I have been resonating with Morgan Wallen’s new song “I’m a little Crazy” lately. Now that our season is over, I am a full-time youth baseball coach for my 8-year old’s kid pitch team and 5-year old’s tee ball team. My wife and I design the practices, and I am constantly reminded of old techniques vs. what research has shown us to be better. For instance, one suggestion for a drill for our tee ball team was to have them on their knees to learn fielding ground balls. This is what is called decoupling which is where we break down technique and take away the perception-action coupling required for the game. Decoupling is a popular, old-school technique but has been shown to be ineffective and slow for skill acquisition. Instead, we put up cones behind the players and played the “protect the castle” game where they protect the castle by fielding the ball…. On their feet because movement is ALWAYS required to field ground balls.
While we are on the subject, I am completely against almost all drills on the knees because, in a closed-loop skill, the ground is extremely important for the body to adapt to generate efficient movement. Several studies have illustrated this during both the launch and driveline phases. I have only seen one drill that used a one-knee approach because it was used as a constraint to promote greater ground force. Of course, when I say this, people think I am a little crazy because the arguments refer to younger and new pitchers. However, every coach that texts/emails us has a pitcher they think could be really good but “she needs to use her legs”.
The tee ball scene is always funny, especially because all the parents (me included) were coached by “breaking it down” and “learning the fundamentals”. However, these techniques have been proven to be ineffective over the last 30 years. Start to rethink how you coach by asking yourself a couple of questions:
- Is the drill representative of the game?
- Does the drill remove essential parts of the whole movement?
- Or better yet, is this drill how we’ve ALWAYS done it?
Then think about how you can do the same thing by adding back in what was taken away. For ground balls, keep them on their feet and always use a bat, even if you are hitting it soft. Modify drills to gamify the skill you are working on for younger kids (our players had a blast protecting the castle). If it’s how you’ve always done it, challenge yourself to rethink old drills. Please feel free to share videos. I am more than happy to work through these things with you.
People to Follow
I found a post about general fitness testing that sparked my interest. I don’t follow Hannah – Apex Fitness Advisory but their recent post was about a general fitness test. This is likely for older and out of shape people, but most of it can apply to softball pitchers. If you have a pitcher who: 1. Gets injured a lot or 2. Isn’t throwing as fast as they want, Then, maybe you should see how many of these tests they can complete (minus the body composition test, that doesn’t apply). Here are the tests I would use:
1. 20 Push Ups
2. 10-minute mile
3. 1 Minute Dead hang
4. 60 second plank
5. 6 Pull Ups
6. 25 Body Weight Squats
