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Outfielder Drills
by Dave
Friday, January 22, 2010
If you came here to grab some outfielder drills, you may have come to the wrong place. What I mean is, I don't like to just list out and describe a bunch of drills so that you can quickly grab them for your practices. Rather, it is always my goal to make you think about things and understand an approach rather than merely provide a handy cheat sheet. It is more important and useful to understand the approach than it is to have a pocket full of drills for a particular part of the game.
I often get questions e-mailed to me like "can you give me some drills for (outfield, infield, catcher, pitcher)?" Sure, I can give you those drills but I don't need to - you don't need me to. That's because, if I give you some drills without explaining their objectives, you are not going to use them properly. If instead, I spur your mind to consider the goals of drills, you can adapt practices to cover goals instead of merely having a series of drills with nobody thinking about the goals.
For example, if we consider what we might do for a pitcher in terms of defense, I could say have her throw pitches and then hit balls at her. That's simple enough. But what we want to consider is the sort of defensive plays a pitcher might make, the skills needed to successfully complete such plays, and what we can do to instill the skills while correcting errors. If we do that, we first develop a list of situations, then we think about how we would like to see the desired outcome accomplished, then we develop the skill set required, and the drills just come to us. We might decide that balls would be bounced back to the circle with: 1) nobody on, 2) a force play at second or third, 3) no force play on but a runner on second or third, etc. We might then decide that the pitcher needs to be able to move left and right, make good throws to each of the bases, etc. We then can see that she must do these things after making a pitch. The drills we would use become obvious at this point. The same is true for other defensive plays made by the pitcher as well as every other position on the field. The drills we can use become obvious once we consider the various plays and skills needed to accomplish each.
Many times when a coach has a mere list of drills, he or she runs them as he or she believes they should be run but with several mistakes. Further, the drills are run without explaining the objective(s), without describing the manner in which the play should be made, and without adequate correction when fundamental mistakes take place. This is not just a less efficient way to run drills but also a great way to reinforce bad habits and to make sure the player(s) in the drills will never develop the desired skills.
What's worse is when a coach has a particular drill, doesn't understand the goals of it, and then tries to modify it to make it their own. Many times I have observed coaches take a very good drill, teach it badly, and then later try to adapt it to make it more meaningful or harder without ever considering what the goal of the original drill was in the first place. I'm not going to give you specific examples because it angers me when I contemplate this. Let's just say that I have coached many times when someone has either taken a drill from someone else and then run it almost completely wrong, or has taken the drill and tried to change it in order to accomplish some totally different skill unrelated to the objectives of the original drill. The result is a pile of mud and practice sessions which merely fill time and accomplish less than optimal skill development.
A common mistake is to combine several drills into one and thereby proceed with the mistaken assumption that you are covering all skills needed in the shortest possible amount of time. It is often OK to combine drills in certain situations but when you try to accomplish 4 goals in one drill that should be four, you often don't get the desired result. For example, let's say that you have a drill which teaches infielders to deal with short hops the way a corner infielder often must. You also have an ordinary ground ball drill. You have a quick release throwing drill and yet another drill for dealing with slow rolling balls on the ground. You could run four discreet drills, each taking 5 plus minutes, or you might combine all of them into a single one and do it for ten minutes. You saved 10 minutes by combining them and that means you get to do an additional ten minutes of batting practice later. But in the course of combining the drills, chances are pretty good that you will miss one of the goals of one of these drills, fail to teach one or more of the skills properly, and give your players too few iterations of the drill to instill the skills.
Many, many times, I have coached with someone who really liked my drills one year and the next decided that, in order to save time, they would rather combine things. The result is a single drill covering four or more skills which the other coach does not really understand or teach to the kids. The kids practice but they do not develop the skills. Everybody is happy until game time when those players can't make a good play on a ball stopped on the ground. The coach says, "but we practice that all the time." But the kid has not been taught the skill and has not had enough practice iterations working it to have made it part of her game.
Further, the logical extrapolation of combining various skills and drills into a single element of practice is to simply line up the kids in the field and then hit balls at them while expecting them to make the plays. That saves time, doesn't it? You hit the ball to a player while telling them to make the play to X base. They throw it in and then you hit another. Each kid gets five balls hit to them and every practice involves a different set of five such plays. That's just great! This approach is to be avoided. That's why we conduct drills in the first place. If you want to merely line the kids up in the field and hit balls to them for a half an hour or so, go ahead. See what the results are.
When you line kids up in the field and hit ball after ball, invariably something gets missed and you bore the kids to tears. I once talked with a girl whose team practiced this way. She told me that she would often get so bored after 15 minutes of just standing there that when her turn came, she wasn't paying attention or had gotten so cold that she couldn't make the plays the way she was supposed to. She noted that during many practices, the coach would forget about her and get so distracted that he actually forgot to hit her any balls at all! She suggested that this happened during more than half the practices. She came to think of practice as a time during which she had to stand in the outfield for half an hour before being sent to the batting cage to take some swings. That's an absolutely dreadful way to run a practice. By contrast, this girl who was then on our travel team would get completely exhausted at our practices while having to do 25 of this, 25 of that, 25 of some other skill, etc., etc. The two practices were so completely different that she could not contemplate the two as both being practices. One was practice, the other was a joke. And I hate to tell you what she thought of her coach as a result of the poor manner in which he conducted practice.
Today, we want to consider drills for the oufielder. So first let's consider the various plays she might make. Obviously, grounders, line drives, and fly balls might be hit directly at her, to her left, to her right, and over her head (at her, to the left, to the right). If the outfielder is RF, we must consider balls hit to the line that are fading - spinning away from her towards the line. If she is LF, we have the same issue but in the other direction.
RFs have to consider hard hit line drives which strike the ground in front of them on which they can make a play at first. LFs should consider the same play when runners are on first and second when there may be a play at third. They should also consider making a play with a runner on third when the ball is hit hard enough that the runner freezes and then heads for home right as the ball hits the ground.
In the case of both corner outfielders, we have the issue of flies into foul territory with runners on base tagging up. Tag ups are important to consider whether the ball is hit fair or foul but we want to make sure the OF considers and makes her throws on fly balls hit into foul ground. It is a fairly common mistake for OFs to forget about tag ups on foul balls. Obviously, we have to consider tag ups in general as well as those where the ball is hit into foul ground.
CFs have slightly different plays to make though many of them are very similar. Let's not forget that all OFs need to be able to vector a ball off the bat - from home plate - and that they must track balls while running over grass covered ground. Sometimes they must take their eyes off balls, run to a spot and then pick the ball up again.
With all the possible balls on which a play is made, we have to consider the various throws to bases. Each one requires different footwork. Each, arguably involves a different sort of throw. Each kind of play involves slightly different skills that need to be worked on. So the next element of coming up with some drills involves creating lists of the various plays and the skills we need to develop. Then we ought to be able to design drills for our practices and even come up with new ones on the fly in order to make practice more interesting and, therefore, meaningful.
I want to emphasize this point. When a practice involves everyone moving and being kept interested at almost all times, it is more fun, interesting for the players, and accomplishes more. If you have 12 girls standing in various places in the field waiting for their turn while each play involves just two of them, you have at least 10 bored girls at any given moment. If, instead, you provide just enough time for each kid to get her wind back before having to do something, you are running a better practice.
Many times, the OFs get the least amount of real consideration when their skills are contemplated. Some coach takes them all out to the outfield and hits fly ball after fly ball from one of the sidelines while the infielders work many and various complicated plays over and over again. There is a value to hitting fly balls to the outfield but they need more than that. A worse kind of "drill" occurs when all 8 or 9 defensive players are put into the field and each one gets a few balls hit at them. This is an OK pre-game warm-up but each and every practice cannot be conducted this way.
It would be better to design drills and keep all OFs moving for most of your practice time and then hit some flies towards thje end of a workout. For example, you might form a line in left and throw balls to the fence which after trying to catch them, they must retrieve quickly from the fence and then throw to a cutoff standing near the infield. In another drill, you might want the OFs to run with their backs to you and then pick up a ball hit or thrown high into the air. You may want to work hard hit balls hit right at them which will strike the ground before they get there and on which you want them to make a quick release throw to a base.
One of my pet peeves is when OFs are lined up in one place and a series of balls is hit to each in turn and the only emphasis is on the OF performing the loopy crow hop before throwing the ball back. Yes OFs need to learn the crow hop in relevant situations but that is not the only relevant footwork. How many times have you seen a RF make a play when she could get the runner at first but she does that OF crowhop and gets the ball there too slowly. Contrast that with those times when an infielder plays right and the same situation occurs. More often than not, the IF will get the out which the crow-hopping-trained OF cannot. In other words, your OFs need to do some short quick throws in their drills. In other words, you need to have a drill which teaches, emphasizes and reinforces making those short throws.
So I strongly suggest that rather than reading this and copying a set of drills to use in your practice, you step away from the computer with a couple sheets of paper and a pencil. Then jot down a list of plays you can come up with on your own. Now spend more time thinking about the skills need for each one. &nb sp; Then jot some short notes for some drills you would like to do. Now I'll do the same thing and here is a specimen workout for the OFs that I come up with:
1) Take all your OFs aaway from the IFs. Have them warm-up throwing balls back and forth from 40 feet, move back to 60 after 5 minutes, and then move back to 80 after another five minutes. Once they are reasonably warmed up at 40 feet, work in the footwork needed to make quick release throws. Correct players not doing it right.
I forgot to mention that you want to make sure you have ample room in which to work. The outfield while infielders are doing their own drills is probably insufficient. If you have two adjacent fields, take the OFs over to the vacant field. If your field does not have fences and instead has a large open grassy area, use that by moving far away from the IFs. If you are stuck in the OF of the only field your whole team has to practice on, there's nothing you can do so adapt accordingly.
When the girls are moved back to 60 feet while throwing, have players on one side throw line drives at their feet and have the other side field them like sharply hit balls on which they need to make a quick throw to the infield. Have them charge, scoop and quickly get into throwing position to throw the ball back to their partner. Then, obviously switch sides.
When the girls are 80 feet apart, have one side not throw the ball to the other player and instead have her bounce it to her partner. The retrieving side should make a play on the ball, crow hop, and throw strongly to the other side. Then switch sides. You now have fin ished 15 to 20 minutes of your OF workout.
After this throwing, you want to make the examples more extreme. You want girls to really run before retrieving balls and making throws. Line up girls at one spot and then move to a place 80 to 100 feet away from them. Cones would be useful to establish the line and a target point to which to run. each girl in succession runs at the target point and then when they get to a certain point, throw a ball into the air which requires the fielder to run hard in order to make the catch. Do this in each direction causing the fielder to make plays requiring a forward and backhand catch. This can be accomplished by you moving to another point after each girl has a turn in one direction. Emphasize hard running, not mere jogs. Make the plays somewhat difficult to make.
After this is done, you have another 10 minutes more of practice completed, bringing you to about the half hour mark. The next drill might be to keep the girls right where they are and move to a point from which you can throw pop flies in front of them which require a long run to catch. In each drill, you want to make sure that things move along quickly. You, the coach, should break a sweat. If you aren't sweating, you probably are not moving fast enough. RTe minutes more has passed and we are 40 minutes into the overall practice.
The next drill will involve less distance. Give each player a ball and have them each in turn throw it to you and then start running. You will throw it after about one or two seconds and then have them run the flies down. Do a turn throwing the balls to their right, another to their left, another directly over head, and several more varying where you throw the ball. This is another 10 minute workout and you should probably give them a couple minute break for water.
Once they are back, work some outfield fence plays. if you have a fence, try tossing the balls back to it and having the OFs make plays while finding the fence and catching the flies. Then work an outfield retrieval drill where they can't possibly make the catch and instead must race to the fence and then make a throw to another player. You are probably about an hour into practice and now you can liune the girls up to hit a series of fly balls.
If you are on a free field with nothing else going on, hit balls from home. Keep those girls who are likely to play corners in the corners and those likely to play center in center. Alternatively, you can have each rotate to the various fields after say 5 balls. Also, have some of your Ofs take turns covering bases and have your OFs make attempts at throwing to each. Do this sequentially so that each OF gets the opportunity to throw to each base except you don't really need to have CF and LF throw to first and your RF really should work on making a cutoffable throw when her turn to go to third comes. Hit the balls hard and then hit some soft ones. Hit balls directly at them and, if you are able into the gaps. Make sure that on every ball a girl is yelling for it. It is most common in this softball world for college and high school coaches to want their players to yell "ball, ball, ball" when calling for it. I suggest you use that. I don't really care for that - I'd prefer I got it. But when we coach,m we prep for the next level so use ball, ball, ball and don't try to fight city hall.
I suppose I forgot to work a drill into the early sequence which does nothing more than have OFs in two locations judge whether they should make a play or allow the other OF to make it. We do want to have such a drill and make sure that one girl is going for it and calling it while the other is backing up properly. If you forgot too, work it into your next practice. Don't just assume you will cover it when you hit to the whole field.
I suppose that when I go back and read this, I will realize that I forgot several drills. I don;t have time to list out every possible play, skill, and a drill for each. That is yet another reason I want you to use your own brains to develop drills. I doubt I have offered up anything here that you couldn't have come up with on your own no matter what your experience level is. So your takeaway from this piece is, sit down and make your own list of drills. If you have taken sufficient time and put in the effort, you will cover all the skills your OFs need. And if at some game or other situation, you realize that you have forgotten something, just add to your list and make sure you cover it in the next several practices.
As a final note, if you live in a cold region and are now working indoors, you should still take this approach. Works out the skills and design your own drills. You will do much better this way than you would by copying someone else's drills without understanding the objectives of each.
Have a good practice!Labels: coaching, outfield, practice
Permanent Link: Outfielder Drills
 
Set Sights, Do The Work
by Dave
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Today I want to switch gears a little and talk about college softball recruiting a bit rather than discussing mechanical and practice issues, or getting into some arcane rule interpretation. In order to do that, I need to dispel some myths, correct what I see as mistaken impressions of a few friends, and throw some stuff at you second hand that I picked up as a result of discussions I had with people I believe to be in the know. My hopes are not that I will offer a thorough education of the process in its entirety. Rather, I hope to shoot enough buckshot at the wall to give you something you don't know, to correct a mistaken view or dispel a myth propagated by those who pretend to be in the know. I'm gonna stick to what I believe is the beaten path. I may repeat items I have written about in the past. OK, enough of that. Here goes.
Note that I refer to college recruiting not college scholarships. That is because college softball recruiting is about more than just scholarships. College recruiting is about playing college ball whether there is athletic money involved or not. Scholarships alone is a too limited view and I'll explain why in a moment. I will also state some obvious things about playing in college in order to explain why I am discuss recruiting generally and not merely focused on scholarships.
There are a finite number of college scholarships out there for softball players. D1 schools have up to 12 of these to offer. D2s have less but a fair number. D3s do not offer athletic scholarships. There are other scholarships available from junior colleges and schools not in the NCAA. But the total number is fixed and it is not a huge one when compared to the number of kids playing ball at fairly high levels and who aspire to play in college. Also note that if a school has 12 scholarships to give, it gives those to all four classes. So in any given year, a school with 12 has an average of 3 available, excluding obviously the renewal of existing ones.
Also, college athletic scholarships are often split into equivalency pieces. For example, one "scholarship" might actually be split into two or more partials, one kid getting 50%, another receiving 30% and still another getting 20%. Top, top players may get full rides but most others get partials of some percentage. I know of a baseball player who received something like 60% and then was able to cover another 10% with academic money. His family must pay 30% of the cost of attending that university. That's a far cry from 100% but each family knows what it can and cannot spend on education.
A very good softball player I know of received an offer of 50%. Often folks talk, and I know I have mentioned this before, about colleges spending their money first up the middle - pitcher, catcher, SS, CF. But that does not mean these four positions should expect full rides while the others should expect partials. That may, on the hole, represent the average but I know of players up the middle who got partials, sometimes small partials, and others not up the middle who received full or large percentage scholarships.
If you are not playing softball for one of the top 20 or so teams in the country, chances are very good that you will not obtain a full ride to play ball at Arizona, UCLA, Florida or one of the other perennial members of the top 25 D1 club. When I say top 20 teams, I mean Gold level national powerhouses. If you are playing for one of the teams in the next tier and are an impact player, you have a shot. but if your level has nothing to do with Gold, high level showcase ball, or some other recruiting animal that has a track record of placing their kids at the top schools on full ride, you have to either get yourself up into this upper echelon or set your sights on something else. If you are the number two shortstop on an ASA B team, in all likelihood, AZ is not going to be picking you up on their radar.
Secondly, if you are not really looking to get a full ride or any athletic scholarship money at all at a top 25 NCAA D1 school, if you are not even looking at D1 or D2, the field is fairly wide open but you need to set your sights and do quite a bit of work. If your goal is merely to play somewhere, you still need to look into this recruiting thing. I would not advise you to ignore the college recruiting world, choose your school, get accepted and then plan to walk on and make the team once you arrive. That is much harder than it would otherwise seem. And if, by chance, you do make the team, chances are not that great you'll ever get onto the field or up to the plate during actual games.
To prove the point about merely walking on vs. being recruited though offered no scholarship money, consider that someone who is asked to come to a party stands in at least a little better shoes than someone who invites themselves. If say a college coach with no money to offer but at a small school that has an impeccable academic record wants to field a reasonably competitive team, which most do. She has to find herself players at each of the nine positions who can actually play the game pretty well. She will attend the showcases and other recruiting events in order to find said players. She knows that her two best pitchers, catchers, or outfielders are graduating in 2010. She will attempt to entice the players she needs to fill those roles. If you happen to walk on at such a school and, for example, you are a catcher the year the school has two incoming freshman for that position, lets just say that the only icing of your catching hand you can plan on, if you are very lucky, is out in the bullpen or after practices. Besides, if a coach were to recruit kids while offering no scholarship money and then play some walk-on of approximately equal talent in front of a recruited kid, her other recruiting efforts would likely begin to shoot blanks as word of this began to spread.
I'm not saying that a college coach has a moral or other obligation to keep or play a recruited kid. I'm simply stating the obvious which is that people act in their own best interests and that includes a college coach with no money to offer who recruits kids to play on her softball team. I once had to listen to the complaints of a parent whose son tried to walk onto the baseball team at a D3 school. He was a good player. He had a good tryout. He estimated that he was better than all the other walk-ons (non-scholarship players). He didn't even get looked at. His father angrily told me that the results of the tryout had been pre-ordained. The coach knew who he was going to take before tryouts began. These were all freshman. How did the coach know about them before the tryout?!
So, recruiting is about playing, not merely about scholarships, not merely about D1 and 2, and not merely about going to those big name schools everybody with a TV set knows about. Recruiting is about playing just about any level of college ball. Recruiting is about a bigger world.
Next, college coaches do not cold call at high school games. I know I have told you this before but I find I need to mention it again because I heard someone recently claim I was wrong about this. I couldn't disabuse him of the notion so I need to vent again. Let's agree that from time to time, though rarely, a college coach will actually go watch a high school game. Chances are that such a coach will not be coming to watch your .500 team play a non-conference game against another .500 team on a cold, rainy day in May. They may go to watch a team play when a kid they are already recruiting is pitching, catching or playing SS in the state playoffs against some undefeated team who has an ace pitcher that is going to a rival school next year. In such instances, it is also likely that the college coach is visiting a sick Aunt who lives in the vicinity of your school field because she happens to be in town for a game at a nearby college tomorrow and she happens to have nothing else to do. It is conceivable that she will be impressed by a freshman catcher who throws everybody out and hits three homeruns during that game. She may make some inquiries. But she is not there to look at all the players and see if she can find a few recruits who just don't happen to play travel ball.
It is also extremely unlikely that any college coach is going to come prospect at your 16U PONY tournament in June after her team has put down their uniforms for the year. She will not be at the ASA B tournament that draws in the best town teams from at least 15 miles away. She probably won't be at the "showcase" event featuring teams from two states which occurs the same weekend something really big occurs someplace else.
As a side note, there is a fairly common misconception that kids who fly to the west coast, Florida, Colorado, etc. to play showcases are looking for full rides to PAC10, SEC, ACC, Big 10 or Big 12 schools. The assumption being that the local coaches within driving distance of my area wouldn't go out there to recruit kids. Aside from the fact that some small school located far from these showcases has an impact player from California, Florida, Texas or some other softball haven, coaches from all over the country populate these events. I know many kids who went or are going to various schools within 4 hours drive from their homes and would not have ever met them nor been recruited if they didn't make 4hour flights to be seen by the local college coach.
I have been to a few recruiting events here and there. I have seen smallish northeast schools in California and Florida, junior colleges from the deep south in New Jersey, etc., etc. I know from reviewing tournaments and showcases that there are small colleges from upstate NY who have been to big events more than a thousand miles from their schools. There are D3s from all over the country at Florida's Rising Stars showcases. There are noon-NCAA schools from the Midwest at California showcases. The point is, if you are seeking to be recruited by a small local school that does not give athletic scholarships, you may still have to travel far from home in order to get their attention. They do not restrict their recruiting efforts to an area within 4 hours drive of their schools.
To drive home the point, let's say that the best pitchers come from California or Florida. Now, assume that at a large showcase featuring 100 or more of the best teams in the country, there are 300 or more pitchers. All the D1 and 2 schools in the country cannot hope to absorb all these pitchers. But somebody will likely have some of these girls on their team. If a school of solid (decent to great) academic reputation but no athletic scholarship money can draw in one of these kids who happens to be better than anyone else pitching in their conference, do you think they might pick up such a scrap? Is that made more evident if you consider the kid needs no financial assistance and is looking to major in a subject for which the school is one of the best? What if, such a kid finds the school through her own efforts, writes to the coach requesting that she come watch her play while also telling the coach how much she wants to go to her school and why? Coaches at many and varied schools attend the big showcases. It is not merely the top 25 D1 schools who are out shopping in California, Florida, Texas, etc.
Well, that discussion involves a lot about some showcases and I don't want to go deeply into the general subject of showcase ball. I do want to firmly state that college coaches are not out watching high school games on cold calling visits looking to find prospects. They are also not just staying close to home. If you limit yourself to local high school ball or travel ball on the middle range, they are not going to find you no matter how good of a game, month, or season you have.
I think the contrary mythology has developed because, when you visit a college's web site and view news or profiles of incoming freshman and existing players, the girls' high school accomplishments are often listed while not much from travel ball is. Also, here and there folks will claim to have seen a college coach at their high school or B travel game. Many times the supposed college coach is some guy who nobody knows that came to watch his relative or friend's kid play while wearing clothing from his alma mater or a college team he follows.
I know a fellow who likes to go to local college games in various sports. When he goes, he gets "geared up" with sweatpants, sweat or t-shirt and cap sporting the school's logo. Sometimes he leaves the college event to go watch his daughter's high school sporting event. He does not change his clothes between events! He and I often have a good chuckle about how people give him the eye and watch everything he does in such instances. I sometimes find myself in these situations too! This fellow and I have joked many times about how one day we are going to put a stopwatch and clipboard, maybe radar gun, into our cars so that when this happens, we can really look like college coaches!!
I once noted some guy I was sure was from Providence (RI school) at a high school game. I knew a girl on one team playing had already verballed to that school and assumed this was the coach coming to see her play. Then later I saw him again so I asked the girl's father. He laughed and told me the man was some other kid's father and "he just loves Providence, especially their men's basketball team." On yet another occasion, I was watching some 18U travel games and saw somebody wearing college garb. I asked a parent who he was and they told me he was the uncle of one of the girls who had signed with that school. . He was so proud she had obtained a scholarship that he purchased all their clothing and wore it everywhere!
Enough about that. Now let's talk some more specific stuff for girls who are not top players for top teams playing a grueling showcase schedule against other top teams in front of huge throngs of college coaches. When you go to see showcases, clinics, etc., one thing should strike you. Some of these girls are absolutely unbelievable athletes. The remainder are pretty good but nothing all that spectacular. There are the best and then there are all the rest.
The best and all the rest principle is true at every level of play. It is true at top showcases, lower level ones, and clinics put on by colleges or others. It is pretty much true no matter where you go in the softball world. I really don't know how it is possible to distinguish between many of these kids in terms of playing abilities once you get past the obviously great players. Yet, some of the rest will get full rides to some schools. Others will get partials. Still others will be recruited and get campus jobs more easily than the rest of the kids or perhaps find certain arcane kinds of financial aid is available to them but not everyone at the school. Some will get into institutions they might not otherwise be able to achieve. Some will go to schools of their choice that provide no assistance whatsoever and become the third pitcher or back-up CF ahead of other kids of equal ability who tried to walk on without having been recruited.
So how did these kids get recruited when they do not stand out from the "all the rest" crowd? That's pretty easy, at least in concept. They figured out where they wanted to go, learned what they needed to do to gain favor, and then did the work necessary to go there while being recruited.
The first part of the equation involves choosing schools to target. When I was in high school, I had no idea where I wanted to college or what I wanted to do once I got there. That was truie right until the day I graduated and walked away from childhood. Kids need help narrowing the very large list of possible colleges because not only must they accomplish the task, it is better if they do it in say the freshman or sophomore years so they have more time to target the softball coaches.
What I would do to begin the narrowing process is to list a kid's academic strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and potential areas for several possible careers utilizing her strengths. If you are strong in history and English comp, you should probably not target schools known mostly for their engineering programs. If a kid is very strong in math but says she wants to teach high school or something along those lines, you don't want to target Ivies or other schools that have no programs in her areas of interest.
Try to be as honest with yourselves as possible and narrow the list of schools down to the ones which might be the best fit academically, socially and otherwise. Some kids need to be at a relatively smaller school because that's her personality. When I jumped to college from high school, my HS graduating class was just over 400. The college I chose had class size of about 2,000. That was a good fit for me. My brother graduated from the same high school but he was unintimidated by large throngs. He went to a much larger school that had, I think, 10,000 or more per class. I have heard stories and seen personal instances of kids who do much better in very small setting but who went off to large state institutions and then had to leave because they just could not take it. It takes more than brains top make it at Princeton. You kinda, sorta have to fit in to the kind of people who typically go there. Very large institutions where they get 100,000 at home football games are not necessarily well suited to kids from high schools having class sizes of 100 or less. An extremely bright, borderline genius kid may not like a teaching college despite the significant athloetic money thrown at her.
There are more types of colleges than there are flavors of ice cream or ways to cook shrimp (ha, yet another Gump reference!). There are many schools out there that are possible success stories for your kid but you must pare it down to a reasonable figure focusing on schools that seem like a good fit. Once you do that, you can look to see if they have softball teams. Create a list of your schools and the reasons why they seem like a good fit.
As an aside, I would try to list out schools which are in reasonable proximity of you. You know whether you and your child enjoy 8 hour rides or not. You know if you should cross off this school or that because she does not want to commute under any circumstances and it would be silly to enroll at a school around the corner from you if she is adamant about staying on campus. By contrast, a school as close as 30 miles can still be OK for staying on campus if they provide housing for kids that close.
Choose schools that will accommodate a kid who wants to change her major from English to Biology if your kid is strong in all subjects and is perplexed about whether she wants to write the great American novel or cure cancer. If your child is strong in science but may want to be a science teacher, make sure the colleges you choose have that available.
Also, be aware of the approximate cost and available, non-athletic aid at each school on your pared down list. Add a field for these figures noting the date on which you made the note because these kinds of things can change. Some schools' costs increase more rapidly than others. Some may lose or have lost a good portion of their endowments due to bad financial times. They very possibly may cut aid in the future. You'll want to re-verify your figures as time moves forward. Generally having these figures to reference will be a good aid to your decision making process but you will need to update them next year.
Now that you have your list of schools, the reason you (your child) would like to attend each one, whether they have softball or not, and the costs associated with each, start contacting the ones which do have softball. If you are a freshman trying to get recruited for softball, there isn't much reason to contact schools that don't have the sport, at least not until you are a junior. Don't drop them off your list but there's no reason for a freshman to contact a college so early except for the purposes we are discussing.
The best ways to contact college coaches at your schools of choice are via e-mails but before you start doing this, do the following:
1) Get registered with the NCAA Clearing House at NCAA.org
2) Look for, complete and file any prospective athlete questionnaire the ionsitution has online. If you don't find such a document after much effort, go ahead and contact the coach bec ause they will probably send you one.
3) Create some sort of record-keeping method via spreadsheet or written page on which to note dates and responses of your college contacts and keep it updated as the process moves forwards.
You most likely can find an e-mail address for most of the coaches you need to contact on the University's web site. Some few have forms to use in order to e-mail coaches. &n bsp; You can write your message offline and then use the form once you are ready.
Before you send an e-mail, it would be a good idea to not see this like texting or your other e-mail correspondence. Write out what you want to say as if you are writing an essay for school. The student-athlete should write the message but parents must review the writing before it goes out. Parents who write such e-mails should go over them with their daughters and allow her to change word choice to something she is more comfortable with. The coach knows he or she is dealing with a 14 or 15 year old kid. They do not expect advanced legalize from high school kids. And they are looking to connect with the kid, not the parent. They are also seeking kids who are mature enough to handle tasks like this.
Your first e-mail communication should tell the coach some things about yourself like why you want to attend their school. You are selling (I guess almost recruiting) them. Don't simply tell them that they have a wonderful softball program or you like their logo or mascot name. Tell them you want to go there because of their academic record and the fact that they are strong in the majors you are considering. Tell them that you expect to be able to have your application for admission accepted when it comes time for that because you fit their student profile. If you have a 100 average in honors mathematics or took the PSAT early and scored very high, you can tell them that, if you think it is important to establish your bona fides academically because this school has such high standards. As I understand things, Ivy League schools will not consider girls who have not yet taken the SATs. But many softball programs obviously will actively recruit kids who seem to have their academic houses in order long before they sit for entrance exams.
If you are going to play some showcases and suspect that the college coaches you are writing to may be in attendance, I strongly suggest that either in this first e-mail or in another sent shortly thereafter, you draw attention to the coach that you will be playing. Provide them with more than your name, the team name, and your uniform number. If you have a copy of your schedule, send them that, including times, places, and opponents. Let them know if your coach is amenable to putting girls into the lineup to allow college coaches the opportunity to see them. Some coaches are not and I suggest you get away from them since showcase ball is about, um, showcasing, not winning. If your coach finds it perfectly acceptable to be asked to put a player in just for the coaches, invite the coach to inquire if he or she does not see you on the field.
As an aside, I am rather serious about getting away from showcase coaches who won't put you in, maybe even get offended, when college coaches ask to see you. This is no way to coach a showcase team. Folks who cannot accommodate such requests should find another hobby. I recognize that there are many coaches out there who are like this. I just don't understand it. There are times when a team must show that it can play competitively to remain in a showcase in following years or to hold onto good field placement. But coaches on teams charging perhaps thousands of dollars, which deprive you of the opportunity of being seen when college coaches ask, should be avoided. Better yet, make sure everyone in your area knows that the ultra-expensive team repeatedly turned down college requests. They soon won't have a team to play and that should open the field up for another, more well run one.
At this particular juncture, I would like to raise a subject which relates to the topic and which I found rather interesting. I recently attended a brief recruiting seminar conducted by an organization promoting a new tool for aspiring college softball recruits. When I first heard about the tool, I must admit that I was not optimistic. I felt it was just a web site for putting video tapes and opther information online at a cost, a cost I was not willing to pay. I believed it was put together by some local coaches in order to make money from college softball recruiting. My understanding, if you can call it that, was corrected at the seminar.
The web site is Fastpitch Online Showcase (http://fastpitchonlineshowcase.com). The organization which runs the site held a "college showcase" event which was run like many of the camps and combines. Players performed certain drills, pitchers pitched under the radar gun, catchers popped under the stopwatch, hitters hit, all while being videotaped. The tape of the "showcase" in its entirety is being placed online for college coaches to view for the next month. Folks involved in the showcase suggested, though never stated, that a bunch of college coaches would be in attendance. I signed my daughter up purely to get the experience of participating in a combine setting, not to get in front of college coaches. Some folks made public inquiries as to whether there would be coaches actually in attendance or not. They rightly suspected that there would be few. I believe there were 4 or 5 actually on site.
But this thing was not some local get-rich-quick or fundraising scheme. And it was not intended to draw in tons of coaches. It was really intended as a sort of introduction to this new service. And, at least on the surface, these service, the web site, and the costs associated with it, would appear to be very reasonable. The idea in everything we have said up to this point is, most of the girls aspiring to be recruited for softball need to make connection with coaches and get the coaches out to see them play. This service is designed for that purpose. They have a database of schools and the e-mail contact info for those schools' coaches. The site itself offers up space to hold and present a fixed number of videos to use in order to draw the coaches in. They provide guidance on how to go about making connections with the coaches. They also can videotape players to make recruiting tapes to place on the web site.
I'm going to leave it at that because i want you to do your own homework on http://fastpitchonlineshowcase.com. As of this writing, I am not subscribed to the service and I am not making any sort of income from mentioning it. I merely came upon it and want to bring it to your attention for further investigation. if you do subscribe and have positive or negative feedback, I invite you share it with me.
So the idea is to develop a list of schools and then contact the college coaches. make this a personal message. Don't write some canned message and then personalize it with a "Go Fightin' Randoms" phrase thrown in to convince the coach that you have school spirit. if they have a beautiful campus and everybody knows that, tell the coach that you know that. if their engineering program is world renowned let the coach know that is why you want to go there. A college professor once told me that everybody has some one thing good about themselves. At times, with certain people, I have come to doubt that. But when one is courting another, it is customary to offer a compliment or flattery of reasonable measure in order to win them over. On the other hand, canned "lines" usually end up getting you soaked by a thrown drink. Be smart. Otherwise, maybe college is not for you!
If you have a video, I suppose you could mail it to the coach. Video is a great way to show your skill level. But the guy or gal making the decisions usually does not view every softball tape that the school receives. If someone is viewing it, it is probably an assistant chosen to screen such things before the head coach wastes their time. Your tape may very well end up in a box on the floor. The actual physical videos can be rather expensive when you have to send out 20 or more of them. It may be unproductive and inefficient to send hard copies. Instead, many kids today put their vids on Youtube or other types of web sites. That can be much more efficient assuming you can get coaches to go and watch it. That is really what the previously mentioned web site is all about and I agree with their premises on this. They believe it would be far more productive to place your vid where other softballers have theirs. It is hard to refute that logic.
Either in your first e-mail correspondence with the coach or in subsequent ones, it would be good to send along a link to your videos. This way the coach can quickly determine if there is any chance that you are a prospect. They probably won't come right out and say anything since their communication to you is very limited. Don't take it one way or the other if you don't hear back from them regarding your video. Instead, keep reminding them of it and you by e-mailing them once every month or something like that. An remember that the objective is to get them out to see you in person. So, if you are going to attend a showcase, one of the NFCA recruitment camps, or some such, write them with your schedule, etc., invite them to come watch you, and remind them about your video. If they come out and see you, you have succeeded. If they don't, ask again next time. You aren't badgering them unless they have somehow communicated that you are wasting your time. E-mails are easy to delete. Addresses can be presorted into junk or other folders. It is not as if you are calling them each day as they walk into their office or get up to leave for lunch. It is just an e-mail. It can be removed with one click of the mouse. And, if you are e-mailing a link to your video, you are not junking up their small office or desk area with something which merely collects dust and must be cleaned after they get over their bout with the swine flu.
In summary, evaluate your station in life - your place on the rungs of the softball ladder. Select a list of schools that fit you on a number of levels. Contact the coaches and do so repeatedly, preferably by e-mail. Get them to come out and see you. Be on your best behavior and show them what sort of person, student, and teammate you are. And once you have done this successfully, be wide awake for any clues as to interest level they provide you.
If you have asked a coach to come and watch you, she does, and she invites you to a clinic, go to it. If you invite her and she comes and then you invite her again and she comes, there's a good chance she saw something in you - assuming there is not some other kid doing the same and she is really there to see them. If she invites you to a clinic, there are 80 other kids there all of whom play your position, two of these are called over to a station where the coach watches them closely while you are not, most likely she is not interested. That doesn't mean you should stop recruiting her. But it may be your clue that perhaps you should not get your hopes up and perhaps should look in other directions. In some cases, coaches at these clinics will tell a kid outright that she does not fit the profile they are looking for. In many cases in which kids are singled out for closer looks, coaches do not communicate their interest immediately or directly. You have to read between the lines some. The process can be disconcerting but that's the way the real world is. You can try directly communicating with the coach and asking outright whether she has any interest. But I'm not sure this is the right way to go about things.
The one thing perhaps you should avoid once you begin walking the path is any direct questions about athletic scholarships. You should already know whether the school gives any athletic money. You should also have gained an understanding of the sort of kids they recruit. If you are likely to merely be a pre-arranged "walk-on," you probably can gauge that for yourself. You can ask coaches about financial aid questions without bringing up athletic money. They may or may not respond with direct answers to your direct questions. Everybody is different. But as with courtship, the idea is to engender interest before we get down to prenups.
OK, so that's what I have to tell you today. I hope there is something in it which you have not considered before. When I take the time to go to a tournament or seminar, my hopes are that one thing stands out as a take-away. I threw a lot of stuff up in order to hopefully get you one thing you didn;t know or correct something you had wrong. I'm not an expert. I am merely a person like you who is interested in sharing what I learn. I hope you got something out of this. If you already heard everything I had to say, sorry to have wasted your time. If you have something to add, write me. Just please don;ty write me stories about how some kid got discovered and erose to be the ace pitcher for Arizona when the coach there read about her in the paper or saw her at a high school game. I don't want anecdotal exceptions. I want some principles others can follow.Labels: college, parents, showcase
Permanent Link: Set Sights, Do The Work
Under / Over Opinions
by Dave
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
I begin today by recounting one of the most ridiculous comments I have ever heard. Some bright person suggested that pitchers could gain significantly by engaging in a sport which would result in a sort of "over training" that would improve their strength while enhancing their windmill motion. The sport of choice? Bowling! As I said, that is a ridiculous assertion. Another assertion of far less dubious distinction but wrong, nonetheless, is the suggestion that pitchers would benefit tremendously by training via long distance running. Finally, the over training practice commonly used which really gets me nervous involves using a 12 ounce ball to pitch under the assumption that throwing with a much heavier ball will vastly improve speed. Yes, over training does build strength and can improve stamina and speed. But this must be done sensibly and demonstrate a higher degree of common sense than that evident in some of the foregoing.
Let's quickly dispense with the idea that bowling is a reasonable training activity for windmill pitchers. To begin with, think hard about the movement of the bowler and how that differs from the movement of the windmill pitcher. The bowler rests the ball in her hand with the palm facing skywards and the fingers hooked into holes drilled into the rather heavy ball. She aligns her body so as to allow her arm to swing down and place the ball in the right visual tunnel - just about the same one every time. She walks rhythmically forward to gain some momentum, steps forward and places the ball down as she swings her arm forward in a measured manner, spinning the ball with her stiff wrist so as to hit the pocket in the right place and hopefully knock all the pins down. She gauges her speed so as to get the movement just right in an effort to hit the same place just about every time. She does not roll the ball as hard as she possibly can or even close to that. The spin she creates is the result of releasing the ball with her hand to the side of it and sweeping the hand upwards in a "shake hands" position as she follows through.
Now contemplate the windmill pitcher for a moment. She does not walk forward because that is not permitted. She must obtain momentum via weight shift and a minor sort of rocking (fallling?) forward into a single stride. She opens her shoulders and hips about 180 degrees. She raises her arm as quickly as possible over her head and then downwards through the release point - something no bowler would do absent some mood altering ingestion.
The ball wrests more in her fingers than in her palm the way a bowling ball is held. She alters her arm angle ever so slightly and uses her fingers and wrist to spin the ball. If she is throwing a plain fastball, she may cock her wrist backwards and then as she comes to the release point she snaps the wrist to get the greatest possible spin and speed on the ball. If she is throwing a movement pitch, she will alter her wrist cock accordingly but then, again snap the ball so as to get the greatest possible spin of the desired type. The fingers play a much greater role in spinning the ball. And the wrist is loose, not stiff, as it snaps.
If a bowler did an arm movement like a windmill pitching at any point, she would injure her arm and possibly other body parts. If the windmill pitcher threw like a bowler, she would be slow and get little advantageous movement on the ball.
Bowling and windmill pitching have very little in common. The largest similarity between the sports is they both use a ball. They both involve converting inertial force into a thrown object though, in the case of bowling, speed doesn;t fit anywhere into the equation. Maybe the only other similarity is they involve somewhat, though not totally, similar underhand movements. I can throw a bowling ball down the ally as hard as anyone I know. When I bowl, people often stop and watch. Then they giggle. And the scoresheet shows the futility of a fast-bowled ball.
The stiff wrist is critical to bowling. It would be a killer in fastpitch. Bowling with the fingers used similar to windmill would result in nothing less than a bloody bowling ball. I don't care to go on about the differences between the sports. As I said, it is an absurd comparison. But the thinking behind it really stems from the theory of over-training which tells us that doing something a little more than usual will build the strength necessary to get stronger at the desired activity. And that generally is a correct approach, depending on what it is you are trying to improve.
The second assertion of using long distance running to improve pitching, or any sort of play on the softball diamond for that matter, is one I criticize carefully. Running a mile or two, maybe more, regularly is a very important part of healthy living and should be encouraged for any athlete. Every person who steps onto any athletic field is made better by being in better shape. Running for conditioning purposes can help an athlete in so many ways that I cannot possibly hope to list them all. But from the perspective of merely improving the play of an otherwise in-shape softball player because it will somehow make them stronger or better at some skill, well, that is a wrong assertion.
Fastpitch softball is a sport which requires many very short explosive movements. The longest duration of any exercise might be when playing on a field with no outfield fence and a ball is hit well over the outfielder's head. Either the kid who runs out the homerun or the outfielder pursuing the ball gets a sustained exercise of perhaps 12-15 seconds. Of course, the outfielder will switch out of adrenaline mode if she finds herself sprinting to retrieve the ball for more than about 6 seconds, knowing, as she does, that they ain't gonna get nobody out on this play! The baserunner will not likely be able to leg out a homerun if it takes her more than say 14-15 seconds no matter how far she hits the ball. So the longest possible exertion is perhaps 15 seconds.
A maximum 15 second assertion which requires sometimes rapid recovery stands little to gain from greater cardio-vascular health. Track sprinters at say the 100 meter distance do not spend a lot of their effort to run distances of say five miles and thereby improve their cardio. Sure, they're in great shape and that is necessary. But when they are working towards better outcomes in competition, they focus on explosion and repeating short sprints rather than performing marathons. That's not really a question. An athlete doesn't even really use the same systems for generating energy for the muscles when she performs a 10 second sprint vs. when she runs for a several minutes.
When swimmers train for their particular distance, the sum total of their training may involve a pretty good number of yards or meters. But for someone who sprints in their races, that long total distance results from many shorter sprints. They do perform over-training but, for example, someone who races at say 100 or 200 meters, is likely to perform race-level training at perhaps 25% to 75% of the race distance repeatedly with short amounts of rest between each rep. When reps at say 500 meters are performed, the swim usually involves some sort of stroke mechanics concentration or shorter sprints during the rep and slow downs in between. So even when the athletic endeavor involves over-all longer periods of time, the training does not involve significantly greater than the race distance.
Power lifters, for example, who lift say 300-400 pounds in their particular exercise do not perform 30 rep sets at one tenth to one quarter the goal weight of competition lifting. They do perform rep lifting to improve strength, recovery and general conditioning. But using one quarter weight in order to extend the exercise to use body systems never used in competition is largely a waste of time. That's true in almost every sport one can imagine. Fastpitch should not be considered any different.
Many pitchers do in fact use their legs. Leg strength is important if the pitcher relies upon it to generate speed. But given the nature of the sport, the leg part of the exercise during game conditions involves quick, very short bursts repeated about 10-20 times with about 10-30 seconds of rest between reps, followed by about a 5-10 minute rest during which no exercise occurs - unless of course the pitcher hits the ball over the outfielder's head and needs to leg out an extra-base hit. Then, of course, the pitcher repeats this routine until she is driven out of the game or it ends. Without judging the practice, if a pitcher is one of THOSE aces, she perhaps has to repeat this routine for as many as 300 iterations of the pitch in a day. The typical pitcher probably has to perform the exercise 100 plus times a day, possibly two or more days in a row.
I am not sure I see how running 5 miles per day, 4 or more days per week really helps the pitcher in the performance of her duties. It cannot hurt to be in shape for many reasons. But one does not develop the capacity to maintain speed through the explosion-recovery-explosion routine, no matter how many times it gets repeated, by running long distance. You don't even use the same muscle fibers in the two activities. Notwithstanding Forrest Gump's fictional accomplishments on the football field as well as those on the open road, someone who explodes in motion needs those fast twitch muscles to be developed well in excess of the longer twitch ones.
My conclusion is running is generally good to get an athlete or anyone in shape, though we won't address the impact on the joints of running on macadam. Athletes in this sport never run more than 240 feet. Far more commonly, they run 60-120 feet, even when they play the outfield. Therefore, it is common to see softballers limit their running distance to repeated sprints of 60 feet or less. I have seen both pitchers and other players perform sprints as short as 10 feet in speed-agility training. Yes, many college and high school softball athletes have coaches who make them run distance to get in better overall shape. But this is mostly wasted effort, not to mention time, if the athlete is already in good shape and the desired outcome from the exercise is explosiveness - faster pitching, faster running, better outfield performance, etc.
Taking a step back and looking just at the outfielders who are perhaps the only athletes on the field whose actual game benefits at all from distance running, in my humble opinion, their running should be done on surfaces similar to the outfield itself, i.e. grass of somewhat uneven nature. The reason outfielders benefit from running is because they must learn to run while keeping their heads quiet in order to vector balls in flight. By contrast, no matter how good of a distance runner a player is, if she bobs her head or allows it to bounce when she runs, she will have trouble tracking balls in the outfield.
Rather than having outfielders run miles on blacktop, I would prefer to have them run sprints between foul lines in the mid outfield with somewhat minimal recovery periods. Those runs would be over training for the outfielders. They're probably too long. You would perhaps get better results by limiting them to runs from the foul line to dead center since they'll never have to run any further than that. More importantly, the runs involve a realistic surface. And if they have to track balls towards the middle and end of that sprint, that would be best.
Personally, I would rather just put outfielders in the field and hit or throw balls to them for long periods of time to combine explosion-recovery-explosion training with other skills like tracking and mechanical issues at the same time. What is more critical to me than any outfielder's need to be in good distance running shape is her ability to keep her head virtually motionless when chasing line drives and flies. Good distance runners often keep their head motionless to conserve energy. But simply having your outfielders run distances is not going to engender that particular behavior.
Finally, I have seen large numbers of girls warming up or training while using those overweighted balls. I have a set of balls which range in weight from 8 ounces up to 12. The regulation fastpitch softball is 6.8 ounces. These we9ighted balls can be purchased individually or in a set of progressively heavier balls. The cannonball weighted training softball is often seen at fields and practice tunnels. Those weigh about 16 or so ounces, more than double the weight of a softball.
I do not have a problem with pitchers or others using over-weighted balls to train for softball but the way they are used often makes me nervous. I haven't read the literature for the cannonball but I have for other brands of weighted balls. And this literature advises against performing full windmill (and other throwing) motions while using weighted balls. Rather, the manufacturers encourage users to do motion isolation drills - partial motions - with their products. They do this for a particular reason - lawsuits. They don't want the legal liability when someone gets injured or perhaps ends their career by blowing out a shoulder while performing full windmill pitches with their product. That should tell you something.
The manufacturers tend to suggest certain specific, very limited drills like wrist snaps. Others who advise about how to train pitchers and others warn in all CAPS or boldly against overuse, more than 15-20 throws per session. For this, I am going to be a little over cautious. I don't think anyone should do a full windmill with a 12 ounce or bigger ball. My reason for taking this approach is I want all pitchers to do what they can to avoid injuries because the quickest way to make your pitching speed drop off is to be forced to undergo surgery followed by a months long rehab.
I really do want pitchers to get faster. But as I look out onto the vast pitching world, I seldom, if ever, see a perfect or near perfect motion. Actually it is a rare occurrence when I observe pitching motions that I do not see something that can be corrected which would yield better speed. So my suggestion is, before you go try to find something that will yield you greater speed, take care of the little things. Work on your mechanics. Then, take a look at the pitching motion as a whole and figure out what it is about it that can yield you greater speed.
There are few people in this sport who would dispute that pitching speed comes largely from the first and last parts of the motion. Some would deny that the beginning, the legs, provide much speed. Some emphasize the legs more than the arms towards the end. But almost nobody suggests that it is the in-between that generates the greatest speed. Yet, when you use weighted balls for a full motion, you are working the middle part in a manner which may be dangerous to your body.
I suggest to you, and here I have to steal from one visitor with whom I have frequent exchanges, that the windmill motion is a bullwhip. It begins with the biggest, heavy part of the body exploding into motion. The inertial force of the body created via the legs at push off is roughly equivalent to the first motions of a bullwhip - when the user thrusts the handle forward before creating the whipping movement.
To be clear, the in-between stuff is largely a harnessing of this inertial force. It isn't unimportant but it is not some weight-lifting move. It is the mechanics of the body as the force is run from the handle down towards its end point that are more important than strength. A good circle is very important to speed. But you do not need super strong (over-trained) muscles to accomplish the task.
On the other side, as the arm comes towards release point, the inertia moves towards the tip of the whip. Here muscular explosiveness again comes into play as the bicep and other arm muscles are invoked to transfer the inertial force to the finger tips as the ball is released. Obviously, weighted balls do not help the leg explosion. The weight of an over-weighted ball, used in a full windmill, wears on the shoulders and other body parts as the mechanics convert the body's inertia towards its end point. And then, at the end of the motion as the arm comes forward and the forearm muscles are invoked, this is where we tend to see weakness in the human body and precisely here that we need to work muscles, as well as mechanics, to realize greater speed.
Many folks in both baseball and softball mistake the weighted ball for some kind of panacea to improve throwing speed and strength. If that were the valid, then baseball players would be able to throw tennis balls very far and softball players would be able to really make a mark throwing a baseball. It doesn't work that way. If you were limited to throwing softballs for a long period of time and then picked up a baseball, I suggest that you would be very uncomfortable throwing the smaller ball. Maybe I don't need to tell you this. Maybe you have already tried it. I have. I used to love throwing a baseball. But after years of throwing with my kids using the 11 inch and then 12 inch ball, I hate throwing that little baseball. It feels awkward in my hand but more to the point, its lighter weight sort of bugs me. I might be stronger than I was but my mechanics for throwing the baseball are so messed up that I completely spaz out. I think I can actually throw the softball almost as far as a baseball. That shouldn't be true using the over-training logic. But it is true.
I read a comment on some product-buying web site made by a person who had purchased over weighted balls for training. That comment said, "Good way to warm up quickly ... compare it to swinging a heavy bat before batting." Do you use a heavy bat before stepping up to the plate? How much heavier? Does it work for you? Really? What does it do?
Guys in the big leagues use heavy bats, sometimes a mere steel rod, before stepping up to the plate. I suppose that after all the effort and money that is put into the sport, this must work and be important. But what are they doing when they swing the steel rod? The only thing they are doing is loosening up their bodies to prepare to swing their real bats. Anyone who picks up a very heavy bat and tries to improve their timing by swinging in the on-deck circle using that heavy bat as the pitcher pitches is fooling themselves. The timing of a swing has more to do with decision making than it does with being able to swing something heavy. If anything, you might mess up your timing by swinging too heavy of a bat because you are conditioning yourself to make a decision far too early. This is why I have never purchased my kids a donut or one of those weighted sleeves to place on their bats. I can see using a weight to loosen up but once you are loose, take the darn thing off and take some swings using your real bat by itself.
A worse practice involves dry swinging a significantly heavier bat than the one you use in games during the off season to build strength. When you do this, you are altering your swing mechanics - the more important element of a powerful swing. You are transferring weight to parts of the body in greater proportion than they will be used when you actually step up to the plate. If you use to much weight to train with, your swing is going to be all out of sync when you use an unweighted bat in games and scrimmages.
I suggest that a one ounce difference will give you all that you need. That means using a 32 ounce not a 34 ounce practice bat if you use a 31 in games. That means not taking a bunch of dry swings using a weight during the off season. I have nothing against bat weights used to loosen up briefly but don't think that a singles hitter will become a homerun goddess by using 4 or more ounces on her bat during the off season. The effect of using a significantly over weighted bat beyond the mere loosening steps is mostly psychological.
Moving back to pitching, a very slightly heavier ball may offer some over-training benefits especially for pitchers who have very good mechanics - a rare occurrence. Rather than buying 12-, 16- or more ounce balls, you can really make your own device without much effort. If you take very small nails and pound them into regulation softballs, you can create your own weighted balls. (Do I need to mention that there are benefits of using a real ball? The weighted softballs I bought are somewhat difficult because the seams are not raised the way real balls are. When you use them too much, you can lose the feel of the real ball.) So if you take real balls and put very small weights inside them, you can get a little over-training without endangering your body, with very little cost, and without loosing the feel of the ball. Very small nails (I don't know what they are called) can be pounded into ordinary balls at the holes for the seams. You can take a 6.8 ounce ball and turn it into a 6.9 or 7 ouncer. That really should be sufficient.
It is worth noting that most of the pitchers I see trying to use heavy balls to increase speed tend to be relatively slower pitchers. That is, they do not throw 65. They want to head in that direction. So they try whatever they can find in an effort to improve their speed. I cannot remember the last time I saw a really fast pitcher working with a weighted ball other than in the early stages of a mere warm-up when they are just waking up their muscles.
Fast pitchers have things which make them throw fast. They may have bodies made for the purpose - for example those 6 foot tall girls with long arms and fingers (i.e. longer bullwhips). They may have superior mechanics - this is probably the most common cause of speed. They may have a relatively high percentage of fast twitch vs. slow pitch muscle fibers. They may have developed their fast twitch muscles rather than the slow twitch ones. They may have built up their muscles for fast pitching through many, frequent, effective practice sessions while using proper mechanics since they were pretty young. But most likely, they did not achieve speed through weight-lifting of any particular sort.
I entitled this piece "Over / Under" and you may have noticed that the primary focus is "over." I'm not all that sure what to say about "under training." I sduppose I addressed it inadvertently when I discussed working explosive movements like softball players doing 10-15 foot sprints. I think under training has a similar place in sport as over training. Generally, the effects are psychological. Sometimes there can be real physical advantages but they aren't quite as powerful as some seem to think.
If you are used to swinging a 32 ounce bat, you train adding several ounces to it for dry swings, your real bat probably feels like an under training. Your bat speed will be very fast relative to the heavier bat. Similarly if you never add a single weight to your bat but, instead, train by using a light bat, your swing will should be quicker. Some folks like to use this technique - not necesasarily for swinging - in order to generate explosive speed in various movements. For example, some pitching coaches and trainers try to improve arm speed by having pitchers work with lighter balls.
I don't really know if this approach works. I suppose it could but I think the difference is, again, psychological. In track, swimming, and certain other sports, the athletes taper down their practice loads as championship competition approaches. This has physical effects as well as psychological ones. I suppose the physical effects are more important but I never want to devalue psychological impacts. By the time one enters the competition, one is about crazed by the lack of work. I remember as a swimmer that I felt as if I was going to kill someone if I wasn't allowed into the pool to compete.
Another thing swimmers do aside from tapering down their workouts is to shave their bodies under the theory that it cuts resistance in the water. I don't know in quantitative term s how much this matters. But I can tell you that cutting your head hair down to the nubs or shaving your head and then removing all or most of your other body hair does make you feel different in the water. I remember in college swimming in the conference championship meet. I placed fourth or fifth in the preliminaries. Then, we we came onto the pool, the guy who had finished behind me in prelims had shaven his head before the finals and removed I suppose most of the rest of his body hair. I had spent my time more wisely, going out into the Bronx and finding some low-life bar and pool hall in which to spend my meal money. I beat baldy by quite a bit. His time was slower in the finals. Mine was faster.
So under training may have some beneficial results but I think much of this is tied to the psychological. The one exception to this, I believe, happens when one is working fundamentals like pitching or swing mechanics. I believe that an athlete can work on mechanics without the tools and thereby help to train the body to perform better. I have used this in swimming, baseball and football. For example, I believe I greatly improved my ready position at linebacker and my stance for both offensive and defensive line by practicing it and moving from it without any equipment on, while working in front of a large mirror.
I was once putting too much weight on my fingers in down football stances. Coaches corrected me but the final result, which they highly approved of, involved putting too little weight on the hands. They wanted my head way up but once I started working this on my own, I quickly saw that I was not in a good explosive position. Working off the field, out of gear, gave me the best tool to fix my stance. I did the same thing for swimming my main stroke, butterfly, an d vastly improved it. Also, working in front of a mirror without gear or a ball in my hand was a far better way to improve my catching mechanics. I imagine the same is true for windmill pitchers - although it is very difficult to get girls to work their mechanics on their own, in front of a mirror because they feel stupid doing so.
When we use video to show a player major things she is doing wrong - not when we break down the smallest aspect of, for example, a swing - we are really doing something that could be done in front of a mirror. And if a kid under-trains by performing a swing or her windmill motion without a bat and ball, I think she can condition her muscle memory almost as well as she can on the field. I expect this can be accomplished with an underweight ball but I hesitate to suggest either that or a significantly underweight bat. There are just too many risks associated with this practice.
So in summary, I believe there are benefits to both under- and over-training. Those benefits are somewhat limited and these techniques need to be used sparingly and intelligently. No pitcher is going to get anything out of using a bowling ball! I hope I have explained myself well here but if you have questions, comments, etc., please feel free to write in with them. The only thing I ask is that you do not simply provide your opinions or tell me how you think it is OK for pitchers to throw full windmill using a 16 ounce ball. I have, I think, made clear why I am against this. I would prefer to be pointed to scientific studies which refute my opinions rather than merely consider contrary points of view.Labels: Training
Permanent Link: Under / Over Opinions
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