Pitching

Weight Back and Balanced Pitching Drill
by Hal Skinner

As a pitcher, it's important to understand how important it is to start your pitch off in a balanced pitching stance. For the smoothest motions, you must also maintain that same balance through the entire course of your motions when you pitch.

Here is a pitching drill that gives you a feeling of balance during your pitching motions, the feeling of a slight lean forward at the start and of having the weight back at the end of the motions.

How to do the drill

Part One

Stand on the rubber and bend your stride knee to 90 degrees, like a flamingo.

Throw three pitches like that balancing on your pivot foot only while keeping your balance.

Don't let your foot come down until the catcher catches the ball.

Part Two

Now, take an empty coffee can and set it upside down about 1 foot directly in front of your stride foot.  Place your foot against the top edge of the can, lean SLIGHTLY forward, and throw three pitches from that position while keeping your balance.

Part Three

Former Olympian and Professional pitcher Lauren Bay demonstrates a simple softball pitching drill for increasing your pitching speed and power.

Here's a philosophy on being a successful pitcher as shared by legendary pitcher and instructor Coach Hal Skinner in his book Sneaky Softball Pitching.

The best and most widely respected pitchers are those who pitch the smartest games.

They don’t have to throw the quickest fastball, or have a large number of different pitches to choose from, or even have great ball movement on those pitches. The best pitchers are the unpredictable pitchers. The unpredictable pitchers are the smart pitchers!

Years ago, my goal was to become a smart pitcher; to outsmart the batters, the teams I faced. Every good pitcher needs a bit of an ego when it comes to their pitching. I am no exception to this rule.

My pitching philosophy is different from any other I’ve encountered in the sport. Most do not even agree with me. But my philosophy is simple: a pitcher must be smarter at pitching than the batter is at hitting…

Do you agree or disagree?

One thing that's often said about hitting is that "hitting is timing."  Well if you're a pitcher and you want to experience success in the circle, the last thing you want to do is allow hitters to get their timing down when hitting against you.

That's why legendary pitcher Hal Skinner wrote Sneaky Softball Pitching: Sneaky Pitching Tactics to Destroy a Hitter's Timing.

Sneaky Softball Pitching contains the most sought after pieces of pitching advice in the game today. Learn how to pitch faster within seconds. Get the secret of how to stun a batter into not swinging at all. Find out what every great pitcher needs to know about the mental game, and get detailed information about the foundation for building not only top speed, but most accuracy as well!

From the author: I am a self-taught pitcher. I learned to pitch by watching hundreds of adult male pitchers starting when I was 5-years-old. I saw the ones that won most of their games and the ones that weren't as good. Most of the teams I played on were championship teams that won nearly all tourneys entered. We were champions because we did things in practice and in the games that the other teams did not do, did not do as well, or did not do nearly as often as we did.

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

Fastpitch Drills Work Better When You Know Why You're Doing Them

Yet another story from the fastpitch front, i.e. lessons. Tonight I was doing a pitching lesson where the pitcher brought her own catcher. The catcher happens to be a girl named Lindsay, a former player of mine and a personal favorite.

As the pitcher was working, she occasionally threw a ball into the ground. My expectation was that Lindsay would drop and block the ball, or at least catch it competently. But instead, she was just sort of swatting at it, which looked very odd.

After the pitching lesson I asked her what gives, and that's when she told me she'd just come from a team workout (not sure if it was HS or travel ball) where the coach was bouncing balls into the catchers, who were only wearing masks. I asked her what the purpose/point of the drill was, and she said she didn't know. None of the catchers did, apparently.

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

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.

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

Over the weekend I was working with Erin, one of my former players (who is still a student) on her baserunning skills. Actually, that's a misnomer.

We weren't really working on skills. We were working on the mental side instead — knowing what to do, and working on her opening up her game on the bases.

You see, she has legitimate speed. Not sure where she is now, but I know she was 3.0 home to first a year ago, and probably faster than that now.

Yet once she got on base, she tended to shrink into a shell. Most of the time she would think station to station instead of realizing just what her speed could do on the rest of the bases, so we went out on a field to try and change that thinking.

A big part of her "conservative" running was a fear of making an out. She'd take the easy base, but was reluctant to push the envelope even a little bit despite my encouraging everyone on the team to always "think two bases" when running.

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.

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

Anyone who has been following fastpitch softball over the past few years knows we have entered an era of hitting. The philosophy used to be "put the ball in play and hope for something good to happen." Games used to end 1-0 or 2-1 after 12 innings.

Today, though, it's all changed. There's lots more offense in the game, thanks in part to better training for hitters and in part to superior bat technology that turns checked swings into extra base hits.

So it might tempting to think that having that great pitcher isn't nearly as important as it used to be. Yet the truth is the opposite; if anything, it's more important than ever to have good pitching.

Softball/baseball is the only sport where the defense starts with the ball. And who on the defense has it first? The pitcher.

To paraphrase a saying from my underground comic book reading days, "Good pitching will get you through times of no hitting better than good hitting will get you through times of no pitching." Think about it.

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!

Get $100 worth of softball training resources you need to raise your game to the next level.

• Throw harder
• Hit farther
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• Increase your pitching speed
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• Earn more playing time
• 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.

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

We are about halfway through the summer fastpitch softball season, which means teams are starting to find out exactly what they have. In some cases, perhaps there have been pleasant surprises — players playing above the level you thought.

In others, perhaps that worldbeater of a team you thought you had isn't quite as good as you expected. Which means it's time to do a little retooling to get ready for the second half.

One of the phenomena that goes along with under-performing is the ever-helpful observations and suggestions from the peanut gallery, i.e. the parents. I'm not sure exactly what they think we're doing in the dugout, or what sort of a veil they think is placed over the field-side opening. But it's apparent that they often mistake a player's inability for our ability to recognize them.

So for all those who have taken on the obligation to point out the obvious, here's a little info from inside the dugout.