began showing improvement. The machine was set around 45 mph since they all had been struggling to adjust to slower pitching anyway, and was then upped later into the mid-to-high 50s. FYI, we were using a Jugs machine with a generator at a field. I love the Jugs machine!
Anyways, we took a long time with each girl. The entire session lasted 2-1/2 hours. All of the girls were motivated to learn and improve, so that made a huge difference. It was a lot of fun, and no one complained or asked if we were done yet.
Now comes the payoff. Every single one of these girls saw marked improvement in their hitting this week. That’s an awfully fast turnaround, but I think it goes to show what focus and intensity can do. One girl, Kathleen, had been struggling so badly they DH’d for her Monday. I know Kathleen’s mom reads the blog so feel free to jump in with a comment if you like. Tuesday they let her hit for herself, and Rich tells me she was the first one to get a hit on her team. She hit a double into a gap that got some offense going. She hit well Wednesday, and then got the game-winning hit with a double on Thursday that went over the left fielder’s head. She’s now considered a hot bat.
Another girl, Michelle, told us she’d been striking out continuously all season on varsity. This week in her first at bat against one of the area’s better pitchers she started with a sac fly, then popped a double and a single. That was on Tuesday. On Wednesday I think she went 4-for-4 with a pair of doubles, including one that hit the fence, and Thursday she started a seventh inning rally for her team with a single up the middle. She did have a couple of Ks in that game, but that was a big club.
Rich’s daugher Stephanie started a little slower early in the week, but then started hitting the ball on the nose, he says. In her last seven at bats she has four hits, including a double and a triple. More significantly, she’s been hitting the right center gap instead of trying to pull everything and popping up to the left hand side. The triple was a lead-off triple that started a rally, and they ultimately won the game.
Finally, my daughter Kimmie saw her first varsity at bats this week after moving up from JV. In her first game she went 2 for 4. The two outs were a fly ball to right center that was caught on the run, and a fielder’s choice with bases loaded that ended the game on a mercy rule — her second RBI of the game. Guess you could call it a walk-off fielder’s choice. Thursday she struck out in her one at bat, but that was against the same pitcher that gave Michelle and the other girls problems, so it could be worse.
The point to all of this is that improvements can be made with quality BP, and a sincere desire by the players to learn and improve. There weren’t any magic pills, no secret sauce as it were. Just plain old hard work and intensity. There’s still more we can do with each of them — they’re all dragging the bat to some degree — but it’s a great start.
If you have similar success stories, please be sure to leave a comment. Everyone likes to hear how others have broken out of the doldrums. Usually, it begins with effort. As the old saying goes, the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.
A book every player and coach should read
Often times on this blog and other sites we talk about various physical skills and how to execute them. That’s important, of course. But nothing can get in the way of one’s mechanics faster than a player’s own head.
Anyone who has played fastpitch softball or baseball knows it’s a game built around failure. There are many, many ways and opportunities to fail, and as they say a hitter who fails 70% of the time is an All-Star. Knowing that, the objective isn’t to avoid failure — you can’t — but instead learn how to deal with it when it inevitably occurs.
Years ago at the National Sports Clinics I had the opportunity to see a presentation by Ken Ravizza. The book he wrote with Tom Hanson, Heads Up Baseball: Playing the Game One Pitch at a Time, is probably the single best book on the subject. Sports psychologists such as Jeff Janssen refer to it often. In the book you’ll find a discussion of what happens in our little brains to make us go all goofy. More importantly, though, you’ll find a series of techniques to deal with them. Techniques, by the way, which have been adopted by many of the top-level athletes.
I had the opportunity to put these principals into action just the other night. I’d watched one of my students pitch in a game where whatever could go wrong did go wrong. Her high school team is not very good, even by high school team standards. She started having some control trouble, and as will often happen that’s about the time her teammates decided to go brain dead. I could see her getting more and more uptight, which caused her to lose both her mechanics and her rhythm, which of course caused her to get wilder and wilder. When she did get the ball over and it got hit, easy outs turned into baserunners, further adding to the frustration. Every pitcher, and every pitcher’s parent, has been there.
So we worked some on her mechanics the other night, but since they were looking pretty good overall I really shifted the focus on her mental game. I showed her how to determine where she is mentally (relaxed, confident, uptight, worried, out of control), and then gave her some of the Heads Up Baseball techniques to use when she’s feeling the pressure. We then applied them in the course of the lesson. If she threw three pitches in a row for balls I would make her use a relaxation technique. Darned if the next pitch wasn’t a strike every time.
Heads Up Baseball costs just $10.17 in paperback at Amazon.com. Most of us spend more than that on a pair of batting gloves. If you’re at all serious about the game, use the link above to go there directly and purchase this book. It’ll do more for you or your players than the most expensive gear you can buy.
The Season of Miracles
To most of the world, the Season of Miracles occurs in December, when Christmas, Channukah, Qwanzaa, and other offshoots of the Winter Solstice come together to fill all us with peace on earth, goodwill toward men (and women), too much turkey, and an overwhelming desire to save an extra 5% by waking up at 4:30 for an early bird sale.
In the softball world, though, we are currently in the midst of the Season of Miracles. It’s that time when players (and their parents) realize they haven’t touched a ball since last July or August and suddenly seek out private lessons in the hopes that three weeks of instruction will make up for all those nights spent IMing friends and watching One Tree Hill reruns.
The official start of the Season of Miracles is late February, just before high school tryouts. It generally lasts through mid-May, by which time pretty much all decisions about playing levels and time have been made and the season is pretty much a done deal. Even the ones that haven’t started yet.
I have said this before and will say it again: no coach has any magic pills that will suddenly make a player better. None that I know of can simply perform a “laying of the hands on your head” and drive vast improvement (although I’ve known a few who thought they could). The truth is learning any skill takes hard work and time. The more you use of the former, the less you will need of the latter. But it’s rare that an athlete can take several months off and then make vast improvements in three weeks. Instead, what actually happens is that the athlete is working hard and 90% of the way there already, and just needs a little redirection to maximize what she is doing.
I always say I wish I could impart all the knowledge a pitcher or hitter needs in one lesson. If I could, I would charge $1,000 or more a lesson and there would be a mile long line down the street waiting to see me. Unfortunately, such is not the case.
If you’re looking for a sudden miracle, my recommendation is to head out to Lourdes, France, where allegedly such things occur (although I have yet to hear of a fastball going from 50 to 60 mph as the result of a visit there; I don’t think the Virgin Mary fancies herself a softball coach). If you really want to get good, start making your plans now to get into lessons beginning in the fall. You’ll be amazed at what a difference a year makes.
The difference determination makes
Had another one of those experiences last night that goes to prove once again that it’s not the teacher, it’s the student that makes the success.
One of my pitching students, a young lady named Rae Ann, has been working on learning the screwball all winter. She actually has the spin down, and has had it for a while. But she has been unable to get her arm to go along the right path to get it over the plate. She has consistently been well inside on her throwing side (lefty pitcher).
Last night the pitch was 95% there. A few missed inside still, but she was getting a lot of them over with good movement. Her dad told me she went out for three hours to work on it one day over the weekend, then spent another hour outside the next day doing the same thing. She had decided that she was going to get this pitch, come hell or high water, and darned if she didn’t!
Learning new things, whether it’s a pitch, hitting, playing a musical instrument, or even riding a bicycle doesn’t happen overnight. It only happens when you are determined to make it happen. Once you make that decision to achieve a goal, and that nothing will stop you, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It was exciting to see Rae Ann throwing that pitch. I’m sure it will serve her well this summer. More importantly, though, the lesson she learned about working at something you really want will serve her well long after her softball days are done.
Getting a better follow-through on throws
Throwing is one of those odd things that seems like it should be natural, but for many girls it’s not. For whatever reason they tend to use their arms only instead of following through completely for maximum power. When they do receive some instruction on following through it gets somewhat better, but often it is awkward as well.
One way to try to get a better follow-through is to have them replace the front shoulder with the back shoulder. In other words, when they throw, their throwing-side shoulder should finish where the glove side shoulder started. This is assuming, of course, that they turned sideways to begin the throw.
Once they get the idea of shoulder follow-through, you can also have them bring their back leg in line with the front leg. This complete use of the body should have them gaining more power and speed, and better accuracy too.
The biggest thrill an instructor can have
Well, at least this instructor. Every time I teach someone a new pitch and they get it to work consistently I have to admit I get a little charge out of it.
The latest example was last night. I’ve been working with a girl named Shannon for a couple of (or maybe a few) weeks now on developing a curve ball. She’s throwing a good drop and an excellent change, both with very good mechanics, so it seemed like a pitch that would break off the plate when she’s ahead would be just the ticket.
We went through the usual learning steps — starting with the spin (using the frisbee, then a ball), drilling it from close range, then getting back into a full pitch. She’s been working a lot on getting it to spin correctly, which is a combination of wrist movement and overall body control.
Last night we started up on it again, and at first we were getting either bullet spins or more of a 12 to 6 spin like a fastball or drop. Then all of a sudden it clicked for her. She started getting side spin, then faster side spin, and before you knew it she had a pitch that looked like it was going to be an outside fastball until right before the plate then bam! Off it goes, about a ball and a half off the corner. It was a thing of beauty.
I’m not sure who was the most excited — Shannon, her dad Randy, or me! But it was pretty cool. I love it when a plan comes together — and the student actually works on what we do in between lessons!
The quality of high school softball
Allow me to open this discussion by stating that this is not a slam against any one school. If I wanted to do that I could certainly find sneakier and nastier ways to do that. No, instead this is more a general statement based on data points I’m receiving from several high schools in the suburban Chicago area.
There has always been a perception in the softball world that high school softball sucks is not as high a caliber as travel ball. This perception is generally born out by reality. Lately, though, it seems like the situation has deteriorated to the point where you’re more likely to see a good game at a local rec league than you are at anything below the varsity level. And even in then, in some cases.
I am hearing more and more about teams at sizeable schools that are only carrying 12 varsity players. Not because they’re being selective, but that’s all the players they can afford to have there if they want to field teams at the JV and freshman levels. Some schools, unable to field both a freshman and a JV team, are combining the two to make one big team. You have to figure in that case that you will have roughly 9-10 kids who play all the time, and an equal number who basically get to go to the games, shiver in the cold, and watch from a bench that homeless people wouldn’t sit on by choice.
While I suppose there has always been some element of this, it seems like the primary criteria for making a high school team these days is the ability to fog a mirror. That’s how desperate many schools are for players.
What’s the cause of this dearth of players? Hard to say. Certainly a part of it is competition from other sports, especially during the summer when girls should be building their interest in and love for the game. But now indoor sports such as volleyball and basketball are going year-round. Those who have a talent for those sports seem to feel they need to specialize earlier, so they drop out of softball when their tournaments conflict. Yes, there is indoor softball too, but it’s expensive and relatively pointless. It can also be tough to field a team during the winter months.
Inadequate coaching at all levels is likely another cause. In the rec leagues it’s hard to find parents who will coach a team, much less one that knows what he/she is doing. Practices are boring, skills don’t improve, games are slow, and ultimately the girls move on to other activities that are more fun. The good coaches who are there suffer for the sins of the others, as well as suffering one or more players who are just there for the social aspects.
Travel ball coaches, driven by their need to prove they are every bit as good a coach as Mike Candrea or Sue Enquist, schedule softball activities for every waking minute of the summer. Every weekend it’s another tournament, every day during the week it’s a practice or a practice game, until all the joy is taken out of it. Softball becomes more a job than a fun activity. Then there are the screamers who expect little 12 year old Suzy to execute against the ground ball the same way Lovie Jung does.
Finally, we have the high school coaching staff. Again, some are good and dedicated, but others are just teachers looking to supplement their paychecks. The biggest problem is the feudal system involved in high school sports. Coaches are accountable to the athletic director, but as long as they stay on his/her good side that’s about it. They’re free to place players at levels according to their whims, and play or not play them that way as well. While that’s true for any coach, the difference in high school is there is no recourse. If you don’t like what’s going on, your choices are to move or enter a private school. Neither is very practical for the majority. As kids feel they have been treated unfairly the word spreads, and soon you have a softball program headed for the death spiral.
What’s the answer? I think at all levels we have to remember that our job is not just to lead the players in our care but also to serve them. Coaches need to build relationships with their players as people rather than chess pieces to throw out onto the field. High schools need to build programs that treat the freshmen as well as they treat the varsity, rather than setting up a caste system; that includes hiring competent, experienced coaches for the lower levels. And when I say experienced I mean coaches with coaching experience, not just playing experience. There really is a difference, as anyone who has played for a former player/no coaching experience type can tell you.
High school softball is suffering and from what I’m seeing and hearing the situation is getting worse, not better. We need to find a way to get more girls involved at an earlier age, and then build an experience that doesn’t drive them off when they get there. If not, soon we’ll be seeing summer teams that practice all spring, because their girls would rather do that than suffer another season of frustration and bad feelings.
Why I love this (coaching) job
Last night I had one of those moments that makes it all worthwhile. A couple of weeks ago I had a new student start. Her dad brought her to me for a sample lesson after she’d been with another pitching coach for three years. He said in that time he hadn’t seen her progress.
I had her throw a few pitches and said I could see why. The mechanics she’d been taught were not really in line with what we know now. It looked like it was the theories of 10+ years ago — particularly how she was working so hard to “close the door.” Most of her pitches were in the dirt and inside off the plate, and so-called movement pitches all had a basic 12-6 spin. I told them what I would do if she came to me and explained why. The next day they set up some regular lessons.
But it wasn’t an automatic. At first, as I worked with her to stay open and drive straight in instead of closing the door I could see she was skeptical. That’s ok — what I said totally contradicted what she’d been told for three years, and while she may not have been particularly effective with it she was comfortable with it. But she dutifully complied. After the second lesson I pointed out to her that while she was working on doing what I said in order to comply (rather than totally buying in) her control troubles had gone away.
Still, she wasn’t quite convinced yet. Her dad e-mailed me asking if I could point to some clips she could watch so she could understand what I wanted better. That may have been the reason, or it could’ve been that they wanted to see if my statement that what I teach is what the top-level do was really true or whether I was just feeding them a line. I sent a link to some online clips and told them who to watch and what to look for.
Last night this girl came in for her lesson and she was spot-on with what I wanted her to do. Well, every now and then she went back to the old ways but I’d say 97% were the right mechanics. That effort was rewarded with excellent control and speed. We worked on her changeup, improving that, and got her going on a true screwball — one that spins in toward a hitter rather than 12-6 as she’d been throwing before. She was quite thrilled with the progress and now totally enthused with what we’re doing.
I have to say it made my night. This girl has some talent, and with a lot of work and some proper instruction she should do well. It’s fun when it all comes together.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 