If there was one thing coaches practically begged me—a pitching coach—to help with, it was this. I hated to break it to them, but throwing strikes isn’t something I can magically fix overnight. It comes down to you. If you want to be accurate, you need to be throwing with your catcher 3 to 4 times per week, year-round. That’s where consistency is built.
Read MoreOne way I like to explain it is through Martin M. Broadwell’s work. He was a management trainer in the 60’s. He wrote a famous article called Teaching for Learning in which he described the four stages of competence. I thought it would be fun to apply this not only to a pitcher’s experience, but also to a parent’s experience of getting his or her kid involved in pitching.
We want to reach “unconscious competence” in pitching and parenting. It’s when a skill can be performed easily without thinking about it. Here are the four phases, the first three leading up to our goal of “unconscious competence.”
Read MoreWerner has the following suggestions on pitch count. She is much more conservative than Bristow. In a perfect world, with exceptions for weekend tourneys, she believes the following pitch counts would be the best, when possible.
10U - 60 per day with one full day rest after each of these days. A pitch includes anything where your arm is spinning. 60 every other day equals 240 pitches per week.
12U - 70 per day, every other day (280/wk)
14U - 80 per day, every other day (320/wk)
16 - 90 per day, every other day (360/wk)
18 and older - 100 per day, every other day (400/wk)
*As published in Fastpitch Magazine
I stood on the mound my sophomore year in college as the opposing team cheered in the dugout. The hitter looked confident strutting up to the batter's box. She took extra time to knock the dirt off of her cleats before she put the bat up to her shoulder. Then she settled in and stared me in the eye. I stood up taller, followed my pre-pitch routine, and delivered my blazing fast curve ball right towards the - “BALL ONE!” Okay, no problem. I beared down, focused on my catcher’s mitt and fired again. “BALL TWO!” Although two balls in a row were not ideal, it is nothing that any good pitcher can not handle. When the next two pitches buzzed in as “BALL THREE!” and “BALL FOUR!” the cheers from the opposing dugout resounded even louder. As the good Brian Cain says, “So what, next pitch,” that saying formulated then in my brain.
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