Beginner pitching drills

[sluggers]

Pitching is absurdly complex.

There is absurd amount of confusion about pitching, but pitching isn't complex. (Heck, if @BoardMember can figure it out, anyone can. )

I would teach anyone on my rec teams who wanted how to pitch. Any average girl can be taught to pitch "good enough" to put the ball over the plate and have fun doing it.

Were they throwing the ball 60MPH? Nope. Did they have 10 pitches? No. Could they pitch 14U-Gold? No. Could they "just throw strikes"? Yes.

The problem is that there are way too many people espousing crazy theories.

 

[fanboi22]

My daughter wants to give pitching a try in her 10u rec league, she has had some coaching from some varsity girls with more experience, I know very little about this... She seems to e struggling the most with big high low misses. Any suggestions to get her to learn the release point? Anything else to watch for on high or low misses?

One other comment that I would stress is the Brush Interference. To me that is one of the single most important aspects. As you will know immediately her flaws if she does not have it. If you are doing all the sticky drills without the B/I then you will be severely delayed in your progress. Get DD to feel comfortable with the brush and make sure she feels it on all the drills. That was one thing my DD didn't have as B/I was just getting promoted on here and I missed the boat.

 

[DNeeld]

Any suggestions to get her to learn the release point?

This is fallacy and tells me the varsity girls are telling her something along the lines of "Oh, that was high, release sooner" and "Oh, that was low, release later". We are talking about a physical action that takes place in microseconds. What is the instruction going to be? Release the ball 2 millimeters sooner? Hold the ball 1 millisecond longer?

Adjusting the release point consciously like that is fallacy and will lead to failure and discouragement.

What needs to be done is to teach her to utilize brush interference (brush assisted whip or any number of similar terms) and then just have her throw with proper technique over and over and over. Her body will subconsciously learn what it is to do.

As long as she is whipping the ball and using brush interference, she won't ever consciously adjust her release point.

 

[uncdrew]

There is absurd amount of confusion about pitching, but pitching isn't complex. (Heck, if @BoardMember can figure it out, anyone can. )

I would teach anyone on my rec teams who wanted how to pitch. Any average girl can be taught to pitch "good enough" to put the ball over the plate and have fun doing it.

Were they throwing the ball 60MPH? Nope. Did they have 10 pitches? No. Could they pitch 14U-Gold? No. Could they "just throw strikes"? Yes.

The problem is that there are way too many people espousing crazy theories.

We're coming at it from different places, I suppose.

It's absurdly complex. Multiple grips, spins, all the muscles involved, what to do with the glove. All the angles of all the joints. Cameras measuring optimal positions. Drills out the wazoo to correct hundreds of issues. Just the leg drive alone creates hundred pages of posts in this forum.

Teaching someone enough to go out and do ok in 10U rec? Yeah, that's doable.

Creating a D1 dominant pitcher? Complex.

 

[jsoftballcoach]

We're coming at it from different places, I suppose.

It's absurdly complex. Multiple grips, spins, all the muscles involved, what to do with the glove. All the angles of all the joints. Cameras measuring optimal positions. Drills out the wazoo to correct hundreds of issues. Just the leg drive alone creates hundred pages of posts in this forum.

Teaching someone enough to go out and do ok in 10U rec? Yeah, that's doable.

Creating a D1 dominant pitcher? Complex.

Pitching is almost like playing another sport, and it's hard. Being a great catcher or CF is also hard. Technical and complex? Sure, absolutely.

In most cases you get out what you put in.

If a pitcher knows the correct way to pitch then she can throw strikes consistently. In order to get better, she needs to figure out how to locate the ball, how to mix speeds, how to throw other pitches. After a few years and thousands of pitches, she can get there.

Practicing is not good enough, you also need games and high pressure situations, the mental side also needs the work. You need to fail, you need to succeed.

I'm going through this for the first time and my DD is a pitcher. It started out as "want to try and pitch?" at 8u rec to 14U PGF premier.

We started at 8u rec, 10u and 12u B travel, we left town for A level competition and now play at the highest level. I didn't start DD with a top pitching coach when she was 9, because I didn't know any better. She put in the work, she had a bit of natural movement, and she pitched, a lot. I guess it doesn't hurt that she's now 5'9" with long fingers.

I'm convinced that it's more important for her to do strength and conditioning rather than go to weekly lessons at this point.

TL;DR
find the best PC that you can, ask questions, work really really hard. Be on a team where your DD gets at least half the innings, progress to better competition. Give time off, let them be kids, don't make it a job. Don't be the crazy pitchers mom/dad

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

 

[sjw62000]

TL;DR
find the best PC that you can, ask questions, work really really hard. Be on a team where your DD gets at least half the innings, progress to better competition. Give time off, let them be kids, don't make it a job. Don't be the crazy pitchers mom/dad

I will second this emotion. Should your DD decide to go on this pitching journey (journey isn't a strong enough word, but good enough for now) you will experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Be prepared to see flashes of greatness followed by flashes of "is this her first day?" This will occur, game-to-game, inning-to-inning, and often pitch-to-pitch.

In closing, I think it is great that your DD wants to give it a try and I hope she enjoys it. If she does, you should also be prepared to see a work ethic and mental toughness that many girls her age won't have.

 

[sluggers]

We're coming at it from different places, I suppose.

It's absurdly complex. Multiple grips, spins, all the muscles involved, what to do with the glove. All the angles of all the joints. Cameras measuring optimal positions. Drills out the wazoo to correct hundreds of issues. Just the leg drive alone creates hundred pages of posts in this forum.

Teaching someone enough to go out and do ok in 10U rec? Yeah, that's doable.

Creating a D1 dominant pitcher? Complex.

Parents and PCs don't create a D1 pitcher. The kid creates a D1 pitcher.

Pitching is not rocket science. A lot of PCs want pitching to appear to be some great mystery, It is straight forward.

If a kid has "hundreds of issues", then she isn't going to be much of a pitcher.

The leg drive is strangely magnetic parents. Leg drive is 5 to 10% of the motion, and parents will spend hours trying to get .01% more efficiency.

Here is what it takes to be a dominant D1 pitcher:

1) Throw the ball 62MPH+
2) Have one really good, exceptional breaking pitch.
3) Be able to change speeds.
4) Be able to move the ball around the plate in 3 or 4 inch increments.

 

[uncdrew]

I think we're talking passed one another. And you put some words in my mouth. I didn't say the parent or PC creates a D1 pitcher - pretty obvious there's a girl involved. I didn't say one kid has 100 issues. I said there are hundreds of issues a kid can have.

I agree with much of what you say, but disagree with you about pitching being straight-forward. I really don't think it is, and our pitching forum here with more sticky threads than anywhere else agrees.

 

[Fluid Fastpitch]

I pulled together for my team this (mostly bs-free) playlist of I/R vids, ordered progressively from no idea how to pitch through deep theory... The intention being to introduce components conceptually and drills along the way.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6fHAMWEnBp345hYU6FY-IgpT9FydGnvd

I'm open to constructive curating of that playlist.... hold the flaming, please.
edit: the forum wysiwyg magic is aggressively changing link, think I finally got it to stay, but you'll have to copy/paste

 

[fanboi22]

I pulled together for my team this (mostly bs-free) playlist of I/R vids, ordered progressively from no idea how to pitch through deep theory... The intention being to introduce components conceptually and drills along the way.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6fHAMWEnBp345hYU6FY-IgpT9FydGnvd

I'm open to constructive curating of that playlist.... hold the flaming, please.
edit: the forum wysiwyg magic is aggressively changing link, think I finally got it to stay, but you'll have to copy/paste

Kudos on putting this together to help your team. I would, however, stick mainly to the DFP promoters of I/R and not what i saw from some of these videos, especially the first video of basic pitching drills from the Portage video, or the Fastpitch Power-Forearm Fire videos. If you just keep to the stickies on this website and watch Javasource's videos, you will be miles ahead. I would't confuse the issue with all the videos you have listed.