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Throwing 101 Revisited
by Dave
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
I am going to step into an area which I would prefer to leave alone because someone wrote in with a very good question and I think it deserves a public answer. The writer questioned the throwing mechanics her 8 year old was learning at practice. She had played softball for a long time and wondered why these girls were being taught to throw differently than she was. The answer brings up an important issue which involves not only throwing but also age appropriate mechanics (though that may seem to be almost an oxymoron). At this time of year, it is important to address fundamental issues because a new class of girls is picking up the yellow ball for the first time. So I will tread where I'd prefer not to because the question was a good one and because it is an important subject this time of year.
When I was a kid, we didn't have these issues of throwing mechanics. I learned to throw out of social necessity. There was a stream or brook behind my house which had these "water spiders" jumping all over the place and piles of rocks nearby. Kids congregated at waters edge as the cave men must have done in prehistoric times. There were barely decipherable grunts and shrieks as new recruits made their ways to the principle place of social gathering. A bot had to be able to throw a rock and hit a water spider if he did not want to made fun of, or worse. I learned to throw because I could not stand humiliation. And I got lots of practice.
Prior to our introduction to the organized sport of baseball, we pretty much threw rocks at water spider all day. When that bored us, we sided up and threw rocks at each other. One day, my friend and I gave our little brothers the high ground and began to throw rocks at each other from, I guess, about 100 feet. My friend's brother had a good arm and, apparently pretty good aim for he struck his brother in the forehead with a particularly pointy rock. That was the end of that.
Not long after my friend's stitches were removed and he started to heal, we were introduced to baseball. At first, the only time there was a ball around was during practice. So we threw only then. Over time, a kid or two acquired a baseball for his birthday or someone went hunbting in the foul territory of the woods siding our field. You know, we weren't worried about deer ticks or Lymes disease back then. Actually, we should have been more careful because I understand there may have been rattlers in those woods and there were definitely other kinds of disease carrying insects. Nevertheless, some of our number found enough baseballs to keep us in business during the summer. And in business we were. The only time we weren't throwing a ball around was when we would stop because someone's mother made us eat lunch or when we traded baseball cards or competed to take our friends' cards via "flipping."
As I said, we were never taught to throw except by means of shame and intimidation. Many of us learned to throw incorrectly and a few learned to do it basically right in terms of mechanics. It was not until high school that throwing was ever taught. And by then, most of us had our motions set in stone, I mean rocks.
Today, things are quite different in many places. I suppose that because everyone has this dream that their son Johnny is going to make it to the big leagues, the parents seem to care more about mechanical issues in sports. Whereas, when I was a kid, the only qualification to become a coach was an early arrival home from work, today if you want to coach, you must not only get some sort of certification, but also, you have to sit through sessions wherein somebody is going to talk about mechanics. That is probably a very good development. But it does tend to raise discussions and arguments about the proper way to do things. And, almost no parents are going to accept the way coaches teach their kids without questioning the methods and substance.
When I first became a coach of girls softball, there was a man who did a nice job of teaching us what and how to teach. The first skill he taught was throwing. This makes sense because if you contemplate things and actually watch a group of 8 year olds try to play, the most difficult, necessary skill is throwing. You really cannot play a reasonabl;e game of softball without the girls knowing how to throw. Further, it is my belief that if kids learn to throw and catch, then they can throw a ball back and forth and gain the most important skills needed in this game, those involving hand-eye coordination.
If two kids throw a ball back and forth regularly and for extended sessions, their hand-eye coordination will dramatically and rapidly improve. Once they have this most critical skill, it is much easier to teach them to hit and field balls. I think that if a parent of a young child wants their kid's softball or baseball skills to improve rapidly, time spent merely throwing a ball back and forth is time well spent. But you can't do this unless a kid knows how to throw. And if he or she does not throw properly, the result is likely to be some pretty sore arms and shoulders. So, teaching proper throwing skills is absolutely critical. It should be addressed first in beginner players.
The reason why throwing mechanics may be taught different ways is because there really are two ways to look at throwing which have to do with the age of the girls involved. When I was taught to teach girls to throw, the age group was, I think 7 or 8 year olds. We taught an elongated technique which I'll go over somewhat briefly in a moment. Now that my work is with much older girls, we teach a different technique which is essentially an much abbreviated version of what we taught the younger girls. At these older ages, the primary objective is speed because the game is much faster now. Let's take a look at these two throwing techniques, go over some of the reasons why each is used, and then discuss why some folks would prefer this were not the case.
The elongated motion, without getting too much in body and feet position, begins with a girl standing with two hands on the ball at her belt line. She pulls the hands away simultaneously and raises her hands up into a "scarecrow" or "goalpost" position in which the glove hand is about as high as the throwing hand, above her head. Palms are facing up and away from the body. The ball is facing the sky. The glove hand is pulled downwards and away from the body as the torso turns and the throwing hand is brought forwards, towards the target. The ball is released with the glove coming to the side, again at or near the belt line but slightly past the hip. And the throwing hand follows through down towards the glove hand side knee or thigh.
The shorter version begins with the hands together out below the chin. The hands come apart (as the ball is removed from the glove) and the throwing hand is pulled to the side of the head. Note that the arm sticks out directly from the shoulder and the elbow is bent at a 90 degree angle. The thrower does not pull to her ear. She holds the ball, if you made her freeze in this position, about one foot from her head. The glove hand has moved out and down as she begins to make the throw. It ends at probably about the same place as in the other, elongated method. The throwing side arm forward motion really begins with the elbow coming forward, immediately followed by the part of the arm below the elbow being slingshot forward to the release point. Follow through is, again, to about the same place as in the elongated method.
The primary reason for teaching the elongated method is because it places less stress on the shoulder and elbow than the shorter method. When we are dealing with 8 and 9 year olds, their bodies just are not developed enough to have the kind of strength around the shoulder and elbow that older, post-puberty girls have. In order to maximize the experience for all these entry level girls, we teach this method so they do not develop shoulder or elbow problems which will chase them from the sport and make the whole exercise moot. If you stand and try each technique several times, you should be able to see that the shorter version places greater stress on elbow and shoulder. By contrast, the elongated method requires girls to move their bodies in order to make the throw. They cannot just arm it in the direction they want. They must throw using their quads and core muscles.
The reason we need to shorten up throwing motions as girls age is because softball differs from baseball in one very important respect. It is a faster game. I've been over this a few times but I think it necessary to state it here again. The average time to first base for a major league baseball player is about 4 seconds. Girls playing high school softball are considered slow if they cannot get down the line in under 3. That is a substantial difference in the amount of time a fielder had to throw a kid out. It is somewhat ordinary to see a fielder bobble a baseball and still get the batter-baserunner out with timne to spare. That seldom happens in softball. Players must get rid of the ball more quickly in our game.
As an aside, I should tell you that throwing power has little to do with a fielder's success in softball. I have seen girls with absolute cannons compete with very quick but weak throwers, side by side. Invariably, the quicker girl's ball reaches the target faster than the cannon shot. This is why Howard Kobata teaches the speed techniques and notes vociferously that "I don't care how strong your arm is. If you are not quick, the runner will beat you."
If you really don't believe this and cannot get to a Kobata clinic, you need to perform your own experiment with strong armed girls playing side by side against quick ones. I know what the results of that will be. You will join our church of the quick infielder.
Going back to the younger players and their elongated technique, when kids are that young, runners are not very quick. The bigger concern is merely reaching the target. Girls playing the left side of the infield have a very difficult time reaching first on their throws. They need as much power as possible. They must use their legs and torsos in order to get the ball where it should be going. This should not be the case from 12 or 13 years old and on.
So these are the reasons why the two techniques are taught. The nagging problem and one on which I am sure to receive some correspondence, however, is that of muscle memory. We do not want to ever teach something that needs to be undone. Many would argue that we don't teach a different hitting technique because girls are too weak to swing the bat. We don;t have a special windmill motion for young pitchers because they cannot throw the ball 50 mph yet. It would be wrong to teach youngsters "the wrong way" to throw the ball and then have to reteach throwing when they get older.
I do not disagree with this philosophy. I really do not enjoy teaching something that must be retaught differently. But I do not think this is the case with the two throwing techniques. &nbs-p; One is merely a shortening of the other and I think you can easily move from entry throwing to a more advanced technique. You simply have to explain it to your older kids, teach the shorter version and then drill it while timing their throws. It would probably be far easier to teach shortened throwing mechanics after players have witnessed the two side by side, just as I became convinced of the superiority of quickness over power. Once a girl fully understands that the shorter technique is needed and she has a chance to drill it and make it part of her repertoire, there is very little difficulty.
A much more difficult impediment to overcome is the tendency for girls to have pause points in their throwing as they age. This comes as a result of the drills we use early on in which players must assume positions in each stage of the throwing mechanic. There is a tendency I have observed in some girls to "statue" at various stages of throwing. In particular, girls who have been taught the elongated method in steps, never running through the whole thing quickly in drills, have a tendency to pause after drawing the ball to lift off position - the one at the side of their head. This can be a problem that costs as much as 2 tenths of a second and that's too long. Generally, this can be drilled out of a kid by showing her what she is doing (by videotape if necessary), having her run certain drills intended to get fast release without any pauses, and then her learning that she gets kids out more easily by being fast than she does by being strong.
One of the drills we use for this is something I discussed years ago called 5 ball. I really like this drill because it is easy to adapt to real life fielding situations. You need 3 players and, you guessed it, 5 balls. One player feeds balls to the thrower, one receives throws from the thrower, and the last one is the girl really performing the drill. The feeder tosses balls from about 6 feet away to the thrower, at her belt line. The thrower catches the balls and immediately, with no foot movement at all, throws to the receiver. The thrower then, immediately after release turns back and gets into a ready position. At the precise moment the thrower is back into ready position, the feeder tosses another ball until all 5 have been caught and thrown.
The nice thing about this drill is you can run the entire team through it in one minutes. Each kid on your squad can have multiple turns being the thrower in under ten minutes. If you want to have some real fun, perform a competition in which the first person to throw all five wins. You should be able to get more out of this if you run two groups, side by side, while the other 6 players watch. If you do this for a while, they should be able to judge the need for quickness over power for themselves.
As I said, this drill can be adapted for many real world situations. Tossers can roll balls or mimick grounders by bouncing them. The drill can be run with balls thrown or bounced to the side of the fielder. You can do a lot with it in a short amount of time. But while you are running this drill, it is imperative that coaches observe the throwers and make mechanical corrections. As I said, no steps are allowed. if you are doing balls to the side of the fielder, they can move their feet only before they touch the ball. After that, they must have them nailed to the ground.
There is a tendency for young girls to want to take step before throwing a fielded ball. This stems from that need to generate power at the younger ages. But this is slow, very slow. Players need to learn to not take steps after fielding a ball. Their foot position for throwing must be about set before they get the ball, except on certain specific types of plays. I have no time to get into this or the whole issue of footwork today. That will have to wait for another day but if you crave more about this, try Howard Kobata's tape series on defensive softball. You can get that here: softballskills.com.
At this time of year, there are a ton of softball newbies excited to start learning about this game for the first time. Many of their parents are new to the game, some are not. Some few parents actually played good fastpitch softball and they are wondering about the skills being taught. They know the right way to throw, hit, etc. They also know that it is generally inadvisable to teach a skill differently at different ages. But I think throwing just might be the exception. I think injury concerns outweigh the need to build muscle memory at these tender ages. I also believe it is a relatively small matter to adjust throwing mechanics from the elongated younger method to the shorter one. There are other, more difficult corrections to make as girls age up. I've mentioned two of these. I've also given you a little drill you can work to make players faster. I don't believe the risk of injury is worth the benefits of teaching girls the "right way" to throw.
As an aside, the person who wrote in read all this stuff I have to say before her daughter's next practice. She wrote me back and said, "What you have said makes sense. My husband and I were warming up at my daughters practice last night using the palm back method and I have to admit I could tell that it was less strain on the shoulder."
If you must disagree with me on this, my only request is you write a well thought out argument disagreeing with me. Of late, I have received too much e-mail to respond quickly. If I receive a message disagreeing with me on this point and offering nothing more than that disagreement, I will most likely just throw it out. It is just too busy of a time of year right now.Labels: defense, kobata, throwing
Permanent Link: Throwing 101 Revisited
 
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