Hitting

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

With all the crazy parent stuff that goes on these days, many teams and programs have adopted the so-called "24 hour" rule. With it, parents are not allowed to talk to coaches about something that happens in a game, or playing time, or any other issue until 24 hours after a game.

Yet often the same coaches who want parents to take 24 hours to cool down forget they can use a little cooldown time too, especially after a poor performance by the team. That can be a huge mistake for a couple of reasons.

One is that it's tough to objectively assess the facts of a game in the heat of battle or directly thereafter. What seems like a horrible game at the time may not look as bad when it's a little further in the rear view mirror.

The other is that you may say something to blow off steam at the time that comes back to bite you in the behind later. Any experienced coach can tell stories about things that were said that could never be unsaid. It can lead to all kinds of trouble.

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

Tonight I was working with one of my top hitting students, a girl named Amy who always draws oohs and ahhs when people watch her swing the bat. She's a very good hitter, better than she herself realizes, I think, and really turned some heads as a varsity starter last year when she was a freshman.

Her normal swing is a good one, but tonight while we were doing some front toss I noticed something. At one point you could just see that something had changed with her — and changed for the better.

I had to stop and ask — did your concentration level just go up? Yes, she answered. She told me that the last swing, where the ball just jumped off her bat in what looked like it would've been a 300 foot home run if we were at a field instead of in a cage, she just totally blocked out all other thoughts and just focused on the ball.

Written by Stacie Mahoe

Most coaches have fears, worries, or anxiety about something. In fact, I'm not sure I know any coaches who don't.  It's pretty normal, when you really care about something greatly, to have concerns or worries about it.

However there is one softball coaching fear in particular that I see get in the way of good coaching time after time.

Can you guess what it is?

It's the fear of what others will think about you. I've heard advisers in other areas of life say that if you really want to be successful, you have to stop caring what other people think of you and your choices.

I believe that holds true for coaching softball too.

It's an easy trap to fall into. You and I both know how many critics there are of any softball coach. It comes with the territory. It's tough not to take things personally. Sure we all intellectually know that we shouldn't, but that's not always easy.  You're not the only coach who finds challenge in not allowing whispers (for shouts for that matter) from the outside impact what you do and the choices you make as a coach.

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

With fastpitch softball being as competitive as it is these days, most of us spend 100% of our time looking forward. We see the goals, they're out in the distance, and we're always looking to move ourselves closer to them.

But with the new year upon us, it might be a good time to take a look back, even just for a moment, to see how far you've come. I find that is often one of the most inspirational things you can do, and a good way to recharge the ol' enthusiasm for the journey ahead.

I've done this with a few of my students lately, especially the new ones. I ask them to think back to when we started back in August and September, and what things were like for them. I then go through a quick review of what we've worked on since then, capping it off with a count of the months we've been working on it.

For example, with a high school pitcher we might look back to find we've rebuilt her mechanics so they are more consistent and allow her to throw both harder and more accurately. We'll see she is throwing a change-up, and starting on a drop ball.

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

Many of you have probably heard the expression "Practice doesn't make perfect — it makes permanent." Yet how often have you really thought about that in the context of your own work?

I know I see that in action all the time. Walking through a facility or along a field I will see teams diligently running drills or working on techniques that essentially have them practicing to lose. Even though they may have best of intentions.

I see it with hitting a lot. I like hitting stations as much as the next coach, but they can do as much harm as good if they're not set up or supervised properly.

Now, if you have older players whom you've worked with for awhile you can probably have them work the stations without someone being with them every minute. But for younger players it often doesn't work as well.

I will see young players putting no effort into hitting off a tee because they think it's for babies. So they just sort of knock the ball off instead of working on elements of their swings.

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

I'm sure you know people who still believe in "hands to the ball" hitting cue. I, for one, think that's a terrible cue that will cause more problems than it cures, especially because I don't think it will cure anything.

Regardless of the specifics, however, this issue does get me thinking because at one time I DID use that very same cue, and put my hitters through some of the drills that encouraged it (such as soft tossing balls and hitting them with the knob, which I picked up at a coaching clinic).

What I was thinking, though, was thank goodness none of the hitters I worked with, either on my team or on the side, have to give back any of their hits now that I have better information.

That's the funny thing about a forum like ours. We can expend lots of time, passion and electrons arguing various positions on how to execute differen skills. At times it can sound like one of the taboo topics (politics, religion), especially when True Believers clash or those with a particular agenda try to bring everyone else around to their point of view.

In this episode of Fastpitch TV, Jenny Dalton shares and demonstrates more softball hitting drills including some drills to help keep a hitters hands inside the ball and eliminate "casting."

Press play below to watch this softball hitting video!

Click here to watch Part I if you missed it.

Compiled by Stacie Mahoe

After having Crystl Bustos in Hawaii and getting to see her work with young softball players, I thought she'd be a good person to ask about softball hitting and hitting instruction. Crystl graciously took some time to answer 10 softball hitting instruction questions for us!

1. What's your favorite thing about working with young hitters?
My favorite thing about working with young hitters is to watch them grow and get better

2. What are some of the common myths or misconceptions hitters come to you with? (things they've been told by other coaches that isn't really helpful)
Squish the bug. That this is softball not baseball so the swing is way different. That they can't hit homeruns.

3. What is the hardest part of teaching hitters to improve their swing?
Getting them to practice at home!

4. When a hitter comes to you and has multiple areas of her swing to work on, how do you know where to start?
I start from the ground up and age sometimes plays a role.

5. What are some of the most common problems you see in hitters that come to you for help?
They don't know why they should do what we are telling them to do.

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

While the winter weather isn't too bad yet, we're reaching that point in the year where those of us in the North have to think about moving indoors. As you probably know, that creates an entirely new dilemma for practicing.

During the warmer months (and the months where it isn't dark by 5:00 PM), you can pretty much wander out to any available ballfield and get some practice time in. Heck, it doesn't even have to be a ballfield. Just about any old patch of grass or dirt will do in a pinch.

But once outdoors is taken out of the picture, things get a lot tougher. Sure, you can rent cage time, but that can get expensive if you're serious about it. You can try to find an open gym, but their managers often are unhappy about a hard ball being hit, thrown or pitched in the general vicinity of others playing basketball, volleyball or other sports.

Moving indoors also takes more schedule coordination. Not only do coach/parent and player/daughter have to be available at the same time, that time has to coincide with the times a cage or gym are available.

In this episode of Fastpitch TV Jenny Dalton shares some useful hitting tips on contact point, releasing the barrel, where to hit, and more. Plus see some hitting drills you can use to improve your hitting.

Press play below to watch this video now…

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

The other day I had a hitting lesson with a girl named Erin, a girl I converted to a slapper last year and who is now playing at the 16U level. As we were working on various techniques she can do to take advantage of what the defense gives her, she told me something that just warmed my old heart.

She told me after the last tournament she went to her coach and asked her if it would be ok for her to make some decisions on her own regarding what to do with the next pitch, based on what she saw with the defense. Apparently the coach had been calling a lot of bunts — Erin is the leadoff hitter — despite the fact that the defense was playing her in close.

To me, that's a great thing on two levels. First, she approached it the right way. Rather than just ignoring the coach or giving up, she went to her with an idea. Second, she knew enough and was confident enough in her own abilities to want the choice of what to do.

Keeping What You See in Perspective
Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

Softball fanatics love evaluating what those at high levels of play are doing. We may even watch the mechanics of some of the top players in Major League Baseball. As fanatics, we love to study those mechanics and try to learn from them in order to help our players, or our own children (male and female) become the best they can be.

There is a danger in all of this, however. Namely an inability to keep what you see in context.

While the mechanics of some of these great hitters make a good model and a good goal, it's important to be realistic in your expectations. Because like it or not, there is a huge difference between a 28 year old MLB player and a 12 year old girl.

Let's start with the obvious: a grown man is much stronger than a young girl. Not just in the upper body, but in every aspect. Take the strongest 12 year old girl you've ever seen and put her in a cage match with a 28 year old male professional athlete, and the girl is going to lose. Badly. So expecting a 12 year old girl to have the exact same swing mechanics, including the explosiveness, of a 28 year old MLB player is not very realistic.

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

Now that school is back in full swing time is at a premium for fastpitch softball players. Especially high school age players who are either in-season right now or playing other sports.

The demands of schoolwork and/or other sports/activities make it easy to say "I don't have time to practice." And that's true to an extent — it really is difficult to find the time in the midst of everything else going on.

Yet the fact remains if you're a pitcher, come next summer the hitters you're facing won't care that you had volleyball practice after school or that you were taking three AP classes in the fall. The only thing they'll look at is how fat that pitch is and how hard they can hit it.

On the other side, if you're a hitter, the pitchers won't care if your free throw percentage was 85% or you sat first chair flute in the band. If you're not ready to hit they'll simply blow the ball right by you.

This is seriously one of the coolest softball hitting machines I've come across and I'm so excited to be able to offer it to you at SoftballTools.com.

The Hitting Pro Advanced actually suspends the ball in the mid air so it's kind of like hitting off a tee (you can hit into a net if you want), but way more challenging.

This unique softball hitting aid challenges hitters in ways no other machine does. Not only can it can move a softball from one side of home plate to the other to simulate an inside pitch, an outside pitch, and one down the middle for training purposes, it also creates ball movement as the ball rotates at high speed while suspended in the air making it very challenging to hit solidly.

Use the Hitting Pro Advanced to:

• Improve muscle memory and bat speed
• Develop a faster compact swing
• Improve your hitting mechanics and batting average
• Allow players to take batting practice alone or with a coach
• Train indoors or outdoors
• Simulate more gamelike hitting challenges
• Train with real Softballs or with polyball

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

Yes, it's hard to believe we're already in the thick of tryout season. All the comfort of knowing what the days ahead will look like is gone, replaced by that feeling in the pit of your stomach over all the uncertainty that will be dominating your thoughts for the next week or two.

That feeling applies to both players and coaches, by the way. For the players it's obvious, especially if you're trying out for a new team.

Suddenly you're being judged and evaluated by a group of strangers who don't know your track record. You have to perform right here, right now if you want to be selected. It can be very nerve-wracking, which doesn't help your performance any.

Yet it can also be stressful for coaches. You can look at all the skills you want, but it doesn't answer how a player will perform in a game situation, what type of teammate she will be, how high maintenance her parents will be, what kind of game knowledge she has, etc.

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

Most of the time when softball people get together to discuss the game, the talk turns to technique. They'll debate for hours on end regarding the best way to hit a ball, pitch a ball, throw a ball, etc. They'll talk about athleticism, conditioning and a lot of other physical aspects.

One subject that rarely comes up, though, is heart. That's a shame too, because while a player with great physical skills is a valuable thing to have, without heart you're not going to win as many games as you could.

Heart is what keeps a player going when others might give up. While a player with heart loves to win as much as the next person, winning is not what ultimately drives her. Instead, she plays for the love of the game, and thus focuses on the game itself rather than the outcome.

Players with heart are highly valuable to a team. Just as a player who loses heart can bring a team down, a player who has heart can drive her team to keep playing even when the odds are against them.

Written by Stacie Mahoe

Being in the right frame of mind when going into softball competition is a big factor in your success or lack of success. There may be thoughts floating around in your head that stop you from performing at your best. If you can replace these negative thoughts with positive statements, you're likely to perform better on the field and be a bigger part of your team's success.

The first thing you need to do is recognize some of the negative thoughts you have. Here are some common ones that pop up for most players at some point or another. Just because lots of players have these thoughts, doesn't mean it's okay for you to allow them to hang out in your head. Any negativity you can replace with more positive thinking will go a long way to making you a better softball player.

17 Common Thoughts That Can Hurt Your Softball Performance

• I hope I don't strike out.
• I hope I don't bean this batter.
• Why is so-and-so playing?
• I can't play in rain/wind/sun/etc.
• This umpire just doesn't like me.
• I hate this field.

I hope you're enjoying all the giveaways we're bringing you this summer.  While we've done one for Got Bustos gear, an Insider Bat, and Ringor Cleats, we haven't really done one for Softball Performance.

Well, today we're going to change that!

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• Throw harder
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• and help your team win more games!

From DVDs to Pitching Books to Coaching Resources to Hitting Audios and more, Softball Performance helps you become more dominant on the diamond.

If you win this $100 Softball Performance Giveaway, you'll get to buy products from the following list:

Guest post by Ken Krause, Life in the Fastpitch Lane blog

Without a doubt this is a busy part of the fastpitch softball summer season. Tournaments every weekend, for some teams league or scrimmage doubleheaders during the week, and maybe a practice squeezed in here or there.

What that means is very little time to work on individual skills. Some may be able to handle that, but they're in the minority. For most, all this play time means skills are actually deteriorating.

It makes sense. In a practice setting, a hitter might take 100 to 200 swings in a session. In a game, she's lucky if she gets 12. That's a pretty big delta.

Same with fielders. Whereas in a good practice session you may field 50-100 balls or more, you may go a game or two without any significant fielding chances — especially if your team has dominant pitching. Sure, you get some practice during warm-ups, but your focus is different then. It's on getting ready for this game coming up, not on necessarily improving your skills.