3 Must-Haves to Make It at the Highest Level

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3 Must-Haves to Make It at the Highest Level

After running our first successful college evaluation event with Coach Erica Hanrahan, I wanted to share with you some thoughts I had on playing at a high level before you get to college. 80% of current Practice Pro pitchers are eight grade an under. I believe there are three attributes an athlete must posses to reach A or B level travel play, or regional-level high school play.

I would never discourage anyone from learning to pitch because they probably weren’t going to pitch in the Olympics, but I do believe there are certain attributes and life circumstances a player must posses to play in college.

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What Should I Do During Practice, Exactly?

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What Should I Do During Practice, Exactly?

Depending upon the season, the percentage break-down of maintenance, game prep and future practice differs. The closer a pitcher is  to the season, the more game prep and the less future learning she should do. The offseason is great for learning new things.

When you ask, “How much time do I spend teaching my daughter all of these new movement pitches when she can’t even throw a strike?” look to the chart below for the answer. Apply this formula to a day or week of practice, depending on how you like to schedule it out. 

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Help for Brave Parents Who Catch

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Help for Brave Parents Who Catch

In lessons, I'll sometimes ask a parent who's catching for her daughter if she can see the spin on the ball. I'll ask if she saw a fundamental that could have been executed better. Most of the time, I get these answers to the question:

"It's hard to see if my daughter's follow-through is correct when the ball is flying at me at 50 miles an hour."

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What The Best Teams Do: Everyone Has A Purpose

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What The Best Teams Do: Everyone Has A Purpose

In college you'll rarely see a player sitting on the bench doing nothing during a game. When I played at Ithaca College, every player on the team was always cheering, clapping, or doing something in a supportive role when on the bench. Your positive attitude can anchor the “spirit of sport” in your team.

Last week our mental game lesson was about Charlie Morton, a 37-year old pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays who started the last game of the 2019 World Series. At the time his ERA is .57 and only made his first all-star game two years before that. If Morton would have won that night, he would have tied a record by posting eight consecutive winning postseason starts.

When asked about this wonderful run, he said,

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How To Get Your Daughter To Practice

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How To Get Your Daughter To Practice

You are always trying to "get" your daughter to practice. After all, she said she wanted to be a pitcher, you are spending tons of money on lessons, she is super athletic and is going to be great!! Yet...she won't practice!  You even set up the basement to look like an exact replica of the Rosemont Dome! You nag her, you try to reason with her by explaining all of the benefits of practicing. You feel you have given her all the tools humanly possible, but alas, there she remains comfy on the couch, TV remote in one hand, cell phone in the other.

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You Did WHAT to Be Great??

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You Did WHAT to Be Great??

I want to be clear that there is a level above GREAT. That level is the ELITE level. And to be ELITE, you do have to possess certain innate qualities (talents). Sadly enough, most players with the ability to be ELITE will never get there because the extra effort it takes to get there is the same formula it takes to achieve GREATNESS, and not everyone “really” wants to do the work.

To measure GREATNESS more specifically, you will be in the top 10% of ALL pitchers at whatever level you compete at. ELITE is the top 1%. And to be clear, it takes an ELITE desire to become GREAT to actually achieve GREATNESS. This is the level I hope all of my students in pitching school are striving to attain.

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Where Will Your Game Be One Year From Now?

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Where Will Your Game Be One Year From Now?

If you are thinking about taking on the position of pitcher with your daughter this note is for you!

Notice I use the phrase “taking on the position with” because learning to pitch is nothing less than a partnership between the two of you.

Becoming a pitcher is a special journey that takes a high level of commitment time-wise, financially, and emotionally. It can also be one of the most rewarding positions in all of sport! After reading this you will understand what to expect, have a road map for success, and motivation to help you persevere along the way.

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Why You Should Forget About Winning Games From Mr. Miyagi

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Why You Should Forget About Winning Games From Mr. Miyagi

Unless you are a member of the Kobra Kai dojo, you understand that “winning isn’t everything.” But are you showing no mercy in our fall ball games in spite of that understanding?

Travel coaches struggle with getting the most out of their pitchers due to the lengthy schedule of the year-long season. Fall ball (especially because of the pandemic) is becoming more meaningful these days. It’s overwhelming when it seems like every single game is important. If coaches make their goal to win each tournament and each game with little regard as to how to get there, pitcher development can become stunted and players peak early or not at all.

I offer an alternative.

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How to Explain Internal Rotation to Your Daughter

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How to Explain Internal Rotation to Your Daughter

The main indicator or arm speed is hand speed. Obviously, it's the only part of a pitcher's body that touches the ball and it has to be equally as fast as the speed she wishes to deliver it. If you follow even one pitching coach on social media besides me you’ll see the main topic discussed is something called “internal rotation.”

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How to Master Power in 4 Simple Drills

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How to Master Power in 4 Simple Drills

When learning, a lot of players look like this the pitcher on the right: leaning forward and her back leg has not moved towards the target by the time the ball is being released. When a pitcher throws “all arm”, this is what is happening mechanically. 

What’s more powerful, sprinting forward or jumping sideways? Just as a sprinter leaves the block, pitchers are sprinters leaving the mound. The fastest way to run to the finish line is forward, not sideways. 

If a pitcher can put herself in a good position at 3 o’clock (top pictures), she sets herself up for the rest of the motion. If not, it can be very difficult to correct her mistakes mid-pitch.

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A Beginner's Guide to Seasonality

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A Beginner's Guide to Seasonality

Has your daughter ever been afraid to change something in her motion because it will mess up her accuracy for the upcoming game? Well, she should be concerned because there are only certain times of the year when she should or should not be majorly altering her fundamentals. Last week we talked about how to break down practices and seasonality. This week I will give you examples of fun games and challenges to include in your seasonal practice.

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How Not to Develop Pitchers

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How Not to Develop Pitchers

It's not about winning, it's about HOW you win and challenging yourself.  Even if her team would have lost the lesson stands strong. Coach Hanning was preparing Jennie to reach her potential, an Olympian and NCAA National Champion, not a summer ball tournament champ.

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How to Win Big with Habit-Formation

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How to Win Big with Habit-Formation

In our pitching school, we give away pins every session to a select few students. They say, “Commit to the Process.” To earn one, a pitcher must do any sort of pitching practice every single day between lessons to earn a star for her team. Then, over the span of a 10-week off-season, if she’s able to accumulate all 70 days of consistent work, she earns the pin. This is quite a feat, to say the least.

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A Productive Rant About Release Point

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A Productive Rant About Release Point

One of the least effective ways to help a pitcher develop better accuracy is to instruct them to "release sooner" or "release later." Her arm is moving too fast to make such small movements intentionally, especially for a young person who has little body awareness. Secondly, athletes respond better to “external cues” which are conveyed by relating their body to something outside of themselves, like a target in the distance, or the ground, or the sky.

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9 Signs You Need Help With Mechanics

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9 Signs You Need Help With Mechanics

Think back to your last golf round. What type of player are you? Are you praying that you'll hit your next shot in the air, or are you calculating the difference between the 5 and 6 iron? Are you just trying keep up with the rest of your group, or are you visualizing the angle of your draw?

These questions show a clear difference in competency level. One person is competing while the other is focused on skill development, without knowing what skill needs to be developed. She just knows she has to get the ball over there, with no idea how.

Without mechanical competence, your daughter's only thoughts will be, “Please throw a strike and don’t embarrass myself!” as opposed to, “I’m going to strike this girl out with a low fastball then and outside change.” Unfortunately, pitchers will go through this thought process their whole career unless they learn and practice. As a young player, I received instruction on how to pitch, but did not practice. So my “worried” thinking went all the way through the end of high school. Not until college did I put the work into grooving my mechanics.

So, in an effort to help girls of all levels learn to actually “play” softball, here is a list of 9 circumstances when you know your daughter needs mechanical help.

  1. You think your daughter can pitch without learning how to do it.

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Why We Forget: How Our Mechanics Slip Away

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Why We Forget: How Our Mechanics Slip Away

I was working with my personal trainer, Mondale, on posterior chain strength. He explained the short circuit of exercises I was going to do, then told me to go ahead and start. I did the first one, then completely forgot the other two exercises and looked at him with an “uh-oh emoji, help” face. Was I not listening? Was it too much information for my brain that only got 5 hours of sleep?

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8 Ways You Can Build Pitching Staff Unity

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8 Ways You Can Build Pitching Staff Unity

In order for a player to want to change for her team, or at least live up to her existing role, she needs to be encouraged. There are a bunch of ways to get her excited about the role that she has or the role she wants to accomplish. These are some ideas I have learned from college, travel, and high school coaches I have met along the way. 


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How to Prevent the Downward Spiral

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How to Prevent the Downward Spiral

I hear it all the time, “Is there some kind of trick that I can use during a game to prevent me from going into a downward spiral?” It’s frustrating (and even more confusing) to start off well and then lose this “groove” later in the game.

While at first it seems sometimes coaches over-analyze what could have happened…”she got tired”, “she lost it mentally”, “she stopped performing her mechanics properly,” and so on, at second thought, I believe this is an under-analysis or a faulty analysis without proper work on the back end to diagnose issues and adjust practice accordingly. In order to identify the issue take a cue from college teams. They are always recording a huge amount of stats throughout the games. For them, there is no “guessing” when it comes to the issues they face during game time. They try to make it as objective, and therefore easy, as possible to make decisions.

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How To Be Obsessed With Your Little League

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How To Be Obsessed With Your Little League

No one on her team could throw a strike so the games were very long and uneventful. A number of parents started asking me to instruct but I saw myself as an executive in the corporate world. Now, as a small business owner running a pitching school with over 160 students, I’m often to help little leagues find a way to make the quality of pitching better. If girls can pitch strikes, then the batters can hit, and the fielders can field.

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5 Ways To Harness Your Power

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5 Ways To Harness Your Power

Do you ever notice when a pitcher sometimes falls over forward after she pitches? She looks like she’s off balance. You’ll hear a coach yell out after every few balls, “Stand tall!”

This has to do with her stride and how she is failing to harness all of the power she created through her drive off of the mound. Harnessing your power with your stride is equally as important as gaining momentum. Strides are for resistance, balance, and accuracy. If, you want to gain velocity, you must practice a great stride.

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