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Batting Tip - Relax
by Dave
Thursday, March 08, 2007
I know it is very difficult to avoid game tension when you have those butterflies flitting around inside your stomach. Stress and anxiety are unavoidable in sport. That queasy feeling is actually something that you are going to have to learn to embrace if you want to succeed. It is actually the thing which ultimately draws people to enjoy sport - that is, success under stress is much of the hook which addicts us to sports. Another important part of building a successful sports career is learning what relaxation-in-stress really involves. It is essential to success in any aspect of softball and nowhere is that more evident than at the plate.
It is easy to say "just relax" to a hitter but I want to break the concept down a bit further than merely to tell you to do that thing you are trying to do without success. I want to address the way in which it harms your hitting and I want to give you some advice about how to achieve it.
First off, muscle tightness has serious deleterious effects on hitting. Muscles which are flexed tightly lose there reactive capability. To test my thesis, try standing at the plate and flexing everything as tight as you can. Now try to take a quick swing. You can't do it. You'll feel very slight cramping in the muscles you were just flexing since they have used up their quick-twitch energy and are now working aerobically with a very slight buildup of acid. So the first thing I want you to work towards is general looseness or relaxation of your body in the hitters stance. We'll get to how you can do that in a moment but I want to plant that notion as a foundation.
Secondly, you cannot hit, even though most of your body is relaxed, if you've got your hands tightly wound around the bat. If you've ever watched big time baseball and softball players on TV, you may have noticed a few things. You may have wondered how it is possible for them to take a swing and, while missing the ball, throw their bat across the infield. This occurs because they do not grip the bat as if their life depended on holding on to it. They get a relaxed grip because that allows their swing to be longer and more effective. If you watch closely enough, you may even notice hitters whose upper hand isn't even gripping the bat before the pitch is thrown. This is deliberate and we'll elaborate in a moment. For now, just recognize that a tight grip on the bat is undesirable.
You will often hear coaches and miscellaneous advisers tell you to "relax up there." They can't get up to bat for you but they see you are overly tight and they know you're never going to hit like that. But they seldom give you solid advice for accomplishing that precise task. I'll get to methods for achieving that in a moment but for now, I want you to recognize that relaxation doesn't just happen. You have to do something in order to make it happen.
OK, so that's my summary. You have to relax your body in order to hit. Nowhere is it more important than with respect to the hands. And its your responsibility to accomplish a relaxed state as you approach the batter's box.
Let's talk a little about hitting to drive home a point. Hitting is the working of a lever, the bat, by moving it as rapidly as possible through the plane of the pitched ball as it approaches homeplate. Making contact essentially involves a couple of subconscious steps. First you have to see the ball on its flight track. Then you've got to move that bat to the desired contact point. And you've got to do this with sufficient bat speed to make the yellow orb fly the way you want to.
Levers work best when they are longer. There is sound scientific reasons for that. But rather than getting into them on a sports blog, let me suggest doing something which makes the point clear. Go out to a playground with a buddy and go over to the teeter-totter. Have your friend sit on the extreme end of the teeter-totter and you position yourself closer to the middle on the opposite side. The thing won't move. Now have your friend move towards the middle while you move towards the end on the opposite side. At some point, the thing will begin to teeter or totter (depending on your point of view). At one particular point, the thing may actually be balanced where both of you are lifted off the ground slightly. This is the point of equilibrium. At the point of equilibrium, if one of you moves further back - elongates the lever, the other will be lifted into the air. This proves that a longer lever provides greater force.
That's general lever mechanics but let's get into the thing which determines, more than anything else, how hard a ball is hit, bat speed. The lever mechanics are important but there's another aspect and that is the relative speed of the inside and outside of a lever moved in a circle. Let's do a little experiment in order to further your understanding of this.
Find yourself a piece of paper, a pencil, a length of string, a ruler, a small bottle cap and something else round which is bigger than the bottle cap but smaller than the paper. Now draw a circle on the paper using the big round object as a guide. Now draw a circle using the bottle cap right in the middle of the bigger circle you drew. Measure the length of line you drew for each circle using the string and ruler. You will see that the large circular line is significantly longer than the smaller one. Now put your pencil in the circle and spin it around once. Let's pretend that the circle were 5 inches and 10 inches long and that you spun the pencil inside those circles in one second. The part on the pencil which is around where the little circle is was moving at a speed of 5 inches per second. The part of the pencil where the big circle is located was moving at 10 inches per second. In other words, when you move a stick, bat or other lever in a circle, the outside part of the lever is moving faster than the inside! It covers more distance in the same amount of time. the same thing is true when you swing a bat. So the longer your lever is - arms plus bat - the faster the end of the bat is moving.
I don't want you to conclude here that what you need is a longer bat. That's not the case at all since bats don't vary that much in length. The point here is that having your arms fully extended, or almost fully extended, at the point of impact is a good thing. It results in the greatest possible bat speed. Most importantly, you cannot get your arms extended and achieve the greatest possible bat speed if you're all tensed up.
As I said, the bat is a lever and your arms are also a part of that lever. The rest of your body is like you on the teeter-totter. Let's assume that bats range in length from about 30 inches to, at most, about 35. That's not much variability. Yet some people hit balls harder than others. And it isn't always or even usually that the girl with the greatest body weight who hits the ball hardest or farthest. The girl who hits the ball hardest and farthest is the one who one operating the longest lever AND who makes the best contact.
In order to make the best possible contact, you have to judge where the ball is and where it is going. You cannot accurately judge the speed and direction of anything without "vectoring" it. Vectoring really means watching it from two points. Those are your eyes, of which you have two for a good reason. It is not possible to determine location or direction of anything without having two points in order to possess depth perception. And those two points, your eyes, must be in a relatively fixed position in order to accurately determine location and speed.
Think of it this way, if you are in a car moving at 60 mph across a long flat plain with a mountain 20 miles ahead, if all you do is stare at that mountain, it will appear to be moving. If you stare at it for twenty minutes, it will move right up to you as if it is the thing moving and you are standing still. That's obviously an illusion since you're the one doing the moving. You cannot recognize even a mountain as not moving unless you yourself are not moving. You can't accurately locate it since it is moving relative to you. In order to do that, one of you has to remain still.
Also relative movement impacts perceptions of speed. Consider two cars moving in opposite directions at 60 mph. If you are riding in one and keep your eyes focused on the other car, it appears to be coming at you much faster than 60 mph. When it passes, you will probably swear up and down that it passed you at over 100 mph. It did just that. And if you did not recognize that you were also moving, you might conclude that the car itself was moving at over 100. It wasn't. We said it was going 60.
If you can't determine location or speed when you yourself are moving in a car, consider that on a much smaller scale. The same is true of hitting a pitched softball. If you are moving at 60 mph, the 60 mph pitched ball will appear to approach at 120 mph. But humans don't move that fast and you aren't running out to the pitchers circle on each pitch! Yes, but you may be moving your body at something like 20 mph right at exactly the wrong moment - the moment you start to swing. So for three quarters of the time the pitch is coming towards you, you accurately judge it to be moving at 60 and then when you begin to swing, it speeds up to 80! If a pitcher could do that herself, she would ... every time. Yet you allow the same thing to be accomplished when you are excessively tight and moving your head all over the place. You can't judge the ball if you are excessively tight and moving your head around quickly.
In order to hit, you have to operate the lever efficiently while maintaining a good unmoving set of eyes. But how do you generate any sort of bat speed if you are supposed to somehow remain relaxed, long and unmoving? Well, I didn't nothing on your body should move. The fact is you are going to have to move your arms, hips, shoulders, etc. in order to hit the ball well. But you are also going to have to keep your head quiet - unmoving - as much as possible. So how do you get your bat moving when your muscles are all relaxed and you're not allowed to move your head.
The first thing you'll need to do is remain relaxed so when one part of your body moves, the others aren't forced to move. To demonstrate, try standing in a batting stance, tensing up everything and then moving some part of your body like your front arm. If you are truly tense, the rest of your body has to follow whatever you are moving. The first thing you'll notice is your head moves. That's bad. If you are really tensed up, it isn't possible to move one part of your body without moving all the other parts. The only thing which permits you to move one part of your body at a time is some muscle must be relaxing. In order to start your swing without moving your head and, therefore, your eyes, is to remain relaxed.
My second piece of advice is one I have often repeated which is to minimize your first step. Some batters don't step at all. Many do take a first step but it is more of a timing mechanism than a machine to generate forward bat speed. That's extremely important so I'll mention it yet again. Your first step, if you take one, is not meant to generate bat movement. It is merely a learned timing mechanism. It can also be a way to shift your weight but since you can do that without stepping, I would advise against using a first step to begin the weight shift. If you take more than say a six inch step, it is virtually impossible to do so without moving your head. You generate bat movement through other mechanisms.
The way I have heard this best discussed was by Stacey Nuveman who used the analogy of throwing a punch. She noted that before you throw a punch, the first thing you do is assume a relaxed athletic position. Then you move your hand backwards slightly right before you throw the punch. To me, this is kind of like shooting a rubber band. Your muscles work very similarly to rubber bands, they stretch and then contract. The real difference is that your muscles can contract and become even smaller than they started. A rubber band can't do that. But the analogy works because before you quickly contract your muscles, you get more out of them if you first stretch them.
So before you exert effort and contract your muscles, first you stretch them out. This is the slight backwards movement that most hitting instructors teach. The bat rests over your shoulder and then as the pitcher winds up to release the pitch, you move slightly back ready to pull the trigger and then pull the bat through the hitting zone. You've elongated all the muscles you'll use to swing the bat that ways by moving them slightly in the opposite direction. But don;t do that too early and try to hold the pose. That too creates tension.
If you want to see something about relaxation, try standing in a batting position and do the pull back thing with your muscles relaxed and then try it while tensing everything up. It actually hurts a little to perform the pullback when you are tensed up and you can't easily pull back as far. If you are going to perform a good pullback in anticipation of taking a swing at the pitch, you are going to have to be relaxed.
This brings me to the tension I sometimes see in a batter's hands. She steps to the plate in a nice relaxed fashion, assumes a good relaxed stance, and then before she swings, she crushes the bat in her hands making it useless. Well maybe that's an exaggeration - nobody I've met is strong enough to crush the handle of a bat by squeezing it. But I've seen hitters who seem like that is exactly what they are trying to do. There's a problem with that approach. Tight hands shorten the lever.
To demonstrate this, get your bat and go outside to a place where there's a chain link fence. Extend your arms fully and set yourself up so that you can just barely hit that fence at your most extended point. Assume your batting stance and while keeping everything else loose, get as tight a grip as you possibly can on the bat. Now take a swing and try hitting that fence. If you are doing this right, you won't be able to hit it because when you tightening your hands, you flex muscles in your forearms and thereby make your arms unable to extend fully. If you are having trouble seeing this, try making a tight fist and then extending your arms as fully as you can. That's hard work and you can't straighten your arm fully. That's what I'm talking about here.
OK, so I hope I've made some points about the need to be relaxed enough to lengthen your lever and keep your eyes in a fixed, quiet position. You are working on loosening your grip on the bat. Of course, you can do this just sitting around at your computer. But once you get up to bat, you are a bundle of nerves and tense up like you did in the demonstrations. Your coach says "just relax" and gee whiz that really helps, doesn't it? How the heck am I supposed to relax when I'm like trying to hit a totally excellent pitch thrown by that crazy girl with the 60 mph windmill? OK, it looks like we need to do some more work.
Relaxation is something learned. It is enhanced by confidence so it is going to take some time. It will come to you because A) you recognize its need, B) you are confident at the plate, and C) you are working specifically at it. I've already discussed its need so, hopefully, we are in agreement thus far. if you disagree, I suggest you need to conduct further experiments on your own and decide fro yourself. if that describes you, class is dismissed. Otherwise, please continue.
There are a lot of techniques out there meant to train you to relax in a sports setting. You can go look them up if you prefer. All I can do is teach you my own. And while I am talking about relaxation while skipping right past confidence, there's a good reason for that. My relaxation technique comes from an already established point of confidence. It also makes use of it to enhance future confidence while working on relaxation.
If you are just about ready to step out onto the playing field for the first time, I'm extremely surprised you are reading this article. This piece is neither for the extremely advanced who should already know this stuff nor the first timer who have never laced up cleats before. My assumption here is that you have played fastpitch before, like it, and are looking to improve your game.
If you've already played softball and are looking to improve, I also assume that you have experienced some degree of success. What I mean is you made some plays and got some hits. You want to continue playing because you want to repeat the successes you have experienced in the past and have new ones. I suppose some degree of success is truly the essence of sport.
When I'm out on the golf course (something I try to avoid), some of my friends have suggested that one particular shot I made (of the approximately 130 others I have taken on a given 18 hole round!) is the "one that will make me want to play again." They're right. The only reason anybody can get me out to a golf course is because I have on (rare) occasions made good shots. Maybe it is my one hole-in-one on that sometimes easy 150 par 3, or a 250-300 yard tee shot I hit last April. What makes me even willing to play any golf at all is that fleeting moment of glory I once had. I think the same is true of softball. You play because you liked the power you felt that time when you were 8 years old and pounded that pitch for a double.
Depending on your age level and experience, you have several memories of glory from the softball field. Now what I want you to do is conjure up such moments. I want you to visualize them perhaps more fully than you have ever done before.
Get yourself into a quiet place like your bed where nobody will disturb you. Then conjure up those moments of glory while also keeping in mind that you are working on relaxation at the plate. Lay down or at least sit somewhere and close your eyes. Concentrate on your breathing and forget about homework or that embarrassing moment the other day. Breath in and out, in and out. Look at the way your body moves when all you do is breath. Feel the air coming in and going out through your nostrils. Clear your head of all things not related to softball.
Now conjure up a softball field in your mind. Hear the sounds of balls hitting mitts, bats hitting soft toss off in the distance, ping, smack. Smell the grass and the infield dirt. Reach down and touch the dirt, perhaps even the chalk. Roll it in your fingers. You hear other people talking but you can't make out what they are saying. Off in the distance, at another field in the complex, some girl just got a hit and she's running the bases while everyone is yelling and cheering.
You realize that you've already got your batting helmet on and you reach down to grab your bat. This game doesn't matter and even if it did, your team is so far ahead, it's already in the bag. You've got an at-bat and the outcome of it isn't going to matter at all to anyone. This at-bat is a freebie. You don't have to do anything. But you know this pitcher girl. And you know you can hit her, easily. You step to the plate and notice how relaxed you are. Oh well, in a few minutes this game will be history and you can go swimming with the girls in that pool at Britney's house. You step into the box and she throws you the biggest meatball she has ever thrown anyone. You swing and make contact so sweet that it is perhaps the best contact you've ever made. You drop the bat and look up to find the ball as you begin to run. You are absolutely shocked as you see the centerfielder panic and turn to chase the ball you just hit way over her head. You round first and see her still chasing the ball as you head to second rounding the bag - I'm not even going to have to slide into third - but as you approach the base the coach is waving you around so you kick it into gear as you round and head for home. But you let up as you see the girl who scored in front of you standing behind the plate signaling you to stand up. You cast a glance into the field where you see the short stop out trying to get the relay but she drops it and gives up - not that it matters, you would have scored standing anyway.
OK, that was fun. You liked that but that game didn't matter. No try the same exercise where the game situation is your team down by 2 in the last inning with nobody out and the bases loaded. Picture yourself hitting the ball really good again and running all around the bases but this time everyone on your team is going nuts because you just won the game.
Try the same thing with a championship or elimination game. To the extent possible, try this exercise by conjuring up something really big you actually did. if you;ve never done anything worthy, think some more. It doesn;t have to be the biggest game in the history of the world. And you don't need to have found a cure for cancer in the process. My personal favorite visualization involved a 10U game where the game was suspended due to darkness with us winning by a run in the last inning and the bases loaded with nobody out. I'm not really sure why that game was even resumed since I guess you can make an argument that it should have just been called. But that's what happened. So I was brought in to pitch out of the situation, threw three straight strike-outs, and we won the game. It was meaningless game but one I used for visualization purposes for many years afterwards.
In terms of hitting visualizations, I also use some meaningless games I played as a very young ballplayer and anything which happened subsequently. I might start out by remembering a game where I hit the winning homerun in the last inning. Then I age myself up to 12U where in one also meaningless game I pitched great and hit even better. I remember how I gave up just one run on a walk and series of errors but struck out 16 kids. I also visualize my second at-bat after I hit grandslam in the first one. The coach of the other team stopped the game, and pulled his shortstop out of the infield. He moved him out to past the left fielder behind the strip of trees I had reached the first time. He then moved the center fielder to left center and the rightfielder over to right center. So I hit the ball past the second baseman and got a bases clearing triple out of it. The I managed to draw a throw from the catcher on the next pitch and steal home. I'm going off here and my point is just that there is something out there you can conjure up which will allow you to perform my visualization exercise.
Please recognize that this is not going to be a one time deal. I want you to practice this technique and then I want you to use it. First find those moments which have made this game extremely fun for you, preferably hitting moments but any moment will do. I want you to practice visualize those moments or similar moments of your own making slowly and deliberately the way I described to you. begin by visualizing the location. See it, smell it, hear it, feel it. The think of the situation while recognizing that you are relaxed. Think through every last detail of the event including touching home and maybe packing up your gear after the game.
Do this drill as often as you can using the best moments from the past you can. Once you have the basics down, try doing this before every batting practice. See if it helps you to relax while also feeling confident at the plate. Eventually, you will be able to do a quick version of the visualization before every at-bat, every swing. The idea is ultimately to bring your body to the point where it feels precisely as it does during visualization. The more you can do this, the more likely you will be to pull it off.
To recap, we talked about the need to be relaxed at the plate. Without getting too much into hitting mechanics, we talked about the need to lengthen your lever. Your entire body, including and especially your hands must be relaxed. And to achieve the relaxation and confidence needed to be relaxed, we used visualization as a relaxation technique. I can't stress the need for these elements enough. Every big time athlete does it whether he or she is conscious of it or not.
Every time you see a truly confident person before you, they know they can do almost anything humanly possible. They know this because they actually see themselves doing great things over and over again in their heads. That is the reason why big athletes often come off as arrogant. It is difficult to seem humble, even if you are, when over and over in your mind you are playing a video in which you are accomplishing great things. How are you supposed to appear to everyone as humble when at that moment you picture yourself hitting a game-winning grandslam in the last inning of the championship game? But that's the price a girl pays when she is using a technique for making her at-bats the best they can possibly be. Try it and see how it works for you.Labels: hitting mechanics, relaxation, Visualization
Permanent Link: Batting Tip - Relax
 
Online Pitching Coach
by Dave
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Let the surfer beware!
I was steered to a pitching advice site by a reader of this blog. I spent a few minutes reading through some advice columns and left in a rush because I saw one too many pieces of what I would characterize as bad advice. This reminded me that A) you can't believe a large percentage of what you read, particularly on the web, B) everybody has their own opinion about a lot of things, and C) some opinions are a little too strong for my liking. You just have to read everything you can before you make up your own mind and frequently, there is no replacement for a real, in-person coach.
I won't tell you specifically where this site I checked out was. The best I can do is give you some of the pieces of advice I found offensive.
One issue addressed by the site had to do with closing of the hip before ball release. I won't debate the point - I'm still on the fence because too many of those who have been coached to close the hip leave it open and too many who espouse leaving it open, close it more than they're willing to admit. But this advice web site said the reason you should know to leave it open is because overhand throwing mechanics do not tell you to step forward with your throwing arm foot before release. How in the world that is relevant, I just don't know. Overhand throwing mechanics are COMPLETELY different than windmill because you release the ball over your head. The body, for the most part doesn't do any of the same things in a windmill that it does when throwing overhand. You fall forward when you throw overhand. Your use gravity in a way that is not available to the windmill pitcher. Overhand mechanics are not relevant to windmill pitching.
Another issue I encountered had to do with snapping of the elbow in addition to the wrist - that was meant as a criticism of drills which isolate the wrist. I'll get to the drills in a second but I want to say that when working with beginning pitchers, you cannot tell the pitcher to snap her elbow when pitching. The reason is simple. When you pitch, you are working a lever the same way you are working a lever when you hit. The longer the lever, the greater the speed at the end of it and the greater the force put on the ball at hit or pitching release. Long is better and if you instruct a pitcher to snap her elbow, what usually happens is she "short-arms" it which takes away from speed. You do snap your elbow when throwing a fastball but that is a natural reaction to the snap of the wrist at the release of the pitch. It isn't something you try to do. Rather, you try to keep your arm as long as possible to get the most leverage.
If you try to coach a young girl to pitch, one of the very first obstacles you are going to have to overcome is her natural tendency to short arm it in order to control where the ball goes. The only way you'll be able to get her to stop is to discourage her from snapping her elbow and rather work on keeping it straight until release. I can't tell you how many kids I have seen give up on pitching because they couldn't get any speed at all on it. Every last one of them was snapping their elbow too early.
The item which really made me run away from the site had to do with ineffectual drilling. The site said that if you encounter anyone who breaks the motion down into drills which isolate part of the motion, run from them. I found this comment to be extremely curious because, on one hand this coach was drawing conclusions from overhand throwing to be applied to windmill pitching, and on the other he was advocating no isolation drills for pitching when we do exactly that for every other aspect of every sport. Top level hitters hit off the tee, do soft toss drills, break down and work parts of the swing in isolation in all sorts of drills. The same is true of all other aspects of softball and baseball. And its true of football, basketball, soccer, hockey, etc. Practicing any sport involves performing drills meant entirely to build muscle memory by isolating individual aspects of the overall motion. I'd be less surprised to hear advice telling the reader that one shouldn't bother practicing pitching since the only wayt you can do it is if you are naturally gifted. Yes, that's absurd. So is saying that a pitcher shouldn't perform isolation drills.
Now obviously, this coach either expressed his sentiments poorly or doesn't see the need to do isolation drills except to mitigate mechanical errors. But performing these kinds of drills flows from a philosophy which notes that everyone has mechanical flaws. It's as simple as that and the notion is true. Everyone has natural tendencies to make similar mechanical mistakes. That may be less true or true to a smaller degree in world class athletes. But it stands to reason that the web site was not written for world class athletes since I doubt any of those folks seek out advice from web sites. And beginners do mostly make the same mistakes.
Beginning pitchers particularly need to perform certain isolation drills in order to learn the muscle memory needed to perform the overall skill. I dare say that if you encounter someone who does not use drills, run away. But not only do beginners use isolation drills, so do world class athletes. I have two experiments for you to prove the point.
The first experiment is a lot of fun - go watch a professional fastpitch softball game or, at the very least, a high level NCAA game. Get there early enough to watch the pitcher do her full warm-up. I believe you'll find that every last one of them will begin with isolation drills.
My second experiment is much less fun. This involves taking a girl who has never pitched before and teaching her to pitch. You cannot make use of any isolation drills - you have to teach her the full motion in one step. No snapping of the wrist or performing a complete circle without using legs or any of that so-called nonsense. Show her the motion and then let her perform it. Then you'll have to correct everything she is doing wrong. And since you cannot isolate parts of the motion, I suggest you'll have to teach her to correct one error at a time while performing the full motion. I suppose this isn't impossible but I wouldn't want to try it. The only way you can build a proper technique in any other athletic skill is to isolate parts of the motion. And as an athlete moves up in her skill level, most, if not all coaches encourage a continuation of many isolation drills in order to reinforce motor memory.
This online pitching coach made an interesting comment, one of apparent arrogance, to which I took particular exception. He said essentially, I'm right because I know this stuff since I pitched at a high level. Now the first thing that occurred to me is that being a male fastpitch player, even at a high level, is not quite the same thing as being a female fastpitch standout. Not very many boys or men ever play fastpitch softball. Heck I wasn't even aware men played this sport until I was almost thirty and had hung up my baseball cleats for ten years.
Most boys and men grow up playing baseball and a few lucky ones discover fastpitch softball after their baseball playing days are over. Slowpitch is another matter but the former minor league baseball players I played slowpitch with never knew that there was such a thing as fastpitch out there for them. And while there are a half dozen over-40 baseball organizations in my area, I am hard pressed to name one local fastpitch team, let alone league. They do play men's fastpitch softball in places, but it is hardly as widespread as the women's game. And girls play this far more than they do baseball. So, while the best female athletes play softball at high levels, that isn't necessarily true of the men's game. So a person claiming to be an expert because he played at a "high level" is sort of like claiming an expertise in women's basketball because you played in a co-ed league once.
And I've got news for this coach and you. Many other people also pitched at a similar level. Some of those people are very good pitching coaches. Some are not. Being a competitor in a given sport or at a particular skill does not in and of itself qualify one as "always right." In fact, within the world of sport, a high percentage of the best of all coaches were mediocre competitors themselves. Some of the biggest absolute miserable failures as coaches were some of the absolutely best competitors to play the game. There does not seem to be any kind of one-for-one correlation between those who played very well at a high level and those who coach very well.
In conclusion, I want to remind you that you must read everything you find about fastpitch softball with skepticism. I say that with full recognition that "everything" includes this blog. I don't mind your skepticism regarding any particular subject I cover. Nobody else should either. I go with what works for me. I try to remain humble and always be a student of the game. You should too. The only time you really should run away is when you come across people who seem to absolutely always know precisely what it is they are talking about. Nobody on this planet is omniscient.Labels: coaching, pitching
Permanent Link: Online Pitching Coach
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