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Navigating the Maze of Fastpitch Skills Development
People often talk about the “path to greatness” when it comes to fastpitch softball skills development. But when you think about it, it’s not really a path – it’s more of a maze.
Everyone starts out in the same place – at the entrance. Everyone knows the end goal is excellence.
But it’s really not a straight-line journey, i.e., you hire a coach, join a team, or try to try to train your daughter yourself. Instead, the journey can be full of twists, turns, blind alleys, and dead ends.
Go the wrong way and you’re going to spend a lot of your time backtracking or trying to get your bearings again. Get in deep enough and you may never find your way back to a lane that will take you to your goal.
Take pitching for example. There are those who believe it doesn’t really matter what you teach to budding pitchers; they say eventually those pitchers will find their way to the mechanics that will lead to success.
I can tell you wholeheartedly that that is not true. Yes, some can overcome learning “hello elbow” (HE) when they start out, replacing them with more body-friendly internal rotation (IR) mechanics as they mature. They are usually exceptional athletes.
But that is not the case with everyone. I’ve acquired many pitching students who were taught turn the ball back toward second and push it down the back side of the circle who struggled to unlearn that early, sub-optimal teaching.
It can take them months just to learn how to keep the ball facing forward at the top of the circle (and just past it) so they can set themselves up to whip the ball through release. It’s not that they’re bad pitchers or poor athletes.
It’s just that the habit has been so ingrained into them that it’s difficult to break. They essentially got deep into the maze and then have to find their way back to nearly the beginning to get on the right track.
Hitters can have this too. They’re taught to “squish the bug” or “throw their hands/knob of the bat” at the ball or over-use their arms, or some other outdated concept.
Or maybe they’re just allowed to swing the bat however they want because they are big enough and strong enough at the younger ages that the techniques they use really aren’t important.
However they get there, they follow that path thinking they’re on their way, only to discover after their habits become ingrained that it’s been a series of blind alleys once again leading to a dead end. The other players have matched (or surpassed) them in size and strength, and suddenly what made them look like studs when they were young has them seeing more bench time today.
Just like in an actual maze, it’s important to start out in the right direction early. So how do you know which way to go when you’re just starting out so you ensure you don’t waste a whole lot of time and money that you will never recover?
Fortunately, unlike an actual maze there are plenty of signs and guideposts that will help you find the most expedient path to your goal. Some of those include:
- Watch high speed video of what actual high-level players do, then match that up to what potential coaches are teaching. If they’re not closely aligned you probably don’t want to go that way.
- Research the topics that interest you on the Internet. Yes, the Internet has as much bad information (or more) than good, but if you’re really interested in doing what’s right it shouldn’t take you too long to separate the gold from the garbage.
- Ask other parents, especially those whose daughters stand out, about their journey and what their daughter is being taught now They can help you avoid the pitfalls they themselves fell into.
- Try what’s being taught yourself to see if it makes sense. Many people actually seem to miss out on this simple test. See what it feels like to move your body the way it’s being described. Be aware of what you feel and whether it feels natural or forced. The goal is for it to feel natural and easy, because it means you’re working with your body instead of against it.
- Once you’ve gathered the data, think through it carefully to see what makes sense. Don’t just accept what Famous Player A says, because Famous Player A may not have a clue as to what she does on the field. She was probably one of those who found her way to good mechanics DESPITE what she was taught. Yet when it comes to teaching herself, she just goes back to what she was told when she was young because that’s all she consciously knows.
Starting down the wrong path in the beginning, or taking a bad detour along the way isn’t unrecoverable. But it definitely makes achieving one’s playing goals a lot more difficult because there’s going to be a lot of backtracking (and angst) before you can move forward again.
Take the time to determine which path will lead you through the maze of softball skills development more efficiently and you’ll find the entire journey to be a lot more enjoyable.
Maze photo by Tom Fisk on Pexels.com
It Always Helps to Have Perspective
One of the things I often tell players on their development journey is that yesterday’s achievements eventually become today’s disappointments.
For example, when a player first comes for hitting lessons she may be striking out all the time. Which means her goal is to not strike out so often, i.e., hit the ball instead.
She works hard and starts hitting regularly. Then she has a streak where she hits the ball but right at someone and she’s out every time.
She is still achieving the original goal – not striking out – but the goalposts for her expectations have moved and now anything less than a hit is a disappointment.
Probably the easiest place to see it, however, is with speed measurements for pitchers. Everyone always wants to get faster. I’m sure Monica Abbott, who I believe still throws the hardest out of all female players, would still love to add an mph or two if she could.
So pitchers work hard to achieve a new personal record. Then another. Then another, etc.
After a while, though, that first personal record she got so excited about is now a disappointment and perhaps even feels like a step backwards.
That’s why it helps to keep some perspective on the longer journey instead of just the next step.
That idea came home to roost last night when I was giving a lesson to a student (Gianna) who hasn’t been to lessons in a couple of weeks due to a volleyball-related thumb injury. (Don’t even get me started on how volleyball injuries impact softball players!)
Now, as you know the thumb is pretty important for gripping things like softballs. In fact, the opposable thumb is one of the key advantages that separates humans and other primates from most of the rest of the animal kingdom.
Gianna’s thumb had swollen up pretty badly and for the last couple of weeks she’d had trouble gripping anything. The swelling had finally gone down, and with a tournament coming up and her team already short a couple of other pitchers due to volleyball injuries (grrrr) she wanted to do all she could to help them.
So with her thumb stabilized and a bandage that wrapped around her wrist she decided to give it a go to see if she could pitch this weekend.
The short answer was yes, she could. But her speed was a little down from where it normally is. That’s ok, though, she was able to do it without pain (so she said) and to throw all her pitches.
Later on when I thought about the speed being down I had an epiphany.
You see, a year ago Gianna was struggling with some mechanical issues that were preventing her from getting the type of whip and pronation that would bring her speed up. She was working very hard to correct them but once those bad mechanics have set in the habits they create can be tough to break.
(One more piece of evidence that saying “Start with hello elbow and you can change later” is bad, bad advice.)
As I thought about it I realized that had she been throwing the speed she was averaging last night at this time last year, she would have been very excited and gone home on cloud nine. Because it was about 3 mph higher (whereas now it was 2-3 mph slower).
And that’s the point. Sometimes in our quest to get to “the next level” we sometimes forget to take a minute and look at how far we’ve come.
Keeping that longer-term perspective can help you stay positive when you hit the inevitable plateau and keep you going until you reach your next achievement.
Life in the Fastpitch Lane 