Well this weekend we played in a tour. We played 6 games my DD pitched 5 of them.. They only went a average of 4 innings because of time limits.. She pitched 3 on Saturday and never slowed down or showed any sign of getting tiered. Saturday night i asked her if she was sore or tired and she said her legs were tired but not sore. we iced her shoulder saturday night and sunday morning she was good to go.. She pitched two game Sun. the first one she though an 3 inning no hitter K's for 9 batters and walked only 2.. the next game she did well but started slowing down and loosing some control in the 5th inning.. She is only 10 and pitches very well for her age. What is too much. As long as she is performing well is she ok to continue or should i limit the pitching to what i think is ok... At this age should she only be pitching 2 to 3 games in a weekend??????? or is it ok to let her go till she shows signs of fatigue??
How much is too much
- Thread starter hillbily75
- Start date
Welcome to Discuss Fastpitch
Your FREE Account is waiting to the Best Softball Community on the Web.
- Feb 4, 2009
- 112
- 18
3 games Saturday 4 innings each, 2 games sunday 8 innings for 20 innings in two days. conservative average of 12 pitch/inning and that comes out to approximately 240 pitches. Thats not counting warm ups...
Huge other threads on this... but assuming the games on Saturday were pool games then it is not acceptable that she pitched ALL 3 games. Even if your second pitcher is sketchy they need to be developed and get game time or they will never be ready to take on some of the load.
It is not so much this particular weekend - it is the weekend after and the weekend after that and the following months and years. For a 10 year old I would also be hesitant to have her working on her pitching for a couple of days after a weekend like this - which also doesn't help her development as a pitcher as she gets older.
There are two kinds of problems:
(1) Traumatic injury: occurs from pitching when fatigued. When she gets tired, her technique goes. When her technique goes, she could be injured by straining or spraining a muscle.
(2) RSI (repetitive strain injuries): occurs from repeating a physical task thousands of time (e.g., using a mouse, typing a keyboard, or throwing pitches).
No, your DD shouldn't be pitching 5 games a weekend or 3 games a day. IMHO, two games a day is OK, or four games over the weekend. Then, she should have a couple of days off.
Yes, this means your DD's coach will have to *coach*. Wow...imagine that.
Full disclosure: My DD didn't start pitching TB until she was 13 YOA, and then she was pitching 5 games or more every weekend, and I absolutely loved it. She played 4 years of college. At this time, she cannot sleep on her right side due to the pain in her arm. The long tendon of her bicep on her pitching arm has been stretched so much she can move it around with her fingers.
(1) Traumatic injury: occurs from pitching when fatigued. When she gets tired, her technique goes. When her technique goes, she could be injured by straining or spraining a muscle.
(2) RSI (repetitive strain injuries): occurs from repeating a physical task thousands of time (e.g., using a mouse, typing a keyboard, or throwing pitches).
No, your DD shouldn't be pitching 5 games a weekend or 3 games a day. IMHO, two games a day is OK, or four games over the weekend. Then, she should have a couple of days off.
Yes, this means your DD's coach will have to *coach*. Wow...imagine that.
Full disclosure: My DD didn't start pitching TB until she was 13 YOA, and then she was pitching 5 games or more every weekend, and I absolutely loved it. She played 4 years of college. At this time, she cannot sleep on her right side due to the pain in her arm. The long tendon of her bicep on her pitching arm has been stretched so much she can move it around with her fingers.
Last edited:
- Jul 26, 2010
- 3,553
- 0
3 games on Saturday??? Was this some kind of HS single elimination tournament or a travel style tournament where you have pool play on Saturday and single elimination bracket play on Sunday?
-W
-W
I don't think the 20 innings over 2 days is a that big of a deal. However toss in the warming up 5 times and you have a lot of pitching for a 10 year old.
ok went back and looked at the pitching chart for the weekend.. we only had her pitching 283 pitches for the weekend.. so i figure she pitched around 300 so not as bad as i originally thought i was putting her around 500..
the games were time limited at 1:10 so they averaged 4 innings.
the coach and i discussed this at the practice after the tour and came to a agreement.. we have a couple of other pitcher one that wasnt there that weekend and the other one was just off her normal game. so that will not happen again.. and i agree that no more than 1 1/2 to 2 games a day is plenty..
what would you suggest as a # per game.. maybe do things like baseball and give them a limit that they can pitch too and then change pitchers regardless of the situation.. may help the pitchers too.. we might try that out this weekend....
