What I Learned from Wasserman at the NFCA Conference
/It’s my favorite time of the year - conference time! Each December I attend the National Fastpitch Coach’s Associations annual conference. This is when all the college coaches, some travel and high school coaches, and softball “affiliates” get together and talk about softball. Last week I hopped in my car, drove down to my cousin’s house in Indianapolis, 6 of us hopped in a giant VW Wagoneer and headed to the event in Louisville together. My cousin is a head coach at DIII school so I’ve admittedly stolen her college-coach friends and made them my own, and we get to hand out a lot during this time.
I want to share as much as possible with you, and there is too much for one post, so I’ll start with what applies to us most - the Wasserman High-Level Throwing program. We started this plyo-ball program for the first time during the offseason. Players experienced with pitching school completed the exercises every class, working on things like “separation,” “body awareness,” and “patterning.” I wanted to test this program and see how it went, then the plan was to go from there.
After doing it for 10 weeks, seeing two all-time pitching school speed records broken in the same session, then hearing Wasserman speak, I’m more excited about it than ever! I hope you get excited about it too, buy the plyo balls, and complete the extra 1-2 days of the program at home on your own.
I went to two of his talks. He spoke mostly about overhand throwing, but we can apply what he said to underhand as well. Here are some helpful notes for those of you who have been doing the program in pitching school. Hopefully there are some things to look forward to if you finished your new recruits program and will start this next session. If you are a team coach for baseball or softball starting at age 7, this will be useful for you as well.
One of the goals of High Level Throwing program is to understand and execute the interaction between the pelvis and torso. It is a sequence. The pelvis rotates first and carries the torso and arm. When we do static drills, it doesn’t get to this issue.
Resistance - We are learning the “pattern” aka “movement you’ve muscle-memorized in.” for resistance with the plyo ball program. If, after toe-touch, your leg slides forward at all, you are not executing the best resistance. Many of the drills focus on this.
Scapular pattern - In overhand throwing, when loading, or winding up, it’s best if athletes squeeze their scapula together, as opposed doing a sort of lat-raise to get the ball up to your ear. Squeezing your scapula together activates big muscles. In pitching, this applies to what your back muscles and scapula do after toe touch through delivery.
In overhand throwing, saying “get your elbow up” is not a good cue. If given this cure, players start way up, then are included to drop their arms down. Instead, load even with the shoulder or lower, then the elbow will be more included to work up over the shoulder where it needs to be.
This sequence is the most effective - In overhand throwing, the most powerful throwers start to rotate their knee towards the target as they are loading their arm, not while they start propelling the ball forward. That’s too late.
7-10 year old’s aren’t going to be able to do each drill perfectly, or even somewhat correctly. It will be messy. That’s normal, just get them moving and they will slowly catch on.
Open mouth, closed mouth - This is a great cue to help players understand an athletic position. I usually say “bent at the waist, hips, and light on your feet.” By referring to the hip hinge as “open mouth, closed mouth” it helps pitchers understand it quicker.
In overhand throwing when you point the ball backwards right before you accelerate the ball forward, it makes your throw slower. He teaches to keep the ball by your ear. https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipMm6anpG3djkQeEiK745oKpADCQF0tYQoS4XXPF
I’ll add more pictures and videos for the next post! Please respond to this email or give me a call if you want to hear more about this program and what we learned at conference.
