Softball Pitching Drills - How to Increase Pitching Speed

Last week, a discussion started on our forum about "why so much talk about pitching speed?"

Here is the link to discussfastpitch.com

(by the way, I invite to register to the forum, it is rapidly becoming a dynamic community of fastpitch fanatics)

My answer to that question was that speed has always fascinated and that it's the first thing that makes a young pitcher dominant.

At the lower levels, a good pitcher is someone who throws hard and gets a lot of strikeouts.

Over time, the importance of pitching speed decreases as the importance of movement and location increases but speed remains important to make the ball move even more and reduce the hitter's reaction time to a minimum.

A question that is often asked: "How do you increase pitching speed?"

It's a combination of four major factors:

1. Genetic make-up of the athlete
2. Perfectly optimized mechanics
3. Muscular balance and coordination
4. Power and strength

Here are a two popular softball pitching drills that  can be used to maximize pitching speed:

1. Distance Pitching - This is a great drill to teach the body how to use all of its muscles to generate as much power as possible.

Start pitching to your catcher from your regular distance and back up 5 feet every 3-5 pitches until you can't reach the catcher within one bounce. Then, you  reverse direction and do the exact thing until you come  to your regular distance.

The key point here is to focus on general power using the whole body without focusing on pitch location.

2. Walk-through - this is a popular drill to teach the body how to generate power and momemtum.

The idea is to start a few feet behind the rubber and you start walking towards the catcher, step on the rubber and push hard to deliver your pitch and you keep your momentum going forward after the delivery.

If you have any questions about these two drills, visit our forum or ask any pitching coach.

If you are bored with your workouts or you are looking  for fresh and innovative pitching drills, I have an ebook that contains the largest collection of softball pitching drills ever assembled.

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