JJsqueeze
Dad, Husband....legend
What has the PC been focusing on in lessons? I think most PCs would have given you a set of drills to do with her and described what to look for in doing them.
If you have 2 minutes to watch DD
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That's kind of an issue I have - we've been sort of all over on focus. It's not a very structured approach, they're pretty laid back. I'm ok with it for the most part, as DD does terribly with excess structure and coaches who are overly strict. She's getting better, but it's a struggle.
That said, she had her absolute best day throwing today. I was catching for the lesson, so I have no video, but she was pretty solid mechanically all around.
Good ! One thing I do is pack a tri-pod. I started recording whole lessons, so I can cherry pick best pitches
JJsqueeze
Dad, Husband....legend
I really don't have any drills for specific fixes, with both of my girls their basic training has really just been the I/R drills from I/R in the classroom thread, coupled with a drill we got from a PC a couple of years ago he called "glove up/ball down" this is kind of an in between drill with a full arm circle but with a limited drive and backswing. Then once they got this down we added walkthroughs and long toss for power and the step backs for better load and explode. The PCs on the board will have better specific drills for fixes than what I can offer.
What we have done is just the K/45/liberty whatever you want to call it, it is a truncated half circle drill. We just worked that drill until her arm whip looked good and then started reverse chaining to the full pitch. Really just three drills BUT when things broke down in trying to reverse chain we would go back and focus on specific fixes in the K. Both my girls have specific things that they have trouble with but it is different for each. For instance, older DD was able to learn how to get and stay open quickly but little DD has a real hard time with closing her hips a little too much. Lil DD had good whip from day one and older DD is still struggling to add a little bend to the elbow.
For instance...lil DD used to bring her arm behind her body on the up swing of the K so she would pitch kind of inside/out. So we spent about a week doing Ks where she would position her arm more outside of her body to make it outside/in. Once she felt that her arm position on the up swing would lead to downstream accuracy we moved on to foot position. She has a tendency to step across the power line by about 6 inches and this would aim her inside or she would overcorrect and throw way outside, so we spent about a week just focusing on that. Then it was on to brushing, she tended to lean and clear so we spent a good month just getting her comfortable with staying tall and keeping the circle close to her body and eventually she started brushing.
So in essence we have used just the one drill but we change the focus within the drill to be on one thing at a time and ignore the rest. Once she gets the hang of a fix we say "OK, now while keeping tall, lets try to get the glove to the catcher a little more", so we are just building things brick by brick.
One thing I have wanted to do for a long time is to see how much my lil one has retained and how well she understands and can articulate what she is doing, so I roped her into going through her practice routine for Emily.... it is uploading to Youtube now and I will post a link.
[video=youtube_share;1SG-zEqSXb4]http://youtu.be/1SG-zEqSXb4[/video]
What we have done is just the K/45/liberty whatever you want to call it, it is a truncated half circle drill. We just worked that drill until her arm whip looked good and then started reverse chaining to the full pitch. Really just three drills BUT when things broke down in trying to reverse chain we would go back and focus on specific fixes in the K. Both my girls have specific things that they have trouble with but it is different for each. For instance, older DD was able to learn how to get and stay open quickly but little DD has a real hard time with closing her hips a little too much. Lil DD had good whip from day one and older DD is still struggling to add a little bend to the elbow.
For instance...lil DD used to bring her arm behind her body on the up swing of the K so she would pitch kind of inside/out. So we spent about a week doing Ks where she would position her arm more outside of her body to make it outside/in. Once she felt that her arm position on the up swing would lead to downstream accuracy we moved on to foot position. She has a tendency to step across the power line by about 6 inches and this would aim her inside or she would overcorrect and throw way outside, so we spent about a week just focusing on that. Then it was on to brushing, she tended to lean and clear so we spent a good month just getting her comfortable with staying tall and keeping the circle close to her body and eventually she started brushing.
So in essence we have used just the one drill but we change the focus within the drill to be on one thing at a time and ignore the rest. Once she gets the hang of a fix we say "OK, now while keeping tall, lets try to get the glove to the catcher a little more", so we are just building things brick by brick.
One thing I have wanted to do for a long time is to see how much my lil one has retained and how well she understands and can articulate what she is doing, so I roped her into going through her practice routine for Emily.... it is uploading to Youtube now and I will post a link.
[video=youtube_share;1SG-zEqSXb4]http://youtu.be/1SG-zEqSXb4[/video]
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Thanks, JJ. PC today called me out on trying to fix too many things at once, and I had to simply nod my head and agree. And I should know better: I teach novices how to ride motorcycles, and that is exactly the approach we use, one thing at a time until they've got it.
So, after a decent think on the way home I've determined that the lack of focus on specific aspects of her pitching development is at least 50% my fault. I will have to focus more myself on making sure I don't overload DD!
So, after a decent think on the way home I've determined that the lack of focus on specific aspects of her pitching development is at least 50% my fault. I will have to focus more myself on making sure I don't overload DD!
JJsqueeze
Dad, Husband....legend
Along those lines, I gave this some thought and If I had to boil down the goal we have set of the basic K drill it would be getting to a point where the motion into release looks something like this. I enlarged the area that shows the ball/hand position and the brush. This is just my interpretation, but when I think about it, when we saw this we started focusing on drive and timing and the K drill became something we used for warmups/checks but we started pitching from full motion a lot more than from the K once she got here. To be able to pull the ball down the circle with a little palm up, nice elbow bend and then brush at release, and generally throw a ball around the strike zone with a slight inside out spin that is not bullet, the posture, hand position at release, body angle (open v closed), body lean (back v forward), arm circle and the weight distribution HAVE to be somewhat correct. So I view these frames as kind of the final test of a good K type drill.
Thanks for that! I'll show DD when she gets in from making giant snowballs in the back yard lol!
AWESOME...!!! going to get DD to watch this
JJsqueeze
Dad, Husband....legend
for those who haven't seen it, this is the clip that got me wanting to see DD describe her motion and see how well she could articulate it to test her understanding. This young lady pitches for Cal now and DD has kind of adopted her as her favorite pitcher since my daughter is also blond, fiery and on the not so tall side.
Here's what Emily's been up to today. Sometimes I miss CA.
