By the way if your DD plays or will play school ball you need to ask her what they are doing and adjust accordingly. DD was pitching batting practice 4 days a week, lovely.
putting extra pitching time in
- Thread starter dgat7
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She will be in her second year of MS ball in the spring. I will ask her what her coach did with the pitchers last spring.
Is that a sarcastic lovely?
A little bit but DD arm was ready to fall off just be aware what is going on.
DD tells me the coach pitched batting practice last spring. She said he was terrible at it, but at least he did not want to overwork his pitcher.
Thanks for the advice.
My $0.02...
1) DD took a private 30-min pitching lesson one day a week.
2) We would spend an hour/day @ 3 days/week on "bucket time" working on what she learned that week.
3) Down time is important for a pitcher.
4) We shut down every year - no pitching, just speed/agility, between Thanksgiving and New Years.
5) We paid for the lessons between Thanksgiving and Christmas just to keep our reserved time slot year round.
This guy gets it. And his results speak for themself.
I have other opinions on this matter, but most will be stuck down and ridiculed by bucket moms and dads who know better...so keep throwing your 100+ pitches a day, 5 days a week and then maybe DFP should start a new forum for diagnosing medical issues and the first thread will be "why is my DD's arm about to fall off?"
Sorry - just amazed at the ignorance of parents who talk and post about their kids on social media, team sites, other boards and here putting in "work" because they lift/hit/pitch/cross train/run/etc. 4, 5, 6+ days a week.
It's not about QUANTITY...It's about QUALITY. If you don't understand the difference, then be prepared for disappointment.
JAD, so you did 4 days a week of bucket time and the pitching lesson? I assume you did not do bucket time on a lesson day.
When it came to a week with a tournament did you cut back on bucket time? The approach I have been taking is my DD should skip bucket time the day before a game or tournament, and rest the day after a 2 day tournament. She seemed fine practicing with me the day after her team had only a doubleheader for the weekend and she pitched one of those games.
We would do a pitching lesson one day a week and bucket time @ 3 other days. Depending on the schedule and how many games DD pitched over the weekend we would adjust accordingly. If she pitched more than 3 games on the weekend we might drop down to 2 bucket days. There is a fine line between pushing a pitcher to be the best she can be and pushing her over the edge. I have seen it go both ways and the "line" is different for everyone.
As [MENTION=12447]junkball[/MENTION] mentioned, it is about quality of quantity when it comes to bucket time. My DD and I would may spend an hour together, but a lot of that time was spent talking about the her last lesson, talking about last weeks game scenarios, talking about the next weeks game scenarios, talking about life...we would also spend @ 10 minutes just warming up throwing overhand, then would go through a progression of long toss before she ever threw a pitch. A typical one hour bucket session was usually less than 100 full speed pitches.
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I am reluctant to push my pitching DD even to the point of being the best she can be. Before she started pitching this past summer, she saw softball as simply a fun thing to do with friends. It has long been her sister who has pushed herself to be the best she can be. My pitcher does not know if she wants to college ball. Right now she has set her sights on being the best pitcher on her MS team (not a challenge) and the best on her TB team. She is close to that, if she isn't already the best on that team. I imagine I could easily end up pushing her over that fine line without even realizing it.
Somehow we keyed onto timing her practice with me for 40 minutes, including warm ups. Some of that time is spent with the two of us being silly. I want the practices to be fun, and more important, I want them to be time we enjoy being together. I doubt we are near 100 full speed pitches.
My DD was always the #1 or #2 pitcher on her team, not because she was great, but because we took baby-steps bringing her up through the levels of TB. I always thought it was better to be the #1/2 pitcher on a B-level team vs. #3 on an A-level team. I used the motivation that the team was counting on her to help them win to make her want to practice harder.
I understand that you do not want to push your DD over the line, but pitching is something that you should either commit to 110% or give it up.
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