Too Much Focus On The Result

[CoachFP]

I taught my daughter how to pitch and to use proper mechanics beginning at age 9. At 10U travel she pitched well and could throw strikes. She was a smallish girl but could throw strikes and change speeds with the best of them. If you have a kid that is throwing with a less than optimal motion, then maybe pitching at 10U is not for her. I strongly disagree with the throw it hard and the control will come. I say throw it well and the speed will come.

 

[halskinner]

The coaches want to win. I can't really blame them. It would be great if I could work with a student for 2 years, before she ever pitches in a game, but that isn't practical from a parent's stand point. So, although I am preaching "never throw down the middle of the plate." That is the only strike that some volunteer umps are going to call.

2 YEARS??? GOOD LORD AMY. The parents in m y area must be completely different then other areas I guess. When it comes to brand new begginers for rec leagues, around here they dont sing up to start their first lesson until 30 days before league play starts. Then 2 to 3 weeks before their rec league season is over, they stop coming to lessons, then go play other sports.

I HAD 30 DAYS to take a brand new wannabe 8 to 10 year old pitcher from first lesson to getting in the circle and throwing 3 innings (all they were allowed per week) of defeating the batters. And, if the parent and student did not see great results the first lesson, you didnt see em again, that simple.

I know what very young pitchers see as success; STRIKES AND STRIKE OUTS, that spells succes and nothing else. Anything short of those two thing are not seen as a successful outing.

What amazes me is that there are still instructors out there that will tell parents "we will work on the dropball fo a year,, then another pitch the next year, and so on. And parents will still write that check! If I would have ever told a parent that I would have been tarred and feathere3d.

My students worked at speed AND accuracy at the same time. If after the first lesson they did not have at least decent speed AND throwing mostly strikes, I felt that I had failed them.

Strikes and strrike outs are what young beginners see as success and those successes are the two things that build confidence. Pitchers using my advice can get so much confidence that their team's coach would come to the academy and ask why my students had such an attitude. The pitchers did not want to listen to them anymore. I would explain that it was a confidence thing. I would ask iof they were striking out alot of batters and they would say yes. "then coach, with all due respect, they know more about striking out batters than you do,, AND THEY KNOW THAT ALREADY".

Sorry for the rant but that has been a pet peeve for many years

 

[FrozenRope]

I taught my daughter how to pitch and to use proper mechanics beginning at age 9. At 10U travel she pitched well and could throw strikes. She was a smallish girl but could throw strikes and change speeds with the best of them. If you have a kid that is throwing with a less than optimal motion, then maybe pitching at 10U is not for her. I strongly disagree with the throw it hard and the control will come. I say throw it well and the speed will come.

Teach them to throw the ball well, WITH speed. By NO MEANS am I an expert in the field, but I have developed a pretty strong opinion, based on what I have seen and who gets better, and who doesn't. If you teach a girl to pitch at anything less than 100% of what she is capable of, you're stunting the development of that pitcher. Learn a powerful start. Learn the whip. Learn a fast arm circle. Learn to use the legs. Don't nit-pik too much on the fine tuning of the mechanics. Teach them to throw as hard as they can while you work on the main points of the motion. Once they have the general motion down, and can throw it with good velocity, start to break down the motion and fix one thing at a time. I learned first hand that you cant fix everything at once. IMPOSSIBLE. It takes 100's of hours of work. So why not teach SPEED while they're learning? That's easy.

 

[Ken B]

With good form, you get speed as a byproduct. Control comes from practicing good form.

 

[Carly]

While I understand your point, I have to disagree. Kids have to play the game to learn to love the game.

The emphasis should be getting kids to pitching coaches as soon as they show some interest in pitching, not stopping them from playing the game.

I should have specified, they should absolutely start playing as soon as possible. I just don't think they should start pitching competitively for a while. And unfortunately parent volunteer rec coaches are often the biggest "just throw strikes" culprits, so even trying to pitch in that environment can be counter-productive. If the coach has the right attitude it isn't, but at least where I come from it was hard to find a rec coach with the right attitude.

And again, there's never a one-size-fits-all answer to anything. I've DEFINITELY worked with kids who clicked right away and played up to 12U when they were 10U and were out-pitching older kids. But it's also true from what I've seen that A LOT of young pitchers suffer from being pushed into higher competition too early.

 

[Amy in AZ.]

I compare pitching, without knowing how, to going to play a piano concert when you can't play Mary Had a Little Lamb. Some poor girl is put in the circle, she bowls something towards a catcher (that is standing up), then, she eventually hits 2 batters and (here) she has to come out. That is not a good way to learn anything.

But, I don't think this area is any different than any other part of the country. You can put boys on the mound and 90% can throw overhand, somewhere near the batter. Plus, they aren't pitching illegally.

The little girls get very discouraged and then, don't want to pitch, when they are asked to, without knowing how.

 

[GunnerShotgun]

Ya think??
IMO Rec coaches need to understand that if one of their players is getting private pitching instructions, they need to respect that a little by leaving the pitching advice to them and her parents.

But what if they instruction they are getting from their hitting and pitching coach is wrong? Rec league coaches shouldn't be changing mechanics but don't forget they are volunteers (never criticize a volunteer coach).

The issue I have on my travel team is that if your daughter has a HC/PC fine, I won't change a thing. I will tell the parent if I see something that is being taught incorrectly. Some parents just don't' want to hear that they are paying money for bad instruction.

 

[FrozenRope]

I compare pitching, without knowing how, to going to play a piano concert when you can't play Mary Had a Little Lamb. Some poor girl is put in the circle, she bowls something towards a catcher (that is standing up), then, she eventually hits 2 batters and (here) she has to come out. That is not a good way to learn anything.

But, I don't think this area is any different than any other part of the country. You can put boys on the mound and 90% can throw overhand, somewhere near the batter. Plus, they aren't pitching illegally.

The little girls get very discouraged and then, don't want to pitch, when they are asked to, without knowing how.

Lets think of this in a more relative scenario. You have a concert band of 14. Most can play M.H.A.L.L. on their instrument. You just don't have a girl to play the "Piano". Do you take your trumpet player, that never sat behind a piano and throw her up there.... or do you put your aspiring young piano player up there because you know she's had a few lessons, and although she cant play MHALL, she at least knows where middle C is.

This is the scenaio MOST rec ball 10U coaches I know face. I was one of them. The Over/Under for average walks issued per game by our pitchers was 18. The better 10U players tend to play up due to the weak skill level at 10U Rec Ball. My dd, now falls in that category. I don't want her to play that level ball. She's way too interested to stand at the plate and watch 4 horrible pitches on her way to a walk. She would be an all star pitcher in 10U rec, but if she did play that level, I think it would discourage her from working hard to get better.... thinking she's good enough because none of the 10u hiters can hit her.

 

[sluggers]

I coached rec league with both my DDs. DD#1 (the college pitcher) had real control problems but she threw *hard* for her age group. I would put her out there for an inning or two and when she fell apart I would put in another pitcher who could "just throw strikes".

DD#3 was taught the correct way to pitch from the get-go, and she never had any major control. I would still only let her pitch a couple of innings per game. I taught two other kids on the team how to kind-of sort-of pitch, and they did quite well. They all pitched about the same number of innings. The coaches from the other teams hated me.

Ray

 

[CoachFP]

With good form, you get speed as a byproduct. Control comes from practicing good form.

KenB, exactly. Throwing as hard as you can before your form is good will inevitably end in introducing problems that have to be overcome later.