Gotta love Facebook for keeping up with people. This week I saw that one of my long-time students, freshman Mary Chamberlain, was named Pitcher of the Week at Blackburn College. The honor came during their Spring trip to Myrtle Beach, SC.

Mary is a great player and a great person. Nice to see her getting this kind of accolade so early in her career. I’m sure it’s the first of many!

I was at a lesson tonight (as usual) and got to talking to the parents of one of my students. They have been excited to see the progress their daughter has made, especially since we started back up in late September, and then they told me an amusing story.

There are four pitchers on their daughter’s 12U team (including her). My student actually could be playing 10U but moved up.

Anyway, at a recent practice the pitchers were all warming up, and one of the coaches pointed out that my student was the only one not doing wrist snap drills. Her mom and dad said, “Yes, that’s right” and smiled. (For me, wrist snaps as warm ups are a total waste of time, as I’ve written in previous blog posts.)

Her parents told me the other pitchers go through this elaborate warm-up sequence before pitching. Their daughter is often pitching for 25 minutes (or at least seems like it) before the others get started.

So then I asked the big question: how is she doing compared to the others? Because if she’s not doing what they’re doing, you’d hope she’s doing better.

She is. And that’s the funny thing to me. Despite being younger and smaller than the others, apparently she throws harder and more accurately. If that’s the case, and she’s doing something different from the others, maybe it’s time to question what the others are doing instead?

Just sayin’.

The other day I was working with a girl named Emily who has been a student of mine for several years. She’d always had a bit of a problem with striding off the power line, but after taking a year off from fastpitch softball it had become more of an issue.

Essentially, while she was striding off-line, she was working hard to keep her arm circle on the line. As a result she was off-balance, which affected both her control and speed. I tried a couple of things to try to get her on-track but they only had a temporary effect. Then a new cue hit me.

I told Emily to keep her bellybutton on the power line. That seemed to do the trick. Suddenly she was striding forward far more consistently, and staying in balance much better.

Once she was doing that, everything else fell into place. Her speed picked up and her accuracy improved.

If you have a pitcher who is struggling with these issues, give the bellybutton cue a try. It might just be what she needs to stay on line.

In a perfect world, when a fastpitch player comes in for softball pitching lessons the first thing that would happen is she would immediately get faster. Unfortunately, often the opposite happens.

A player will come in throwing hard, but wildly and inconsistently due to poor mechanics. Then, as we work on correcting those mechanics, she notices a drop in speed. It’s usually not a lot, but enough to cause her some concern. Some can get quite frustrated, at which point they begin to wonder whether learning new mechanics is worth it.

But seeing a temporary loss of speed is fairly normal. And it makes sense when you think about it.

When that player walks in, she’s usually totally comfortable with what she’s doing. She may not like the results — too many walks or hit batsmen — but she is used to doing what she does. Which means she does it with 100 percent enthusiasm and effort.

When we start to change the mechanics, though, she is then out of her comfort zone. She actually has to think about what she’s doing, and because she is uncomfortable with the new mechanics she tends to be hesitant in her approach. The natural result is a loss of speed.

Think of it in terms of running. If you are assigned to run a 100 meter sprint, and do it with 100 percent effort, you will get a particular time. If you then run another sprint with 80 percent effort, you will almost certainly get a noticeably slower time. You wouldn’t expect it to be any different either.

The same applies to pitching. Until you are comfortable enough with the way you’re throwing the ball to go 100 percent, your speed will be down. But it’s a temporary effect.

Eventually, better mechanics should result in even more speed than you had before; you just have to have a little faith and patience to get there. And you’ll be more accurate to boot. It’s a win-win!

One of the most important pitches for a fastpitch pitcher to develop is a good changeup. While everyone is always impressed with speed, the ability to change speeds without visibly changing the delivery is key to keeping hitters off balance and getting them out.

Now, there are all kinds of ways to throw a changeup. My favorite, though is the backhand change. Some call it the “flip” change, but I don’t because I don’t want the pitcher to flip her wrist at the end. Instead, I prefer that she drags the ball through the release zone and just flings it forward at release.

Not long ago I had a pitcher (Larissa) who was having trouble feeling the drag and fling. She was stiffening up and flipping the ball, and as a result it was going too fast and too high.

As I often do, I stood across from her and started to explain the release in a mirror image. But I forgot to use my left hand, and demonstrated with the right hand instead. That’s when the light bulb came on over my head, and I had her try what I had just done. 

The reason I think it works is that it takes the pitcher out of the normal context of pitching, and allows her to focus strictly on the release. Whatever the reason, though, I’ve tried it with several pitchers and it has worked for all of them.

If you’re using this type of change and have a pitcher who’s having trouble feeling it, give this a try. If you have a pitcher who’s struggling with the flip change, give it a try as well. You might like the results.

In my last post I talked about getting rid of the “hello elbow” and replacing it with a finish that is long, loose and natural. After that post, a reader named Melissa asked if I could post a video that illustrated the point.

This week I had the opportunity to shoot video of one of my students during her lesson. Justine is very long and lanky to begin with, so you can really see the follow-through. Here it is. Note that this is video is running at 1/3 the normal speed to make it easier to see.

Justine demonstrates a long, loose finish


Using this finish allows her to deliver maximum velocity without placing strain on the elbow.

So yesterday I started with two new pitchers — teammates with little pitching experience. Both had attended a few sessions of a pitching “clinic” in a large group put on by some local instructor or another.

As I always do I asked to see how they pitched before we launched into the lesson. One of the things I saw right away was something called the “hello elbow.”

The “hello elbow” is a form of forced follow-through at the end of the pitch. After you release the pitch, you bend your elbow and bring your hand up to your throwing hand shoulder. You’re supposed to then point your elbow at your catcher.

It may be well-intended, but it actually works against the mechanics that make up a good pitch. A finish should be long, loose and natural.

If you keep your arm loose and focus on whipping the lower arm past the elbow at release, the last thing you’re going to be able to do is touch your throwing-hand shoulder. You would have to stop the arm and change directions to do that.

As I was working with each of the girls, we focused on learning to be long, loose and natural at the finish. They both struggled at first, but I used a drill called the “low five” to help them get the feel. With an empty hand, I had them start with their pitching arms at the 12:00 position, then bring the upper arm down, then bring the hand through and give me a low five with their hands to my hand.

As they focused on slapping my hand, they started to find a new finish. Both wound up with their pitching hand by their glove-side shoulder. Luckily, from there it was an easy transition to throwing the ball that way too.

They weren’t perfect with it — the “hello elbow” showed up from time to time. But they were definitely better. At the end of the lesson I had them throw to their fathers, and the ball was straighter and faster than it had been when they walked in.

Follow-through is important, but you have to be careful not to trade one issue for another. Keep the follow-through long, loose and natural and your pitchers will find their own way.

I’ve written before about the myth of the wrist in pitching — how coaches and players put so much emphasis on developing a hard wrist snap through drills despite the fact that the wrist actually contributes very little to power. This past weekend I had the opportunity to see a good example of that in action.

Having some free time on my hands, I went to check out a local tournament. I thought I might get an opportunity to see a couple of students or former players playing (which I did).

While I was there, I saw one girl pitching who to me was the epitome of the “snap your wrist honey” school. She would step off the pitching rubber, make her arm circle, then pretty much stop the circle at the bottom and snap her wrist violently.

As you might expect, her pitches were rather slow, and had somewhat of an arc to them. But I’m sure someone, somewhere taught it to her and thought she was doing a great job. Despite the fact that she was getting pounded pretty hard.

The wrist’s main jobs are to transfer power from the rest of the motion to the ball, and to impart spin in the right direction. It is not a power source in and of itself. Think of it like a car.

The body, the arm, the whipping motion are all the things that create power; they are the engine. The wrist is the transmission that delivers that power to the wheels. While both are essential, by itself the transmission doesn’t do diddly. If you have the world’s greatest transmission and a weak engine, your car isn’t going to go very fast.

Performing endless wrist snap drills to develop power is a waste of time. Especially since there are no actual muscles in the wrist; the muscles that move the wrist extend from the forearm to the hand. Keeping the wrist loose and allowing it to snap quickly at the end of the windmill chain will work far better to impart speed to the ball.

But what about all those exercises to develop the wrist, like the forearm curl? They work because they’re building strength in the forearms, not the wrist, which provides greater stability to the wrist and allows more efficient power transfer.

If you want to increase speed, forget the wrist flips. Focus on developing the whip, and allow the wrist to do its thing.

There’s a saying I’ve seen on signs that goes “You can never be too rich or too thin.” For fastpitch softball pitchers, I would add “And you can never have too much speed.”

While speed by itself is not the be-all and end-all of pitching, neither is a lack of speed. The faster you throw, the tougher you are to hit. It’s that simple.

So now, as fastpitch players are (or should be) ending their self-imposed shut-downs and getting ready to start working on next season, this is a great time to work on learning to throw faster.

Why now? Very simple — you don’t have to worry about where the ball goes.

Working on speed requires pitchers to get out of their comfort zones. When that happens, there can be a temporary loss of accuracy until the mechanics lock back in and the faster, harder motion becomes the “new normal” as they like to say.

During the season, a loss of accuracy isn’t good for anyone. But now, at this time of the year, accuracy isn’t at such a premium so pitchers are freer to make adjustments that can set them back a bit in the short run but pay off later in the long run.

Now, of course there is fall ball. For pitchers who are new to a team, or trying to prove that they’re ready to take on a larger role on the same team, a loss of accuracy can be counter-productive. For those pitchers, it might be better to wait until fall ball is over.

For everyone else, though, it’s a good time to start pushing the proverbial envelope and seeing just what you can do.

For those in the North (like me) there’s another good reason to do it now. One of the best drills for building pitch speed is long toss. But it’s hard to get enough distance to make long toss pay off indoors, in a batting cage or even a gym. But right now, you can go out onto a field and just keep backing up until the ball doesn’t reach the plate anymore. Do that once or twice a week, and give it all you’ve got, and you’ll start to see that speed go up.

I know the summer of 2012 seems like it’s a long ways away. But for pitchers it’s not. Get after it now so you’re ready when next summer (or spring for you HS pitchers) comes.