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Checkmate! Why Fastpitch Hitting Is Like a Chess Match
Ok, before we begin I am going to flat-out admit I am not much of a chess player. I never liked it as a kid – too slow and boring for me – and can’t remember the last time I played a full game.
Probably when I was in high school, which was a very looooooong time ago.
But I do know enough about it to understand how it’s played from a macro level. Especially after watching The Queen’s Gambit series.
At its core, chess is a game of strategy and anticipation. You don’t go for the kill right away.
You make certain moves in a particular order to put yourself in a position to strike when the chances of success are highest. And you anticipate what your opponent is going to try to do to disrupt that strategy.
In that way it’s a lot like hitting.
The instinct of many young hitters (and more than a few older ones if we’re being honest) is to attack the ball with their bat as soon as it’s pitched. In other words, they initiate the swing with their hands and let the body follow that lead.
That can work sometimes. After all, a broken clock is right twice a day (unless it’s digital, in which case it probably doesn’t work at all) and a blind monkey can find a banana now and then.
It is not, however, an approach that is going to yield regular success, especially in higher levels of play.
Just like in chess, the first move shouldn’t be the main attack. It should be to get the pieces in place so when you do attack the ball you stand a better chance of hitting it.
That’s why a sequence of hips-shoulders-bat after the front foot lands is so important.
The hips have two jobs. The first is to generate power.
The largest and strongest muscles in the body are located in the lumbar-pelvic-hip complex (LPHC). The rotational movement of the hips and core muscles get the body moving in a manner that accelerates as it goes, creating power that can then be transferred up the chain when those same muscles suddenly decelerate the hips.
By delaying the shoulders momentarily, instead of allowing them to ride along with the hips, you create a stretch from the front hip to the back shoulder that acts as a rubber band, helping accelerate the shoulders and ultimately the bat forward rather than using the arms to do it. This frees the arms and hands to focus on directing the bat to the ball rather than yanking it wildly to try to increase the energy.
But it’s not just about power. That same movement also helps position the upper body, bringing it to the launch position without having to commit the arms and bat to the ball.
This delay give the hitter more time to see the ball and brings the bat closer to it so the actual launch of the bat occurs over a shorter distance, increasing the chances of making good, hard contact. After all, it’s easier to hit a target from close-in than far away, particularly if it’s not exactly coming in on a straight line.
And that’s where the chess analogy comes in. Rather than rushing the swing, an effective, quality hitter will first get all the pieces in place, then unleash the swing with a controlled explosion when the time is right.
Whereas a weaker hitter will place all her focus on simply getting the bat to the ball from the beginning of the swing.
The other part is the strategic element, the cat-and-mouse game between the hitter and the pitcher. A good pitcher will either be trying to pitch to her strength or the hitter’s perceived or known weaknesses so the hitter must understand what those are and adjust accordingly.
For example, if the pitcher is heavily dependent on her riseball to get hitters out, the hitter must have a strategy to deal with it. That can be to try to stand a little taller and stay on top of it, or look down and lay off those riseballs entirely while hoping the umpire doesn’t have a high strike zone.
The hitter can also look for patterns in the pitch caller’s pitch sequences. For example, if the pitcher is throwing changeups consistently in 0-2 counts, the hitter should be looking for a changeup if she goes 0-2.
In fact, against a tough pitcher she may concede the first two strikes to get to that easier to hit changeup. I’ve seen that work.
Hitters need to be aware of their own weaknesses as well. If a hitter has trouble with outside pitches, and is playing against an opponent who knows that, she should expect a steady diet of outside pitches until she proves she can hit them.
In that case, the strategy might be to crowd the plate and turn the outside pitch into more of a middle pitch – particularly if the hitter is strong on inside pitches. Doing that might even bait the other team into throwing inside to try to handcuff her – at which point she can turn on a pitch she likes and send it off like a rocket.
This is what makes fastpitch softball hitting so interesting and challenging. While it definitely requires a high element of physicality, there are also strategic elements built in that will affect and are affected by the physical components.
No wonder hitting has been called the most difficult feat in all of sports.
So keep that in mind when you’re working with hitters of all ages, levels, and abilities. Have a strategy for how you’re approaching each pitch, and a plan for how you’ll move the pieces in place to execute that strategy, and you’ll greatly increase your hitters’ chances of success.
Checkmate!
My good friend Jay Bolden and I have started a new podcast called “From the Coach’s Mouth” where we interview coaches from all areas and levels of fastpitch softball as well as others who may not be fastpitch people but have lots of interesting ideas to contribute.
You can find it here on Spotify, as well as on Apple Podcasts, Pandora, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’re searching, be sure to put the name in quotes, i.e., “From the Coach’s Mouth” so it goes directly to it.
Give it a listen and let us know what you think. And be sure to hit the Like button and subscribe to Life in the Fastpitch Lane for more content like this.
Chess photo by Gladson Xavier on Pexels.com
Taking a Chess-Like Approach to Softball Skills Development
Every couple of decades or so, something comes along that increases the general public’s interest in chess.
In the 1970s it was Bobby Fischer and his rise to become World Chess Champion. His victory was important because it was during the Cold War, at a time the Russians were dominating the chess scene.
In the 1990s it was the development of Deep Blue, IBM’s supercomputer that became the first to win a chess game and a chess match against a reigning world champion, this time Garry Kasparov. If you like all the processing power you now get in a mobile phone, you can thank Deep Blue for some of it.
Of course, right now it’s the Netflix original series The Queen’s Gambit that is making chess cool. Well, maybe not cool. Being captain of the high school chess club still isn’t nearly as good for your social standing as being captain of the football team or the cheerleading squad. But at least the show makes it a little less nerdy.
But whether you like chess or not (and you can count me in the “not” category for sure, since my idea of playing chess as a kid was to line up the big pieces and throw the pawns at them until they were all knocked off the board) there is a valuable lesson to be learned from how great players approach the game. The lesson is that to be successful in the long term in softball you have to have the right approach.
Beginners and your basic amateurs tend to be very transactional in their approach. They see a piece that’s vulnerable and they take it. If there’s nothing there, they make a move and hope something better shows up on their turn. It’s all about making something happen now.
Chess masters, however, take a different approach. They patiently work to get all the right pieces in all the right places so they can mount a powerful attack at the right time and win the game.
Sometimes that means sacrificing the most powerful piece on the board to gain an advantage. (That’s the queen for those who know even less than I do about chess.)
But that process of putting all the pieces in place before striking is what makes them successful.
That same philosophy applies to improving softball skills. In our sport, we love to measure things. So, say, if a pitcher is increasing her speed on a regular basis there is a temptation to believe all is well. It’s a transactional approach based on immediate gratification.
But the success she’s experiencing right now may end up leading to long-term failure, or at least some unnecessary limitations, if she’s not improving her actual skills. Because poor technique, even when combined with great athleticism, can only take you so far.
To experience real growth and development, sometimes you first have to put all the pieces in place, i.e., break down the movements and replace them with better movements. That can be difficult for some, because it might actually mean regressing in terms of performance measures for a little while.
Take our pitcher again. She’s a big, strong girl who has managed to throw 55 mph by just muscling up and chucking the ball in there.
But she eventually wants to play at a higher level, against better competition, and knows she’s reached the limits of what she can do with what she has, so she decides she needs to improve her technique. What she will probably find, however, is that before her numbers go up they may go down some.
The reason, of course, is that when she was doing what she used to do, she was able to do it with all the enthusiasm and energy she could muster. Now that she’s trying to make changes she can no longer do that.
Her pitching motion may feel awkward and uncomfortable for a little while as she gets used to the new technique. Or maybe the only way she can learn to relax and execute the new motion is go at 70% energy for a little while. Either way, she goes from 55 to 51 and no doubt begins to wonder if she’s doing herself a favor.
If she’s done her homework, however, and selected a coach who knows what he/she is doing (not always a given, unfortunately), the payoff will come – once all the pieces are in place and she can once again put 100% into every pitch.
This approach isn’t just limited to pitching. It’s the same for pretty much anything in softball, and any athletic movement in any sport for that matter.
Making substantive changes is hard because we all want to fall back into our old habits. It takes time and repetition to replace old habits with new ones.
Yes, it would be nice if someone could just say “do this” or “do that” and improvement would come instantly. But it would be a whole lot less satisfying.
If you’re looking to make real improvement in your softball skills, follow the lead of great chess players. Get all your pieces in place, i.e., fix everything that needs fixing, then go for it with everything you’ve got using your new skills.
By keeping your eye on the long game you’ll ultimately experience far more success – and have a lot more fun in the process.
Chess pieces photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com
Nerd photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
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