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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More Survival Tips for Parent Catchers

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More Survival Tips for Parent Catchers

The most successful pitchers have involved parents. This can be tricky, because that means you’ll have to put a high percentage of effort as well. That’s why I call it a partnership. It’s best if you both decide to take on the challenge together.

If you want to give her the opportunity to reach her full potential, you'll have to catch for her - a lot. Here are a few catching techniques to get you through the times when you don't quite feel like getting out there with her.

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Become a Movement Pitch Expert by Doing This

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Become a Movement Pitch Expert by Doing This

For example, when throwing a rise ball, a pitcher must deliver the ball on the “upswing” of her arm circle, meaning a little bit later. To make it easier to get her palm underneath the ball and facing the sky, she must lean her body back towards second base at delivery. The reverse is true for a drop ball. She must lean forward to get her hand on top of the ball, palm facing downwards.

Once her body position and ball trajectory is correct, the Magnus Effect becomes relevant.

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This Thing Can Ruin Your Pitch

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This Thing Can Ruin Your Pitch

The best pre-motions, or "take-aways" as I call them, are simple ones. Pitchers prepare themselves for success by performing a take-away that doesn't result in mistakes later in the delivery. When making up for a mechanical mistake during the motion, such as a crooked arm circle, the price she pays is a loss of speed.

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What if I Don't Get to Play?

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What if I Don't Get to Play?

You put in so much effort to be a pitcher. Going to lessons, practicing, and always being sore are tough things to commit to if you don’t get to play. If this hasn’t happened to you, consider yourself a very lucky pitcher. How, then, do you deal with this situation to your benefit?
1. Use it as motivation to better.

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Lessons from College Coaches

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Lessons from College Coaches

Overuse injuries make up 50% of all injuries in middle and high school. Three-sport athletes suffer less injuries than one-sport athletes. Plus, Dr. Middleton answered the common question, “Is the underhand pitching motion more natural that overhand, and as a result do less injuries occur?”

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How To Make Practice into a Daily Routine

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How To Make Practice into a Daily Routine

How many goals have you made in which you didn't take action on? How many of those goals without action have you accomplished? None, obviously!  Jim Rohn, legendary author and motivational speaker said "Goals without action are nothing." You need to form habits to help you take action.

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So You've Bought Weighted Balls....Now What?

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So You've Bought Weighted Balls....Now What?

You want more ways to get faster and you have the time. It’s the offseason so you have 7 months before your first spring game. While lifting is the best way to get stronger there’s another excellent way.

One of my favorite methods to increase speed is following a weighted ball workout. A weighted ball workout isn’t just throwing overweigthed balls. You need to pitch underweigthed balls as well.

Overweighted balls increase strength and help pitchers understand what full effort feels like. Unlike the heavy balls, underweighted balls train your arm to move fast. Notice when you are fake-pitching you are able to fly at warp-speed. Your fast-twitch muscles are being trained to twitch even faster. Light balls increase quickness and help pitcher feel how fast their arm has the potential to move.

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Her Worst Nightmare About Softball Come to Life

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Her Worst Nightmare About Softball Come to Life

Here is a short story that I'm sure you can relate to, especially if it's after the end of your first season as a softball parent/coach. If you read through to the end of this story you will find out how to avoid some big mistakes in the future.

It's your daughters first kid-pitch game. She's seen her friends pitch a few times and has maybe tried it with you in the backyard once. Today is a big game with the rival team: Reliable Auto vs. Rose Salon. The inning starts and she nervously creeps out of the dugout and dawdles up to the mound. All eyes are on her as she feels small out there on the big field. She throws her first pitch - a grounder.

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Will Virtual Lessons Ever Rule the World?

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Will Virtual Lessons Ever Rule the World?

For parents and players trying to learn more about pitching, gathering all information from online sources can be overwhelming. As a result, it gets demotivating. Every coach says something different. The key is to ask, “What are my goals and what are my daughter’s goals?”, and “What methods of learning would fit our lifestyle best?”

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Pitching: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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Pitching: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

*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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How to Get More Results Out of Your Practice

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How to Get More Results Out of Your Practice

Although your daughter might feel the urge to use her practice to turbo-pitch balls to your shins pitch after pitch at lightning speed without thinking much about it, players should pitch with focus and intent. There are no other ways to build muscle memory and consistency.

Remember from the last two blogs that during practices and lessons we are trying to accomplish two things. 1) Improve by forming muscle memory (building neural pathways in the brain). Once they are built, games become a competition instead of constant mechanical corrections, which leads us to number two. 2) Mentally prepare for games by pretending practices are like games.

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What Yoga Can Teach Us about Pitching

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What Yoga Can Teach Us about Pitching

This summer we held class at a beautiful personal training and yoga studio called “Practice Chicago” in Lincoln Park. What a fitting name, right?! As you know, I love when pitchers practice, but I never looked at practice the way described in @practicechicago’s recent Instagram post:

“When an activity becomes a practice it shifts from something you are doing at a point in time to an ongoing process of becoming. The former lends itself to “good” or “bad” judgments, forgetfulness, and discontinuity. The latter lends itself to integration, continuous learning, and wholeness.”

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Why We Love Accountability Partners (And You Should, Too)!

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Why We Love Accountability Partners (And You Should, Too)!

Everyone needs consistent human support when attempting difficult physical activity. Before I got a personal trainer and started attending scheduled classes at the gym in 2014 I just wandered over to Lakeview YMCA 2 or 3 times a week and completed my old college lifting workout. That's right, I did my old college workout for ELEVEN years because I didn't know what I didn't know. Seemed like a totally awesome workout because it was totally awesome in college.
 

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High School Tryouts: What Coaches Want

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High School Tryouts: What Coaches Want

I know I’ve sent a similar blog about high school tryouts a couple of times, but I’ve revised it based on interviews I’ve recently done with coaches in Chicago and the suburbs. Tryouts are this week so I wanted to make sure to pass along to you what I’ve learned so far. Coaches had common themes with what they were looking for in you.

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