5 Things Pitchers Need to Be Great

Practice

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Practice 〰️

Listen [3:28]

As the NCAA Softball playoffs begin, you’ll see amazing pitchers firing the ball the upper 60’s, low 70’s with extreme movement and devastating change of speed. How do they get to this level? Each began where many of you are today and slowly put in the work to be great. Here are five things it would take for you to do the same.

Practice
No matter how many other sports or activities you participate in, great pitchers find the time to practice 20 to 60 minutes (almost) daily to pitch. Softball is a game of repetition. Players at this level can’t afford to skip days, months, or years. Once good fundamentals are developed, accurate pitchers must practice a ton to keep the “feel” of the release point for 4 to 8 pitches.

Involved Parents

Parents go with their daughters to pitching practice. They catch for them and learn the pitching motion and offer feedback.

Good Fundamentals

Great pitchers have had contestant formal instruction from a young age. While parents and team coaches can teach the basics of the motion through their own research, players who want to get to the top level have no time to waste with inefficient learning. The time it takes making up for mistakes by the coaches puts players too far behind the competition.

Fast-Twitch Dominant

People are born with either more fast or slow-twitch muscle fibers, but can also do additional training to reinforce the fast-twitch fibers. The top pitchers are fast-twitch muscle dominant. The top pitchers develop this through training and playing other sports and positions.

Focus

Going through the motions is a waste of time. Only focused practice works. The athlete must think hard and put effort into every single pitch, thus enabling her brain to “memorize the motion” by building neural pathways. In doing this she is able to repeat her movements consistently.  It is better to perform 10 minutes of focused practice than one hour of simply going through the motions.

Appropriate Expectations

Not everyone is interested in playing at the highest level. However, even pitching in a house league or a travel B or C level team requires way more than one lesson plus one practice per week. The best pitchers in the world hit their spots 80% of the time and never throw a pitch that a catcher can’t handle. A girl in her first one to two years pitching is doing very well if she has a “bad” miss 30% or less of the time while throwing as fast as she can. Perhaps even more importantly, expecting to avoid injury without learning what causes it is an improper expectation.

Now that you know about all of the hard work and athleticism required to get to the ESPN-level pitching you can watch the players with a new level of respect. Use it as inspiration, copy their motions, and compare what they do with what you do. This is a great chance to FOCUS on learning something new from someone who’s better than you - for now.