Thoughts on PCs and parents looking for a PC. For some of you parents just beginning the journey of having a daughter pitch I thought I’d share a bit of wisdom gleaned from this website and a few years spent as a PC myself. It’s a long journey. Read up on any top flight pitcher in the country, listen to them thank the multitude of PCs over the years, number one almost always being their dad. 95 percent of the time spent pitching will be with a dad or possibly mom. It’s rare to see a successful high school or travel team pitcher whose dad isn’t involved in their development. This is the same with quarterbacks, all the greats will tell you…it was my dad…countless hours of practice. You won’t have enough money to spend on pitching lessons to count as practice. PC are for instruction only really. This is what pitching is, by a long shot…practice. For every hour on a mound, at a high successful level, is backed by hundreds of hours practicing. 12 months out of the year. To just get the basics down, from a raw recruit to serviceable pitcher, will take two to three years. There are no short cuts. This is why you’ll see on this website so many parents complaining about their PC. “We’ve been taking our DD to X pitching coach for six months now and don’t have much to show for it.” So they shop their DD around year after year hoping for that magic connection that will align the softball stars. The next thing you know, after a three to four year period, for those that haven’t dropped out, they can pitch with location, velocity and movement. They are averagely good. This wasn’t because of some magical pitching coach, this is because your DD paid her dues, she practice till she couldn’t practice anymore and then got up the next day and did it again. All the great athletes, no matter which sport, has a touch of OCD. They have to, how else could Tiger Woods hit five hundred golf balls a day when he’s not playing. Kobe Bryant shoots four hundred jump shoots every day. A reporter asked him once “How do you know when you’ve shot four hundred?” Kobe replied in disbelief…I count them. It’s been said by many to become an expert at anything takes 10,000 hours. I tell my girls, we don’t have 10,000 hours to give but we can dang sure can work towards 10,000 pitches.
Technique plays a role in pitching at a high level. I think you can’t go wrong following the advice of Boardmember, Bill Hillhouse and the gurus of I/R. But realize this, there is a lot of slop (variation) at the highest levels. Look at Jenny Finch, then Cat Osterman, Yukiko Ueno and Keilani Ricketts. All top flight pitchers, all using I/R, all slightly different in delivery though. Some brush the hip, some don’t. Some land with the ball of the stride foot while some land flat footed. Some lean like Keilani Rickets while others are very straight like Jenny Finch. Sometimes the hip leads the wrist slightly, sometimes not. There are a few absolutes, and then there is a lot of slop. As your DD is developing you may get impatient and think…NEW PC! Maybe. But I suspect, once you find a decent PC who has patience, it’s really just a matter of putting in the time. This is not an easy skill to master.
Final note, should help you understand what you’re up against. When developing a pitcher I know there are three people to deal with, four if there is a dad involved. The first is me as a PC, the second is the DD I’m talking to and the most important person, who is silent, is the DD’s subconscious. When you or a PC is talking to DD about technique they listen, they want to perform, they can repeat back what you’re saying, they can analyze other pitchers (I have my students do this). Yet, they still can’t perform the required skill on a consistent basis. Why? People speak of muscle memory…there is no such thing. When walking or running my conscious sends the signal to run, the subconscious then initiates the walk/run routine. I tell my girls we are in a collaboration, it’s me and her against their subconscious. We, together, have to train it to properly align her body and throw the ball. We are overwriting code in the subconscious. It has to be trained, retrained, and then trained some more. I'm betting about 10,000 pitches worth of training.
Those are my thoughts on the evolution of a pitcher.
Technique plays a role in pitching at a high level. I think you can’t go wrong following the advice of Boardmember, Bill Hillhouse and the gurus of I/R. But realize this, there is a lot of slop (variation) at the highest levels. Look at Jenny Finch, then Cat Osterman, Yukiko Ueno and Keilani Ricketts. All top flight pitchers, all using I/R, all slightly different in delivery though. Some brush the hip, some don’t. Some land with the ball of the stride foot while some land flat footed. Some lean like Keilani Rickets while others are very straight like Jenny Finch. Sometimes the hip leads the wrist slightly, sometimes not. There are a few absolutes, and then there is a lot of slop. As your DD is developing you may get impatient and think…NEW PC! Maybe. But I suspect, once you find a decent PC who has patience, it’s really just a matter of putting in the time. This is not an easy skill to master.
Final note, should help you understand what you’re up against. When developing a pitcher I know there are three people to deal with, four if there is a dad involved. The first is me as a PC, the second is the DD I’m talking to and the most important person, who is silent, is the DD’s subconscious. When you or a PC is talking to DD about technique they listen, they want to perform, they can repeat back what you’re saying, they can analyze other pitchers (I have my students do this). Yet, they still can’t perform the required skill on a consistent basis. Why? People speak of muscle memory…there is no such thing. When walking or running my conscious sends the signal to run, the subconscious then initiates the walk/run routine. I tell my girls we are in a collaboration, it’s me and her against their subconscious. We, together, have to train it to properly align her body and throw the ball. We are overwriting code in the subconscious. It has to be trained, retrained, and then trained some more. I'm betting about 10,000 pitches worth of training.
Those are my thoughts on the evolution of a pitcher.
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