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Beginner Tips For Coaching Softball
by Dave
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
This article is strictly for beginners. It makes no attempt to teach experienced coaches something they don't know. If you have any experience coaching, you are certainly welcome to read it but please don't expect to get much out of it.
Deciding To Coach
If you are a parent of a young girl and are wondering if you should try coaching, I highly recommend it. You will probably learn more about yourself than you care to. I can assure you that if you take the right approach and expect little in return for your considerable efforts, you won't be disappointed! However, if your aim in volunteering is to enhance your child's experience with softball, forget about it. There are just too many distinct pressures on a coach to concentrate much on your own child. In fact, you will most likely give your kid an inferiority complex by the end of the season as you ignore her to teach other children. If you want to enhance your child's experience, play catch with her, pitch to her, go to a game with the entire family, enjoy the sport together.
Softball like most sports relies on parental volunteers. Without these individuals who give up their precious free time for your children, there would be no recreational leagues. The experienced coaches know they will give a lot and receive only grief in return. They do it for love of the sport and love of children in general. They are mostly trying to give back what they received as children. There are not enough of them. In short, if you are like-minded, softball needs you.
Safety Certification
The first step of becoming a coach is to obtain "safety certification." This is a four hour course which teaches you some extremely fundamental aspects of coaching kids sports. It does not really teach you much about safety but is more of an informational and philosophical discussion. It lasts about 4 hours and is frequently referred to as "Rutgers certification" because it is named after Rutgers University in New Jersey who pioneered the course for parental volunteer coaches in order to mitigate legal liabilities for volunteer coaches. You must take this before you go out on the field in most states. You must also make sure all your coaches have obtained it. Do not, under any circumstances, allow anyone who is not safety certified to assist you on the field. You do yourself, the kids, and the volunteer a disservice if you do.
Having Fun
Before we talk about specifics of coaching, let me offer up one pearl of wisdom. Softball, like all athletic endeavors, is a structured, goal-oriented activity. If you "just want the kids to have fun," you are taking the wrong approach before you get out of the box. There are myriad other activities which afford your child and the children of others the opportunity to "just have fun." Sure you want the kids to have fun but this is accomplished by teaching them the game and the skills needed to succeed at it. Your goal in coaching must be to teach.
Draft Day
Your first season as coach most likely begins with a draft. Presumably you've met with your assistant coaches all of whom will likely have kids on the team who you are required to draft. Now you must piece together a team that is competitive with the other teams in your league. If you do not, your kids will know that their team is not good and will begin to take you less seriously as a coach. Also if you draft an inferior team, the parents of your kids will not reason that you put together a team where the girls all "like each other." They'll assume you are a bad coach. So, please do not attend the draft meeting with a list of your kid's or other coaches' kids' best friends. You can certainly pick some of friends but you need to build a team that contains kids of the appropriate skill levels. And your daughter's experience will be greatly enhanced by meeting new kids.
Get And Stay Organized
In order to be a good coach, one of the first items on the agenda is organization. You simply must be organized in order to succeed. You need a complete list of team members, contact numbers, etc. Every time you and your coaches sit down to contact parents, you must make every effort to contact them all and communicate the desired message. Not to do so will cause you much grief. And it isn't fair to the kids. Get organized and stay organized. The kids deserve this much from you.
On the first contact of the kids you have drafted, you should make the call. Your coaches can make future calls but the first contact should be made by you to establish who you (the primary contact) are, to plan the first practice, and to obtain information. You don't need to have long conversations with each parent giving them your resume or explaining your philosophy about coaching. Give them the basics and get as much information as possible on each player including cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses. You'll be glad you did.
One thing you may wish to formulate on the first call is an idea of the best days of the week to practice. You likely will not be able to find a day on which every kid is currently available but you do not want to make your weekly practice on the day of the week nobody can make it. Once you decide which day to practice, let the parents know. If parents express anger because their kid cannot make that day, explain to them that you have polled the entire team and this is the best day for you and the rest of the team. Tell them you understand that their kid cannot make it but if you change to this day or that, this kid or that cannot make it. Also explain why this day is the best for you. Explain that you are sorry but you don't have a lot of choices because you, like they, have a very busy schedule. If you run into serious problems with this first step of actually coaching, call together a meeting of the parents. Parents often behave more reasonably when they are in a group of similarly situated people.
So now you have contacted each and every team member, told them when your first practice is, and established a day or days for weekly practices. Your next step is to design a practice. Practices should be one and one half hour long. One hour is simply not long enough and two is probably too long to keep your kids' attention. If you have older girls or are in a very competitive league, it is OK to extend beyond an hour an a half but that is because the girls are more serious.
Your First Practice
Plan to arrive at your first practice, and every one thereafter, 10-15 minutes before the established start time. Many parents will arrive a little early, some late, but arriving just at the start time means you are not ready on time. This will cost you as you take 5 minutes to move the equipment to the field, another 5 to get everyone in for a discussion, and you will be off balance for the first half hour. The famous NFL coach Vince Lombardi said that you are not really on time unless you are on the field, ready to go at least fifteen minutes before practice begins. This applies to coaches themselves more than it does to players.
At your first practice, or earlier if you have the opportunity, distribute a packet of information for parents and players. You probably have to distribute and then collect medical release information along with other information but also include some creations of your own which include a list of players on the team, their contact numbers, the rainout number and policy for your league, the game and practice schedules, and any other routine information which parents are likely to call you about. If you do not distribute this sort of ordinary information, you can expect to get weekly calls from many of your team parents because common sense is just not that common and even though the league probably posts rainout information on their web site, most of your parents will be totally ignorant of this!
Bring Ice
Another important item which is simple but should not escape your attention is always bring ice and some plastic sandwich bags to practices and games. It hurts to get hit by a softball. Having ice you can quickly put into a baggy is the most useful way to deal with injuries such as this. I recently attended a little league tournament game in which the pitcher took a hard line drive to the shoulder. We were standing around waiting for play to resume when I asked the other team's coaches if they had ice to put on the injury. They didn't! This is lazy and inexcusable. This sort of ordinary sense is the bare minimum for having supervisory authority over my and other folks' kids. Always have ice and something to put it into.
Always Two Adults
Speaking of injuries, it is entirely possible that kids will get injured in practice or games. You must have another adult present at all practices. They don't necessarily need to be safety certified (in which case they must not be on the field) but they must be there in the unlikely event that you must leave to seek medical attention. The other adult should not continue practice in your absence but he or she will be there to supervise the kids until their parents arrive to pick them up. Two adults to a practice period. If you are alone, don't practice.
Structure Practices
Practices need to be broken down into segments. Each segment does not have to be a specific length but thinking of a 1 1/2 hour practice as consisting of three half hour pieces is probably a good idea.
You must begin each practice with a warm-up and stretching. Stretching is best accomplished after the body has warmed so I suggest you begin with a brief, easy run such as twice around the bases or using some landmark near the field like out to the outfield fence and back. Then after the girls have warmed a bit, begin stretching. Girls can begin warming, then stretching right after they arrive - you don't need the whole team to do this. And starting before some kids arrive makes the late parents feel guilty about being late. Never blame a kid for being late or missing practice. Your kids do not choose when or where their parents will drive them. It is not their fault so do not even speak to them about lateness.
Play Catch
A complete discussion of stretching is beyond the scope of this article but suffice it to say the kids must stretch their leg and arm muscles, and their back and torso muscles. Once this is accomplished, it is time for some catching and throwing. If it is your first practice, you may want to do some very basic things like having the kids roll the ball back and forth while you and your coaches teach them how to field a ground ball. I suggest beginning this without a glove. If you can get a ground ball without a glove, you can do it with one. Emphasize proper body position and supervise the girls to ensure they are doing this properly.
After some bare-handed rolling, have the girls put on their mitts to field the rolled balls. Now have one girl roll it and one throw the it back to the other while you and your coaches emphasize proper throwing technique. When I was a kid, we often spoke of "throwing like a girl." Guess what, girls don't throw that way anymore! But if you teach nothing else during this first year of coaching, you want to teach throwing and catching because after these two, everything else will eventually fall into place. Do not fret about spending too much time on throwing and catching, you can't.
Infield Practice
After a good session of catch, you should be into your second half-hour segment. This is a good time to do infield practice. If you have two adults, you can split into two groups. Both groups do not have to do the same thing. One group, perhaps the more needy one, could continue working on catching and throwing which we'll get to in a minute. The infield practice should provide the opportunity for each kid to play each position. You don't need to have a bat in your hand with girls at 10 or younger. You simply roll the ball to each kid playing in the proper position and have her throw to first. If this seems too easy, roll the ball harder and mix in some popups. The important thing is to emphasize good body position on fielding and good throwing mechanics on throws to first.
As an aside, this first fielding practice is your first opportunity to see where the girls may play in an actual game. I'm all for allowing the girls to play every position on the field (excluding pitcher and catcher) but if a girl is unable to throw the ball past the pitcher from third base, you are probably going to want to play her at second base during a game. Unfortunately, possibly as many as half your girls may not be able to make a throw from short or third and you'll have too many second basemen but you are going to work on throwing all season long and their opportunity to play other positions will come. What you don't want to do is set a kid up for abject failure by making them unable to accomplish the task at hand in a game. So make note of who you need to work on throwing skills with and during practice allow them to play all positions but don't have weak throwers play third and short during your first couple of games.
Perhaps you have some girls who need further throwing and catching practice early on. As I said, if you have two coaches and you are breaking up for infield practice, have one group of girls work with the other coach on throwing and catching. If the girls are really needy, have that coach catch with these girls in the outfield - don't have a group of girls who can neither throw or catch playing catch with each other. Start out with easy, close throws. Then move them back gradually. If the girls are really bad at catching, have them drop their mitts and catch with them bare handed while emphasizing two-handed catches from about ten feet. Again, if you learn to catch without a mitt, you will be able to do it with one. These girls need to play catch often but you cannot hold a gun to their parents' heads and force then to do this. Just do the best you can with the time allotted.
If you've broken into two groups, one thing you don't want to do is stigmatize the girls with lesser abilities. After fifteen minutes or so, switch the two sets of girls. The good girls will go into the outfield for more throwing practice but this will be at a much higher level than the other group's catch was. Encourage them to catch with each other at greater and greater distances. Have them throw hard ground balls at each other. Your group of lesser skilled girls who are now doing infield practice will do just what the other girls did but move them in closer to ensure some success.
Nothing breeds success like success. I don't want you to always make things too easy for the lesser skilled girls but I don't want you to make it too hard either. You will get them to where they need to be in a few weeks. They need to be able to field a groundball and make a throw. So work on it but make sure they feel some success.
While you are running your infield drill, take a moment to praise girls who seem to have done something better than they usually do. False praise is counter-productive but if a weak thrower makes the play and throws a little stronger than usual, say something like "nice throw" so they know when you see they have done something good. Every kid knows when they do something wrong on the field of play. But when they have done something right, they aren't always so sure. If you reinforce a strong throw, then they are sure that what they did was significant and right. I'm not from the school of thought which says you need to praise everything every kid does but I do think that positive reinforcement will make your kids better. Softball and its brother baseball are full of opportunities for failure. Offering praise for good plays stands out and makes kids work even harder to gain more praise.
Now you are an hour into your first practice. Things aren't quite as good as you had hoped but they aren't as bad as you feared. You've worked fielding and throwing, and the girls are coming along. They won't improve all that much in a first practice but they may go home and work some of these techniques. You should begin to expect perceivable improvement by the middle of the third practice. You just cannot rush these things. But you can encourage the girls to bug their fathers and mothers into playing catch once a week between practices. This will help you immensely so don't be afraid to broach the subject both with your kids and their parents. You can't force them but you can suggest. Try telling a parent that so and so has improved quite a bit. If you can catch with her once a week for fifteen minutes, she will improve even more.
Batting Practice
To me there is nothing as fun in diamond sports as hitting the ball. That is why I have saved this for the last segment of coaching a practice. You want your kids to leave the field wishing they could practice for another hour and a half. The best way to do this is to save hitting for last. At your early practices I strongly recommend using whiffle balls and a batting tee. If you have more than one tee, so much the better. You want to emphasize good hitting fundamentals and then let them hack away. Take a read through the hitting fundamentals section at your leisure. Emphasis at your first practice should be on proper stance. Then you can move into some more advanced points but always, always emphasize keeping the head still.
If some of your girls are beyond the fundamentals and some are not, assuming you have two coaches, break into two groups again. Have the more advanced girls hit soft-tossed whiffle balls (if you don't have two tees) while the other girls are hitting off the tee. Splitting into two groups allows each kid to get twice the repetitions she would otherwise have gotten. Stay with a strict count like ten swings. This way each kid gets her fair share and things keep moving along. Again in order to avoid stigmatizing the lesser skilled group, switch half way through this final half hour. Each kid should hit off the tee as this is the best way to teach hitting. But if you don't have two tees and you do have two groups, you can pitch to one group. Oh, and lest I forget even though you are using whiffle balls, have the girls wear batting helmets. This is less for safety and more to get them acclimated to hitting while wearing a helmet. Nobody should ever hit without a helmet.
In later practices, before the season begins, you will want to have batting practice with game styled balls and fielders in place. Early on, when you are emphasizing fundamentals, this is not necessary. But before you stick the kids out on the field in a real game, you want them to know what it feels like to hit real balls and field balls hit by their peers.
If you have reached the end of practice and a few, but not all, parents have already shown up, you may waffle back and forth between continuing the practice for the girls whose parents have not yet arrived. I feel the same way. But consider what things are going to be like on days when you have somewhere to go after practice. Continuing practice a little late rewards the parents who haven't shown up by giving their kids more practice. Instead wrap up everything and be standing, waiting by the field when the late parents arrive. This may shame them enough to arrive on time the next time.
Remember To Keep It Simple
As you move on to more and more practices, you are going to feel pressure from yourself to teach more and more complex skills. Fight this pressure. Unless your kids are truly advanced, they really need the fundamental skills you taught at the first practice. Maybe you can modify the drills to make them more challenging or interesting but you must warm-up, stretch, throw, field ground balls and hit at every practice. Feel free to vary the mix but emphasize fundamentals. Avoid dedicating a practice to hitting or to just fielding. This will bore the kids and the results may surprise you. I have done this a few times and each time I have done a hitting only practice, in the next game the kids' hitting was so bad that it was only surpassed by their fielding which was atrocious. Do all aspects of the game in practice with perhaps one drill emphasizing the team's weakest points. But don't work on these skills to the exclusion of all others.
Base Running
I have deliberately left out running the bases in my practice. This is an important skill but not one which you need to emphasize early on. You can introduce this at the second or third practice and once you do, you should continue to do some at each practice. A good time to place this is after the warm-up and stretching, before throwing and fielding. This will further warm them up.
The first thing you want your kids to do is know how to run to first. They should swing the bat and then run to first, running through the base and turning towards the fence along the baseline. Place a coach just beyond the base whose hand they will slap after running through the base. If a kid slows along the way, the coach should yell encouragement to keep up the speed. Each kid ought to run at least twice and perhaps three times so you can correct any slow downs or not running through the bag.
After some sprints to first, you can teach them to run to each base, one at a time. And at your next practice you can have them go from home to second and second to home. Teach how to round the bases if you have them running multiple bases at one time. They won't do it right in the games but they need to have this concept introduced. Each practice you can do something a little different with base running. If there is stealing in your league, you will want to teach this. But whatever you work on, you should always do the run to first to begin with and you should always emphasize the importance of the base coach. The list of possible baserunning drills you can do is virtually limitless. Use your head and focus on the ones they seem to have trouble with in practice and games. Baserunning drills are usually pretty short as you can move through the entire team in a few minutes after which you can begin throwing followed by fielding.
Do not try to accomplish more than one goal with each base-running drill. This will only confuse the kids. I recall the first practice I participated in as an assistant coach. The manager was flying by the seat of her pants and had no practice plan. When she decided to do base-running drills, she started with the run to first and then each kid was supposed to then run to second at the next "go." The kids on second were supposed to steal third (which is all our league allowed) before the runners began to go from home to first and then first to second. Are you confused yet? I was. Undoubtedly so were the kids. And after the practice the manager actually was angered when I pointed out that this drill was confusing! Stick to one goal when doing running drills. You really do have that much time.
Much later on, perhaps at the mid-season point, perhaps after a game or two, you may wish to do "live batting" drills where the hitter runs out each hit and the fielders play the ball as they would in a game. This is fine but don't let practice become only this so the girls will "have fun" at your practices. Again, you need to work on the other fundamentals. Live batting practice or scrimmages are fun and your kids will improve but your practices should be organized and structured. That is the only way your team will improve. Improvement will convert to more fun than if you set out to "just have fun."
Well that's it for now. We'll cover more advanced coaching aspects later but for now I wanted to make sure I covered the fundamentals!
Permanent Link: Beginner Tips For Coaching Softball
 
Some Softball Hitting Tips
by Dave
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Hitting a softball or baseball is among the most difficult exercises in sport. There are a couple of important fundamental considerations when you are teaching hitting. The head must be as still as possible. The eyes must judge the ball perfectly. The feet must accomplish a perfect weight shift. The hands must be in the right position throughout the whole process. The hips and shoulders must remain closed until exactly the right moment. It is a far more difficult thing to teach than almost any other skill. So let's break it down.
Keep Your Head Still
The first, most important consideration is the stillness of the head. The head must be as still as possible because judging the speed, spin and vector of the ball is an extremely complicated mental activity. Your vision is really made up of two visions which your brain pieces together into a single image. Your right eye sees one thing, your left another. Piecing these two together allows you to have depth perception, as well as judge the velocity and direction of objects. To prove the point, spin around or move your head in random directions. At some points, you will perceive two images simultaneously. Your brain takes time to orient itself and piece the two images together. But if you ever see two images while you are batting, you have no hope of hitting the ball. So head stillness is your absolute goal when hitting.
When we speak of many sports, it is a forgone conclusion that your body follows your head. In a softball swing, almost the exact opposite is true. Your head moves because of actions of the rest of your body. Because you don't want your head to move, you need to minimize the impact of movement of the rest of your body on your head. In short, minimization of movement is critical. Keep this one principal in mind when teaching the rest of the motion.
Take A Small Step
The second element of a good swing has to do with weight shift. Most good hitting instructors speak of the 60-40, 40-60 rule. This refers to the fact that a hitter has 60% of her weight on her back foot and 40% on her front at the beginning of a swing, and after swinging, 60% should be on the front and 40% on the back. Stand up and get a feel for this. You can easily approximate these numbers with your feet planted firmly on the ground. Now stand up and try this while taking a step. Not so easy, is it? Now try this while taking a big step. It is nearly impossible to accomplish 60-40, 40-60 when you take a big step.
I remember some years back I taught my youngest daughter to swing using this weight shift principle. Then she played what we call "clinic ball" in which the coaches pitch and are right out on the field. My daughter's coach saw that she was a pretty good hitter but he was displeased with how hard she hit the ball. He was a men's slow pitch player so he encouraged her to lift her front foot up and take an enormous step followed by swinging with all her might. She missed about 90% of pitches thrown to her after that. It took me 6 months to get her swing back to where it was before that moment. As an aside, it takes a long time to establish a good swing and mere moments to destroy it. But that's an issue for another day. The point here is a big step is the wrong thing to teach. If your kid is really young, her step should be almost imperceptible. Forget what you learned about swinging either as a kid or as an adult slow-pitch player. Smaller is better. Also, please try not to get very excited about how hard your kid hits the ball. As she locks down the rest of the swing, she will hit the ball harder and harder. Don't be in such a rush.
The short step involved in swinging occurs right before the pitcher releases the ball. It is more of a timing mechanism than it is an energy creator. You do not really create much torque by stepping. Basically while standing with your weight spread 50-50, you step or shuffle which puts a little more weight on the back foot, the object being to get about 60% there. Then as your hands come forward, the 10% of your weight you put on the back foot plus another 10% gets shifted to the front foot. The object is to shift that weight right at the moment of impact.
Relaxed, Comfortable Stance
Now that we've discussed the head being still and the feet performing 60-40, 40-60, the next thing to discuss is the hands. But we cannot discuss the hands without discussing the arms to which they are attached. And we cannot discuss the arms without getting into the stance as a whole because the arms are where they are mostly as a factor of the rest of the body. The stance is very important but I discuss it after the head and the weight shift because those are absolutes. Every hitter must keep her head still. Every hitter must shift her weight in basically the same manner. But every hitter seems to have a different stance. This is because the stance depends on the body of the individual. Everybody feels comfortable in slightly different positions. But there are some important fundamentals.
The stance of the hitter must be a balanced one. Like I said before, she has to be able to accomplish the weight shift while keeping her head motionless. If she is not comfortable, those two are nearly impossible. Basically the feet should be about shoulder distance apart. Some like more distance, some prefer less. As long as she is close to shoulder distance, good enough. The back foot should be slightly behind the front foot. A good rule of thumb is the big toe of the back foot should be in line with the instep of the front. Again, personal preference is important to comfort so don't get too carried away here. Close is good enough. As an aside, when you hear other refer to a "closed" or "open" stance, this refers to the positioning of the feet. A closed stance occurs when the big toe of the back foot is further back than the instep. An open stance occurs when the alignment of the feet is reversed - the big toe of the front foot is aligned with the instep of the back. There are degrees of this and if you watch any big time baseball or softball, you know what I mean. But don't let your daughter or the hitters you coach fall into habits of an exaggerated (open or closed) stance. It may be a habit they can never break. A little variety is OK but stick to good fundamentals.
The knees should be bent. The degree is not all that important. But you do not want a hitter to stand with knees cocked and you do not want the her to be in a catchers crouch. Right around three quarters of totally straight legged is correct. If your knees are at 90 degrees when sitting with your feet flat on the ground and 180 degrees when standing, the right position for hitting would be described as 135 to 150 degrees. Again, personal preference is important but you want some bend because that aids in creating torque and also helps in adjusting to the thrown ball.
The position of the back is a factor of where the knees and feet are. A hitter should be leaning forward, towards home plate. This is somewhat pronounced but not exaggerated. A hitter should not have her head in the strike zone but it should be out in front of her toes. This is the area where I allow the greatest variability. When I hit, I like to be pretty straight up. One of my daughters likes to bend over quite a bit. My other one prefers to be right about in between the two of us. But none of us is rigidly straight up and none of us is stooped over. If you have your back perpendicular to the ground - straight up, let's call that 180 degrees. If you are perfectly bent at the waist, let's call that 90 degrees, the right position is about three quarters to perpendicular or 135 degrees. Allow for variation. Comfort is key because as the swing commences, it is important to keep the back in the same position as it was in the stance. If you start out stooped and immediately move to perpendicular, you immediately move your head far too much and you've lost the pitch.
Arms Bent And Parallel
Now that your hitter has taken the right body stance for her, the next thing is the arms. If you've had similar experiences as I have, you may have been taught to bring your back elbow up so that your two arms are at almost a 90 degree angle to each other. This is wrong. The way to get the right stance with the arms is to take a pole such as another bat or some sort of stick and place it on the inside of the two elbows. The pole must be level. And it should not slide off the arms until really the very last instance of the swing. Some would say it should never slide off but I believe in lowering the back hand and then rolling the hands at the point of impact. So, for me, it's just not possible to keep a pole between my arms during the entire swing.
Obviously, it is just not practical to have your child swing a bat with a pole balanced on her arms. I do suggest this is a good exercise for older girls who are serious about hitting. But when dealing with younger girls, it is probably more something you would want to demonstrate for them so intellectually they nform a picture in their minds of how to hold their elbows. Also, you want to keep this image in your mind when you are teaching or correcting hitting.
Elbows Locked At Point Of Impact
Another arm consideration of hitting is you want to make sure that the elbows lock at the point of impact. Locking too early causes the hitter to appear to be dragging the bat through the strike zone. Not locking is a great way to flub a foul ball off to your back side. Locking just at the point of impact along with shifting the weight at that instant while keeping your head straight is the key to driving the ball. This takes time and practice but make sure that your hitters know that locking the elbows is crucial. We'll get to drilling this a little later but the point must not be lost.
Hands Low
Regarding the hands, they are almost an afterthought but not quite. The hands follow the body and arms. The knuckles have to be lined up the way they will be when contact is made. Some folks like to teach that the first knuckles are lined up with the second but I prefer lining up the second knuckles right from the get-go because this is where your hands will be at the point of impact. Lining up the second knuckles at the start helps the hitter to have a nice, short swing and to flex the elbows at the right point of the swing.
The final consideration about the hands is they must be below the head of the bat. You may think of this as keeping the head of the bat up but I prefer to think of it as keeping the hands down while not over-extending the wrists. Keeping the hands lower than the end of the bat is the only way to transfer your weight and the motion of your arms to the head of the bat at impact. It is important to have a "level swing" but a level swing is not actually level. The plane of the bat is basically level but the hands must keep the bat head up.
Hips, Shoulders, And Feet
After the hands, we go back to the body. But when we go to the body, we need to discuss the feet again. Going back to the second element discussed above, the short step, the front foot actually performs a slight turn as you step forward. If, at the start, your instep is facing the catcher, once you step, you want your toes to be facing the first baseman, if you are righty. You don't want a complete turn of the foot but rather a short, slight turn. The degree doesn't matter so much but you should neither keep it in the same profile nor turn it sharply.
As you step forward, moving 10% of your weight to your back foot, and bring your hands forward, you will notice that both your hips and shoulder begin to open. Good hitters like to delay this opening as much as possible. You do not want your hitter to "fly open" right at the beginning of the swing. Rather, the "flying open" is accomplished just before the point of impact. And simultaneous with this, the back foot twists in the dirt, ultimately facing the pitcher more than the front foot does. To explain this a little more clearly, on the step, the front foot points to the first baseman. On the "fly open" point, the toes of the back foot are actually pointing at the pitcher and the back knee should be bent. I think you can best see this with a still photograph of a big time softball or baseball hitter at the point of impact. If you look just at that moment in time, most big time hitters are in the same position. The front foot is extended, the back foot has just twisted, the hands are at the waist with the bat head up, and the weight is shifting right at the moment of impact.
Judging The Speed And Location Of The Ball
Probably the most difficult aspect of hitting is judging the speed and location of the ball. But this is really an experiential thing. If you focus on all the other fundamentals first and don't get too excited about how frequently or hard your hitter hits the ball, things will work out. Great young hitters are seldom great when they hit high school. Their success tends to breed over-confidence and bad habits. And average hitters with good fundamentals often become great hitters once they face better, faster pitching. If your hitter works on the fundamentals and gets enough opportunity to face good pitching, she will eventually make good contact.
There have been a number of studies which show that human beings do better judging fast objects than they do slow ones. This is because millennia of adaptation have made us better at judging moving objects than still ones. Your hitter may have trouble making contact with slow pitches but in later years when she is facing better pitching, she may knock the ball around the diamond. I just endured a year in which my two daughters had tremendous difficulty making contact with the ball. Even when they made contact, most often the ball was pulled way into foul territory down the left field line. They'd foul off a couple and then strike out. Actually, most often they walked - maybe as much as 60% of their at bats. And then in frustration, they would begin swinging at bad pitches. My older girl got the opportunity to play in a much more advanced league. I was apprehensive in her first couple of at bats because the pitching was far better. But she drilled the ball almost every time up. She could not judge the slow pitches in her rec league. She had no trouble with better pitching.
Just to reiterate, focus on solid fundamentals of hitting and don't get overly excited about how well your hitter hits. Hitting is like most other quality products. It results from long periods of hard work where emphasis is placed on the little things. If you doubt any of this, make a point of watching one kid who is a good young hitter. If she has solid instruction, chances are she'll be a good hitter for a long time but if she does not, watch as she gets into one bad habit after another and crumbles as the pitching gets tougher and tougher. Then you can come back here and tell me I was right.
Drilling
The most under-rated piece of equipment is the batting tee. Don't agree with me? Ask yourself this question, who uses a batting tee more, a ten year old boy or girl or MLB player with a million dollar contract and lifetime .300 batting average? The answer is pretty clearly the lifetime .300 MLB player. Colleges use batting tees all the time. And most major leaguers would not even bother getting into the cage to face live pitches without first spending significant amounts of time at the batting tee. The reason for this is the batting tee is unforgiving. You must swing level, keep your head still, shift your weight at the right moment, etc. to hit the ball well off the tee. And, as I said above, it is easier to hit a fast moving object than it is a stationary one.
The batting tee requires the hitter to take a good swing. Use it often. I dare say you shouldn't actually do much teaching except when you are using the batting tee. That is because you can much more closely watch the interplay between body parts when you are kneeling next to the tee and feeding balls. You need to be close to a hitter to see errors and correct them. You really cannot do this easily when you are throwing batting practice. It is also easier for a hitter to correct mistakes when just hitting off the tee because she does not have to perform the actions of judging the pitch while working on keeping her body aligned.
To vary hitting practice up a little bit while using a batting tee. Have your hitter adjust where she is standing relative to the tee. She can practice driving the ball to right or left by moving up and back. She can practice hitting outside strikes by moving away from the tee and inside ones by moving closer. Most tees are adjustable so you can easily vary things up by working on high pitches as well as low ones.
As a final hitting drill, I suggest you use soft toss hitting practice before you go to live pitching. Live pitching has its place but after you've done the stationary tee for a time, hitting a moving ball need not be accomplished by having pitchers stand at 35 or 40 feet. You should make use of a net screen if you have one available, or if you do not, try using whiffle balls of varying sizes to throw a batting practice from 10 or 15 feet. Get down on one knee and always throw underhand. There is no point to throwing a softball batting practice overhand as the purpose of facing live pitching is the act of picking up the ball as it comes out of the pitcher's hand. Speed of throw has almost no bearing on this drill so do not throw overhand just because you are faster or more accurate.
Conclusion
In writing this, I realized that I got a little long-winded and things appeared to be a little disjointed. But after re-writing it a number of times I realized that there is no perfect order in which to teach hitting. I started with the head because it is absolutely critical to teach this to every hitter from a first year player to a world class athlete. The next most important aspect has to be the minimization of movement, starting with the step. Then I moved through the stance and the other aspects because if I were teaching you how to hit, that is the order in which I would emphasize things. Finally I cannot over-emphasize the importance of using a tee to drill hitters. My baseball life was filled with "live pitching" which was of a very low quality. My coaches would yell corrections to me. Most times I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about so I seldom made any correction. I was astounded when I learned from a major league friend of mine just how high a percentage of his time was spent on the tee as opposed to live pitching. He is a big time coach now and almost any conversation you can have with him about hitting boils down to fundamentals.
If you are a player, focus on fundamentals. If you are a parent, work through this piece several times, returning after working with your daughter. Be patient and try to emphasize one thing at a time beginning with her head stillness. If you are a coach, please leave your glory days at the door and try teaching your kids some solid hitting skills rather than trying to win the world championship. Hitting is complex. You must break it down and practice skills slowly and carefully. Hitting involves a complex use of muscle memory so you need to put last things first. If you get nothing else out of this, please remember that it takes a long time to establish good hitting technique yet only a moment to develop a really bad habit.Labels: hitting
Permanent Link: Some Softball Hitting Tips
Teaching And Training A Catcher
by Dave
Monday, July 25, 2005
After pitching, the next most important position on the field is quite possibly the catcher. A good catcher keeps runners glued to the bases, helps the pitcher call the right pitches, and generally captains the defensive team. Just as it takes years to develop a good pitcher, catchers need time and good instruction to develop the skills necessary for success.
A strong throwing arm is a prerequisite to being a good catcher. The only way to develop a strong throwing arm is to throw often. If your daughter aspires to catch, you've just got to throw with her as often as possible. If she is older and has a friend to catch with, you should help her to develop a plan of throwing at least 4 times per week.
Before throwing, stretching is critical to avoiding injury. We haven't the space to go into stretching here. If you are not familiar with baseball arm stretches, I suggest you go out and buy a good book on the subject. Remember that stretching after a brief warm up is better than stretching cold.
After stretching, each throwing session should begin with close throwing in which proper arm form is emphasized. As she becomes warm, your catcher should try to throw harder and harder and then the distance should gradually be increased to 60 feet. Each session should reach its zenith with distance throwing which exceeds the distance from home to second. It is important to throw further than game situations when practicing because psychologically it is just easier to make a shorter distance in a game when you have practiced throwing from long distance. The throw to second becomes very easy if you practice throwing at about 30 feet past. And the throw to third is downright simple. Your long throws do not have to be as intense as throws to the base. You are stretching the arm muscles and using the legs to throw. The throwers no not have to throw line drives, they can throw more arced throws.
Only after throwing for distance is done should your young catcher then begin throwing to second and then third. Here aiming is important and she should throw to hit the base where a stealing runner would be sliding. The throw should be low and straight. It is better for a catcher to throw into the dirt rather than over the infielder's head. She should make at least ten throws to each base, more as she gets older. These throws are made even more effective if your catcher starts from the squatted, catcher position. Some throws should be made beginning with her back to the target as in passed ball / wild pitch situations but we'll get to that in the foot drills section, below. After making the game situation throws, she should warm down by making shorter and shorter throws, emphasizing mechanics and leg usage, eventually to the distance she started with. After throwing, your catcher should perform the same stretching exercises she began with. Each throwing session should be around a half an hour. This will strengthen her arm very quickly.
Please note that some of your young catcher's throws should be done with regular stepping - the way any player throws. But some should be with short, hopping steps (which we'll get to a little later) and some with no stepping at all. Catchers often do not have the luxury of taking steps to make a throw and this should be practiced. To throw with little or no step requires a skill of using the middle part of the body to generate the torque which usually comes from the legs. Basically if you take a look at a player who is throwing properly, using her legs, and eliminate the legs, you can see how the body moves from the waste up. This body movement needs to be accentuated when making a no step throw. And the follow through is also more pronounced.
Although it is a prerequisite, throwing is just not enough. Catchers need good footwork as much as any player on the field. It is a common misconception that catching is a less athletic position than, for example, shortstop. They just don't need to have the range and overall speed that shortstops do. Their steps are shorter and quicker than a shortstop's. There are a number of drills you can use to work on this footwork. Once you cover these in basic, it is important for a catcher to practice them anytime she is having a catch. Here are some drills (designed for right handed catchers - make modifications for lefties):
- Standing in a good athletic position with the right foot back a couple inches from the left, take a throw to your upper right. Lift the right foot slightly and plant it with the instep pointing in the direction of the throw, step with the left foot and throw. Now try this with a throw taken to the lower right. Now try with a throw in the dirt to the right.
- In the same position as above, take a throw to your upper left. Lift the right foot and move it just in front of the left, forming a "T" with the two feet. It is awkward at first but soon becomes second nature. Step with the left and throw. Now repeat with a throw to the lower left.
- Repeat this drill with your catcher placing her right foot just in back of the left in a quick shuffling motion. Here the speed of the shuffle is very important. You can make a game of this where the object is to throw the ball as quickly as possible back to the person who threw it to you.
- Now repeat these drills with the throw to your catcher further and further away. This will cause her to take some shuffle steps and reach to catch the ball but each time, immediately after catching the ball, her next step needs to be with the right foot into the position to aim the throw in the right direction, instep facing the target. Then she needs to practice making that step at the same time as catching the ball so the next step upon catch is with the left, followed by throwing the ball.
- These drills should also be practiced where the only step is with the right foot and the actual throw is not performed with a left foot throw. The left footwork actually occurs after the throw is released. As I said above, catchers often do not have the luxury of having time to step and make a mechanically beautiful throw. The torque of the midsection of the body provides the momentum to get something on the throw. The left foot does take a step but this is actually after the throw. (To explain, think of taking a long stride with your left leg where your body sort of falls forward and at the last minute you lift your left foot and stride. Rather than your right leg providing the force behind the step, you allow your body's weight to do it. This is how a catcher is able to make a strong throw.)
- The next drill I recommend is a game situation one and needs to be done on the field. You need to have a fielder at second and third bases. Place some balls next to the backstop. Have your catcher assume catching position. Then she retrieves one ball at a time and throws to the base you call out. Don;t make this easy because part of the object here is to get her to change her footwork in accordance with last-minute, split-second decisions.
Yes, we are talking about "drills" but, no, this should not become "work." Emphasis must be on having fun when you are playing catch. Foot work drills must be worked into a fun game of catch. Once a player works on these drills for a while, I think you will see that she no longer enjoys an "ordinary" game of catch. The drills should enhance the fun aspect of playing catch.
Another misunderstood aspect of catching is the physical fitness needed to withstand the wear and tear of playing the position. A catcher must have very strong legs, especially the muscles in the front part of the upper leg and back part of the lower leg. To see what I mean, assume the catching position, now stand up, now squat, now stand up. Do this several times and see which muscles begin to bother you. A catcher does this as little as 100 times and as much as 200+ times each game. An exercise regime which works these muscles is key to having injury-free success at the position.
Riding a bike, whether stationary or not, is the best way to build up the muscle in the front of the upper leg. A good exercise regime will contain both long riding and short sprinting. Longer riding is great cardiovascular training which is necessary for any athlete but the twin diamond sports of baseball and softball really consist of a long series of somewhat infrequent short explosive movements. So sprinting of all kinds is encouraged. Do not simply ride a ton of miles in a slow methodical rhythm. A catcher must perform bicycle sprints. And when you perform these sprints, it is not necessary to work on cardio. Explosiveness is the key. I suggest warming with a long methodical ride followed by a series of short sprints, followed by a long warm-down ride.
Bicycling is the best method of building the front of the thigh but, if for some reason it is not practical, running is a decent substitute. Again, emphasis has to be on short sprints. You are trying to explosive power in the legs so keep this in mind. 60 feet is plenty and helps with running the bases too. You needn't push your catcher to run a lot of sprints in a short amount of time since cardio is not what you are after.
Working the calf muscles is a quite a bit easier and requires no equipment. While standing next to and holding onto a wall, stand on your tip toes. Hold this position for a count of ten and then slowly come down to a flat foot position. Now slowly rise back up to tip toes, hold and slowly come down. There is no rush to do these quickly because we are trying to strengthen the muscles rather than increase endurance. Do these in sets of ten to twenty and repeat as often as you like. These are also a great warm up exercise for your catcher before a game.
Another way to workout a catcher's legs is the very obvious way in which I asked you to examine the muscles being used by a catcher. A catcher can build explosive leg muscles by assuming the catching position and then jumping as high as possible from this position. Performing this motion builds both sets of muscles simultaneously. This is maybe too obvious to discuss but it can be almost as effective as riding and running so I would be remiss not to at least mention it. If you use this method of building leg muscles, do at least 20 repetitions in several sets. Again, you are not working on cardio. Think of a game where your catcher gets up and squats 100 - 200 times. That would be a good number for a workout just as a pitcher needs to throw 100 pitches in order to build strength.
Stretching the legs before each workout, practice and game is another important key to avoiding injury. The earlier your catcher learns how to do this, the better. Again, stretches are a little beyond the scope of this already lengthy piece. If you have no idea how to stretch legs, buy a book on exercise. At the very least, any player needs to sit on the ground, spread her legs out to the sides, and touch her toes. But I do suggest you find more sophisticated stretching regimes.
Any discussion of how to condition a catcher brings me to the back issue. As catcher get tired, their body mechanics tend to fall apart. This is very evident in long defensive innings on hot days when the catcher feels a little like a punching bag. There is a tendency for her to begin putting more and more pressure on her lower back so it is necessary to strengthen her stomach and lower back muscles. She should routinely perform the kind of exercises which a person with a bad back does. Here is a good link for lower back exercises. Please take this discussion about back exercises very seriously. If you get nothing else out of this article, please visit the link and have your young catcher begin doing these exercises.
Finally, I want to talk a little about catching position. Girls just beginning softball who play catcher usually put one knee down. I don't have to tell you that this position is wrong. After more experience, catchers take a more appropriate position of squatting where their butts rest on the heels of their feet. This is closer to correct position but it is not perfect. The right position for a catcher is to flex the thigh muscles so the butt is not resting on the feet. Butt resting on feet is to be avoided for long periods because it is just too hard on the knee joints. Shin guards with a cushion in back help and these were developed because of the knee problems catchers develop but they are not enough as the cushion is small and the knee still takes too much strain. Your catcher can assume this position for short durations, like while giving signs to the pitcher but then she should assume good catching position. The back should be straightened as the butt comes off the feet with thighs flexed. She can even get into a good catching position from a standing position, gradually squatting down with her back straight.
In any event, if your catcher is young and inexperienced or if you have any question regarding her physical fitness with respect to legs or back, do not allow your catcher to catch multiple games back to back. If she is playing anything other than rec ball, chances are pretty good that her team is playing 2 or 3 games in one day, sometimes as much as 9 or 10 games over a three or four day stretch. Do not allow her to become the team's donkey who must catch every game. If you do, you stand a pretty good chance of having a kid with a very bad back. High school is the first place you should allow your daughter to catch multiple games back to back.
If you get the chance to watch baseball or softball games with your catcher/daughter, take time out to observe just the catcher. Point out the things the catcher you are watching is doing right and wrong. Especially watch his or her body position and point out if he is putting too much strain on his back or knees. Watching games is a great instructional device for teaching any player. Because catcher is such a complicated position, it is important to get out and see some really high quality catchers at work whenever possible.
To sum up, catching is probably the most physically demanding position on the field and one of the most important. A good throwing arm is important and should be worked on. Just as important as strength of throwing is foot work. This is easy to practice and I've given you a few suggestions to follow but you can use your imagination to modify these and create others. Leg strength is an important consideration in training a catcher. Bicycling or running can accomplish this but you should emphasize sprinting over cardio work. Finally, please note that catching is hard on the back and you must consider this in any exercise regime.
Permanent Link: Teaching And Training A Catcher
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