Most pitchers are constantly trying to improve their pitching and improve their pitching speed. Many pitchers practice pitching a lot to get better, but there are other ways to improve as a pitcher, especially when it comes to throwing more heat.

I’m talking about this because I was just browsing around on facebook when I saw this status update by the King of Core himself, Barry Lovelace…

Every time I hear testimonies from softball players that work with Barry (especially pitchers), one thing stands out is they all talk about how they see results FAST! Just about every one mentions that, after just a few sessions and workouts with Barry, they can already see and feel a difference in there softball performance.  What other kind of training does that?

Barry uses lots of core power training, functional training, and sport specific training when working with softball players.  He’s designed some great softball training programs that can help you (or your team) step up your game and do it quick! Best of all, you can do his Barry’s softball training programs during season or off season, any time you want or need it!

Learn more about how you can ramp up your softball performance quick and do it for far less than you’d spend for a personal softball trainer or gym membership => SoftballTeamTraining.com.

“How Do I Stack Up?”

This player is a freshman that college coaches of some of the best programs in the nation already know about.  She’s got great grades and doesn’t have to be hounded by her parents or coaches about it.  She’s not one of those players who’s been playing since she was 5 and yet, she can hit the ball and “has it all” as a pitcher.

AND is just a freshman in high school this year!

So how do you stack up?  Where are you in your skills and grades and attitude?  Are you working hard enough?  Or are you just “settling” for “being the best” where you are at?  Are you really, truly striving to being the best you can?  Why should a coach choose you?  Can you do better?  Can you strive for more?  Can you push for more than you’re doing now?  Do you need to raise the level of your softball performance?

Maybe now is a good time to do a serious self-check and re-evaluate your direction.  Be Great!

Hey – just a quick note to let you know about a live interview I just found out about.

• Who: Make It Pro, Michele Granger, and YOU!
• What: Live Interactive Interview
• When: Jan. 7th, 5pm Pacific.
• Where: Take part, listen in, watch the interview live at http://www.makeitpro.com/tv

Hopefully you and I are able to take advantage of this opportunity to check out a fun softball event.  Mark your calendar.  Set an alarm on your phone or in your e-mail program.  Tell your friends, teammates, and colleagues about it!  Should be lots of fun.  Hope to “see” you there!

Participating pitchers can now attend this 2-day clinic for just $50 (includes BOTH days!).

• Saturday: clinic/instructional session (3 time slots to choose from)
• Sunday: small group session (6 sessions to choose from)

More information is available on the Clinic Flyer.

You may print/save the registration form for this clinic HERE.

Spaces ARE limited so please reserve your spot as soon as possible by turning in both your registration form/waiver and payment.  This will be Bill’s 3rd time coming to Hawaii and each time parents ask when he’ll be coming back!  This is your chance to work with one of the premier men’s fastpitch pitchers and clinicians without having to travel to him.

I hope to see you there!  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.  Contact information is avaialable on both the flyer and registration form.

Coaches, parents, and anyone else who wants to come watch, learn and ask questions are invited to come for FREE!

Here are some pictures from Bill’s 1st clinic here in Hawaii.

Crazy guy only told me at the last minute that he’s offering this brand new workout video for fastpitch softball pitchers at just $9 until Tuesday!  Ummmm, doesn’t he know that softball people are usually BUSY over the weekend and no one checks e-mail or reads blogs (especially on a holiday weekend)?  So no one is really going to know about this, except you, since you ARE here still looking for ways to improve your game over a holiday weekend.  That’s the kind of dedication it takes to be the best.  So, for you, since you’re here when most people are out cruisin’ on the weekend, you WILL get the chance to grab this new workout for fastpitch softball pitchers before the special introductory price ends.  Get it HERE.

LAST DAY: Today is the last day to enter our 10 Commandments
Contest!  Submit your entry at the Fastpitch World Forums
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I’m afraid of the ball…Did I just say that? Well, not terrified of the ball like some people are, but I admit, I am more afraid of getting hit by a ground ball than I used to be. Why? Mostly because I know that I’m not as quick as I used to be. My reaction time is slower than it used to be. Let’s face it, I’m no longer training to actively compete as a softball player. I do not practice fielding ground balls on a daily basis and therefore, I know that my skills are a little rustier than they were 13+ years ago when I was training to be the best infielder I could be.

I’m not, however afraid of balls that are thrown at me. I’m still quite confident in my ability to catch a thrown ball and do that quite often, so it’s not something that worries me. But lack of that confidence is a common reason why young athletes are afraid of the ball. Not only is it a relatively hard object traveling toward them, but they lack the confidence in their ability to handle it. They do not believe they possess the adequate capability to safely deal with this hard moving ball that
is coming at them.

I know that if I were to practice and train to actively play softball again, my fear of the ball would all but disappear as I regained confidence in my skills. The same is true for young players. If they gain confidence in their own ability to adequately deal with and protect themselves from this ball that’s coming at them, they won’t be as terrified of the ball anymore.

Of course, that’s more easily said than done in some cases and there are specific things you can do to help them along the way. I’ll talk about that in another post, but first I wanted to know if you’ve ever personally dealt with this situation before (players being afraid of the ball).

• What triggered it in their case?
• What did you do to help them?
• How old are the players you work with?
• Is there anything in particular you’d like to know about helping players get over their fear of the ball?

This seems to be a topic that I get e-mailed about a lot lately, so I just wanted some of your thoughts on it in case you were also dealing with the same issue.

Leave me a comment and let me know.

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Bill Hillhouse Pitching Location Update

Location for the Bill Hillhouse 2-Day Pitching Clinic in Hawaii (Oct. 10-11) has been set at St.  Francis High School. Registrations are already coming in for the clinic and spaces are limited! For more information, print out the flyer at http://www.allaboutfastpitch.com/BH2009.pdf

Grab your registration form at http://www.allaboutfastpitch.com/BHR2009.pdf

If you’ve never checked out Twitter, it’s a pretty cool “micro” blogging community. Basically it’s short updates about what people are doing all around the world. If you have a f*ree account, you can login and see the updates from all the people you are following. There are even some cool softball people on there. Like I said, there’s no cost to use this tool – check it out at www.Twitter.com – follow me at Twitter.com/staciemahoe

Anyway – back to the story about my conversation…

One day on twitter I mentioned that I think that baseball people seem to be overly obsessed with pitch count; that they seem almost “religious” about it. Of course, this baseball guy responds that it’s not religion, but science. He said that if I’d seen the injuries to young pitchers arms (bone spurs, rotator cuff issues, damage to growth plates etc) that I’d understand.

I completely understand wanting to prevent devastating injuries to young athletes. I’m all for that. I just don’t think pitch count is an effective way to do that. In my discussion with baseball guy I talked about how I feel too many coaches are using pitch count as a “rule” rather than as a guideline. I think that there is sooooo much obsession with “pitch count” in baseball that coaches put too much emphasis on it and not enough on proper training, proper mechanics, proper care, proper warm-up, and listening to your body.

I feel that pitch counts are excellent…as a GUIDELINE!

Baseball guy said that rules have to be used when people don’t know how to properly use a guideline. However, I feel that if coaches are overlooking those other critical issues and just using pitch count as a rule, they could HURT their pitchers with their pitch count “obsession.”

For example, maybe a particular pitcher is not supposed to go over 80 pitches per game. But what if that number is actually too high for that particular pitcher, and their coach incorrectly thinks they are “safe” so long as they stay under that number? The pitcher could actually get hurt pitching up to that number because it’s not an accurate number or because maybe today he pitched 200 pitches during warm-up due to a delay of the game vs the “normal” 100 he usually does.

This idea of being “safe” so long as you are strict on pitch count is silly.

First of all, who came up with that number for that pitcher’s count and what did they base it upon?

What each individual person can handle varies greatly depending upon a huge number of factors.

One pitcher can be bigger and stronger physically, but maybe he has mechanics that are not as physically sounds as the next pitcher who is not as physically strong and fit. The one with great mechanics may be able to handle throwing more pitches even if the other pitcher is bigger stronger and does all the non-pitching training (strengthening, conditioning, etc) correctly.

Then problem I have with “pitch count” is that a number of baseball people have told me you don’t count pitches in practice or in warm-ups. Why not?

I was told that they are not “game intensity” so they are not counted.

Again, that makes NO sense to me. Are you saying that none of those pitches have any effect on the strain or stress put on the pitcher’s arm? He can throw 1000 pitches in 2 days of practice and the number of pitches he throws in tomorrow’s game is the only number that holds significance?

If you are going to be so obsessed with pitch count, I would think ALL pitches need to be counted to have any kind of accurate feel for what kind of strain is being put on a pitchers arm. Why should only certain pitches count? What do you think? And I also find it hard to believe that baseball pitchers practice at one intensity then throw at another in game situations. Do they not practice how they play?

I’ve always thought that softball pitchers had a tougher time in practice because they often pitch for 45 minutes to an hour straight with no breaks. In games, they’d pitch an inning, then get to rest, then pitch again, then get to rest.

What about the players who’s parents work out with them outside the team practice. So you have 2 pitchers who have pitch counts of 80 pitches for a game. You also monitor their practice time, but one only throws in practice (where you see every pitch and know what’s going on), then the other is throwing hundreds more pitches each week at home with dad. Does the game pitch count number really have “that” much significance or mean anything?

Then what about outfielders? I mean these guys (in baseball) are often trying to throw a ball hundreds of feet as quickly or as hard as they can (if they are practicing to throw a guy out at 3rd or at home) – yet no one counts their throws. Do they not put strain on their arm as well for throwing? I’m sure there are some outfielders out there who will take hundreds of balls a day maybe even six days a week, yet no count cares to do any kind of count for them.

Baseball guy also talked about how softball people wouldn’t understand because our pitchers have a motion that is less damaging to the arm. Well, there was just a study done that shows the underhand windmill may actually cause more strain on the anterior shoulder than an overhand throw. (The link to that blog post and video is: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/04/why-do-softball-pitchers-experience.html )

After seeing this information about strain of softball pitching, baseball guy tells me that maybe softball should have pitch count rules too (he said it with a smile of course).

This is the summary of what I said back to him…

All physical activity puts strain on our bodies and what each person can handle varies greatly depending on a number of factors (does this person warm-up properly, do they do other strengthening exercises for supporting muscles, what are their mechanics like, do they practice outside of practice, do they have tightness anywhere in their body that may alter their motion just a bit from what it normally is, did they sleep well last night, etc, etc, etc).

Again, pitch counts are great as a GUIDELINE, but educating your players, doing proper warm-ups, proper training, using proper mechanics, and learning how to listen to your body are also critical. These issues are too easily overlooked when pitch counts are being used as a hard, fast rule vs as a guideline.

I’ve seen situations where very good softball players (strongest arms on their team) and they are the ones experiencing arm pain. Why? Because they often throw with ONLY arm. Everyone else on the team has to use their WHOLE body to get their strongest throw off.   But players with really strong arms can use just their arm and still throw harder than just about anyone on their team. They are very STRONG. They may never have had coaches get on them to use their legs or the rest of their body to make their throw. Sometimes coaches are looking at the end result only (Wow! What a smokin’ throw!) and pay no attention to the process (yeah, the throw was great, but they could have done it better – used their leg/body vs just their arm).

As a coach, in practice, I don’t care so much if the end result “looked good” I want you to do it RIGHT! And I want you to do it right over and over and over and over again until it’s second nature and you no longer have to think about it.

Do you know what was in baseball guy’s response?

“Agree absolutely, but that assumes a coach with player interest paramount…”

Ouch…okay, now my heart hurts because this just brings to light the unfortunate truth that there are coaches out there who are NOT coaching with the player’s best interest at heart. That’s another topic, but disheartening all the same.

Do I think you’re a bad coach if you don’t make every call right? Do I think you’re a bad coach if you put your player’s in to situations every now and then that DO push their limits? No I don’t. It happens to all of us. We won’t always make the right call. We may get “stuck” in situations where we have to push players a little farther than we’d typically like physically, but do to so in and of itself doesn’t make you bad. However, do to so without any regard to what’s best for the players is just not right. The ones who DO have their player’s best interests at heart with likely do everything they can to minimize the negative effects of their “push” before (if possible), but certainly during and after.

There is one more thing to consider in regards to boys vs girls in this whole strain on the body issue. As a coach who deals with high school aged girls – fact is MOST are just about done growing if not completely done. There is typically no more serious growth going on with these players. However with baseball that’s not necessarily true. With high school aged players and maybe even college players, there may still be significant growth or development still taking place with throws yet another factor in to play for baseball players, coaches, and parents.

Thanks for letting me share ALL of that with you. My venting is done for the day. And imagine…this whole “conversation” took place right there on Twitter. Like I said, it’s a pretty cool thing. Follow me and join in a conversation with me at Twitter.com/staciemahoe.

See you there!
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Don’t forget, you can also connect with me and many other great fastpitch fanatics at Fastpitch World. http://fastpitchworld.ning.com

Next week, here on the blog beginning on Monday, I’m running a 5-Day Mini Guide to Coaching Kids. Some very interesting stuff I thought you’d be interested in.

Plus – Fastpitch Talk Radio – Episode 19 will be ready for you soon. Continuing on the “Hot Topic” of the Month, College Recruiting. I’ll going to talk about an Academic Eligibility Issue you may not fully understand, so tune in to Fastpitch Talk Radio next week to listen in.

Hope you’re having a great weekend. I’m looking forward to the Bill Hillhouse Pitching Clinic tomorrow. IF you are on the island of Oahu and have any interest in learning about pitching, please feel free to stop by. Demonstrations will begin at 9am, 12pm, and 3pm at Kapolei High School. Call me if you have any questions, 864-3346.

CLICK HERE to go to the page of softball instructional videos.

This link will take you straight to the pitching video.

I hope you enjoy these. Oh yeah, did I mention that it’s Mike Candrea and members of the USA National Team that are doing the instructing/demonstration in these videos?

IF YOU ALREADY REGISTERED – PLEASE take note of the changes in clinic times!

Slight changes were made to the original schedule in order to secure our Saturday location.

With that said, here are all the details of the clinic…

Bill Hillhouse Pitching Clinic Sessions
September 20 & 21
Registration Fee of $35 covers ONE session on ONE of these dates.

Saturday the 20th will be at Moiliili Community Center – map
Sunday the 21st will be at Kapolei High School

Schedule for the clinic sessions on both days are as follows:

• 9:00-11:00 Ages 9-11
• 12:15-2:30 Ages 12-15
• 3:15-5:30 Ages 16+

Each session is LIMITED to just 12 girls!
Get your registration form HERE
All pitchers must supply their own catcher

Small Group/Team Sessions with Bill
September 27th at Moiliili Community Center

• Must attend pitching clinic in order to qualify for a small group session with Bill
• Up to 4 pitchers per one-hour session
• $160 per group/team
• All pitchers must supply their own catcher
• Click Here to Download Team Registration Form
  

To download and print the flyer for your league, your team, your friends, or yourself – CLICK HERE

The latest information for the pitching clinic is at http://allaboutfastpitch.com/Bill2008.html.

I’m still looking for a good location for the Saturday dates. I do have a field reserved, but I would like to get a spot closer to town. I have been in touch with a few people about other options and once I have finalized my decision on the Saturday locations, I will let you know.

In the mean time, people have already begun to send in their registration for the clinic. Registration forms are available here.

The cost is $35 for participating pitchers.

ANYONE who wants to come and watch (coaches, parents, players, pitchers) may come for FREE. Please encourage anyone you know who has questions or wants to learn more about pitching pitching to come to the clinic. Contact me with any questions you may have.

See you there!

Eek! I cringe when I heard coaches or fathers saying these words to their young (or maybe even not so young) pitchers. I know I’m guilty of it sometimes too. Well, not the “Don’t throw hard” part, but the part when I see a pitcher trying to hard to be too “fine” and I just want the ball in the zone because I know the batter isn’t going to do much, I catch myself saying something to the effect of just having the pitcher get the ball over the plate.

But I do NOT tell a pitcher to slow down in order to gain more accuracy.

So many times I hear young pitchers being told to slow the ball down and not throw hard in exchange for strikes. More often than not what I end up seeing is this young pitcher begin to throw both slow AND wild. So she just went from having 1 issue (not throwing accurately) to having 2 issues (not throwing accurately AND not throwing with any speed/power).

How often to you hear coaches telling their infielders, “Don’t throw hard, just get the ball to the 1st baseman’s chest.” I don’t know, maybe you hear something like that on occasion. I personally can’t think of a time I’ve heard that though. If we don’t use this “logic” for throwing overhand, why do so many insist upon using it for throwing underhand, for pitching?

I know some young pitchers try to “aim” the ball on their own. My 8-year-old does this. She starts of throwing nice and strong. Sometimes she’s a little off – the ball is the right height, but off left or right OR the ball is straight, but too high or too low. These are very minor “problems.” Yet, she will try to slow down to gain more accuracy. It NEVER works. She still throws off the plate, sometimes even worse than when she was going all out, and her ball has very little on it.

So I just remind her that she’s not gaining much by trying to go slower. I ask her if the ball was going straighter (where she wanted it to) when she was throwing slow. She always says, “No.” So she’s beginning to realize that’s not the answer. She’s starting to correct the part of her motion that IS causing the inaccuracy (releasing too late or too early, not keeping her arm swing close to her body, not stepping toward the target, etc).

The results are much better with those kinds of adjustments than they are with “slowing down” to gain increase accuracy.

I talk a little more about this in the most recent Fastpitch Talk Radio episode. It’s just a short episode and you can listen to it HERE.

Another thing I’m picky about is fundamentals. I am big on working proper fundamentals, proper mechanics until it’s second nature. One of my first softball coaches did this for me and I went back to it time and time again whenever I started to struggle. I’ve often wondered what kind of player I would have been had that ONE coach not done that because NO coach after her stressed those mechanics and drilled them like she did. I don’t know that I would have had that to fall back on if she hadn’t been so insistent on going over those fundamentals again and again and again.

Too often I see coaches breeze through the basics. They are so anxious to move on to other more “advanced” skills, but I just don’t see the rush if your team hasn’t gotten the basics down yet. For example, I’ve seen 10U coaches want to work on turning the double play when their team has a tough time simply fielding a ball and making a throw. Why even worry about how to turn a double play when you’re still having trouble fielding a ball and making good throws? I’m not saying that you should never work on it, but it just seems a little silly to me to drop the work on the basics to “move on” to something like that. I would still work the basics in practice and give it some quality time, then maybe introduce the concept of the double and work it a bit. But to spend all your defensive practice working the double play in that particular situation doesn’t make sense to me. Work the fundamentals and those “advanced” plays will come.

Same with when you start pitching. Work those fundamentals! It always baffles me to see coaches/parents/players wanting to go from never pitching before to throwing 5 different pitches in a year. Of course, if you have an unbelievably talented athlete that happens to catch on to the fundamentals and to all of the other aspects of pitching THAT quickly, than by all means, go for it. But most of us don’t have that type of superhero ability. Fundamentals is what’s going to give you the most power and the most accuracy whether it’s throwing overhand or underhand.

If you’re looking for a DVD on pitching fundamentals, the one I personally bought is from www.HouseOfPitching.com (Building the House by Bill Hillhouse).

Another one that’s currently on special for $19.95 is available at Softball Performance. But that pricing is only going to last for the next day or so. If this is something you’ve been looking for, now’s a good time to get it.

Location and times for Sunday (the 21st) is already set – the clinic will be at Kapolei High School on the 21st.

I still need to confirm a location for the 20th (Saturday) and a location for the Small Group/Team Session on the 27th.

Only registration for the clinic sessions are open at this time.
The Small Group/Team Session registration forms will posted at a later date.

Again – Bill Hillhouse will be in Hawaii in September 2008!

Last time, we had WAY too many girls in each session, so this year EACH clinic session (20th & 21st) is limited to just 10-12 girls. That’s why we are running two days worth of clinic sessions – so that we can make more than just 10-12 slots per age group available. One session for each age group will run on Saturday and another session will run on Sunday.

The clinic is $35 for participating pitchers (must supply your own catcher). This fee is good for ONE session. Parents, coaches, non-participating pitchers are FREE.

Also – in order to secure a spot in a Small Group session (on the 27th with no more than 4 pitchers per session), you MUST attend one of the clinic sessions.

So a Re-Cap
20th & 21st (Sat & Sun) – pitching clinic, 3 sessions each day – registration is now OPEN
27th – Small Group/Team Sessions, only 5 hour-long slots available – not taking registration yet

Great play though…I hope the pitcher was okay.

The other clinic is the pitching clinic I’m putting on with Bill Hillhouse of HouseofPitching.com. He was here a few years ago and many people wanted to have him come again. We couldn’t swing it last year, but he will be here again in September. The clinic sessions will be on Sept. 20 & 21. The small group sessions will run on the following Saturday, Sept. 27th. I don’t have the eact time and location yet, but other important information is already up at www.allaboutfastpitch.com/Bill2008.html. When times, locations, and registration forms are available, they will be up at that link.

Last time we had just one day of clinic sessions and that was not enough, so that is why we’re doing clinic sessions on the 20th and the 21st. On top of that we want to be able to keep the groups of pitchers down to just 10-12 per session, so we needed to be able to offer more sessions. Last time we had about 15 per session and that was just way too much. So even though we are offering two days worth of sessions, space IS LIMITED and will fill up very quickly. So keep the dates open and be ready to register once the forms come out. I’ll post it here on the blog when that’s ready and I will also send out notification via the mailing list if you are on it.

This article also talks about the mechanics of pitching and the stress or lack thereof on the shoulder. That’s fine, but what about the rest of the body? The shoulder isn’t the only part involved in pitching.

I’m just a bit surprised at the format of the tournament they talk about in the article because our state tournament here in Hawaii is only 12 teams, single elimination and it runs over the course of 4 days (and does include teams from outer islands who travel away from school to come and play). Now I’m not saying the girls are not capable of it. I’m sure lots of the girls LOVE playing that many games in a short period of time. I would have, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do things.

In high school, the team I was on entered lots of pre-season tournaments where we played a number of games in a short period of time, but pre-season is very different from post-season. In pre-season, you’re usually carrying extra players (those trying to make the team), you’re doing lots of subsitutions (to give everyone a chance to see what they can do), and the “Big W” isn’t all that important. In post season, it’s a completely different story.

I just can’t imagine why a state would run a 16 team double elimination state tournament in just two days. There’s probably a logistical issue I’m not considering? But I would hope that, for the sake of the girls, they’d come up with a better way to run the tournament. What do you think? Read the article here, then leave me a comment below with your thoughts.

We’re looking at September 20-21 for the clinic sessions (2 – 2 1/2 hours) and the following Saturday (27th) for small group sessions. Just like last time, in order to attend a small group session, you MUST attend a clinic session first.

I’m not quite sure on location yet, but we’re looking at the CORP again and possibly another field in town. Ideally we’ll be able to do CORP one day and the town field another day to make it easier for pitchers from different parts of the island to attend a session.

Most likely will run something similar to what we did two years ago. Clinic sessions will be offered by age group. One session will be for ages 10-12, another will be for 13-15, and the last for ages 16+. We’ll run those 3 sessions on Saturday (20th) and if you can’t make the Saturday date, we’ll run them again on Sunday (21st).

Clinic sessions will be limited to 10-12 girls EACH. This is part of why we are running it for two days because 10-12 spots per age group will fill up FAST. So one session of 10-12 girls will be available on Saturday and another will be available on Sunday. Last time we had 14-16 per session and that was too much. This year, we’re only allowing 10-12 per session so that your pitcher will get more attention during the clinic and get more out of it. Also remember, all pitchers MUST bring their own catcher.

As we get closer and closer to the clinic I will provide additional information (finalized location and pricing). Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the clinic. All clinic sessions will be FREE for ANY coaches or parents that want to attend. Bill’s demonstrations during his clinics are very cool, so please come by if you have the chance. There is no charge to anyone who wants to come to see the demonstration and instruction. Only the pitchers that actually go out onto the field and go through drills and get instruction from Bill pay the clinic fee.

Cost to the pitchers will probably be about $40 to attend a 2-hour clinic session in the appropriate age group on the 20th OR 21st. Small group sessions (27th) are one hour long and Bill will work with just your group (up to 4 pitchers) for that full hour. These sessions will probably be about $140. Small group sessions will be VERY limited as we will only run them on one day, so once we finalize location and start taking applications, please don’t wait too long.

Learn more about Bill Hillhouse at www.houseofpitching.com.

These will NOT last long!
Over half the bundles he is selling are already gone ~ some purchase by AAF members.

For all the details, CLICK HERE.