Pitching instructor said... 10%

[PJR202]

What if that's not the goal? Or at least, not the priority. By 14 maybe you need to sorta have your sights there, but _under 14_? ...meh.

I'd be interested in what percentage of the girls this coach thinks aren't better at the end of their their season compared to the end of their previous season. I bet it's close to zero, if not zero.

Neither of my girls was/is interested in playing in college. My younger one enjoys playing and loves the camaraderie, but her favorite thing is to say "what kind of loser would I be if I didn't have softball? I would literally be doing nothing with my life." The drama of it makes me laugh, but at least she appreciates that she's bettering herself in some capacity.

I can't even get her to like the idea of teaching pitching lessons after high school. She would be making straight cash at $40 or more per hour and setting her own schedule. She has no idea how awesome that would be for a college student living at home.


As for your second point, I think there's a big difference between whether they improved vs how much they improved. In our program, the better natural athletes will improve at a faster rate just via team practices. The other kids improve as well, but not much. It drives me nuts when either of those types of player doesn't work at all in the offseason. They show back up, and we're a small program so we really can't afford to turn anyone away with tryouts.

Our hitting last year was better, but we still only had five girls bat over .300. Two of them will be gone this season, and they both hit .400+. So now we need to make up for them, which means we'll need like three more .300 hitters. I think my daughter will end up being one of those, but where will the others come from? We have a couple other potentials, but ultimately there are several on the team who could fill those spots if they even spent once a week hitting off a tee in the offseason.

But they don't think that way. They just play when it's time to play, and then get frustrated all season when they start varsity and can't even hit .200. Other programs have kids who can all hit .300 and are competing for varsity slots with openings that expect a .350 hitter to fill it. Kids who work in the offseason competing with other kids who work in the offseason. We just don't have that luxury right now, so we hold two practices a week from June until the start of spring practices...all open/optional sessions. Of the 14 or so we expect in the spring, we average 5 or 6 at open sessions, and it's usually the same kids. Most of the others are doing no other sports or extracurriculars.

This winter will be 3x per week in the batting cage. That's our situation. We need more than improvement from season to season--we need drastic improvement. Those are the kids we want, and really it's more that we need parents who are like-minded and care about the team's overall success.

 

[El Oso]

Where did he say that? I've re-read it a few times and I don't see where @Rolling Hard says anything about lessons. He spoke about pitching more than once a week, but I don't see what you're seeing.

When I read his post -- "Simply inform your DD that you are not going to pay for lessons unless she commits to throwing bullpens. Pitching is not easy and requires a 3 or 4 times a week commitment. Without that you are lighting your money on fire. There may be some exceptions but very few are going to develope into a college pitcher throwing once a week." ------ When you combine the first bolded part with the 2nd, the connection seemed clear to me.

 

[sluggers]

Is this a reflection of parents just throwing money at their kids without parenting guidance or what is this?

Parents don't understand athletes and sports. Few parents have been around high-level athletes, and therefore don't know the quantity of work required.

Anyone who has played at the collegiate knows the truth about athletic performance.
It takes (1) talent, (2) work and (3) proper instruction. Take away any one of those three, and the athlete will never get close to achieving her full potential.

 

[daywalkerdad]

The hardest part is getting players to understand; the amount of work to get small gains; small gains can be big results.
The difference between the best/worst pitcher in a tournament may seem great but is often small. While sometime it is stuff, like velocity and movement, it is often the execution of 1 pitch in 5 or 1 in 10 that is the difference.
It is just a lot of work to improve 1-10.
Probably more obvious in hitting getting on 1 more time in 10 at bats.

 

[steve1244]

My daughter is 13, she started pitching when she was 8. Started pitching when she was 9, was in lessons sporadically when she was 9 and 10. She started playing travel when she was 11 and started weekly lessons, which we are still doing.

The amount she'd actually practice pitching during the week has changed a lot over this time. When she was first starting, we'd be pitching every day just about, because there were a lot of bad habits that had to get unlearned and good habits that had to get engrained. For about 12-18 months, there were a lot of balls 3 feet over my head or into the bushes on either side of me. Most of that work was to build a relatively fundamentally sound motion that worked for her. At this point, she's found that motion, so aside from practice and games on the weekends, she may end up warming up and doing a bullpen outside of lesson day only once a week. But, on those other days, she's working on spins or doing strength/conditioning.

So far, this decreased amount of pitching has worked pretty well. I think it's important as pitchers get older to build in some strength work, both to help their development and to protect them from injury. Plus, it's a long road and I personally think the minimum required dosage to achieve a desired result when it comes to throwing live pitches, is best.

 

[RADcatcher]

Parents don't understand athletes and sports. Few parents have been around high-level athletes, and therefore don't know the quantity of work required.

Anyone who has played at the collegiate knows the truth about athletic performance.
It takes (1) talent, (2) work and (3) proper instruction. Take away any one of those three, and the athlete will never get close to achieving her full potential.

There is some accuracy to that!
And within the group that seek out instruction, apparently some people are paying an instructor (AKA for instruction) may not be willing/wanting to apply what the instructor is advising.
Meaning~ apply the lesson to its greater potential by working on things outside the lesson.

It's also evident that people are willing to pay for something and not necessarily want to put in the extra time to get the Fuller benefit of many spent.

 

[FP26]

Fortunately (or unfortunately...) for my DD, she had me to practice with any time she wanted. When she was 12 and under, the process was easy. Since I was a coach, we attended practice together. When we were not at practice she would often ask to play catch or to practice hitting. I rarely had to remind her. When she turned 13 it became more difficult. Her motivation with practice began to drop. I didn't help matters much because I was bugging her way more than I should have. Eventually I started to believe that her interest in the sport was waning, so I loosened up on the reminders. Ultimately that worked in both of our favors. Above all else, DD has a strong desire to be successful in anything she does. When she started to get shelled at the first tournament that spring, she became very upset with herself. It didn't take long for her to start asking me to catch for her again. That work ethic never faded until she was done with college ball. We both learned from the experience.

 

[Hillhouse]

When I read his post -- "Simply inform your DD that you are not going to pay for lessons unless she commits to throwing bullpens. Pitching is not easy and requires a 3 or 4 times a week commitment. Without that you are lighting your money on fire. There may be some exceptions but very few are going to develope into a college pitcher throwing once a week." ------ When you combine the first bolded part with the 2nd, the connection seemed clear to me.

ok, I got a different takeaway. I took the first bold print part as him saying they refuse to pay for lessons without additional practices each week. And for the 2nd part in bold lettering, my takeaway was the "throwing once per week" to be her actual pitching lessons. As in, the kid pitches only once per week, and that once is with the pitching coach.

Thankfully I haven't had to do it too often but, I am not shy about sending parents an email telling them I think they should reconsider pitching lessons because the kid won't practice and do work between lessons to get better. For me, it's pretty easy to see when a kid isn't putting in the time between sessions. And it's an important distinction between a kid struggling with getting good at something vs. not getting better from a lack of work.

El Oso, would you say lessons are a 100% must even if the coach, and only coach in the area, is a staunch H/E style coach? The great pitchers who grew up with H/E coaches became great when they stopped doing many of those H/E things. Whether they stopped doing those things concisely or not, somewhere along the way that pitcher stopped doing many (if not MOST) of the things that H/E coach is instructing. But for every 1 pitcher that overcomes the bad H/E mechanics, there's plenty who underachieve and will be held back. The fact that H/E is completely unnatural and every movement has to be taught, sometimes even forced because of how unnatural it is, there's some who develop that muscle memory and will never be as good as they could be as a result. I see it every day in the cages next to me during my lessons, and I feel so bad for those kids. There's some great athletes who struggle more than necessary as they try to fight their own body, doing what the coach instructs. Anyway, just curious your thoughts on lessons and H/E coach.

 

[PJR202]

El Oso, would you say lessons are a 100% must even if the coach, and only coach in the area, is a staunch H/E style coach? The great pitchers who grew up with H/E coaches became great when they stopped doing many of those H/E things. Whether they stopped doing those things concisely or not, somewhere along the way that pitcher stopped doing many (if not MOST) of the things that H/E coach is instructing. But for every 1 pitcher that overcomes the bad H/E mechanics, there's plenty who underachieve and will be held back. The fact that H/E is completely unnatural and every movement has to be taught, sometimes even forced because of how unnatural it is, there's some who develop that muscle memory and will never be as good as they could be as a result. I see it every day in the cages next to me during my lessons, and I feel so bad for those kids. There's some great athletes who struggle more than necessary as they try to fight their own body, doing what the coach instructs. Anyway, just curious your thoughts on lessons and H/E coach.

You werent asking me but here's my take.

I started out teaching my daughter via youtube. It didnt take long before I realized I didn't understand it well enough to teach and critique it. I took her to lessons and she went for 18 months to a H/E instructor. After I got a lot more knowledge and experience, I eventually decided to take her a different way and took the lessons back over last year. But, having some sort of instructor I think for 99% of kids, is critical. Even if they teach HE release, the basic mechanics (if taught correctly) aren't much different. Plenty of kids at doing fine with HE...they just aren't gonna go the distance.

 

[sluggers]

There is some accuracy to that!
And within the group that seek out instruction, apparently some people are paying an instructor (AKA for instruction) may not be willing/wanting to apply what the instructor is advising.
Meaning~ apply the lesson to its greater potential by working on things outside the lesson.

It's also evident that people are willing to pay for something and not necessarily want to put in the extra time to get the Fuller benefit of many spent.

I don't know how it is with catching. With pitching, it's hundreds of hours of practice.

I saw a situation unfold which was awful. This kid had all the talent in world--6' tall, athletic, strong, smart, confident, and very coachable.

She took lessons from an accomplished Pac10 pitcher. She and her parents were told simply and plainly what it took to be "good." For whatever reason, she didn't put in the time. It was painful to watch. Kids with 50% of her talent passed her by.