Another way to explain finishing the change
At our last practice I set up a station to work with pitchers. We only had 15 minutes per pitcher, so I had each pitcher select one pitch to work on in that time.
The first pitcher was Emily, and she chose the changeup. It’s been troubling her for at least a year – to the point where she really doesn’t like to throw it. Yet it’s critical to her success, so that’s what we went after.
After some warm-ups Emily threw a few. And that’s when I spotted something in her finish. I always tell pitchers to drag the ball through the release zone, and she did to an extent. But it was happening too late. So I told her to drag it starting from behind her and then all the way through.
It was a night and day difference. All of a sudden it was coming in low and slow, floating the way we like it. And, she was able to mix it in with other pitches on command.
For me, it’s one of the things that keeps teaching most interesting — finding new ways to explain the same core concepts. I’ve never thought of telling a pitcher to drag the ball that way. But that day it seemed like the right thing to do.
For you coaches out there, never stop learning or finding new ways to teach. If what you’ve always said isn’t working, find a new way to say it. The more options you have, the better you’ll be able to help your players.
Zip Balls definitely help fastpitch pitchers learn
Recently I had the opportunity to see Cindy Bristow demonstrate the use of Zip Balls, a training aid she developed to help fastpitch softball players learn to pitch, hit and field better. It was at the NFCA Coaches College course on team practices; she was working with some D1 pitchers, and used the Zip Balls as part of the training.
I had seen Zip Balls advertised for a while, but wasn’t really sure if they would be worth it. I’m not big on gimmicks and gadgets, so I always tend to look at such things a bit skeptically. But I can tell you now from first-hand experience that they are definitely worth the investment.
If you’re not familiar with them, Zip Balls are little softballs. They are slightly larger than golf balls, with full seams and all, but they weigh as much as regular balls. It’s a little disconcerting the first time you pick them up.
The object of using them is to feel how the fingers are used on the ball. Because they’re so small you’re forced to use the finger pads to throw them.
I’ve used them with several different pitchers and have found them to be great for teaching all sorts of things. For example, with a beginner who was having trouble getting the feel of the basic motion, Zip Balls helped her learn to use her arm properly. With the small ball she was able to relax and lead her elbow then pull her hand through the release zone.
Where they really seemed to be effective, though, was with more experienced pitchers learning movement pitches. For some it was a matter of feeling how to position the hand properly. When Cindy demonstrated them she said to tell the pitcher to be very aware of what her hand is doing. It usually takes a few times before they can actually do it, but they do start feeling it.
With one of my most accomplished pitchers we were able to really sharpen her movement pitches, especially her curveball. She already had good break on her curve, but after using the Zip Ball it broke quicker, sharper and more dynamically.
If you purchase a dozen you also get a DVD that shows you more uses for Zip Balls. Most are pretty intuitive – you can use them for hitting, fielding, training catchers, etc. — but it’s worth a look anyway.
Zip Balls are definitely a good investment, especially for pitchers. Just one word of caution — they can get through the netting on typical batting cages very easily. If you’re using them indoors, be sure there’s a tarp so something behind the catcher or someone outside may get hurt!
Three Star Master Coach
Ok, this is a little self-serving, but I am now a Three Star Master Coach with the NFCA’s Coaches College, or NFCC. Not only is it an achievement on its own, but it also takes me 3/4 of the way toward full Four Star status.
If you’re not familiar with it, the NFCC is a college Masters degree-level program that delves in-depth into various aspects of coaching fastpitch softball. You receive one star for every two courses successfully completed, so obviously I have taken six of the eight courses.
Courses cover everything from the mechanics of pitching, hitting, throwing, etc. to offensive and defensive strategies (two separate courses, by the way), defensive techniques, strategies for game day coaching and more. The latest course for me was #406, Coaching Dynamic Team Practices.
For this course I flew down to Orlando, where I spent two days with about 60 other coaches, from D1 college down to 10U travel. The instructors were Carol Hutchins, Cindy Bristow (both NFCA Hall of Famers) and Carol Bruggeman (no doubt a future inductee). We did several hours of classroom work, and each day we were also outside for two hours watching the instructors run a couple of teams through a sample practice.
While what they did was interesting, it was really watching how they did it that was the most fascinating for me. You got a pretty good opportunity to see why they are where they are. The first day they worked with the Seminole State Junior College team, and the second day with D1 Central Florida University.
If you’re committed to being the best coach you can be, the NFCC is an awesome program to improve your knowledge and help you grow. It’s not cheap — I probably spent more than $1,000 when it was all said and done — but a very worthwhile investment for serious coaches.
Of course, earning Three Star status doesn’t give my team any extra runs to start the game. But it sure helps me feel like we’re preparing the best we can for competition. And it’s fun to be among so many other committed coaches.
Training v practice
Saw this post the other day on The Talent Code blog and thought it was something fastpitch softball players (and their parents) would find worthwhile. It’s on the negative connotation of the word “practice.”
According to the post when players hear the word “practice” they think of boring repetition – something to be avoided if at all possible. Yet we all know those boring repetitions are necessary to learning our sport.
What author Dan Coyle suggested is replacing the term “practice” with “training.” Here’s the thinking.
Practice sounds like something you do for its own sake. You practice to learn, but you don’t necessarily have a specific goal.
But training is something you do in preparation for a something. Prize fighters train. Olympians train. Everything they do is aimed at a specific endpoint.
I happen to like the term “training” (this is a new concept for me), but what do you think? Is there a real difference? Does training sound better than practicing? Or does it not matter what you call it as long as it gets done?
Device to help fastpitch infielders learn to have soft, quiet hands
We often hear that fastpitch softball infielders should have soft and quiet hands when fielding ground balls. But sometimes they build habits that make it difficult to make to keep their hands soft and quiet.
That was the case for one of my infielders. Somewhere along the way she’d picked up a habit I’ve seen in a number of players. As the ball came to her, she would raise her throwing hand up and then make a slapping motion down toward her glove to finish fielding the ball. Only it seemed like every time she did that it became distracted by the extraneous motion, and often she’d have trouble actually securing the ball.
The result was more errors than a player of her caliber should be making. Balls would hit her glove and end up on the ground – or sometimes would take a little hop and end up getting past her. Not all the time, but enough to be of concern.
That was the problem. We tried explaining what she was doing and showing it to her, but she wasn’t able to feel it when it happened. That’s when I came up with a solution.
The solution
What she needed was something that would keep her hands in close proximity while fielding, 
and give her instant feedback when she started pulling them apart to slap the glove. After improvising something on the spot to start her, I made a little trip to Ace Hardware and created the device you see here for just under $20.
It’s made with a couple of Velcro straps that have a D-ring on them held together with some latext tubing. Honestly, I couldn’t believe I found the perfect straps just off the shelf – I was sure I would have to build straps with the attachment rings on them. But they’re stock items, and even come in two lengths so you can adjust for players with larger wrists.
The results
My player has been using the “handcuffs” for a few weeks now on both rolled and batted balls, and the improvement has been noticeable. It didn’t take long to have an effect either; we played a double header a week after I made them and she went error-free with softer hands.
She’s continuing to use them as she doesn’t think she’s quite past the glove slapping just yet. But when I talked to her about the handcuffs today she said they definitely helped, because she can feel when her hands start separating too far. She likes the tubing because it provides just enough “tug” to help her feel the problem, acting as a reminder without being so restrictive that it becomes a crutch.
So if you have a player with the issue, take a trip to the hardware store. You may be just as pleased at the results it produces.
All Access videos provide great insight, ideas
This is not an official Life in the Fastpitch Lane product review, but rather just something I wanted to share. I’ve been getting catalogs from Championship Productions filled with all sorts of fastpitch softball DVDs for a few years now.
I love looking through them, but usually don’t buy because I’ve already spent a small fortune on those sorts of materials. But one group I’ve had my eye on for a few years has been their All Access series, where you get to go behind the scenes of the practices for various college teams and see what they do.
They run around $100 each so not a decision one would make lightly. But I finally broke down and purchased two of them — the UCLA outdoor practice with Kelly Inouye-Perez, which I believe is the first one they did, and the University of St. Thomas indoor session with John Tschida.
I’ve watched them both now, and I can say they were well worth the money spent. Not to mention the time invested. The UCLA video runs across two DVDs and about four hours, whereas the UST set is on three videos and probably ran closer to six. I didn’t watch either in one sitting.
It’s fun to see how they structure their practices, what they spend time on, how they interact with their players and even how they use the facilities. I was personally gratified by the fact that many of the things they did are things I’m already doing, both with my team and with my students.
Still, I sat there with my smartphone writing down ideas for different activities or different approaches to the same skills. As with most training DVDs, at times a particular activity went on too long. In my mind once you’ve made the point move on rather than showing endless repetitions. Still, if you double-time it you can get through the dull spots and move on to the next thing.
Whether you’re a beginning coach or a grizzled veteran like me I think you’ll find these DVDs worthwhile. With the holidays coming up I’m hoping to pick up a couple more. Hint hint.
Practice time v game time
In the past few years, fastpitch softball teams seem to have become more and more obsessed with seeing how many games they can possibly jam into a season. The belief is that the more games you play, the better you get.
Yet if you actually look at what the professionals say, more games doesn’t necessarily equal better performance. In fact, it’s the opposite, at least as far as developing skills goes.
The current thinking across different sports is that you should have anywhere from three to five hours of practice for every hour of game time. Yes, you read that right.
In this article on the USA Hockey website, they recommend a 3 to 1 practice to game ratio. They’ve done a lot of studies about the amount of stick time players get in games, and it’s not nearly enough to develop skills. You get far more in practice.
World class soccer programs go even more. They follow a 5:1 ratio, i.e. five hours of practice to one hour of games. Dan Coyle in his Little Book of Talent and The Talent Code recommends the same ratio based on his study of talent hotbeds around the world.
Finally, closer to home there’s this document from Softball Canada. While they don’t give a specific recommendation on what the ratio should be, they do recommend against a 1:1 or even a 2:1 ratio. They essentially advocate many more hours of practice time than game time.
Check out pages 10 and 11 for more specifics.
So there you have it. If you want your player to develop her skills, look for a team that emphasizes quality practice time and instruction over an endless series of games. It may not be as much fun to watch, but it’ll pay off better in the end.
So what do you think? Is practice time more valuable than game time? Or do you believe the only way to learn the game is playing the game?
Failure another step toward fastpitch softball success
Normally when I tell stories about my fastpitch softball students I like to share success stories. It’s always inspiring to hear how a player overcame adversity and experienced success. And it’s not too bad for self-promotion either.
But today I want to share the stories of a couple of fails from over the weekend. Unusual, I know, but bear with me. The reason I’m somewhat happy about these failures is what they will ultimately do for the two girls involved.
Both of the girls in this story are 14U pitchers, and both have experienced a lot of success in the past year. Maybe a little too much. This past weekend, though, both got rocked. Admittedly it was pretty cold, so I’m betting that had something to do with it.
Regardless, for each girl a team served as a reminder that we still have a lot of work ahead of us. I think that’s a good thing, especially right before going into the long, boring off-season, because those experiences will provide some inspiration to work hard and get prepared for next season.
For these two girls, the bar was set a little higher. Both are great kids and hard workers so I doubt it would’ve been much of an issue anyway. But now they can put a name and a face on the opponent they’re preparing to battle, which always gives it a little extra juice. They’ll work hard to disguise the changeups better, to add speed, to add movement to breaking pitches and so on. Because they know if they don’t, someone out there will be making them feel bad next summer.
So many coaches and parents are afraid of failure. They don’t like to see their kids go through any adversity. Yet it’s human nature to need a little adversity to drive us to get better. It’s like the old saying that you can’t forge steel without a lot of heat.
Another thing I like about the struggles these girls went through is it showed them it isn’t fatal. Sure, it feels bad at the time. But they both got through it fine, and they now know a little more about themselves.
The final thing is that we can be sure they faced a quality opponent in those losses. When you’re winning all the time, and dominating in the circle, you have to wonder if you’re really that good or if your opponents are a little weak. Facing quality opponents gives you a level-set, and shows where you need to be versus where your are.
So yes, it’s not much fun to lose, and to fail. But those failures are critical to achieving ultimate success. As long as you don’t make a habit of them!
Crazy stuff people teach about hitting
So tonight I was doing my last lesson of the evening. It was scheduled as a pitching lesson, but the dad asked if I would take a few minutes at the end to look at his 13U daughter Hannah’s hitting. When we got to that part I asked what exactly he wanted me to look at and he said the whole thing. It seems Hannah wasn’t hitting the ball very hard.
I figured the best place to start would be to ask her what she thought she should be doing — what has she been taught in the past. She told me that she had been to a few hitting clinics at a local D1 college, one I think most people would consider a top 25 program. I couldn’t believe what she then told me.
Apparently, all of the instruction had focused on the following: to start the swing raise your front elbow, and bring your back elbow down into the slot (my term, not hers). Next pull the front elbow, and then push the hands through at the ball.
That was it. No mention of the lower body, or the hips, or how to use the shoulders. Nothing. Nada. It wasn’t that she didn’t remember. It’s that’s all there was.
I then had her demonstrate what she’d been taught. After a couple of swings, where she perfectly executed exactly what she’d been told, I stopped her and said no wonder she is having trouble. We then started working off a tee.
We only had a few minutes so I couldn’t get into a full bore hitting lesson. But I figured I could at least help her use her arms correctly. I put her into the “turned” position, where the hips have mostly come through while the shoulders were still in their starting position. (Some call this the “stretch” position, I believe.) I had her keep her bat angled, then hit the ball off the tee.
In just a couple of swings she was hitting the ball harder than she had with a full swing. We finished by having her take a few full swings, focusing on maintaining what we’d worked on for the end of the chain.
I don’t know if it’s going to help her much this weekend. I mean, I’m good but that’s spelled with two “o’s.” If she works the drill I gave her during the week it may. But at least it’s a start toward becoming a better hitter.
The reason I share this story, though, is as a cautionary tale that can’t be told too often. Remember, just ’cause someone coaches at or plays at a D1 college or has some other impressive-sounding credential doesn’t mean they know the first thing about hitting. Or pitching, or fielding, or any other aspect of the game.
When you’re told something, don’t take it as gospel. Look at what great players do and compare that to what you’re being told. If the instruction doesn’t match what you see, find a better instructor. (If it’s a team coach, find a diplomatic way to ignore it and seek out better advice.) There’s a lot of bad information and theories floating around there, and listening to it will actually make you worse than if you just tried to stumble your way through it yourself.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of good advice out there as well — advice that will match what you see being done by top players. Some of the “experts” may disagree with one another on certain points, because it’s not quite an exact science. There is still room for interpretation. But what you’ll see is a lot more similarities than differences among good instructors, especially in the bigger picture. Certain aspects, such as the sequence of events in hitting (hips, then shoulders, then bat) are universal.
In tonight’s case, I’d bet good money that not a single even decent hitter on this college team does anything close to what was being preached in the clinics during their games. They may think they do, but they don’t.
If you want to be successful, don’t take anyone’s word for it. Even mine. Verify what you’re being told by comparing it to what great players actually do. If it’s wrong you’ll save yourself a lot of wasted time, and you’ll experience success a whole lot sooner. And if you find it’s right, you’ll be able to pursue it a whole lot harder. As it should be.
There really is such a thing as throwing like a girl
Last week I was handed an article by Larry Ellett, the father of Molly Ellett, one of my students, that is sure to make some people unhappy. He saw it in the Chicago Tribune, but it was originally from the Washington Post. The story was about how boys and girls throw differently — naturally.
We’ve all heard the phrase “You throw like a girl.” It’s never said as a compliment. What’s usually meant is that the person in question drops his/her elbow and pushes the ball out, resulting in an anemic throw that doesn’t go too fast or too far.
Apparently there’s more to this than gender bias. According to the article, in societies all over the world, there are marked differences in the way boys and girls throw when left to their own devices. There’s actually a graphic that shows the differences in the two throwing methods. It also quotes Harvard softball coach Jenny Allard, who agrees that girls don’t come by a proper throwing motion naturally and must be taught.
One of the theories in the article is that in our hunter/gatherer days, males had to learn to throw if the tribe or family was going to eat, and women didn’t. The one exception was the Aboriginal tribes of Australia. There, boys and girls both hunt using throwing methods — and that’s where the gap is least pronounced. (This also backs up my theory that to a boy, rock+duck=throwing practice, whereas that doesn’t occur to a girl.)
There’s lots of data in the article to back up the claims, so give it a read. This is not a case of gender bias or men trying to keep women down. In fact, the study was performed by a female, and females like Allard are quoted saying “Yes, it’s true.”
What does all of this mean to a softball coach? It means no matter what age group you coach, you’d better plan to spend time working on throwing mechanics. Lots of time, because this is a very under-taught part of the game.
Allard says (and I’ve seen other college coaches say as well) that one of the biggest issues for players entering college is they don’t have good throwing mechanics. They may have been good enough athletes to get by with bad mechanics, and as long as the team was winning none of their previous coaches worried about it. But in college, they want them to throw properly, which means the ball goes farther and gets there faster.
Here’s a quick experiment. Set your players an appropriate distance apart (60 feet for 14U and up, perhaps closer for younger players). Then pull out a stopwatch and tell them you want them to make all successful throws and catches for one minute. While they’re working at it, call out the time remaining. You may assume this drill will take a minute to complete. Don’t be surprised if you’re still
at it 20 minutes later. It’s not as easy as it sounds. But it will give you an idea of where your team’s throwing mechanics really are.
Fall is a good time to get a throwing mechanics program started. Winter is even better, especially if you’re going to be indoors for much of that time. But even if you’re continuing to play a full schedule through December make the effort to teach your girls how to throw.
When I’m working with players on throwing I always tell them that poor throwing is an easy way for them to get cut at a tryout. By the same token, if you throw well — especially if your mechanics are better than everyone else’s — you look like a player. It’s your choice how you want to show up in a tryout.
Again, give the article a look. And then make sure you carve out some practice time to teach throwing mechanics and practice them. It’s worth the extra effort.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 