One of the keys to keeping the backhand change low and hump-free is maintaining a slight bend in the elbow as the hand comes through. In this position the ball comes through before the rest of the arm.

Ok, that sounds good in theory. But it can be tough to get the feel of how to get the arm properly bent. Here’s a new cue I’ve found that helps pitchers get in the right position. Have the pitcher bring her thumb across the spot where the hip bone and the thigh bone meet. In practice she can actually touch her hip area at that point. The arm will bend and she’ll be able to keep a flat release.

Emphasis on the wrist snap has been part of the process of coaching fastpitch pitchers since Eddie Feigner soiled his first diaper. Generally it is interpreted to mean that you have to have a strong, powerful wrist snap driven by the muscles in the wrist in order to throw hard.

But how true is that, really? Let’s try an experiment. Have someone grab your forearm with both hands so you can use the wrist muscles — and only the wrist muscles — to throw the ball. Now snap the wrist as hard as you can. No matter how strong your wrist is, and how many fireman rolls you do, the ball is not going to come out that hard, or go that far. It’s because the wrist muscles are relatively weak compared to the rest of the body. Because of this, on their own they don’t really add anything to the pitch, no matter what all those expensive pitching videos might tell you.

It’s not the strength of the wrist, but its flexibility, that is the key to its contribution. Have you ever snapped somebody with a towel? First of all, shame on you. But if you have, you know that if you get the end of the towel to flick fast enough, you can make your teammate, spouse, dog, etc. jump. There is no muscle in the end of the towel. It’s the speed at which it accelerates, and the fact that the previous section stopped moving in the same direction, that creates the snap.

Your wrist is like the end of the towel. As long as it moves quickly it will impart the speed. And the faster it moves over a short distance, the faster the ball will come out. It’s also the most flexible joint in your body, capable of moving 180 degrees back to front, and in a variety of directions. Try that with your knee! Wait, maybe you shouldn’t.

Still not convinced? Try another experiment. Stand with your elbow at your side and your forearm pointing straight up. Now snap your wrist down as fast as you can using the wrist muscles. Doesn’t work too well, does it? Now relax the wrist so the hand is just sort of hanging there, and then abruptly move your arm back and forth slightly. If I’ve described how to do it correctly you’ll see the wrist move much faster. (If I haven’t no telling what you’ll see!) A loose, flexible wrist can move much faster than a tight wrist can be muscled.

So does that mean the wrist can be weak and you’ll throw hard? No. It still has to have enough strength to accept all the power and stress being driven into it by the other, larger muscles in the body. A weak wrist won’t be able to transfer the power. But just as a car needs both a powerful engine and a strong transmission to go fast, so do your pitches. You should strengthen the wrist so it can do its job effectively.

The point, though, is that you don’t need to practice endless strong wrist snaps or concern yourself with muscling the wrist at the end of the pitch. Instead, make sure you’re getting good whip of the forearm (the forearm going quickly from behind the elbow to in front of it at the bottom of the circle) and keep that wrist loose. Done correctly your wrist will snap all on its own, and at the right time, to help you achieve your goals.

One of the most common problems with the screwball (once it begins to move) is that it starts too far inside and the breaks off the plate. This is usually caused by an arm circle that stays outside of the throwing hand hip instead of getting across the body more.

Still, you can talk about it all you want, but it’s often difficult for the pitcher to understand exactly what this means. Here’s a way to help make the point.

Have the pitcher stand over the plate, with her pivot foot aligned with the center of the plate and the stride foot slightly offset as Meaghan is showing here. Then have her hang her arm straight down, outside of her hip. From here she can see why the ball is starting so far inside.


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The ball is starting on the inside of the plate,
and has nowhere to go but further inside.

Now look at the second picture. Meaghan has her elbow inside of her hip, and the ball is over the center of the plate. This position will allow her to start the ball down the middle, where it can break over the inside corner.


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The ball is now over the center (more or less).

One last point. In order to get it to this position, it helps to offset the arm circle so it moves from pitching hand side toward the glove side, much as you would do for an outside fastball. If you align the circle straight down center it is difficult to reach this position, and thus difficult to throw this pitch for a strike.

One of the challenges teaching pitching to younger girls is getting them the idea of moving quickly when delivering the pitch.

I recently ran into that challenge and found a new way to explain what I was looking for. I asked each pitcher if she had ever played the game of “hot potato.” They all had, so I explained it this way. From the time you begin moving forward, you are playing hot potato. You need to get rid of the ball as fast as you can or else risk getting stuck and being eliminated from the game.

It seemed to work, as each of them picked up the pace after we discussed it.

(By the way, for those few who aren’t familiar with the game, you have the participants sit in a circle and hand a potato to one of them. You start the music, or a timer, and the player with the potato tosses or passes it to someone else in the circle. You keep going until the music stops. The person holding the potato is then eliminated. You keep doing this until there is a winner. The game definitely encourages everyone to move quickly, and get rid of the ball as fast as you can.