School is now done and we are now busier than ever with softball.

Every weekends and most week nights are busy with softball either playing, traveling, or practicing a little.

The question is…

At this time of the year, what should you be practicing?

I will start by answering what you should absolutely positively NOT do…

The ONE thing you need to AVOID doing is to implement any  significant technical changes.

Learning takes time to integrate and doing technical changes at this time of the year will HURT your game, not help it.

Resist (even if it is really tempting when things aren't going well) doing significant technical changes and keep for until after the season.

When you're young, you don't care about "experience". You don't think you need it to perform and do well.

You think it's just a bunch of BS older folks are talking about to make them feel important because they are older and
have lived a little.

I certainly didn't believe much in it.

Well.. I have been coaching 20 years now and every year I realized I couldn't be more wrong.

Read this carefully:

You don't know what experience is until you have it.

You cannot buy or train experience; you have to live it.

Experience is important to be the best you can be.

What is experience?

If you're like me, you have 2000 passwords (barely an exaggeration) for your all your online sites whether email accounts, bank accounts, profiles on social networks, etc.

It would be easy (yet not very safe) to have the exact same login name and password for every site and account that you own. The problem is that in most cases, you are required to use a variation of different number of letters and numbers

How do you keep track and manage all of those passwords?  There are many options… notebooks, excel files, word documents, etc.

The other pain in the a** is that you have to type your login name and password every time your want to access your info, account, email, etc.  This ends up taking a lot of time.

A couple of days ago, I sent an email where I discuss the fact that you shouldn't focus on your batting average but on your on-base percentage.

In my opinion, this is a much better indication of your overall performance at the plate.  Reaching a base on an error or a walk is a good as getting a hit.

I received an interesting reply from Coach Andy Collins who commented by saying:

You probably remember that a couple of weeks  ago I told you about a great core training program  called Core Power for Baseball.

Core Power for Baseball

This sport-specific core training program was created by my good friend Barry Lovelace who's also known as the  "King of Core" in the sports conditioning circles for his  extensive expertise in core training.

I just spoke with my him and he told me that he after receiving a ton of request to put his program on a hard copy DVD that he finally did it and it is now available.

If you have not checked this product yet, you definitely should. As you probably know by now, the core is your  center of power and this DVD shows you exactly how to train
it using very sport-specific exercises.

I received the following email from one of our subscribers:

"Marc,

Quick question please:

Have you noticed an excess number of shoulder injuries and shoulder surgeries?

I was in OKC to watch the WCWS (4th year attending)  and talked with another coach from Mississippi that  told me he sees the same thing.  An awful lot of  players with shoulder injuries.

If so, what do you attribute to this?   50+ weeks a year work and overuse?? Improper stretching along with improper throwing mechanics?

One thing is for sure,  this needs to be addressed at  a national level and coaches need to be educated to  ensure our young female athletes are not damaging  their shoulders and requiring surgery as an expected  part of playing softball!

Core training is currently a hot topic in sports and for a reason - it can really help your game if you train it well or it can really hurt it if it is weak or not trained properly.

My good friend Barry Lovelace is known as the "King of Core" because of his unbelievable knowledge of core training and how innovative he is with it. He is the creator of Core Power for Baseball system (yes, it's good for softball too! I have checked it and I love it!).

As a softball peak performance coach, I get asked training questions all the time and many of them are about core training.  So, I thought I would asked the most frequently asked questions about core training to Barry so you could hear from someone else who know a lot of that topic.

Not long ago, I wrote a post about why running speed doesn't matter in softball.  In a nutshell, I was explaining why linear speed (or running fast in a straight line) isn't that important for softball and I made the point that what really matters in our sport is acceleration (starting speed), multi-directional quickness and lateral agility because of the nature of our game.

A friend of mine, Doug Parry, just sent me a link to a great video that shows a great drill on how to improve lateral agility for softball. This is one of my favorite drills to teach players lateral agility, quick change of directions, and quick feet.

Here is a quick and interesting video where Cat Osterman provide a few softball pitching tips and discusses finger placement on the ball.

Today was our first official outing of the season.

We went 1-2 for the day.

There was a fair bit of nervousness, rust, and lack of cohesion on the field during the first two games.

We certainly didn't play up to our potential in the first two games making several mental, baserunning, and defensive
errors.

But, you know what, that's alright with me and you will read why below.

We did finish with a strong showing during our last game, had a decisive win against a pretty solid team and I saw
more of what I consider to be my "real team".

In the mean time, each game allowed me to remind the girls of important lessons on their path to excellence.