Teaching pitching to

[Rick M]

My experience is only with my daughter and her friends and teammates, but I'm going to disagree with the idea that speed should be the priority at 10U. I'm assuming that a 10U preseason clinic will mostly be for beginner pitchers, and that the league as a whole will be comprised of girls seeing kid-pitch for the first time.

If this is the case, velocity without location is useless. If a girl can't throw strikes, she's not going to pitch much. The coaches have no choice but to put someone in who can at least put the ball over the plate, or else everyone on the field is just standing around. And that's not good for anyone.

A 10U kid is not going to learn how to pitch between now and April. But if she can get out and throw strikes and get a taste for being in the circle, that's the first step towards becoming a pitcher. That's what will light the fire that leads to real lessons and working on their own to get better, more accurate, and faster.

DD was the kid in 10U who didn't throw very hard, but threw mostly strikes with only the very beginning of an IR delivery. There were many bigger, stronger kids who could throw much harder than her, but with bad mechanics and lots of walks. At the time, even though she was slower, she had many more strikeouts than the hard-throwers because 10U hitters are bad. Four years later, she's the only one still pitching.

 

[Megobee]

. I'm assuming that a 10U preseason clinic will mostly be for beginner pitchers, and that the league as a whole will be comprised of girls seeing kid-pitch for the first time.

If this is the case, velocity without location is useless. If a girl can't throw strikes, she's not going to pitch much. The coaches have no choice but to put someone in who can at least put the ball over the plate, or else everyone on the field is just standing around. And that's not good for anyone.

you hit the nail on the head, it’s kind of a catch 22.
you have all confirmed my thoughts that MECHANICS should be taught first and then speed and accuracy.

where DD trained, they did this thing sometimes where they had all the pitchers let loose and throw it as hard as they could. Then after, they asked all the catchers how were the pitch locations, to which the catchers confirmed they were mostly strikes- demonstrating to the pitchers that it was ok to let it fly, they didnt have to sacrifice speed to throw strikes!

 

[Sparky Guy]

Agree with teaching speed first. It's a bit over an oversimplification but they need to learn to let it rip. When they do that with good mechanics control will come with practices.

Coaches are so obsessed with "throwing strikes" at young ages, that we support the concept of changing the delivery or taking something off to throw strikes. It's a short cut that hurts the pitcher over the course of their career.

Amen... Sings the choir.

When I'm working with beginner pitchers, mechanics is the first thing I have them work on. Then I have them working on trusting their mechanics to feel loose and throw the ball freely. During the process I will tell the pitcher and her parents I don't care where the ball goes. I'm worried about what is happening at the rubber, not at home plate. When things are right in the circle what happens at the plate takes care of itself. Once a pitcher AND the parents understand that control will come with time and work it makes things much easier for the both of them.

I will often explain to the parents the difference between a strike and ball is only a few milliseconds at the release point. It takes a lot to control the last few milliseconds.

 

[heman1202]

I am wondering why teaching mechanics and speed are being discussed as if they are mutually exclusive. Why not teach them together.

 

[djcarter1966]

My experience is only with my daughter and her friends and teammates, but I'm going to disagree with the idea that speed should be the priority at 10U. I'm assuming that a 10U preseason clinic will mostly be for beginner pitchers, and that the league as a whole will be comprised of girls seeing kid-pitch for the first time.

If this is the case, velocity without location is useless. If a girl can't throw strikes, she's not going to pitch much. The coaches have no choice but to put someone in who can at least put the ball over the plate, or else everyone on the field is just standing around. And that's not good for anyone.

A 10U kid is not going to learn how to pitch between now and April. But if she can get out and throw strikes and get a taste for being in the circle, that's the first step towards becoming a pitcher. That's what will light the fire that leads to real lessons and working on their own to get better, more accurate, and faster.

DD was the kid in 10U who didn't throw very hard, but threw mostly strikes with only the very beginning of an IR delivery. There were many bigger, stronger kids who could throw much harder than her, but with bad mechanics and lots of walks. At the time, even though she was slower, she had many more strikeouts than the hard-throwers because 10U hitters are bad. Four years later, she's the only one still pitching.

This seem like its important and well if they can't hit the side of a barn you can't really let them pitch in a game...but this usually gets translated into do whatever it takes to throw strikes and once they do don't change anything that will mess with that which leads to all sorts of bad thing usually a sacrifice of mechanics because if I just do this the ball goes over the plate even if "this" is mechanically wrong.

 

[Powerof9]

In 10u, you can have speed without proper mechanics but you can't have control without correct mechanics. The reason is you have some girls at 10u that are 5'8 180 pounds vs girls 4'5" 80 pounds. Teach both these body types properly IR mechanics then speed, safety, and control will come with practice of 4 days a week. In the beginning of pitching at 10u the team with the fewest walks wins because there are few balls you can actually hit. The travel ball 10u girls are much more seasoned and can learn to throw strkes with bad mechanics because they have become efficient at doing incorrect motions by repetition.

 

[uncdrew]

I kinda feel like we did all of them together. Mechanics, speed and accuracy. But perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly.

 

[Hillhouse]

Many well intentioned misinformed parents/coaches are all about speed right out of the gate.
Proper mechanics should be 1st priority. The girls need to be mechanically sound to prevent/reduce the risk of injury.
Once proper mechanics are in place then it’s time for speed/accuracy. I’m not sure one trumps the other at beginning stages. The goal IMO is both because one is no good without the other.

This is so true. Most parents can only SEE speed so they think that's the measure of their DD's success. "A fast pitcher at 10U will be even faster at 18U" and thats just not always so. In fact, it rarely is.

At this age, 90% of the hitters are terrified of getting plunked. So if you can throw it over the plate you will get 15 k's a game!!!!! Add speed that and you'll get 20 Ks.

I'm just not sure why you can't teach it all together? With mechanics comes a lower chance of injury. The "throw it harder" mentality leads to people doing things physically wrong and taxing for that speed and creating 100 bad habits (all in order to strike out a 10 year old!!!). The long game is what counts, not the shortsighted 10U game.

Personally, I think the first thing that needs to be taught to a young pitcher is WHY does the ball go where it goes, so they can understand their body movements and mistakes. If she knows WHY the ball went inside or outside she's going to be in a better position to fix the next pitch vs. not understanding anything that's going on. And with this comes mechanics and speed.

Bill

 

[Gags]

Telling my daughter to "let it rip" would end up with 3-4 HBP per inning.

We started by learning to throw underhand. And best I can tell, her speed playing catch isn't really that far off from her full windup. I attribute this to I/R - if the mechanics are (mostly) there, speed is almost a byproduct.

 

[radness]

Hilarious
Megobee...
Wait to see wait the instructor does.
There will probably be some structure to the method.

Its just funny....
Questioning from the get go
... part of the process of learning curve for all...

Learn from every situation!

Everybody starts somewhere!

☺