I've been taking my dd's to the same pitching coach for over three years now and both my girls and I have been happy with him. At the same time I've been thinking lately that a second set of professional eyes might pick up on something different that their current coach isn't seeing so when I noticed a well known pitching coach who lives about 5 hours away from us had a video analysis service I videoed my dd's and emailed it to him to take a look at.
He replied saying that the uses the video analysis to supplement lessons for students he's already worked with personally and mentioned that he planned to give small group lessons about an hour away from where I live and asked if my dd's could attend. My oldest had a tourney that weekend but she's getting plenty of innings with her 14u team anyway but my youngest, who's 11 with a late year birthday, wasn't getting much circle time on her 12u team so I just brought her to the lesson.
His approach to pitching mechanics was not radically different than what my dd had been taught but he firmly believed that men and women have different muscle and skeletal structures that aren't always utilized by male pitching instructors with a men's fastpitch background, which my dd's coach has. As an example, he thought maintaining as consistently fast an arm circle as possible throughout the pitch was more advantageous than trying to accelerate and explode at the bottom of the circle the way most men pitch. He thought the accelerate and explode approach worked better for men because of their greater muscle density and stiffer bone structure but caused women to stiffen up and lose speed as well as negating their more flexible bone structure.
My dd was eager for me to put the rader gun on her the next day and I tried to preface it by telling her not to get too disappointed if any gains weren't apparently visible by the gun readings. Much to my surprise even on our rain soaked uncut backyard with no pitching rubber to push off of she picked up 3-4 mph and her cruising speed was at the occasional high readings we used to get in ideal conditions. He taught her a new pitch (screw) and had a few other different ideas about pitching we didn't have time to get into (he likes the rollover drop better than the peel).
I thought about pushing our scheduled lesson with their current coach to give this stuff more time to sink in but we're having a rainy week here and I figure it's business as usual for my older dd and I may as well find out if he notices any differences and see what he thinks of what my younger dd learned.
Despite the somewhat cheeky thread title I was planning to just tell him who we saw and what he did for my dd and see what he thought of it. I'll just say it was a fling and he lives too far away for us to start a regular affair with him.
He replied saying that the uses the video analysis to supplement lessons for students he's already worked with personally and mentioned that he planned to give small group lessons about an hour away from where I live and asked if my dd's could attend. My oldest had a tourney that weekend but she's getting plenty of innings with her 14u team anyway but my youngest, who's 11 with a late year birthday, wasn't getting much circle time on her 12u team so I just brought her to the lesson.
His approach to pitching mechanics was not radically different than what my dd had been taught but he firmly believed that men and women have different muscle and skeletal structures that aren't always utilized by male pitching instructors with a men's fastpitch background, which my dd's coach has. As an example, he thought maintaining as consistently fast an arm circle as possible throughout the pitch was more advantageous than trying to accelerate and explode at the bottom of the circle the way most men pitch. He thought the accelerate and explode approach worked better for men because of their greater muscle density and stiffer bone structure but caused women to stiffen up and lose speed as well as negating their more flexible bone structure.
My dd was eager for me to put the rader gun on her the next day and I tried to preface it by telling her not to get too disappointed if any gains weren't apparently visible by the gun readings. Much to my surprise even on our rain soaked uncut backyard with no pitching rubber to push off of she picked up 3-4 mph and her cruising speed was at the occasional high readings we used to get in ideal conditions. He taught her a new pitch (screw) and had a few other different ideas about pitching we didn't have time to get into (he likes the rollover drop better than the peel).
I thought about pushing our scheduled lesson with their current coach to give this stuff more time to sink in but we're having a rainy week here and I figure it's business as usual for my older dd and I may as well find out if he notices any differences and see what he thinks of what my younger dd learned.
Despite the somewhat cheeky thread title I was planning to just tell him who we saw and what he did for my dd and see what he thought of it. I'll just say it was a fling and he lives too far away for us to start a regular affair with him.
