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Lesson Buyer Beware
by Dave
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
As if life were not complicated enough, we Americans are charged with significant responsibility via the simple phrase, "ignorance of the law is no excuse." We are obligated to know all the laws applicable to these United States when those laws and everything which explains, defines, and clarifies them would fill a very, very large library with so many pages that it would be impossible to read them all in a single lifetime! That body of law is constantly increasing at almost an exponential rate. There are attorneys who spend their entire professional lives working on tiny portions of the overall body of law. And these individuals find that they learn something new about their area of specialty on practically a daily basis. Even these studied, experienced professionals make monumental mistakes. When it comes to using a professional attorney, the client must endeavor to understand the law and to "supervise" the hired professional lest his or her mistake cost the client in ways that cannot ever be rectified. So it is with lawyers, so it is with all experts.
Ignorance is unacceptable when it comes to the law. It is also at least inadvisable in every other aspect of our lives including sport. We must constantly keep abreast of the entire body of knowledge pertaining to our own pursuits. We must therefore endeavor to gather and assimilate as much knowledge as possible. I can't speak for you but I know I learn something new about softball on a daily basis.
There are so many sources regarding mechanical and other issues that I know I could never have enough time to read, understand and evaluate them all. I struggle with this. I'm one of those who wants to hear the right answers and to understand the complete logic string which underlies them. I do an imperfect job but I do try.
When I am dealing with a subject about which I know too little, I almost always defer to experts. They not only know their subject far better than I can learn it in a short time, they also are able to explain it much better. So, when my kids wanted to play softball and then to pitch, I knew I was out of my league. I had to defer to an expert. Actually, I have deferred to several experts to teach my kids about pitching.
I am not the type of person who normally can be a passive buyer of these kinds of services. Many are passive about their daughters' pitching lessons. I see them all the time. They are the ones who sit in their car while taking phone calls or engage in unrelated discussions during their kids' pitching lessons. They don't know a lot and because they are busy in other aspects of their lives, they do not have the time to delve into things. I understand and respect that. Loads of people just do not have the time to go further. But I am not able to take that same approach. I have to understand what is being taught. And I question almost everything. Sometimes, I get unexpected surprises from sources previously unknown to me.
I am going to get into pitching from a mechanical perspective today. But before I do, I want to at least mention something about batting which contains a parallel lesson. From the time I first got involved with fastpitch softball, I heard about something called the "west coast swing." The very term insulted me. I heard it as "this is the way the softball hitters in California do it and, since CA has the best softball, they must be right." I started t0o try to understand what the west coast swing was and what its underpinnings were. After a while, it became clear to me that those who talked about this swing were really talking about a style which was often referred to as "rotational." I dug further and was fairly easily able to trace it back to essentially the Ted Williams school. It became clear to me that the question was not one of fact but rather of opinion. I read Charley Lau and others who had written books and articles on the mechanics of hitting. Before long, it became clear to me that many of the claims of "west coast" swing instructors just were not true. I won't go into the details right now but basically, I came to understand that the swing was not a new style, was not endemic to the west coast, and was not necessarily superior to other types of swings. It also became clear to me that loads of people made trade specifically by touting the "west coast swing" and they were loathe to admit any fallacies which were promulgated by them or their kindred. In fact, they were willing to argue every single point whether they believed their position or not. Some of these experts were quite wrong but they stuck to their guns.
More recently, what I have observed is a much lower frequency of folks referring to the "west coast swing." I have also heard many of the professionals who teach swinging start to move away from a purely rotational mechanical style. Many have stopped referring to "rotational hitting." Most no longer argue all of the points they once touted.
As I said, this piece is about pitching. There are several aspects of fundamental pitching mechanics which have given me trouble over the years. One of these is the stride. Another is hip closure at release and thereafter. There are a number of conflicting pieces of advice and "expert testimony" on these issues which I had consumed over the years and now I am trying to sort it all out.
I could not fail to hear Michele Smith talk about pitchers and the degree of angle of their hips. She always speaks about a 45 degree angle. This advice was in direct conflict with what most of the pitching experts I have seen were telling me. Yet, I am somewhat convinced that I merely misunderstood someone or everyone. So let me see if I can explain the issue and why it caused me so much consternation.
When a windmiller pitches, she stands with two feet on the pitcher's plate - her shoulders and hips are necessarily square to homeplate. We call this "closed." As she goes into her windmill and the arm is over the head, she has her hips and shoulders square to third base (first base for a lefty). We call this "open." So the pitcher opens the door and then pitches. What follows ivolves the subject of closing all the way or partially.
I have often disputed Michele Smith's charterization of a pitcher maintaining the good 45 degree angle with her hips as she released the ball. It seems counter intuitive to me because if you try to duplicate it, what you end up with is a motion in which the pitcher must hold herself back - prevent her hips from closing after releasing the ball. It is sort of a linear pitching approach, if you will, b ecause she is sort of slamming her back side leg and hip into the front side after ball release. This puts stress on the front leg, particularly the knee and also seems to hold back natural force from body momentum. But I think I slightly misunderstand Michele.
Recently, a reader of this blog, a friend of mine over the past several years, asked me about the timing of the various parts of the pitching motion. I have struggled with his questions and comments for quite a while and still have not answered him. I suppose it is difficult to put it all together. And hip closure really complicates things.
One of my daughters is more "hippy" than the other. Their pitching coaches have always advocated hip closure in order to promote speed as well as ball rotation on certain pitches and as a way of better controlling the location of pitches. When I questioned one the instructors, he told me that the pitchers who advocate hip openness are generally six foot tall girls with long arms who throw 65-70 without really trying. He went on to say that everybody else needs to close their hip in order to generate the speed needed to compete with these ladies.
That was a simple enough explanation and I bought it since it seemed somewhat logical to me. I saw many girls pitch with open hips and they did generally seem to be taller kids with tremendous speed. Then I saw the Japanese great Ueno and noted that she closes her hips. She throws faster than most - she may actually be the fastest pitcher in softball, I'm not sure. And Ueno is rather diminutive when compared to most Olympic pitchers. She's something like 5-6, 5-7. That cleared things up for me since my kids' coach was validated. Still, I was left with some unresolved issues because of something which happened repeatedly over several years.
Have you ever experienced anything like the following? Your kid is pitching practice when she swings her arm around and strikes her leg with the ball as she comes to the release point. Now that's an interesting occurrence. First of all, the pain must be absolutely excruciating as it drives her body to the ground. Tears follow shortly thereafter. But the pitch itself is something I wish I could bottle because some of the most fantastic curves I have ever seen in my life usually result. I mean, we're talking about a curve which has double the sideways action of anything I have seen world class pitchers throw! If you could harness that pitch - obviously without the pain - you could put out just about any fire in any game at any time. What's possibly worse than the pain, however, are the bruises that result. If this kind of thing happened anytime close to a regular doctor checkup, I'm sure I would find myself locked up and my kids in protective custody. Nobody would believe such a bruise would be self-inflicted. It looks as if it was caused by an adult striking a child with a bat while using all their strength!
In any event, I think this striking of the leg with the pitch is caused by excessively early hip closure. Girls have their curves and it is probably impossible to both close the hip and have a decent arm circle. If you try to do both, what you get is agony and ugly bruising. So there's got to be a better way.
The arm needs to stay in a nearly perfect circle. If it isn't on that track, frist of all, you lose power. Secondly, and more importantly, if the arm is not on a nearly perfect circle, you put too much stress on the shoulder. if you do something in your motion which takes the arm off track, you may cause shoulder injury, perhaps significant injury. This injury potential is really the subject of this piece and how I learned of that conclusion - it isn't my own - will be explained toward the end.
So, if a pitcher cannot pitch the ball around her hip, if she must be open to some degree, then Michele Smith has to be right. On the other hand, if you test this out, you will find that in order to keep the hips open, you have to hold yourself back and that will reduce power, and so she has to be at least partially wrong. The answer is the hips must be open at ball release and nothing should be done to hold back the ball side after release, which means that many or most pitchers should be closed when their bodies come to rest after the pitch.
In fact, it is worth noting that pitchers cannot gain any additional force by forcing their hips closed at the end since that must happen after ball release and it is impossible to get any additional speed on the ball at this point. Once the ball leaves the hand, it is going as fast as it ever will. More to the point, once the back leg pushes off the plate, it has no impetus from which to add any additional force. After push off, the pivot leg has used up its potential to generate force. Thereafter, anything it does to the pitch is caused by its enertia, its forward momentum. Allowing that momentum to continue is what caused the hips to close. Closing the hips doesn't add force but, I believe, preventing the hips from closing causes speed to be diminished since it requires force in an opposite direction. You shouldn't cause your hips to close. It should just happen as the result of an otherwise correct motion with good arm speed.
To sum up, a pitcher needs to keep her arm in a nearly perfect circle from the time she starts upwards until she releases the ball. In order to accomplish this nearly perfect circle, the pitcher must have her hips open in order to get the arm through to release. Hip closure cannot add force, it follows proper mechanics. Ueno closes her hips because her motion causes this to happen. That is, I believe, that. Michele Smith is not wrong but you do not need to keep your hips open at 45 degrees after you have released the pitch. My daughter's coaches are wrong because they believe closing the hips causes force to be added. And, most of all, trying to affirmatively close the hips may knock the arm out of its nearly perfect circle which can cause injury. So, buyer beware.
The second issue I said I would discuss is the length of the forward stride before ball release. Here I have real issues since some of the coaches we have seen emphasize this while some are diametrically opposed to a long forward stride. To understand the issue, the first coach of my kids told them to stride out very hard with an aopparent objective of a landing spot about 5 feet away. This was more or less of a leap in which the back foot was dragged forward. And my kids were little at the time so 5 feet is about right. Now that they are bigger, over 5 feet tall, the stride comes to around 6 feet.
The coach opposed to this kind of a stride advocates a normal walking stride. For me, at about 5-9, and known for having short legs, a walking stride is about 2.5 - 3 feet. There's quite a large difference for anyone of any height and leg length between a normal walking stride and the pitcher's stride the other coach advocated. The pitching stride would be about double the walking stride.
What made me concerned about this issue of shortening the stride was I have seen all the top pitchers throw. I know the pitchers circle is 8 feet from the midpoint of the rubber. I watch these top pitchers routinely land near or on the line. Some come awfully close to exceeding it. When the coach who advocates the shorter stride asked one of these top pitchers about stride length, she agreed with him that it should be short. Yet when she pitches, she lands 8 feet from the rubber. She's just about 6 feet tall! Her walking stride couldn't be any more than 4 feet or so.
I was stuck on this issue of stride length for a couple of years. I didn't give it much thought because my kids continue to take fairly long strides. They haven't "corrected" themselves and shortened up. Now I am glad they haven't because I just read the definitive study on this.
On the link I am about to give you is a study of pitcher's mechanics. It was conducted at the 1996 Olympics. Its chief concern is injury. It seeks to explain pitching motions which cause the least amount of injury. The largest percentage of pitcher injuries in fastpitch softball are those to the shoulder. So the motion which puts the least amount of stress on the shoulder while generating the fastest pitch is the best. The link is here: http://www.softballclinics.com/olympic/olympics01.html
Please take the time to read this study because you really must educate yourself in its findings. You cannot simply rely upon the experts since they often disagree. And when it comes to injuries to your children, ignorance of the realities is absolutely no excuse. You are the buyer of pitching lessons. Let the buyer beware.Labels: lessons, pitching
Permanent Link: Lesson Buyer Beware
 
Somebody Always Gets Shorted
by Dave
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
I am happy that the high school federation decided to move the pitching distance back to 43. My state adopted it for this year, good move. I am also happy to learn that other youth bodies are likewise moving back to the same distance. It is insane to have pitchers in high school pitching from a different distance than they do in age group play. It is just too much to ask of kids this young. They throw for their high school team Monday through Saturday at 40 feet and then go play in front of, perhaps, college coaches on Sunday at 43. Windmilling is just too hard to have kids jumping back and forth in an effort to locate their pitches where they need to be. So the fact that most, if not all 16U and 18U youth play will be at the same 43 feet as most, if not all, high school play is undeniably a good thing. But, as usual, somebody gets shorted. And that somebody seems to be the 14 year old freshmen.
I have seen nothing about any sort of 14U play being pitched from 43 feet. Maybe some organization has adopted this distance and I missed it. But from what I have seen, ASA 14U is going to be pitched at 40 feet for the forseeable future. The same is true for USSSA, PONY, NSA, etc. I think this may be a mistake.
In some high schools, freshmen do sometimes pitch varsity. Of course, it is very likely that even if they do not, their JV or freshman games will be at 43. I know that the NFHS rule change was for varsity but I have not heard of any state which adopted the 43 feet for this year having a sifferent pitching distance for the junior circuits. There's good reason for that since JV and freshman pitchers are often brought up for a variety of reasons. Also, hitters likewise suffer when the pitchers are moved around.
It does not take a genius to figure out that 14 year-olds equate to freshmen. It does not take a genius to know that this is a tender young age at which the distance confusion is likely to take a significant toll. One could argue that perhaps freshmen should be excluded from varsity softball - indeed I know of one school which follows this policy - but from a practical reality point of view, many schools could not play competitively without their freshman varsity pitching ace. They do not want to see any sort of rule prohibiting 9th graders from participation in any sport, least of all softball.
The discussion does not end here since, 13 year-olds equate, generally, to 8th graders and middle school play is likely to continue at 40 feet. I would like to see that come to an end since the boys pitch at full distance from middle school on. But the other side of the argument is some middle schools use 7th, even 6th graders to pitch their games.
The bottom line is somebody is going to get shortchanged. I don't wish to continue the analysis infinitely. I do want to say that when I advocated for HS ball at 43, I had in mind a number of girls who I had watched struggle with their command at 40 feet after playing the winter showcases and other tournaments at 43. Then I watched them struggle yet again to acclimate back to 43. It was a bit too much. But I neglected to consider 14s doing likewise when, obviously, the struggle for them is yet more difficult. Somehow we must resolve this. And I do not believe that 14U ball should remain at 40 feet. If we leave it at 40, most talented pitchers will skip the 14U ranks and move directly to 16U. That would be very bad for 14U ball.Labels: pitching
Permanent Link: Somebody Always Gets Shorted
Off-Season Errors
by Dave
Thursday, November 12, 2009
I think we make a huge off-season error when we ignore the value of rest. Some folks force themselves to completely avoid anything even softball related when out of season and some folks consider the off-season an opportunity to practice even more than usual. I think the bigest error is to go to one of the polar extremes.
There is little question among trainers that rest is an absolute necessity. The very notion of exercise involves working muscles to the point that they get sort of "injured" and then repair themselves while getting even stronger. The body needs time to heal itself. This is why even the most strident workout evangelicals usually advocate taking one day per week to do no exercise. They also tend to advocate taking extended periods of rest every so often, like 4 weeks every 6 months or something along those lines.
When you work out by performing repetitive free exercise, using devices to isolate muscles in motion or lift weights, you basically rip muscle fibers which are then replaced by new ones. Done properly, the athlete will feel pain caused by acid buildup in the muscles as well as increased blood flow to allow for healing as well as feeding the new, more numerous muscle fibers.
As an exercise program progresses, usually athletes feel very sore early on and then the soreness diminishes over time. This is usually not indicative of a reduced amount of soreness but an acclimati0on to the kind of pain caused by the exercise. There is a different kind of pain caused as muscles become more and more exhausted and the body needs more rest and time to repair itself.
It is often difficult to differentiate between real injury and the sort of soreness one experiences when engaguing in an extended period of exercise. Particularly young athletes have difficulty distinguishing between the pain of injury and that of soreness. Worse, their parents have even more trouble evaluating their dhildrens' complaints.
Every kid is different even within a single family and each has his or her own threshhold of pain. One kid complains as if she has a broken body after a single day of exercise. Her sister speaks as if she is just a little sore when in reality she has a broken bone or a partially torn muscle. There is every sort of pain threshhold in between the two extremes and parents are left guessing when they hear their children register complaints.
What makes it even more difficult to evaluate complaints is athletes learn to deal with pain. Their pain threshholds do not remain stangnant. As they age and gain more experience training for sport, they become better able to cope with ordinary soreness. And sometimes when they are actually injured, they mistake the pain with soreness.
I know this to be true because I broke my arm during a football game and did not leave it until a quarter later when I was knocked out. I returned to practice a couple days later and lasted 2 or 3 more practices before my arm swelled so badly from the break that I could not put my shirt on. My brother broke his arm but didn't learn about it until a few weeks later when he was goofing around and dislodged the bone at the point of break. Ouch!
My daughter broke her foot once and complained briefly about it. Two years later she hurt the same location and when we took her for an xray, we learned that the bone had been broken quite some time earlier - when she originally complained about it. Whenever she complains now, we take her immediately to the orthopedic doctor!
Her sister used to complain of pain when she felt any sort of comfort. That kid had some quirks early on particularly related to any sort of sensation. It is difficult to explain precuisely what I mean by quirks. Let's just say that during the winter, she would complain about the cold and then start removing clothing. During the hot summer months, she wouold complain about the heart and start putting clothing on! In any event, we used to refer to her as the "princess and the pea." If she felt any soreness at all, she would complain as if being attacked by a hord of stinging bees. But as she aged, this changed. When, several months ago, she complained about some sort of pain, we ignored her. When the pain got worse and worse, we took her to the doctor and learned she had a very real injury which kept her out of action nearly two months.
So pain can be a little tricky. But regardless of any complaints or lack thereof, athletes need regular rest and extended periods of rest every so often. If they do not get it, their bodies do not stay as fit as they should and the chance of injury becomes greater, particularly in a sport in which tendonitis and related kinds of repetitive motion disorders are so common. Every athlete needs an off-season for their bodies to heal.
Our world has become very competitive. You do not need me to tell you that. You know it to be true just by comparing your own experiences with those of your children. When I went to school, I put out little effort, pulled Bs pretty easily, and was content with my results. My kids don't get off that easily and with good reason. My grades today wouldn't get me into the colleges I was accepted to then.
When I took the scholastic aptitude test, I basically behaved myself for several months and got a good night of sleep the night before sitting. It is rare for kids today not to have some sort of tutoring, a fdormal class, or at least performing test preparation drills regularly before taking a college prep test. Academics are absolutely critical these days.
Sports are even worse. When I was in high school, I knew some kids who played 3 sports. They did football only from August to early November, played basketball during the winter, and then picked up their mitts and bats from March through early summer. There were some sports which involved year-round training but very few of them. Nowadays, the football player is expected to remain in the weight room and agility clinics during just about the entire off-season. Travel soccer, field hockey, basketball, softball, etc. players typically are involved in something team related for at least 10 months of the year. I know of one girl, just a middle schooler, who plays travel softball, soccer and basketball, each requiring practice and competition for about 8-10 months of the year, and the combined three providing absolutely no extended break from sport at any time.
Often kids today find out that such travel or club play is about the bare minimum required to eventually make the HS varsity team, let alone be a starter. Not every school is the same but some pack their entire starting teams with travel players. The kid who tries to play 3 sports at the rec level, maybe one at travel, is often disappointed by her inability to crack into the starting rotation in one of her lesser sports. So, on the one hand, you can't blame the kid trying to play travel in 3 sports. But on the other hand, you know she cannot possibly be getting the kind of rest she needs.
Physical rest is critical but what about mental rest? I think this gets the least attention due to our society's priorities of hyper-competitiveness. I recently learned of some kid playing travel ball on a team which played something like 120 games. 120 games? How do you fit that in? And this team was 12U!
When we teach and train athletes, one of the elements we want to instill in them is a sense of being able to turn on and off the element of focus - extreme mental attention. We want the third baseman to remain hyper-vigilant on every pitch. We want her reactions to be on high alert. It is not acceptable for any player on the field to allow her mind to drift. When I was a kid, that was easy because I longed to be out on the field for each and every one of our 20-35 games including all-stars. It was no effort at all to conjure up adrenaline. But even professional athletes have difficulty remaining up for 120 games. The only comparable experience is that of the major league baseball player. And those guys have great difficulty maintaining focus for the entire season even when paid millions of dollars for precisely that.
No matter how you slice it, 120 games is a bit much for 11 and 12 year olds. You have to figure in the amount of practices on top of that. The team must have conducted 20, 40, perhaps 80 practices in addition to its 120 games. You think the coach was tolerant of any lack of focus the team might exhibit during those? What about the countless private lessons and practice sessions the pitchers most certainly went through. Do you think those were good times for rest and lack of focus? So the pitchewrs on this team must have been doing games, practices, or lessons maybe 300 times a year? Perhaps they did more than that? This is most certainly a formula for only one thing, mental burnout.
I think coaches and parents forget about just how much of a mental burden sport can really be. Personal sessions require focus. Formal practices require more. And games are a whole different level onto themselves. players and teams which do this kind of program probably play really amazingly, at least for some of those games. But at some point, they are going to collapse.
I know a team that was very good at a young age. They played a bunch. After a few years of having a real off-season, players, parents and coaches found they were getting itchy in the off period. As they aged and competing at a high level became more and more important and more and more difficult, they all decided to find someplace to play during the historically off months. They found an indoor league where they could play double headers once a week. the kids did pretty well in this winter league. When they came outdoors for the early tournament season, they were well primed and played very well. As spring turned into summer, however, several instances of tendonitis popped up. If you've ever had tendonitis caused by throwing too much, you know what that does to your swing. The kids stopped hitting. Next, the historically reliable defense began to sputter as the whiole team became flat. They began to lose games against inferior teams.
The lesson is that there is nothing wrong with being itchy in the off-season.
In fact, that's what you are supposed to be. If you turn this positive into a negative and then try to resolve it, you are going to end up flat, men tally shot and injured. Instead, embrace the itch.
Think of it this way, pick something that you are very fond of. I'll make it easy. Let's say you love chocolate (please feel free to replace chocolate with whatever you want but remember, this is a family show). Think of the most chocolate you have ever eaten in a single sitting. Now, get yourself primed because you are going to have to eat that much chocolate every day for the next year.
Let's ignore what will happen to your body. Just think of the mental side of it. It is going to be Halloween every single day for the next year. In the last couple of days leading up to the end of that year, how do you think you'll feel about chocolate? Will you have uncontrollable cravings for the stuff as the hour of your daily "meal" approaches? Or will the thought of anything even slightly chocolatey make you wretch and gag? At the end of the year, will you want to follow it up with another one? That is burnout!
Lest I forget, I'm not here to pretend to be a physical trainer or to evaluate the practices of certain teams. What I do want to say is that rest is an absolute necessity for physical training, to avoid injury, and perhaps more importantly, to provide the level of focus required to be successful in this sport for an extended period. A softball player must have rest. She must have regular rest during extended periods of play. And she must have extended rest for a period of off-season. If she does not, she will not be at top physical condition, she may get hurt, and, worse, she will probably burnout sooner rather than later.
The extended periods of rest can be problematic. What should one do? Should you sit around and do absolutely nothing but watch TV, play video games and eat bon-bons? No, by no means. Some of that is probably advisable but anything done to excess is bad. You don't want to put on 15-20 pountds in the off-seaon, allow your muscles to weaken significantly, or develop back problems from becoming a couch-potato. If you allow yourself to become a complete non-athlete in the off-season, you are going to pay during the season and that's not much fun.
What I do suggest you do during an extended period of rest is 1) first make sure you get rest, probably 4-6 weeks worth of relative inactivity; 2) work on muscles that generally don't get worked on during the stress of the season but which are required for successful play like core muscles, quads, etc.; and 3) work on mechanical issues with professional trainers/instructors in the rarified atmosphere of the off-season when you have few worries about in-game performance.
When I say 4-6 weeks worth of relative inactivity, the emphasis is on the word relative. If your regular regimen consists of 4 one hour pitching sessions plus an hour of lessons, 2-4 hours at the tee and during batting practice, 4 hours worth of defensive practices, a couple hours of speed, agility, baserunning, etc., plus 6-10 games per week, you do not have to be placed inside a comfort chamber to get relative rest. You can go out and play whiffle ball games. You can engage in a neighborhood soccer or football match. You can even perform some sort of regular exercise program. But you just must do a lower volume and intensity of heavy exercise.
For catchers, I think doing anything that builds up the quads or hand strength is a good idea. You can purchase a special squeeze ball or device, or just use a tennis ball to build hand strength. You can do all sorts of free exercise to build up the strength and endurance of quad muscles.
Pitchers know which muscles are important to them. I suggest the ones that the parts of the body most forgotten are the forearm, wrist and fingers. A pitcher can dramatically improve her in-season performance by strengthening her pitching wrist in the off-season via exercises performed as little as a half an hour per day, four times per week. She does not need to throw and throw a lot during the entire off-season. Core muscle strength and overall flexibility are very important for pitchers. The off-season would be a great time to enter a core muscle exercise program or sign up for that yoga class offered at the school or community center.
Everybody on a softball field understands that there are certain skills and muscles which if strong, will improve performance. I can't go through all of this. The off-season is the time to work on those things. I think you can handle this yourself.
As the season approaches and presumably your 6 week period of relative inactivity has ended, you can begin to prep for the coming season. Get out and throw but start slowly. Pitchers should pitch and catchers should catch them. Batting lessons should start up now, before the first practices. Running should become proogrammed and gradually increase in intensity. 60 foot sprints and running all bases is a good way to prepare for practice. Otfielders want to get out and run in fields, track down flyballs if you have someone to hit them. Infielders need to begin doing intense side to side short sprints. It is time once again to really prep the body for the stresses of the season.
By the end of this off-season period, I hope that you will experience a few manifestations of this period of rest. For one thing, your mind should be refreshed and should actually be a little impatient about getting back onto a real softball field to play a real softball game. The muscles you begin working when you start throwing a ball, taking swings, etc. every day, should be completely rested. The muscles you need but which get little real workout during the season should be stronger. Your core muscles should be in better shape from correct use rather than abuse. Your body, mind and soul should be ready to go. You should be itching both physically and mentally to play ball.
You can decide for yourself what to do and how much, of course, but I suggest to you that if you decide that the offseason is going to be a time when you play all out or pitch twice as much as usual, or engage in some sort of extreme physical conditioning while not taking any down time, you may be sorry. It may not be this season. It may not be for quite a while. But if you get in the habit of eating chocolate every single day in large amounts, you most certainly will get sick of the stuff.Labels: attitude, injuries, pre-season preparation, relaxation
Permanent Link: Off-Season Errors
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