Thread: Pitching practice - How to make pitching practice with a bucket dad more effective

Inbetween games, pitching lessons and homework my DD and I try to work on pitching & hitting. I would like to make my workouts more effective and fun. During the season we don't get to work together out as much as the off season. We will try to make improvements/refinements when we have some days off in a row or especially if there is rain.

What do you work on and how long?

How much of the practice is drills and how much is pitching?

Do you set goals for the practice or have an agenda?

If your DD is struggling with incorporating something new, do you keep pushing or come back later?

How do you address an incorrect process and still have her feel positive? Or if she is repeating the incorrect process, how do you address the recurrence?

How do you keep it fun and fresh?

What do you work on and how long?

I like to warm up, let her do a few drills to address specific issues, then just pitch.

How much of the practice is drills and how much is pitching?

Well, since you're asking for numbers, I'd say 20 glove snaps, 20 walkthroughs, 20 flamingos, then about 100 live pitches = about 40% of "pitches" are drills and about 60% are live pitches. Timewise it's probably more like 10 to 20% of time on drills and 80-90 on live pitching.

Do you set goals for the practice or have an agenda?

Not really...just try to get a little better than the day before and address any problem areas.

If your DD is struggling with incorporating something new, do you keep pushing or come back later?

Push until you reach the point of diminishing returns. Right, wrong, or indifferent, I like to push mine through a little adversity. Not a lot, but a little.

How do you address an incorrect process and still have her feel positive? Or if she is repeating the incorrect process, how do you address the recurrence?How do you keep it fun and fresh?

Use the sandwich technique: "I like the way you are ......" "we do need to improve.....but we'll get there" "your ....is looking really great." Sandwich the criticism between positive comments.

Address the recurrence the same way. Use a drill if you need to. As for fun and fresh, music helps some. Mixing up drills helps. Letting them experience some success and building them up prior to the tough stuff helps mine.

All that being said, my DD is still a work in progress. Bottom line, the best I can tell, is to work, work work, and work. After you have done all that...work some more. If she is still willing to come along on the ride despite the inevitable frustration from you and her, there is a chance she might make a pitcher.

Originally Posted by left turn

Inbetween games, pitching lessons and homework my DD and I try to work on pitching & hitting. I would like to make my workouts more effective and fun. During the season we don't get to work together out as much as the off season. We will try to make improvements/refinements when we have some days off in a row or especially if there is rain.

What do you work on and how long?

How much of the practice is drills and how much is pitching?

Do you set goals for the practice or have an agenda?

If your DD is struggling with incorporating something new, do you keep pushing or come back later?

How do you address an incorrect process and still have her feel positive? Or if she is repeating the incorrect process, how do you address the recurrence?

How do you keep it fun and fresh?

FIRSTand FORMOST! DO NOT SIT ON A 5 GALLON BUCKET BECAUSE IT IS WAY TO HIGH and she will only pitch high then you will hold the glove low and really throw her off by how bad this looks.!I SEE THIS EVERYWHERE I GO FROM LITTLE LEAGUE TO HIGHSCHOOL.A 6 inch pickle container works well and it will carry 7 balls or buy a catchers chair.If you have a block wall or chainlink fence you can make a square target on it with numbers from 1 to 4 with 4 being the low and inside pitch which most girls don't want to pitch.She can work her way up to any number you both decide like 50 by hitting the numbers on the target.Put a 10 inch red spot in the middle of target as a no pitch zone.
This works really well with a cinderblock wall 6x8 because the whole workout can be done by herself and she will become a defensive player too because the balls come backand she starts close and ends at pitching distance.

What do you work on and how long?

We would work about 60 to 90 minutes.

How much of the practice is drills and how much is pitching?

We did about 30 minutes of drills.

We would work on location, speed and movement for the rest of practice, occasionally doing drills if she was having problems.

Do you set goals for the practice or have an agenda?

Not really...We did this for 4 to 6 times a week, 9 months out of the year, for 5 or 6 years. It depends upon what happened when we started pitching as to what we do. The end of the practice was always working on control.

If your DD is struggling with incorporating something new, do you keep pushing or come back later?

It depends on the situation. The question was our frustration levels. When she and I started getting too frustrated, we quit. You have a job and a family... she has school and friends...so, people are not the same every day.

How do you address an incorrect process and still have her feel positive?

You have to be real with her. You have to be honest. Your DD is not an idiot. And, let's face it, she is being trained by your wife. So, whatever gimmick you try she will figure out in about 30 minutes. A simple, "This is really hard. Sorry, but if it were easy, everyone would do it" is best

Pitching is tough and demanding. It is lonely out there in the circle. Pitching is for the strong, not the weak. If she needs to be propped up and made to "feel positive" every time she is corrected, she should perhaps find a different position.

I'm not saying a kid should be brow beaten, but holding her hand and saying, "Ah, honey, it is OK" is pretty silly considering every time she pitches, the #4 hitter will try to take her head off.

True story: In HS my DD had jaw surgery before the season. During the second game of the season, the coach for the other team had the pitcher hit her in the head. How do I know? The pitcher called up my DD and said, "I'm sorry. She made me do it."

So, if your DD needs counseling after you tell her her arm circle was off, then maybe this isn't her position.

if she is repeating the incorrect process, how do you address the recurrence?

Stop and make her do it correctly.

How do you keep it fun and fresh?

One major thing I can agree with is leave the coaching to the coach. It is wonderful you are involved and I am sure it means a lot to your daughter, but be very careful. If you are paying an instructor you must trust their ability and judgment on developing your daughter’s pitching skills. If he or she is a good instructor they will let them know what they need to work on and give her homework.

When parents correct there can be 3 main problems:

1. Pitchers need to learn to self correct which is typically experimented with during practice. When you point out what she is doing wrong it takes the development of this necessary skill away. You could help with the direction sometimes (i.e: remember what your coach said about high pitches? or I can't remember what your coach said about high pitches. Do you remember? Etc. You can even act like you learned something when she remembers ) but try not to point it out.

2. A good coach will not point out more than a couple of things at a time to work on. You may notice something else she is doing wrong (which is good to make sure the instructor is on the same page). However it can set practice back if she is focusing on too many things.

3. Let the coach be the coach and you can enjoy catching and being Dad. I can’t stress this enough. A young woman wants and NEEDs positive feedback from a father. Often times girls will only hear the criticism even if you told her 10 things she did right she may only remember the one thing you told her she was doing wrong. This is one of the major differences in male vs. female athletes. (There are always outliers but this is true for many) I am currently conducting a research experiment with a University on female athlete burnout. One of the major reasons we come across all the time is issues in the father-daughter/mother-daughter relationships that “it wasn’t fun anymore” because the parent was too involved and they felt they could “never do anything right.” Etc.
I’m not saying you should NEVER correct but try to keep it to a minimum and give lots of positive feedback.

Originally Posted by Screwball

As a child, student, employee, pitcher's instructor and catcher, we all see through the sandwich technique. Get to the point, don't belabor it, and shut up most of the time.

Have the player determine the goal and let her do her own critique. have her google for drills or videos(with supervision based on age). Have a repertoire of things to do and rotate them. One of my peeves is 'throw 50 rises' for example, when you never do that in a gamea dn it can get boring as heck. You have to fine-tune the technique in games while mixing in other pitches (trust me, you are), so might as well do that in practice.

What are glove snaps? If you mean wrist flips or flicks, cut those out right now.

Hillhouse calls it the Up-Down drill. There are videos online. It would be much easier to watch it then for me to describe it. I'm not advocating it for anyone else either....just giving an example of what we work on. The glove snaps or up-downs focus on rhythm, arm whip, release point, and staying tall.

http://www.weplay.com/youth-softball...46-Glove-Snaps