Should coaches teach pitching and batting?

Before you respond, hear me out. Having only coached a couple of years, I have seen (and been guilty of) bad softball advice given to developing hitters and pitchers (e.g. "squish the bug, hit down on the ball, touch the shoulder, just throw strikes, etc.) that it makes me wonder if we volunteer coaches should focus on the fundamental aspects of softball such as fielding a ground ball, catching, throwing, and how to play positions; and to stay away from instructing the very personal and individual mechanics of hitting and pitching.

For example, in my league, there is a father who is considered "difficult" because he does not want any of his DD's coaches messing with her pitching mechanics since he pitches with her 3x a week and has had a PC for the last 2 years and knows exactly what she is doing right and doing wrong. What advice could a coach possibly add?

Second example is, I have a player with a decent swing and a father who is a p/t batting instructor. When working from the tee or doing soft toss, I instruct very little since they probably have a better idea of how she should swing the bat than I do. You know the saying "we know enough to be dangerous". Maybe we should focus on the fundamentals of softball and leave the very technical stuff for the parents and teaching professionals?

Yes, no, it depends.

Yes, I see a lot of team coaches, some very good, who need to leave pitching and hitting instruction to the instructors.

I see kids who desperately could use the knowledge their team coach has about hitting and or pitching but their instructor and dad don't want her touched and neither of them has a clue.

So yeah, it depends.

SoCalSoftballdad said:

Before you respond, hear me out. Having only coached a couple of years, I have seen (and been guilty of) bad softball advice given to developing hitters and pitchers (e.g. "squish the bug, hit down on the ball, touch the shoulder, just throw strikes, etc.) that it makes me wonder if we volunteer coaches should focus on the fundamental aspects of softball such as fielding a ground ball, catching, throwing, and how to play positions; and to stay away from instructing the very personal and individual mechanics of hitting and pitching.

For example, in my league, there is a father who is considered "difficult" because he does not want any of his DD's coaches messing with her pitching mechanics since he pitches with her 3x a week and has had a PC for the last 2 years and knows exactly what she is doing right and doing wrong. What advice could a coach possibly add?

Second example is, I have a player with a decent swing and a father who is a p/t batting instructor. When working from the tee or doing soft toss, I instruct very little since they probably have a better idea of how she should swing the bat than I do. You know the saying "we know enough to be dangerous". Maybe we should focus on the fundamentals of softball and leave the very technical stuff for the parents and teaching professionals?

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There is more than one way to coach just about anything from pitching to batting, so if they are doing something basically mechanically sound and having success there is no reason to contradict that to make it conform exactly to what you would instruct. Save your coaching for the kids that are receptive to it and the ones that aren't will be forced to succeed or fail on their own. If they start to lag behind, they'll eventually either come to you for help or you'll have to part ways. They may even make more progress than the kids you are coaching which can be part of the learning/growth process for you as a coach. You shouldn't instruct on anything unless you feel you have a firm understanding of what to teach and why you are teaching it. It was years before I was ready to feel fully comfortable to start coaching kids on hitting and I still work on improving in that area. Five years in, I could start a kid pitching with basic drills and positions, but would refrain from tweaking an experienced pitcher.

You don't need to be an expert on the first day to be a volunteer coach. You just need enthusiam, willingness to make the effort, willingness to learn and improve, a knowledge of your own limitations, AND the ability to ask for help.

What I did was basically line up a pitching and hitting coach from within our organization for my team before I agreed to take my first head coaching job. I used those guys for reference for two years while attending clinics myself to try to better understand how to teach, what to teach and why you teach it. Half of what I got out of taking my daughter to different college clinics was the oppotunity to observe how and what was taught at that level and listen to the reasons why. Everyone doesn't agree on everything, but you start to build a foundation of the things that everyone, or most do agree on.

In the Spring, I coached a 14U B team and like you, I know enough to be dangerous. There were a couple of the girls who had personal coaches for pitching and hitting. I had a chat with their parents and asked them how much input they wanted me to have. I ended up not coaching them at all on the specific mechanics that they were learning from a personal coach.

In both of your examples, I would not try to coach the specific skills that the players have a personal coach for, just let them practice what they are working on at the moment. Be sure to communicate this tactic to the player and to the parents.

It also depends on what age/level of softball you are talking about. In the younger ages (12U and lower) most kids don't have personal coaches so it is up to the team coach to teach the basic mechanics of all positions and some strategy. in 14U rec ball it is mostly the same. from 14U travel and up, a lot of the kids have personal coaches and the job of the team coach is to work on the mental side of the game and teach the players strategy.

YMMV

Good posts. Snocatz, in your quest for knowledge, I'd suggest leaning a little less on what people agree on and a little more on comparing everything they say to slow motion video of elite hitters. Siggy's Hitting Clips - ImageEvent

Agreed Mark, sometimes "everyone" is wrong

Yeah. Witness the new stuff from Candrea.

care to elaborate on that last statement Mark??

I think a coach needs to be brutally honest with their own understanding of mechanics & coach (or not coach) accordingly. Having said that, some kids- especially young ones are so mechaniclly bad that even poor advise might be good advise for the time being.

The fastpitch swing was different than the baseball swing according to most at one time. Now Candrea, among others, says differently. Sometimes the majority is wrong.

Mark H said:

The fastpitch swing was different than the baseball swing according to most at one time when dinosaurs ruled the earth. Now Candrea, among others, says differently. Sometimes the majority is wrong.

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Fixed that for Mark. Yea......Glad we never fell for that stuff.......Oh wait, we did.