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Lil Bit Of History Repeatin
by Dave
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
It appears as if those currently in power in the US were not paying attention in their college classes whether you consider economics - multiplier effect of government spending vs. private investing; history - causes of the protracted duration of the Great Depression and of stagflation under President Carter: mathematics - 4 minus 2 plus 3 does yield 5 but when the same circle is partitioned into 5 vs. 4, the result is smaller partitions, not a larger circle; or psychology - when a family's expenses rise from $100 to $125, the tendency is to cut spending to $80. But I digress. This is fodder for another sort of blog and would appear to have nothing to do with softball. But it does support the theory that whomever fails to heed history is doomed to repeat its mistakes. And that does have significant implications in our sport.
Many years ago I observed what I thought was an oddity. My kids were taking pitching clinics and private lessons towards the end of a season. We interacted with a number of other players of all ages and their parents during that span. The oddity I observed was a tendency to lose interest in the off-season, the resulting drop off in attendance at lessons or practice sessions, and the attempt to start up about a month or two before the following season or even after the next season began.
Over the span of a couple years, I often conversed with folks who had decided that they would stop their kids' softball training right at the end of the season. Then I saw them again and picked up my conversations when they started up anew. The dynamic which played out is noteworthy and instructive. But more instructive is the reality of the same dynamic occurring year after year with regularity.
I once put together a team in the fall which included certain pitchers who threw very well at tryouts. One of these kids almost completely stopped throwing in the off-season. Lessons were cut from once per week to once per month, if that. Personal practice sessions were totally shut down. By the time we started live-pitched batting practice, the results of this off-season were horrendous. She couldn't throw for 15 minutes and what she did throw slow were meatballs with no movement and little speed.
As indoor workouts progressed to scrimmages and tournaments, the kid had trouble getting back in to see her instructor. When early spring weather got in the way, she just didn't throw any more than she had during winter. I just could not throw her because her pitching was that bad. And they quit the team for an interesting reason. The father noted to me that "she needs to throw to get better." Really, that's what he told me. I just said, "I know."
Another kid I had on that team had a lot of potential. She had a good arm. She was starting to swing the bat pretty well. Her fielding mechanics were OK but we could work on that. But as fall turned into winter, the only throwing and swinging she did was in anger at her siblings.
This girl did get "back into" her lessons sometime late in the year but as soon as we began our indoor workouts, those lessons ceased under some notion that we were going to cover the same ground in our workouts. The kid's swing fell apart. Her fielding mechanics got better but because she had not thrown at all in the off-season, she ended up hurting her arm and missing almost half the season.
When Howard Kobata gives clinics in cold-weather locations during the indoor season, he provides a warning to anyone interested in participating. He instructs them to get out and throw as much as possible before the clinic or face the consequences. The primary focus of these things is getting the ball out of your glove quickly to make a throw to your target in as short an amount of time as possible. The techniques involve body and foot position but the drills involve a ton of throwing. After the first hour, you can usually tell who took the advice and who did not. Many girls are rubbing and stretching their arms. Some have to drop outduring the first session or do not show for the second due to sore arms. You see many of the same kids at the Kobata clinics year after year. Strangely, it is often the same kids who develop sore arms each and every year.
I once knew a kid who was a gifted athlete. She was long and lanky but pretty strong. She played several sports and was good at most of them at an early age. She could play any position on the field though she never really caught. She was a pitcher who could move the ball pretty well thanks in part to her Osterman-like finger length, at least for her age. She could play infield or outfield equally well. She had a defect in her swing and struggled sometimes with the bat. Her parents had her in pitching and hitting lessons when I met them during the season. But they stopped these immediately after the summer. Her pitching gradually dropped off over a couple years because she neither practiced it nor took any sort of instruction for half the year. The defect in her swing would go away after a half dozen sessions with the hitting instructor but immediately after it was successfully corrected, her parents would stop the lessons and it would creep back into her swing.
Year after year, I would have the same conversation with the father. He would say, "I've got to get her back in to see the instructor. We're gonna start pitching as soon as I can get in there." He would also say something like, as soon as it gets a little warmer out, we're gonna start pitching practice again. Weeks would pass. A few tournaments would take place and her pitching was pretty bad. Then they would finally get back in to see her instructor about midway through the season and she would gradually get better but did not progress the way one would expect.
The defect in this girl's swing would really trouble the father. She would go whole tournaments without a hit. Then he would make time to have her see the hitting instructor. The next tournament, she would be a little better. The next ones were gradually better and better until finally it seemed like she was going in the right direction. Then the instruction would cease and she'd be back where she was.
Like I said, this kind of thing happened over and over and over again. At first, I didn't think much about it the first time. But you know, when you hear something over and over again, it isn't hard to put two and two together. I came to expect the same kind of comments and the same kind of playing difficulties each season. And that's kind of what happened.
I say "that's kind of what happened" because I saw history repeating itself but, you know, kids get older. As they do, the small problems get bigger. A kid who struggles at the plate due to some defect which gets reinforced over several years finds it more and more difficult to overcome that defect. A pitcher who does not progress each season will find herself in a little too deep when she moves up to the next age group again and again until one day she finds herself in 16U, 18U, or high school varsity. History does not merely repeat itself but rather repeats itself with a vengeance as time wears on.
Many of these instances of history repeating itself might be characterized as the "playing to get into shape" myth. When I was a youth, kids often played three sports and those filled the entire year. Today it is more common for a young athlete to play one or, at most, two sports. You can argue that this is a travesty of the modern world and I won't dispute you. But we live in reality - the world as it is not as we wish it were - and reality is more and more of the single sport phenomenon.
I understand why kids cannot compete in more than one or two sports. If, say, a girl likes softball, basketball and soccer, she will play these sports first at a recreational level and then attempt to play club as her interest grows. Those reading this blog probably know that travel softball involves a season which runs from thaw to the end of July, a fall tryout, a fall scrimmage and/or tournament season, a month or two off, and indoor workouts starting no later than January. Other club sports have their own grinds.
I was talking to one of my daughter's friends, a thirteen year old, who plays club soccer at a high level. Her team is one of the top 20 soccer teams in the country. Soccer is more organized under a single umbrella so I feel comfortable making this claim. During her off-season, this kid sees no fewer than 4 separate trainers each week. Before you think we are talking about some sort of soccer robot, this is a normal kid who is about as well-rounded as any of her peers. She just happens to be good and has found a very good team. Even at a lower level than this kid plays, the soccer kids are working throughout most of the year.
A few years back, I was talking to a coach of a boys' club basketball team. I knew they had just competed at some large, national-draw, end-of-season tournament recently. So I asked the guy if he was happy to have some time off to relax and not worry about basketball for a while. He replied, "Oh, no, it's always basketball season. We start back up in a few weeks."
It's like that in higher level youth sports. That is reality. It is very difficult to compete in more than one sport except at very low levels because the seasons all run into each other.
I can think of a few kids who have tried or are trying to compete in several sports before they get into high school. Often they must choose one primary sport to play club ball and then a couple secondary sports to play either only rec or lower level club. A very few kids have or are trying to play higher level in more than one sport. I've heard about a kid who plays high level softball, basketball and soccer. She is good at all these and still finds time for school. But the grind is inhuman and I don't think I'll go into that. Suffice it to say that I have heard more than once of the girl running from a tournament in one sport to another in another multiple times on some weekends. Not many parents would be willing to do that. Not many kids would hold up physically or mentally under that stress.
Further, it becomes increasingly difficult to compete with the kids who play a particular sport year-round. Not every high school is the same but, for the most part, I would say that the starting members of any decent athletic team at our local school are all year-round players. The basketball players all play some sort of club ball. They compete during the school season, have some time off, and then play for summer teams. The same is true for other sports whether there is a significant youth club program in the area or not.
With regard to field hockey, there are a number of girls who play the sport at the club level and several who got into it because it was offered by the middle school. When they got into high school, they figured they could continue to play it the same way they did in junior high. But what they find is some girls develop greater interest and start playing club for almost the entire year. When that it isn't the predominant case, what is common here is for high school teams to form leagues in the off-season. Coaches of the varsity squad are not permitted to interact with players but some parent will supervise the team. They play indoor or out depending on the time of year. Field hockey is a fall sport here but the other day I went to watch an indoor competition which consisted of players hoping to make varsity next year. I looked at the league standings on the facility's wall and realized just about every high school in the area is represented. Even school sports are an almost year-round pursuit.
So the situation of the one sport kid is probably the most common reality. Unfortunately, this can sometimes result in kids not really being in shape for their sport at certain key times of the year. If you play softball at a reasonably high level, your team's annual schedule may preclude you from participating with the school field hockey, basketball, or soccer team's off-season league or with a travel club in another sport. But you do not really do any good off-season work unless you make a concerted effort to do so.
You get through the fall tryout season and perhaps play weekends through early November. You do nothing in December and then start up once or twice weekly workouts in January until spring. In the spring, you play school ball, travel tournaments, or both. This lasts into the summer and sometime in July, your season ends. You are physically and mentally exhausted and need to take time off. But during the following fall season, you are not really working that hard. So by the middle of November, you are almost completely out of shape.
I realize that the discussion I am engaged in can get a little tricky. On one hand, I am claiming that girls can only play one sport because the season never ends. On the other hand, I am stating that girls get out of shape. How is it possible to get out of shape if you're playing during the full year?
I am not really talking about being generally out of shape. I'm really addressing being out of shape for the sport. A girl could be in excellent physical condition including muscle flexibility, etc. But if she has not thrown a ball in two or three months, she is not in shape for softball. Just like the kid who attends a Kobata clinic without having thrown in several weeks, she is going to develop a sore arm. The further problem is that she may not get sufficient time to recover if, for example, she gets that sore arm in school ball and has to practice or play every day. This is a particular problem for catchers and infielders. I have seen more than a few kids develop arm problems during the high school season and not be able to heal until after the season.
If a kid is a pitcher who has not practiced for more than 10 weeks, she is going to have a hard time working back anywhere near where she left off. Sometimes this can be particularly problematic. In our school ball, the first day of practice happens early in March. The team does drills for very few weeks and then tries to do scrimmages almost immediately. Then the real games begin early in April. That isn't much time to prepare. That is not enough time for a pitcher to get back to where she left off, let alone make progress.
I am a fan of kids being given sufficient off-season rest. When activities involve intense physical exertion or can cause repetitive motion injuries the way softball can, it is advisable to have a significant period of rest. But if that period extends over too long and sort of slides into a slow, late start, injuries can develop and difficulties ensue. Worse, many times when a pitcher or other player is dissatisfied with early season performance, she can press too hard in order to make advances and cause her own injuries.
A pitcher might look for an increase in speed and throw her mechanics off kilter thereby leading to an injury of the back, shoulder or knee. She might try to spin the ball too hard and hurt an elbow or wrist. There are any number of possible scenarios.
A batter might have worked shoulder, back, etc. flexibility all off-season. But if she never picked up a bat and took cuts, she may find herself over-swinging early in the year which can lead to all sorts of injuries. It is one thing to do yoga or stretching 5 days a week. It is quite another to rip at a pitch explosively 50 times a day after a three month layoff.
Secondarily, I am talking about allowing mechanical skills to lapse. It is not great when your musculature isn't where it was as you start back into intense practicing. But muscles are not the only thing about your game that can atrophy. Mechanical skills can too.
The most well schooled veteran athlete has some difficulty recovering her mechanics at the beginning of pre-season practice after a significant layoff. The junior members of the travel softball circuit have more difficulty, especially if they have done no preparatory work or been involved with instruction. College pitchers often have coach mandated layoffs with heavy weight or other sorts of training workouts. It can take them several weeks to get their mechanics back to where they were last season. But for the most part, these highly developed athletes need the time off more than they need to pitch because their mechanics are well set by then. The same is not true of 11 year olds.
It stands to reason that if an athlete has swung, thrown or pitched several thousand time each year over 8, 10 or more years, her mechanics are not going to leave her for good after a couple months. But if a kid is in her second or third year of lessons for hitting or pitching, the muscle memory has not developed enough to be set in stone. If her mechanical lessons and practicing are for half a year or less, it is quite possible that she will be far behind where she was at the end of the previous season unless she does some sort of off-season work to retain and further enhance them.
Lastly, I am talking about not making appropriate progress from year to year. As girls age up from 10U to 12U and so on, it becomes more and more apparent who is doing the off-season work and who is not. In my early pitcher example, it was patently obvious. I suppose I focus more on pitching than anything else because my kids pitch. But I also know that when I look at a girl during the fall and she's pretty good, I expect her to be at least that good when we start working out or get outside to play scrimmages. My hope when I brought her onto the team was that she would be at this particular point when we start up and then make progress throughout the year. I am not hoping that she will be behind and then get back to this point towards the middle or end of the year. And pitchers may make progress during the actual season but they make more of it if they retain their skills and then make some progress during the off-season.
Recently a travel organization held its first practice of the new year. Most kids had not thrown since the first week of November. There were sore arms. But they practice once or twice a week and the kids will recover. It was apparent that few, if any of the pitchers had thrown at all recently. several girls had control issues in the spring which went away as they worked outside during the spring and pitched tournaments during the summer. By fall, most had really hit their strides. But at this practice, they were far behind where they had left off. The coaches met, rearranged workouts and now they'll have to put aside an hour for just the pitchers to work. They realized after that first practice that their pitchers are not throwing at all on their own. They have to make sure they throw at least once per week now or risk some serious problems at early tournaments. Also, many of the girls play high school ball and they want them to be ready to endure those rigors. There is no other option. They must conduct pitcher workouts. That is probably a waste of otherwise good team practice time / facility rental.
I discovered this same sort of problem several years ago. What I did was find somewhat cheaper space which i could rent for a shorter duration than the full team practices. I conducted pitcher-catcher only workouts for that segment of the team. And because this was outside the normal course of team practices, I had the pitchers and catchers pay for the space separately. Do you know what happened? I spent more time listening to excuses about why this or that kid couldn't come to the workouts.
Quite often kids could not make these workouts because they played rec basketball or did other activities which were reasonable under the circumstances. But these kids were not doing anything on their own. I conducted these workouts because I had to, not because I wanted to. If they had been doing any throwing at all, I could have saved time, effort and money
I also ended up personally spending more of my own money to cover for the kids that didn't show up. Say I had 6 kids and the space rental was $60. nbsp; I told each kid that it was $10 a session. Often I had three kids which cost me an additional $30. And my pitchers were not well prepared for the season. if I had it to do over again, I would charge everyone up front and make attendance mandatory. The only excuse I would accept would be if a kid was doing her own throwing and attending lessons. And I would be the arbiter of whether I believed the work was being done. if she wasn't throwing well enough, I would require her to attend.
You know, this sport is very difficult. It requires considerable effort in terms of the season's tournaments. It requires considerable effort to develop one's skills. It requires off-season work. The dedication needed to succeed in fastpitch softball is as much as any other sport, sometimes more. Kids who pitch must attend lessons unless they are working with a parent who has an equal knowledge base to professional instructors. Those lessons cannot merely be for 3 months of the year. Kids who want to throw well, must throw often. Kids who want to hit need to see professional trainers and work at drills on their own. Kids who want to be good fielders have to attend clinics like the Kobata ones. They must enhance their mechanical skills through whatever means they have. You cannot be good at this game on a part-time basis. The other girls who are working their skills will most definitely pass you by.
I believe in a six week resting period after the rigors of the season are over. But more than that is going to be a problem. While an absolute rest period is important, it is equally important to remember that what we are resting from is an over-taxing season. Once the period of rest is over, it is very important to begin pre-season preparation.
Pre-season preparation is generally nowhere near as intense as in-season stresses. So we really are not ending a season, giving rest, and then immediately throwing kids back into the fire. What we do not want to get into the habit of doing is ending the season, resting, and then procrastinating about starting up work again only to find time has slipped away from us. So I'm not saying that every pitcher fr0om age 8 up ought to throw six times per week, 52 weeks per year. I'm saying that after a tough season, yes, by all means, give her 6 weeks of not seeing a ball. But immediately thereafter begin throwing some and work your way back up to whatever your top level of training is. The same is true for every other player.
If you have had 6 weeks off without swinging a bat, start swinging one. If you;ve got the room in your house, basement, garage, attic, start today. if you have no space available, put on your winter coat and go outside to do it. I know its cold out there but I don;t think you will get frostbite inside of ten or fifteen minutes.
Don't take 100 swings at some 65 mph machine pitched balls. l; Take 10 swings wherever you can today. Take 15 tomorrow, 20 on Thursday, 25 on Friday. Take off for the weekend if you need to. But start back up on Monday taking 20 swings again until you build up to 50 or 100. Then stay there.
You do not have to do this 15 or more minute workout every single blessed day. The first week might only be three or four days. The second week might be one additional day. You can get up to 6 or 7 days per week quickly. And you'll have to because, folks, it is already a good ways into January 2010. In just a couple weeks, it will be February, the shortest month of the year which happens to be followed by March when many of us start getting outdoors and the high school teams start their tryouts. That means you have less than two short months.
If you are a pitcher or fielder who needs to throw and you have absolutely no space, you're in a bit of a bind. But there must be something you can do. Pitchers can pitch without a ball in a hallway. They can also do portions of their pitching motion into a laundry basket filled with towels using an actual ball. Players who want to throw inside of little space can take a knee and throw into that same laundry basket. They can slo perform throwing motions without a ball in very little space. What all this takes is commitment, commitment to do something softball related every day or most days no matter how silly it seems at first.
You can take up a ready position in the hallway or in front of a full length mirror and visulaize fielding a grounder or flyball. Practice your footwork and make a throw without a ball. Do 10 or 20, more if you can. Then run down to the laundry and get that basket. Snap balls into it. Practice you underhand flips. You may be surprised how much of a throwing or pitching motion you can accomplish in a ten foot space with a laundry basket. And finally, resolve to go somewhere and do some real stuff at the first opportunity.
As soon as there is any sort of warm day, get out and throw. It snowed 2 feet here before Christmas. Then it got rather warm outside. Kids could have gotten out and tossed a ball for 15 or more minutes just to do it, if they wanted to. Then it got very cold here and snow flurries have been falling ever since. But one day in January or February, it is going to get wamr for one or more days again, at least I hope it is. Get out and do something when that happens!
There are any number of facilities around which can help out a softball player for a reasonable price. No, most of us cannot go every day and rent an hour or more worht of time. &nbsop; But we can afford to go out and rent a half hour to pitch or throw a bit say 3 times before March. if we do all these other things and then get in a couple sessions of throwing or pitching before our outdoor practices begin, we should be OK. But we should probably do more.
If there are reasonably priced clinics around, and I believe there are many in most places, we should sign up for them. I know economic times are tough and many of us are struggling just to make ends meet. You do what you can. But if there is a gym or other facility nearby where you can spend 20, 30, 40 bucks and get in some off-season preparation, it will be money well spent.
If you just cannot wing it this year and you have no space in which to throw or swing a bat, don't feel bad. But understand that if you do nothing and then go to your first practices or games, you cannot expect things to be just like they were at the end of last year. You probably will struggle to make progress. You may struggle to keep up with other kids. But this is a tough year. And you will survive.
On the other hand, if you are able to do most of these things, if you are able to go to clinics, if you are able to work indoors, but you do not, well then, there is no excuse for you whatsoever. And if each year, you always seem to get a rough start because you haven't done anything in months, well, you can either learn from your own history or be forced to live it again and again. Groundhog day was a decent movie. But in that, the main character actually progressed each day. He was able to learn from his own mistakes. Groundhog day is, what, maybe a month away? Don't let history keep repeating itself over and over again.
Permanent Link: Lil Bit Of History Repeatin
 
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