In this episode, Dan explains why mental training isn’t quite the reason your daughter is struggling so much. And, the Good Advice podcast is going on Hiatus for a little while – learn why in this episode. Get email updates on when the show will return and stay up to date on Dan’s other content by joining his email list here. To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com

In this episode, Dan gives advice on the different factors to consider when choosing a major as a college athlete – did you know some majors are essentially not allowed if an athlete wants to be on a certain team? Also, Dan answers a listener question about what causes overthrows to first base. Links: Try the Early Work Strength Program for free here. To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com EP21 Transcript: EP21 – Choosing a College Major Plus Overthrowing the Ball You’re listening to the Good Advice Softball Podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. And on this show, you’ll learn how to help the softball player in your life. Sharpen her skills, improve her mindset and find new confidence through softball. Alright. Welcome back to the Good Advice Softball Podcast. I’m your host, Dan Blewett. And on today’s episode, we’re going to cover two topics. Number one. Majors in college. So this is something that doesn’t get enough press. And I appreciate, a parent recently suggesting this topic to me, because you know, where you go to school and what you major in has a major impact on your college athletic schedule. And there’s a lot of schools that will just downright say, look, if you want to come here and play softball, you probably don’t want to choose X, Y, and Z majors, which is something just to be aware of. In our second topic. I got a great mail-in question. So we’re going to listen to that and we will cover, overthrows to first base. And again, good question here. So definitely worth covering in this podcast. All right. So let’s kick off with college majors. So the one thing to remember here is that, you know, the old NCAA, anecdote that. You know, or I guess it’s a slogan that, you know, everyone’s going to go pro in something. And for the vast majority of us, it’s going to be in something other than sports. Right. So even though they put it a little more succinctly than I just did, this is true in the vast majority of sports in general, the collegiate level. And it’s even more true for female sports. Obviously there still as the NPF, which is pro softball, there’s a newly called Athletes Unlimited, which is still an upstart. So you know, yet to be seen how long that lasts. But with these two options,  most players like the slogan goes, are going to go pro you know, in a career. And that’s obviously everyone’s path at some point. So that being said, what they don’t tell you a lot of times is with. You know, the rigors of division one, softball and baseball falls in this category too, where they played just a lot of games. It makes it kind of difficult to have certain majors. So every school is going to be different. Every coach is going to be different, but here’s the thing to know that when you’re. Programming out your college schedule. There are many majors that do lots of labs where they have lots of collaborative work or their higher level classes are just always in the afternoon. Like they don’t have morning classes. And so typically what happens when you get on campus, which happened to me and happens to pretty much everyone else is that you have to make your schedule fit with your softball schedule. And of course, in my case, my baseball schedule. So what that typically means is it’s, you know, you could probably guess this, but. They say, Hey, you know, don’t schedule any classes from like, you know, 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM, something like that. So obviously those are prime practice hours. And depending on the program, it could be, you know, even a longer timeframe. So, but typically it’s like that two to six window. Right. And also depends on like transportation to your field. You know, most schools have their field on campus. Some don’t though. So it might require like a shuttle bus or something like that. Like I know, you know, there’s a couple of colleges that have that, where they have the off-site, field, you know, like here in DC, most of the schools have their field offsite. So with all those different factors, you have to consider whether, you know, major that’s going to have all of your labs. Like, you know, the, the sciences are typically a culprit here. If you have, you know, chemistry lab at 3:30 and that’s going to be your life from junior and senior year on until you graduate, that’s going to be a very incompatible major with playing a division one sport, or even division two sport division three sport doesn’t matter. And so. All these things are important to understand. And this is the reason why a lot of players who maybe aren’t as passionate about softball or who are just more passionate and planning rightly so for their future, academically, choose to say, Hey, I’m to rather going to go, you know, I’m going to go to a great D three school instead of a D one school. That way I can still have my fun and enjoy playing softball and still be serious about it. But at the same time, You know, I can put my academics first and, you know, D three schools have a lot less rigorous schedule compared to a D one. For example, of course there’s many, many levels of college softball. There’s D one D two D three. There’s also varying levels of Juco. There’s NAIA. So there’s lots of different levels and they all have different rules and every school is going to be different about where they prioritize athletics and otherwise. Now, I think this is slightly less the case with softball than perhaps some men’s sports, but you know, in some men’s sports and baseball is definitely one of them. You can arrive on campus and they’ll tell you, point blank, you cannot be a pre-med major and play baseball. This school. They’ll just tell you that. Or you can not be this major and play at this school. And of course, Most of them will tell you that well, in advance. So you make a decision with your eyes wide open, but some of them won’t and a lot of them will just maybe steer you to one major or the other. And this can be again, a wake up call for a lot of people, because if you go to a school and say, I’m going to take computer science and you get there and like, yeah, you can’t take computer science. If you want to play softball, you’re gonna miss too many practices. Well, that’s a big problem, isn’t it? So these are all just good questions to think about and obviously good questions to ask a coach on a recruiting visit and just to try to be upfront with everyone and just, and of course here’s the big thing. It’s a shame to say, like, I’m going to, well, it’s not a shame, but for a young athlete, you shouldn’t have your life planned out already. If you know what you want to major in. That’s wonderful. But many of us. Myself included did not. And many of us later on in life still don’t to know exactly what they want to do with the rest of their life. So that’s another thing that’s problematic. Whereas you might start off as a freshmen and say, you know, I’m going to be a journalism major. I’m going to be a sociology major or accounting major and a year later and might be like, I hate every bit of this. So I’m going to switch majors. How does that affect me? And it can be really tough to bounce back from that or to catch up where you might be like, crap. If I had done a different, you know, if I had done this major that I’m choosing now as a freshman, then I wouldn’t have had to take all these classes that are now conflicting with, you know, with practice and with games. I mean, it’s, just difficult in general, you know, I think you sometimes think of like the big sports, like football or basketball. Obviously football is not a women’s sport at the varsity level, but. I think you sometimes think of those as being like the most time crunching and rigorous, but really it is softball and baseball at the college level because there’s so many games and obviously they have really long, very time inefficient pregames. I used to laugh where our lacrosse team, at my Alma mater would show up. So on the Saturday we had a double header we would show up at like, I don’t know, 9:00 AM and we’d have like a 1:00 PM game, something like that. So we’d show up, we’d change. We’d report to the field. Maybe 10, you know, in baseball typically has a long, pregame and we would start our pregame and lacrosse would show up. After we got to the field, starting our pregame, they would do their pregame play their full game, and the entire place would clear out before we had started our game. So their entire pregame. Game and post game fit within baseball’s pregame. And of course, softball doesn’t have quite as long of a pregame as baseball does. But it’s still long compared to other sports. And obviously you’re playing lots and lots of games. The game schedule is way more than other sports. So with all that being said, It’s hard to be a successful student at the college level. And this is why a lot of students, will choose, you know, their academics over their sport. If they’re not just like crazy, crazy passionate about playing at the highest possible level that they can. So these are all just things to consider. And the major thing is something to definitely do some digging on. So if you really want to take biochemistry, if you really want to take one of these science heavy, which most of those classes that it seems like always the sciences tend to have lots of labs and collaborative work. That just can’t really be, you know, you can’t take it on the road with you. You have to do an in person, a lot of those labs and science majors. They ended up being very conflict heavy with your sport. So again, in case that’s news to you, which it was news in my family when I got to college, of course my majors did not conflict. I, was undecided for most of my freshman year. And then I ended up choosing philosophy because I was like, I don’t care about any of this. So it was philosophy seems kind of all right, so I’m gonna choose philosophy as it turned out, it was good for me. And I’m actually really thankful that I made that choice. Even though it was sort of unbeknownst that it would be. As good for me as it ended up being. But, you know, I think with, especially the way the world’s changing, and this is my last sentiment here with majors, the world’s changing a lot and sure you can be an accounting major and, you know, be on a track from, you know, year one. To be churned out of college, ready to be an accountant. And that’s great if you know that that’s what you want to do and you want to build a career track. That’s great. There’s also just so many more ways to make a living today than there were five years ago, 10 years ago, especially 20 years ago where you don’t have to have a certificate or a degree in a certain field to be that thing, you know, you can have, I know the liberal arts and the fine arts, like my major was a liberal arts degree, obviously. Those majors are coming back because people are saying, I just need, I need employees that I can train well, who are quick on their feet, who are smart, who can make good decisions without being constantly supervised and told what to do. And a lot of those heavily thinking majors like philosophy, are good for that. And I would put myself in that same bucket that I think, you know, I could be valuable to an employer in almost any discipline. If I was, you know, leaving college right now. To to make sensible decisions. Right? Well communicate well, and in general, just think critically on the job. And I think that’s what most employers need. I know now that I have a couple of people working for me, that’s the skill I desire most. So I would also urge parents and players not to. To totally sweat your major. Now, if you do want to be a doctor, if you don’t want to be a biochemist, if you want to do you want to be a biologist, you obviously have to be on those tracks. So obviously there’s not leeway in every single major, you can’t side hustle your way in to be a, you know, and to be a neuroscientist or whatever it is. So obviously there’s a lot of different, different paths. And my advice is not going to apply to all majors and all career tracks. But. Again, it’s a, complex thing being a student athlete. And that really is what it is. You’re not just an athlete. You’re not just the student. The student athlete moniker is tough to maintain. It’s tough to get really good grades and for the kids that do it, I mean, hats off to them. And this, again, just figuring out how your schedule fits with your major is just another aspect to consider. All right. In our second segment today, we’re going to cover a great question sent in by Joe. So thank you, Joe. Hey, Dan loved the show. What did ask a quick question? Third basement or shortstop throw to first. Do you have any suggestions or tips for throws that are continually over the first basement’s head, any drills or anything that you would suggest doing technique wise to get those throws down? Thanks a lot, man. Love the podcasts. All right. So really good question. What happens? What is happening when a player is consistently overthrowing high over first base. So without seeing a specific player, this is, these are the first two things that come to mind. So, number one, you always use your torso to some extent when throwing you do it a lot less. So as an infielder, but the more momentum you have and the more you move your body towards your target, the more your torso, your upper body will start to move towards your target. So as you release the throw. Your chest will move towards first base and sort of have a lower angle towards first. So if you look at baseball pitchers, as an example, when they release the ball, their body is at like a 45 degree angled, lean towards home plate. Outfielders also have a pretty significant lean because they have so much momentum. And thus their upper body is moving. I mean, it’s got momentum and it’s, got to continue towards the target. So with infielders, they have less of this, but the more momentum they get and the more they move their feet, the more they can sort of push their chin and their chest towards their target. And when you do that, It helps to drive the ball down. So one of the reasons the ball goes up is when players are standing straight up and down, because when they’re standing straight up and down, they’re not getting to use as much of their upper body and their glove side to sort of crunch them down and get on top of the ball. So the way we get on top of the ball when we’re throwing is that we use our front side to pull down. And that means obviously if you’re playing third or short, you’re going to be a righty thrower. So when your left arm. Your glove arm, it should rise slightly upwardly angled towards first base. And I talk about shoulders tilting upward, in lots of mechanical videos for softball and baseball. So your shoulders need to be at the very least level or slightly uphill when you’re about to make an overhand throw. And when you do that, then you can take your left arm, your glove arm, and you can sort of pull down and pull. You sort of crunch your torso angle down. That’s what helps getting your arm up. Get your arm at your arm slot higher. So you’re, if you don’t have that front side angled pulled down, you tend to go side arm. And I have a bunch of YouTube videos that talk about that. So your front shoulder goes slightly upward and then your front, your glove arm crunches you down. And when you do that, it helps to sort of speed your arm up and get your hand above the ball. So when players are overthrowing, Number one. And I always go back to this. If you look at the highest level players in the world, whether it’s softball or baseball, the, command tool, you know, commanding your throws, having good control, throwing lots of strikes. It isn’t purely mechanical and especially in baseball. And I use that as just an analogy, a lot. There isn’t really like a significant, when you look at a pitcher who walks two batters per nine innings versus a pitcher that walks four batters per nine innings in the major leagues, there’s no mechanical difference. You can’t say, Oh, well, he walks twice as many batters because he does this with his mechanics. That’s not the case at all. It’s the same thing. When you look at hitters and the major league level, or the division one level of softball or pro softball, there’s not like, Oh, that’s why she’s a two 70 hitter, because look at her swing versus that’s why that, hitter hits .310. All of their swings are really, really good at that level. Right. And so the intangibles and the getting the ball, the barrel of the bat to the ball becomes paramount at those levels. It’s not really about their swing. Sure. Some players definitely have better swings and others at the high level, but all of them. Are very good swings and all players in the major leagues have very good throwing mechanics. Now, my point in all that is at some point, there has to be a mental desire to get the ball down. And that seems like a cop-out, but I’ll share a quick story when I was in college. I was a pitcher obviously. And I was just consistently up in the zone. I wasn’t good at throwing the ball at the bottom of the kneecap, which was something our coaches preached and preached and preached and preached and preached. And I got away with it because I later learned that I had a kind of like really fast spinning high spin rate, fast ball that sort of like played well when I threw up in the zone, hitters tend to pop it up or they tend to swing underneath it and I didn’t get hurt very much up there, but the point was, I wasn’t good at getting the ball down. And part of the reason I wasn’t good at getting a downloads because. I was never getting really, really punished at doing it. And so fast forward, many years, like six or seven years, I’m coming back from elbow surgery and I’m in spring training with, a team where probably half of the roster was former AAA and major league pitchers that have been released. You know, they’ve been bounced out of the highest level for whatever reason. And I was in spring training amongst them coming back from surgery. And, I watched the guy who was in the big leagues, throw his bullpen right before me. And like literally every throw he made was just like pounding the bottom of the strike zone. Just bop, bop, bop, you know, fastball, just screaming downhill right below the catcher’s kneecap. It’s like he couldn’t not throw it at the bottom of the kneecap. And as I watched this bullpen, I was like, I got, I just got, Oh, no, because I knew for a fact that I had never thrown a bullpen like that in my life. I’d throw some at the bottom of the knees. Then I throw some right down the middle. I throw some at the chest. I just was all over the strike zone and I always kind of got away with it. And, but at that moment, I was like, if I throw my normal bullpen, I’m going to stick out. I don’t look like that guy. I can’t do what he does. And so at that moment, I was like, I have to throw a bullpen this exact same way that he did. And the level of focus that I had in that bullpen was. Unlike any bullpen I’d ever thrown in my life, because it was a, if I don’t throw the next pitch at the bottom of the kneecap, I’m getting cut. I’m getting sent home. That was my mindset. And it was a very real mindset. And so that bullpen something like unlocked in my brain where I suddenly had a much deeper level of focus that I can now sort of access that I didn’t have before, because I’d never been placed in a situation where I was like backed into a corner and I had to do a thing. Right that moment. And my point here is, and I’m going to get back to mechanics a little bit before we wrap, but. A lot of young players, because I’ve worked with a lot of players, boys and girls, a lot of them, they think it’s all about mechanics. They get the ball, they throw it and it doesn’t go where they want. And they were never really in the throw. They were just making a throw, but they were never really in the throw. Like they’re not in tune with their body. They’re not in tune with their mechanics. They don’t really know what makes a ball go down. And I’ve had so many conversations with wide-eyed baseball, pitchers on the mound. Who just thrown seven fast balls at head height without making any adjustment. And I walk out there, it’s like, all right, you’ve just walked a guy on four pitches and now you’ve thrown the next three all at eye level, just the same. And I’m like, what’s going on? And they look at me, but what are the, I just don’t know where it’s going. I don’t know what to do. And that’s that same thing. Sometimes with infielders, they can throw the ball, they can air mail, air mail, air mail. It. And because they’re not really in the moment when they make that throw, they don’t know what happened because it’s almost like they weren’t there. Right. So imagine if you took a swing with your eyes closed and you missed, you know, pitches coming, you close your eyes and you swing. Well, how do you diagnose where to swing next on the next pitch? Or what was wrong with your swing on the previous pitch? It’s not a perfect analogy. And that’s kind of what it is. Like they’re there for the throw. They’re there for the pitch. They’re there for their swing, but they’re not really in tune with what they’re doing and why. And so a lot of times when I work with players and especially with softball, when I work with softball players on their mechanics, They’re going to make some overthrows, a lot of them when they start to make tweaks, because it’s just like your bazooka now has more gunpowder in it. And so if you had a dialed in to a certain target, now you put more gunpowder. Now you overshoot your target. Right? It’s a very common thing. A lot of players that take my online throwing course they’ll report back in the first week. They’re like, Hey, she’s definitely throwing harder, but she’s like, airmailing everything where my head, what do we do? I’m like, well, Honestly, that’s normal because again, for the exact reason that I said, there’s just more gunpowder in the gun, she just needs to make the adjustment and she will, you just gotta kind of pull down hard with your front side. As I kind of talked about earlier, make sure she’s going uphill. It keeps her weight back a little bit. And then she pulls herself forward. Almost like doing a Cartwheel with that glove side and gets the ball down. And at some point. There’s no mechanical fix that just like magically makes the ball go to the first baseman’s chest. Is there? No, like you have to throw it there and you have to be in tune with what a bad throw feels like versus what a on target throw feels like. And that’s something that you have to be extremely presently aware of to, make that adjustment and feel. This is what a high throw feels like. This is what I, when I do this with my glove side, this is what gets me on top of the softball and then drives it through her chest at first base. So that’s two of the three parts of it. So number one, if your mechanics are fine, like you have good, decent throwing mechanics, you need to make sure you pull down hard with your glove. Side. That’s what sort of speeds your arm up to get over top of the ball. Number two is the mental factor in the focus factor is a very real. Issue with overthrows, with, you know, hitting with pitching with any of it. There’s this huge part of throwing that’s autonomous that’s mind, body connection, but it’s also focused. So even though I’m not consciously focusing on making the next pitch, cause I’ve made 50,000 in my life. all that prior focus on 49,999 of them. Allows me to be unfocused and, and focused on my target and not focused on my mechanics and still make and do everything right. Mechanically. So a lot of parents, I think, forget that it’s, or they just don’t know that it’s not just mechanics, there’s a ghost in the machine who has to be trained what to do. And then the last part of this is a lot of softball players throw the low elbow. A lot of them, the majority of them are almost. So if you have, if you have rough throwing mechanics, chances are you have a low throw elbow elbow, and with a low elbow, this is why it’s especially problematic. That the harder you try to throw a ball. The more, the ball goes up and that’s true with good throwing mechanics too. Like when baseball, pitchers, overthrow, or when a outfit a really Uncorked one in softball or baseball, it goes up right. That’s because your body starts going too fast and your arm lags behind. And so there’s always that balance there. But with, with the low elbow, it’s, it’s fundamentally different because as you accelerate the ball, The elbow drops down and then it tries to catch up and it gets below the ball. And as it accelerates, it’s literally, you can watch your hand going upward. Whereas when you have good throwing mechanics and your shoulder blade is pulled back as your torso rotates, first, the arm goes back, but then it climbs, it climbs over the ball a lot earlier. Index and its acceleration part of the delivery. Whereas when you have a low elbow, it climbed over the ball very, very late. And what this teaches girls to do is when they do try to throw harder and they’re like, I’m going to put some oomph into this one, the ball goes up. And so what they get. Stuck back in the habit of, is there like, Oh no. When I do that, it goes up. So now I got to back down a little bit not. And then now not only are they throwing with mechanics that don’t allow them throw very hard, but now they also have to meet her themselves and take a little bit off to make sure the trajectory is right to throw that mortar to first base, essentially. So part three of this is that if you have a low elbow flaw, In your throwing mechanics, the harder you try to throw the ball, the harder it will be to get it down. And there’s not a whole lot you can do about that because if you look at the mechanics of it, the, again, the elbow dips free long portion of the acceleration phase. And then as it starts to accelerate above the ball, it’s very, very late. And it’s just like the ball’s gone at that point. And so it’s going to have to go up. So that’s the other part of it. But again, no matter what mechanics you will have today, There’s still again, the ghost in the machine, you, as an athlete can throw the ball to first base any darn way and get it and get it there and on the, at their chest. And this is the same way for a pitcher. You can throw, you know, you, you watch infielders, they can throw on the run from any arm angle at any speed running any direction. And it’s phenomenal. It’s so it’s such an athletic movement. And you say, well, how’s that possible? It’s because they just practice it a bunch and they don’t let their mind get in the way and screw it up. And they’ve done enough where their body knows how to trajectory, you know, in vector the ball in to first base. And so, again, it’s not just mechanics. And players can, you know, if they’re focused enough in practice, say, all right, I’m going to get this next ball down. Let’s tinker, let’s pull my front side and see what happens. And then when they say, okay, that’s the cause and effect, when I do this, I can actually get the ball down. Still throw it hard. Then they’ve got to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, and practice, practice, practice. And then hopefully that becomes their new muscle memory as not an issue anymore. So, Joe, thanks for the question. That’s a very good one. Hopefully that long diatribe made some sense. You know, there’s, again, there’s a lot of, I think this is what’s frustrating for parents. Is there a lot of parts that there’s a lot of parts of the game that no one else can intervene with that they just have to do it on, do it themselves. And again, going back to some of those mound vitis I’ve had with baseball pitchers. It sucks for him. It sucks for me because I know full well that I can’t fix him. There’s no like mechanical thing. I’ll give him a mechanical thing to try. But at the end of the day, that pitcher, who’s throwing seven straight fastballs of the eyeballs. He’s got to figure out a way mentally to get his body, to do. What it is capable of doing, and that’s just like the bottom line. Sometimes you can’t hit the ball for your daughter. You can’t throw the ball for your daughter. You can’t feel the ball, or you can’t run the basis for your daughter. You can teach him the proper mechanics, but once they’ve got the mechanics, they still have to do the, the thing to get the proper output. And again, I think that’s, what’s really powerless for a lot of parents and my heart goes out to you. I don’t have any kids out there yet, so. I, but believe me, I’ve had plenty of a nail biting anxiety filled games as a coach, so I can empathize at least a little bit. All right. That’s it for today. Thank you for listening. Thanks for the listener question and be sure if you’re listening. Shoot me an email. Grab a quick, a quick soundbite on your phone. There’s a audio clips app. That’s not exactly what it’s called, but it’s really easy to feel more recording. And, you can just shoot over to me at [email protected] and we’ll play it on the show and answer your question. Well, that’s all the good advice I’ve got for today. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while also helping yourself enroll today in one of my online softball courses, my She’s Got a Cannon throwing courses, come with pricing plans for any budget. And my Resolute Athlete, mental skills course will help your daughter or team build the mindset of a champion. Enroll in any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% with code good advice just for being a listener. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email list where you’ll get updates on all my new videos and episodes, nearly 4,000 people get my emails and you should to sign up for the link in the show notes. Lastly, who do you know, who can use some good advice? Please share this podcast with a friend, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to my snap, softball, YouTube Channel, where you’ll find this podcast and hundreds of softball, instructional videos. Back when I was a player, I was always thankful for good coaches and good advice. I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time.

In this episode, Dan talks through good luck and bad luck scenarios for softball pitchers. Dan also discusses the value of on-base percentage for hitters and the importance of being disciplined at the plate. Links: Try the Early Work Strength Program for free here. To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com EP20 Transcript: EP20 – Bad Luck for Softball Pitchers Plus The Value of On-Base Percentage GA EP20 Final Audio You are listening to the Good Advice Softball Podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. And on this show, you’ll learn how to help the softball player in your life. Sharpen her skills, improve her mindset and find new confidence through softball. Welcome back to the Good Advice Softball Podcast. I’m your host. Dan Blewett  on today’s show. We’ve got two topics number one. We’re going to talk a little bit about bad luck for softball, pitchers. This is obviously a thing, you know, well, if you’ve been a pitcher, if you’ve been a parent of a pitcher, but you might not realize there’s a bunch of other pieces of good and bad luck that are kind of sneaky and are actually really interesting to ponder. So we’ll talk about that. And then number two, we’re gonna talk about on base percentage. Which I think softball probably understands better than baseball does. I think there’s still a lot of machismo in baseball about hitting your way on. But I think softball has actually been pretty good about this as far as the role of slap hitters. And I think the sport values on base percentage probably more than baseball does, but I do want to talk about it. Because I think it’s an important concept. And we’re going to talk about a little bit of the statistics sort of bleeding over from baseball to softball. So if you knew here I’m Dan Blewett and there’s a lot of resources that you’ll find in the description of the show, no matter what podcast platform you’re listening to on, or if you’re on YouTube, there is my online courses for throwing for the mental side of the game. There’s my new strength conditioning program for softball players called early work. So definitely check out the links below and be sure to subscribe to my channel on YouTube. Be sure to subscribe here, leave me a review on whatever podcast platform you’re listening on. I’d greatly appreciate it. All right. So first up tonight, let’s talk about good luck, bad luck. And a couple of things that are a little bit under the radar. So number one, I think a lot of times, and this was something I learned as a pitcher. Obviously I was a baseball player, but. I learned this in one of my later seasons of pro ball, where I had a good friend on a much better team than mine. We were kind of a bottom dweller. They were up running the whole first place team and they just had a lot better players on their team. They just attracted major league and ex-major league talent. And we didn’t quite attract that same level and watching him pitch and getting out of some of his jams. How was it started? It finally started to Dawn on me. I was like, dang. If I had his shortstop and his second baseman. With the range that they have and the arms they have. And they just had a really impressive defensive team. I knew at that point, the same exact pitches that I threw in my era, if I had thrown for that team, my era would probably be a half a run or a whole run lower just because he could get out of miraculous jams because of shorts. I would make this incredible plagues. He was just an incredible player. And so. Obviously players and parents realize a lot of times when errors are made and when all this other stuff goes on. And hopefully as a pitcher, you deal with this in a positive way, or at least you’re very good at not showing emotion and not showing up your teammates and understand that everyone makes mistakes. That’s not as much what I’m talking about, but there’s a lot of defense that goes unscored in the books where your shortstop just doesn’t get to balls very well. Like her range is just not as good as another shortstop on another team. Well, that ball in the hole that she couldn’t get to, that another shortstop could have that goes down as they hit on your record and could potentially contributes to your era inflating and obviously more runs coming across the plate. Whereas on another team, Not only does the girl field that ball, but she gets an out. And the difference between a batted ball becoming a hit versus an out is huge, obviously. And so it’s not, this is not a point to complain, rather. It’s just to understand that sometimes as a pitcher, it can be demoralizing and you could actually be pitching a lot better than your numbers may indicate because your team just  might not have that good of a range. They might not have the arm to make certain plays. And this is something that you see that goes up, put up the ladder in, in softball and baseball as fielders get better. It gets a lot easier to pitch even though the level of competition as far as hitters goes up. So, I mean, again, there’s something to watch on TV. If you’re watching college softball, if you’re watching, college or pro baseball, just watch the caliber of the defensive players. Anything that’s not hit super hard, they pretty much get an out on. So. It’s really important to understand that defense does play a major role. And as a pitcher, sometimes it’s just important to understand this that, Hey, I’m probably not pitching as bad as my numbers say. I got to keep my head up and keep going because I can’t control any of the defensive stuff that happens behind me. Another thing about bad luck obviously is the field. And whether, and again, this is obviously not controllable and it shows just a lack of maturity. When players get upset about field conditions, about bad, you know, bad hops, pitching in the rain, which sucks, but it happens for both teams, obviously the same time. Right? Like cold days, windy days, these are things that you just have to be mentally tough to push through and what a lot of pitchers get in the habit of, or what they, and a feeling. And I’m guilty of this myself is, you know, just like hoping you don’t have to go in the game when it’s super cold or super rainy and stuff like that. I mean, as a relief pitcher, there were definitely nights where it’s like the sixth inning and it’s freezing and it’s raining and all of us in there, like we would rather just sit here and stay in our jackets and knock at the call tonight. Cause you don’t get a call every night is a reliever. So you’d be like, well, if I’m going to pitch, I’d rather pitch in good conditions rather than these crappy ones. Right. But mentally that’s not a good place to be in because if you do get called. You got to go perform and no one cares. If you know it was cold. I didn’t, that’s why I didn’t pitch. Well, no one cares about that. So obviously you feel conditions and weather conditions are tough. You have to play your best, but that’s an important part about, you know, being a competitor and understand that you will get some bad games. You will get some bad weather days. You will get some bad hops. And it’s just part of the scope of being a pitcher. The other thing is bad at ball outcomes. So when, if you really think about the difference between a ground ball that could become a double play or a ground ball, that’s a can of corn easy out of first base. They’re not significantly different than a ball. That’s hit, you know, five feet to the left that goes through the hole between the third base when the shortstop. So as a pitcher, you have to remember that placement of the ball is. A huge part of the game and there is no difference. Like, yeah, you, you accept the pats on the back. When you get a ground ball hit, you know, kind of hard the shortstop of the runner on first and they flip it and they turn in an amazing double play. Well, that’s all well and good, but pitchers can’t actually induce double plays. They can’t actually induce ground ball outs either. They can just throw pitches to the best of their ability. And then what happens after that happens. So, you know, you start to look at this when you really start to be self-aware and really start to consider what you do and don’t have control of the game. You don’t have any control over battle ball outcomes. And so once that pitch leaves your hand, it’s up to the hitter and then it’s up to physics and it’s really just luck of the draw at that point. So again, The same ground ball that gets you, easy out of first base is the same exact ground ball that goes through the hole and loses the game just because of where the hitter put it. And you can say, Oh, well, I pitch them away. That’s why I get more ground balls in the middle, like, okay. And you can certainly be a fly ball pitcher or a ground ball pitcher, or vice versa. But at the same time, you don’t have any say in where it actually goes. So you could have a very similar game where you pitch very well in game A and pretty much you pitched the same end game B but game. Hey, you give up 10 hits just because of bad luck and game B, they hit all the same batted balls, but you only give up six hits because four others were just hit at a slightly different angle where there’s a field or there. And it’s, again, this is just important to understand, because. I’ve seen, especially going back and being a youth coach after being a pro ball player. You know, like people get all like great game winning hit. It was like, it was a routine ground ball that just got through the hole or man way to pitch out of that jam. You just got a hard ground ball. That was lucky that I went to the shortstop instead of going up the middle, there really isn’t much difference sometimes between pitching well and pitching poorly. So it was just important to remember that because it is a long game being a pitcher. And it’s tough when sometimes you’re pitching pretty well and getting bad results. That really aren’t your fault. The last one I want to cover today. And this one is especially interesting. And, and you probably haven’t thought of this before, but is the sequence of batted balls. Now say you’re pitching and you give up or you get an out and then you give up single, single home, run out. How many outs have you given up three? Right? So you got an out, I gave up two singles and then that home run was a three run home run. Now say you pitched the next ending and you get the first out and you give up a home run and then two singles, and then you get two out. So it’s out home, run single, single out. How many runs to give of that, that ending. You gave a one, right? Because you gave a solo home run and then two singles didn’t come around this score. So the events that happened at both of these innings, which are three outs, Two singles and one home run are identical in both innings. So yeah, one run had a three spot and the other, the other inning had a one run. So what’s the difference in pitching quality between the inning and what you gave up? Three runs, single single home run versus one run home run single single, honestly, there’s not much difference. Pitchers really don’t control sequencing either. Now I’m sure some people be like, well, you got to focus up. When you got runners on base, you really got to focus and you know, you got to prevent those. X-rays hits you really, again, you really can’t do that. You can make a good pitch, but you can’t control what the hitter does after that. So the fact that the hit or hit a home run off you, that’s sort of just like a fact of nature now. Like it happened the fact that you made that bad pitch to that hitter. In the F one of the first batters of the inning versus one of the later batters,of the inning the sequence of events, you also have no control of. So you pitch essentially the outcomes that you got single, single and a home run because of the order that they were in the sequence of events, the run total varies very differently. So again, on one day, maybe you throw. Six scoreless innings. And that one inning is home run. Single, single you only give a one run that day and you had a great game. You know, one run seven innings. That’s awesome. But on another day you give up again, single, single home run and then pitch six additional scoreless innings, Nagy three runs, and you lost two to, you know, you lost three to two, so. Just that little thing, the way these battle balls happen in order can make a huge impact on your day. And that’s a very interesting stat and it’s something to consider that the fact that, you know, again, if you just break down your game into, I. Three walks four singles, one double, a triple, a home run, and seven strikeouts. You know, if you order all those different things differently, then you could have a lot of different run outcomes for the whole entire game. So again, is there a take home message for that? It’s that more, number one, you just don’t have that much control over things, especially basketball outcomes in a game and in baseball there’s and you can Google this.  There’s a good amount of writing on sequencing and basically that they’ve found through most of the data that great pitchers, even at the highest levels of majorly baseball don’t have control over sequencing. So again, even the idea of like focus up when you have runners on base and. Really bare down. That’s all well and good. But batted balls are still mostly random and they still have outcomes that pitchers can’t control. So hopefully today’s talk about sequencing and defense field and weather battle outcomes. Hopefully this just gets your mind working again. The best pitchers are very good at focusing on this pitch right now, and then letting all the stuff that they can’t control state out of mine, where it doesn’t really bother them. All right. So part two today, let’s talk about on base percentage. So if you’ve ever read or watched the movie Moneyball. You’ll know that, the Oakland A’s pretty much made history, figuring out that the most valuable thing they could do for the, for their dollar was get on first base. And so what they did being a low budget team, they went out and they drafted players who were cheap, but who had these sort of hidden talents because no one was really looking for them. Of getting on base, which was a lot of walks. So guys like Kevin Youkilis had an exceptional eye, at the plate and was walking to first, over and over and over and other teams just sort of discounted this and they really didn’t think it was a valuable thing cause they wanted to see hitters hit the ball. And that’s the impressive thing that hitters do. Right. But as sabermetrics and baseball wore on and became more and more mainstream. We’ve really learned that basically the number one thing a hitter can do to help his team win and to add value and to add a run score to the team’s,  overall run production over the course of a season is to not make an out. The number one thing they can do is not make an out, obviously of all the different outs or non outs you can make. You know, extra base hits are better than single base sets or just getting to first base in general. But the best thing you can possibly do as a base runner, at the fundamental level is not make an out. And so getting to first base is hugely valuable and it has a specific run total assigned to it, essentially. And if you get there by hit by pitch or by a walk or by a single, it makes literally no difference at all. Because getting on first base is the only thing that really matters as far as then getting driven home. So how, you know, like physics doesn’t know, like no one knows, how you got to first base. And I mean that from like a statistical standpoint or no, no one really cares. Right? So if you get on first by a hip by bitch or a Walker or a single, and the next hitter hits a double into the gap and you score it didn’t matter one bit in the score book, how you got to first base, it only matters that you did. So I think softball has done a better job of this than baseball, because there’s a lot more players who maybe don’t have a lot of natural power because. You know women don’t have as much testosterone as men. And so for some girls who were smaller compared to maybe smaller boys and we have a little more bop, they have to sort of play with what they’re given. And a lot of times that means, Hey, you’re fast, or we can have you put a bunt down. We can have you slap. We can do all these things just to try to get to first base. So I think, from the outside, looking in. Softball is probably known this a lot more that this is something that we can do with players who don’t have as much strength naturally, and as much bat speed that we can maximize getting them to first base and let the other hitters do their job. And I think that probably rings true baseball. There’s still as machismo. There’s still this, like, you know, it’s not really fun to walk, right. It’s certainly not fun to get hit by a pitch, but no one really goes home and brags about going over one with three walks, even though that’s a pretty good day at the plate. And so my big urging here is the, the take-homes are number one, not making it out is the number one thing you can do as a coach or as a parent teaching your player. Plate discipline is absolutely credible critical, and this is knowing the strike zone and knowing how to swing at balls and not, or how to swing at strikes and not swing at balls. And not only does this benefit you as far as getting on base more from walks, number one, but the more you don’t swing at pitches on the edges of the plate, the more of a chance you have at squaring a ball up, especially for smaller, some more slight players. They need to square the ball up on the barrel to have a chance of hitting it hard enough to get through the infield. You know, the one thing that’s nice about softball compared to baseball is that, you know, the field size is constant throughout, you know, the career of the player. It’s, it’s still pretty much the same dimensions. And it was a little bit smaller at the, when they’re really, really young, but pretty much the softball field is constant. Whereas in baseball, you hit this point where the field continues and the bases continue to get longer, where you have a lot of. 14 year olds jumping up to the full size baseball field and 13 year old and sometimes 12 year olds, depending on the state. They’re jumping up to the, the full 60 foot mound, 90 foot bases. And it’s a big field. And if you take 110 pound kid on that big field, It’s physically hard for them to hit the ball out of the infield. And I’ve witnessed this as a coach, coaching 13 and 14, you and 15, you baseball many years. And it’s a really interesting thing to contend with because you know, these kids are essentially maxed out with hitting a single. So at that point you’re like, well, we really need to get you on base. That’s the best thing that can, we can really hope for here. You can maybe squeak out a double down the line once in a while, but for players that don’t have the pop to hit into the gaps. And this is also a lot of young girls also,  You know, you’re really just counting on getting to first base. And so at that point plate discipline is paramount because it does not matter one bit, unless there’s Reynolds on base that you want to bat home, how you get on first base. So if it’s not, you know, runner on second or runner on third in those situations, we do need you to bat the girl home. But if it’s not that situation where they’re just running on first or there’s no one on, you know, getting on first base by any means necessary is all that matters. So whether that’s a walk hit by a pitcher or, or single you get it, The big thing here though, is plate discipline on base percentages is huge  and play discipline is what allows players to get on base consistently. And again, the way you build that skill is by throwing your daughter a lot of BP. You have to have live pitching, hitting off the bat and tee doesn’t do it soft toss. Doesn’t do it. Front toss kind of does it, but really moving balls. At higher speeds, closer to game speed. So it’s gonna really help your plate discipline. And this is where having lots of inner squad games. This is why incentivizing players to walk is important. Incentivizing players to walk and practice is important. Incentivizing players to get to the three ball counts, whatever way you have to do this and control cajole players to take more pitches is important in the Oakland A’s and the money ball situation. They made it clear. They’re like, if you want to get to the major leagues, if you want to progress from A ball to AA, if you want to get promoted, you better, you better walk. At least as many times. And so players like, okay, I can’t go up there and swing at the first pitch anymore. I can’t go up there and swing one-on-one. I need to take pitches. And then they start to be very discerning about what they can and can’t take, because obviously they don’t want to get punched out and strikes, but they start to be very discerning about what is good enough to hit and what is not. And obviously the more your swing, if it is in the center of the plate, the more you’re going to be hit the head, hit the ball hard and maximize the swings that you do take. So. The walking Bart is a happy,  side effect, but really not swinging at pitches on the thirds of the plate or farther off is a benefit just for a trial and hit the ball hard. Even if you’re a power hitter and you want to hit the ball more like harder, more consistently, it still comes back to swinging at pitches in the center, cut of the plate, that center, third of the plate, especially. So again, having plate discipline and building that as a coach is really, really, really critical. Well, that’s all the good advice I’ve got for today. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while also helping yourself enroll today in one of my online softball courses, my She’s Got a Cannon throwing courses, come with pricing plans for any budget. And my Resolute Athlete, Mental Skills course will help your daughter or team build the mindset of a champion. Enroll in any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% with code good advice just for being a listener. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email list where you’ll get updates on all my new videos and episodes, nearly 4,000 people get my emails and you should to sign up for the link in the show notes. Lastly, who do you know, who can use some good advice? Please share this podcast with a friend, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to my snap softball, YouTube channel, where you’ll find this podcast and hundreds of softball, instructional videos. Back when I was a player, I was always thankful for good coaches and good advice. I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time.

In this episode, Dan discusses how to help a girl with a quiet personality play aggressively. Dan also talks through some of the misconceptions of pitching velocity as well as what’s realistic for pitchers when it comes to pitching velocity. Try the Early Work Strength Program for free here. To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com Transcript: EP19 – How to Help a Player with a Quiet Personality Play Aggressively & The Misconceptions of Pitching Velocity You are listening to the Good Advice, Softball Podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. And on this show, you’ll learn how to help the softball player in your life. Sharpen her skills, improve her mindset and find new confidence through softball. All right. Welcome back to the Good Advice softball podcast. I’m Dan Blewett in today’s episode, we’ve got two topics. I’m going to cover. Number one, how do you help a girl with a quiet sort of not overly aggressive personality? How do you help her get more out of her body? So she’s swinging aggressively pitching aggressively, you know, getting as much velocity and, power out of her frame as possible. That can definitely be a challenge. And personality type definitely matters. And then number two, sort of along the same lines, we’re going to talk about pitching velocity and some of the misconceptions about it. I think it’s, often misunderstood what parents can expect, what coaches can expect from players. And, you know, what’s realistic as far as like average velocity, peak velocity, all that sort of stuff. Okay. So first thing, you know, players all have their different personality types. You know, if you follow things like the Myers Briggs or the Enneagram. You’ll know that humans are sort of, we do fall into sort of different buckets and categories and our personalities, and definitely fall within a range. Right. There’s introverts there’s extroverts, but in reality, we’re all sort of on the continuum, right? So no, one’s like purely an introvert or, you know, you might be 32% introvert and. 76%,  extrovert and, you know, couple of percentage points, something else. So there’s never, you know, you can’t necessarily emulate one other, a different players, personality types. You have to take that into account. Some players is more contemplated, less aggressive. Some players are, hyper aggressive and not real deep thinkers, or, you know, there’s any combination of attributes that players can have. And so I think sometimes parents sometimes think that, Hey. You know, if only my daughter could just be more aggressive and just like really put some more oomph into it, and that might be true. And that might be a worthwhile goal, trying to get that out of them. It just might not be the way that they operate. And so you have to sort of figure that out. Like if you look at the highest levels of baseball and softball, there are some players that are just more of like finesse kind of players that aren’t super hyped up, super pumped up that aren’t. Flame throwers and they still get by and they do their thing. And I don’t know, there’s lots of examples where players are converted from one into the other. Now that being said, there is a certain amount of aggressiveness you have to have as a baseline to get to your highest pitching velocity. If you’re a pitcher, Or as a hitter you can’t go up there and just swing at 80% and you can’t go out there and pitch at 90% because you just won’t have enough velocity on tap to do that. You know, if you threw a hundred miles per hour in baseball, you could throw 95% and still throw pretty hard. You know, if you threw 75 underhand in softball, you could go out there and throw 90% and still throw pretty hard. But most players will never have the premium velocity to do that. So for players that are not overly aggressive, who maybe have that quiet personality, I think it’s just starting to challenge them and figure out how they respond to challenges, get them in front of other players. you know, maybe take them to college camps where they can see some of the older players and wow, how hard they throw, how hard they hit, get them to talk to other older players or former players. You know, send them interviews of former players and have them talk about their mindset and stuff like that. And it’s really just exposing them to lots of different voices and having them see in action, what other players do, because they don’t really, they only really know their baseline. And that’s the other thing, if you can’t always tell the players effort level by how they look and you say, well, you’re not even like trying that hard, then they might say, no, I am. I sort of feel like I am. And that’s valid. So I’ve definitely been there. Where if you ever watched me pitch in baseball, I didn’t look like I was throwing the max effort, but I was pretty close to max effort. It just like my max effort looked different than someone else’s. And so for someone who could come to me and be like, man, you could throw way harder. If you just try it, I’d be like, dude, I’m trying, like my trying just looks different than you’re trying. So. It’s hard to know as a parent, how they perceive their effort level too. And also just, you know, when they feel like they mentally get out of control, all that sort of stuff, it’s not just pitching again. It’s hitting also some players just naturally more aggressive the way they swing the bat. So there is no one magic bullet or magic thing to say to get a player to snap out of any of it. for overhand throwing, I think long toss is a good tool, especially with smaller, lighter balls than a full-size softball, because you know, long tossing, you’re challenging yourself to throw a little bit farther. So you can all, you automatically have to reach back for a little extra and like hold onto it and really get that last little bit of it to throw that ball a little bit farther, especially you have a, you know, maybe you’re trying to Chuck it over a fence or you’re just. You know long tossing with a partner and they’re getting pretty far and you missed them last time you know, landed at their feet and this next one, you want to hit them in the chest, giving them that physical challenge is helpful. Radar gun can be helpful as a tool, but I don’t think subjecting your players to having to be on a radar gun all the time is necessary either. That’s exhausting mentally. And you just physically can’t reach your top velocity every day. You know, that’s the difference between, you know, 60 miles per hour and 58 is pretty negligible. That’s only like one and a half percent or 2%. So you know, that two or 3% or whatever is very negligible output difference. And so to say, Oh, you only hit 58 today. It’s like, well, 58 today is 60 tomorrow. Depends on how fresh I am or how much sleep I got or how much food I ate or. Maybe I was tired from a workout. So your baseline always changes. And that’s what they call autoregulation in the strength training world that you can’t expect. You know, you can’t say, well, your max was 500 pounds on squats. So therefore today you have to do 95% of your maps. That means you have to do 490 pounds. you know, that’s, I don’t think I did that math. Right. But that I don’t really care at the moment. but you know, that might not be their max that day 500 pounds. It might’ve been their max a week ago and they like true all time record, but just cause they did the 500 pounds last Thursday doesn’t mean they’re capable of doing 500 pounds. They walk in today. Cause again, they could be tired, they could be dehydrated. They could have had a terrible night’s sleep. You know, all these different factors. And maybe today they’re at the absolute best their body could output is like 486 pounds. So they call that autoregulation where it’s basically just athletes listening to themselves as they build up. So you’d start at 350 pounds and three 80, then 400, 420 404, 460. And as you get closer towards that theoretical 500 pound max, then you start to say, well, is 500 actually in the tank today. It doesn’t feel like it. So let’s say, all right, maybe my max is 480 today. So that’s how they kind of do that. And you kind of have to have that same mindset with pitching where you’re just not going to get to your full speeds. And we’ll cover that a little more in the second topic, but again, for swinging the bat for sprinting, for throwing or pitching velocity, You know, these non-aggressive players who are quieter. I don’t think you’re going to nag them into having more aggression. Number one, I think they’re just going to come to learn, to find a balance and maybe have a little more aggression in their game over time. But again, I think the number one way they’re going to get there. Is from being exposed to other players that can kind of show them the way, show them what a higher intensity looks like, or just show them that like, look, I throw away harder than you. And that sort of puts a fire in the belly of a player to be a little more aggressive and say, no, I do have more, I can dig deeper and I can get a little more velocity. So it can be a challenge for parents. And I’ve heard that a bunch of different times, from both sports. So if you do have a player in your life, who’s not that aggressive. Who’s kind of that quieter, maybe a little meek player. Like I said, it’s tough, but just do your best to encourage and put them in front of other people that might give them that little boost of enthusiasm to try it a little bit harder. All right. In our second topic today, I want to talk about pitching velocity. So I mean I started to allude to this in the previous topic, which is that, you know, your peak is not always going to be there every day. And so with radar guns becoming more and more prevalent with pocket radar being a very good. Cheap, relatively cheap, you know, easy to easily portable option. You know, players can be on the radar gun a lot more than they ever could. When I was a kid, I couldn’t afford a radar gun, like who could, they’re like 800 bucks back when, you know, with inflation 800 bucks was a lot more money than it is today. And so, you know, the only people who had radar guns were some coaches and. Mostly Scouts. So like you didn’t even have access to it. But today there was a parent standing with pocket radar at every game, pretty much, right. And most high school programs have their own gun. All colleges do. And all pros obviously do as well. And a lot of facilities have, you know, my facility had two radar guns on our walls, so. Velocity is more in it’s more omnipresent, it’s more in people’s minds and it’s more accessible. But I think what people don’t realize is that when your daughter who’s a pitcher reaches a new velocity milestone, or maybe it’s overhand throwing, and they reach a new velocity milestone, like they hit 60 for the first time you think, okay, well it’s now everything in the future is, you know, sixties, the new benchmark. And that’s not really true. It’s a, it’s a new frame of reference. It’s the new high score, but just because you can touch. That doesn’t mean you can always reproduce that. So, you know, baseball, pitchers, no, this well, softball pitchers know this well, or at least the higher level ones that everyone’s going to have a max velocity. And you think, Oh, why can’t you just reach back and get one extra miles per hour? Well, sometimes you just can’t, you’re just maxed out. And so. For a lot of players, especially the, you know, like underhand, like maybe 70 or 71 is your absolute max and your lifetime max, you’ve never hit hired in 71 as a pitcher, which is obviously exceptional. But you know, when you hit 71, like what’s the difference between just getting a 72. Well, then why not? 73 then? Why not? 74. And then suddenly it’s like, well, yeah, at some point you really are maxed out. And so the true max speed is typically just going to be, it’s kind of like the bell curve where say your max is 71. You’re not going to hit a 71 on every pitch. Like we already know that. Right. So then like how many 71’s will happen in a game or if your daughter’s 10 and our max is 52. How many 52’s can you really expect when that’s our absolute max speed? In a given game, she throws a hundred pitches. Maybe 10 of them are 52. Right. And so it’s one of those things where. We sometimes think that the new high score immediately becomes this, the standard, the benchmark, and that we expected all the time, but it’s really when that new high score starts to become lower. Right. So when we have a even higher max score, That one becomes more prevalent. So a 52 is your new, your new high. And then in two months now you hit 53 and then a month later you hit 54 because you’re growing now 52’s are there like 40% of your pitches. Right. And then a couple of years later, when you’re hitting 57, 52 is the low end of your range. And you only throw a couple 50 twos a game because you know, that’s like the slowest, like there’s no reason to ever throw all that slow anymore. Right. Everything’s 56, 57. So. You really need to consider pitching velocity, not as this number that you’re looking for. So I think everyone just gets obsessed and they say, Oh, well, she hits 60. I want to see a bunch of sixties today. You might not see any, you know, if they just hit it one time their body might really just not be capable of doing it more than one time or two times or three times. And, that’s pretty normal. And as they get stronger and their body gets comfortable throwing at, that speed, then it adapts. And then you’ll start to see a higher frequency of sixties and 60 ones. And then they’ll all start to come up. But really your velocity is always arranged. And even in the highest levels of softball and baseball, you see this so softball, if a player can touch 70, they’re probably 66 to 70 or 65 to 70, that’s their range. They might touch 70, but they don’t pitch there. They pitch at 67 68. Same thing, even in major league baseball, you look at the graphs, the ranges of these players, you know, guys are 92 to 96, usually three or four mile power spread and given a whole season, it’s even bigger than that. When you’re taking into, you know, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 pitches, that’s a pretty big range that they have. So the big thing to remember is. You don’t want to start to just because you’re excited that you see a loss, you start to grow. You don’t want to start to set unrealistic expectations where now there’s a lot of pressure to continue to climb above that. Cause you just can’t climb in a slow linear fashion all the time. Really it’s going to be, there might be some long plateaus, like they might gain five miles per hour in a 10 month period when they have a little growth spurt and then they might. Not gain a single miles per hour in the next six months. And then they might shoot up a couple more when they hit another growth spurt or jump in the weight room or whatever it is. So velocity is not going to be a completely linear process. You don’t just gain 0.1 miles per hour every day. but over time, if you were to average, it might work out to like, to be something like that. Right. So it’s gonna just be little peaks and valleys. And the other thing is velocity is going to go down. So just because you hit 60 yesterday, and last time you pitched your 58 to 60 does not mean you’ll be 58 to 60 next time. It takes a long time for young player’s velocity, to normalize where every time they’re out, they’re 60 to 62. Every single time they pitch they’re 64 to 66. It takes a while for them to do that, have they have to hone their routine. They have to eat similarly throughout the week, they have to have consistent calories. Like their routine has to be very normal and young players have poor routines. They’re much more likely to have huge swings in how many calories they eat, because school is crazy. And they have so many activities and blah, blah, blah. They’re often they don’t get enough sleep because of the crazy school hour. They have to get up, you know, getting up at  6:30. So there’s more fluctuations when you’re younger and it tends to normalize the older you get. So all those factors are important to understand just because pitching velocity, I think is a very misunderstood, even though it’s more measured than it’s ever been before. Well, that’s all the good advice I’ve got for today. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while also helping yourself enroll today in one of my online softball courses, my She’s Got a Cannon throwing courses, come with pricing plans for any budget. And my Resolute Athlete, mental skills course will help your daughter or team build the mindset of a champion. Enroll in any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% with code good advice just for being a listener. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email list where you’ll get updates on all my new videos and episodes, nearly 4,000 people get my emails and you should to sign up for the link in the show notes. Lastly, who do you know, who can use some good advice? Please share this podcast with a friend, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to my snap softball, YouTube channel, where you’ll find this podcast and hundreds of softball, instructional videos. Back when I was a player, I was always thankful for good coaches and good advice. I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time.

Will your daughter get crossed off a recruiter’s list if she has a bad attitude? Dan talks through how the character of an athlete can play a big role in the recruiting process. Also in this episode, Dan discusses the role of using different size balls for practice and how that can be beneficial for softball players. Try the Early Work Strength Program for free here. To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com Transcript: EP18 – Can a Bad Attitude Get You Crossed Off a Recruiter’s List? Plus, The Role of Using Different Size Balls for Practice You are listening to the Good Advice, softball podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. And on this show, you’ll learn how to help the softball player in your life. Sharpen her skills, improve her mindset and find new confidence through softball. Welcome back to the good advice softball podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. And on this episode, we’re going to talk about two main things. Number one. Will your daughter get crossed off a list if she has a bad attitude. So college recruiters come to find out that she maybe has a hot temper or gets really down on herself as a bad teammate. Any of those things will that actually get her cross off a college recruiters list? And secondly, what is the role of using different size balls for practice? So little wiffle balls, baseballs, tennis balls, soft balls, heavy balls, all those different ones they can use for hitting for  throwing, for fielding, all that different stuff. I think they’re used more often in baseball than softball, but I want to talk through a little bit of some of the pros and cons in today’s episode. All right. So first thing, will your daughter, get cross off a list if she’s got a bad attitude? So the answer is probably possibly, so college recruiters do a pretty good job of,  digging and they do a pretty good job of figuring out. Who players are, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what their work ethic is like. Are they a good teammate? Are they respectful to coaches? All that sort of stuff? And now there’s always exceptions to this. I mean, I’ll be perfectly honest. We’ve had a, I can think of one right now. A baseball player who was kind of crappy. I mean like his attitude was kinda crappy. He was not a great teammate. He’s still found a place to play in college. Now he was the kind of kid that I hoped a college recruiter didn’t call me because I’m never I’ll sugar coat things as best I can. I’ll put them in as best light as best I can. And, but I won’t lie. Right? So for him, I was hoping no one called because I didn’t want to have to lie. And again, I wouldn’t, so I didn’t want to be placed in a position where I was, I don’t know, no negatively impacting his future, but at the same time for me to ship other kids out to other schools, I have to be honest with recruiters because they will figure it out. If I lie for a player. And, you know, they’re going to call for their coaches anyway. So they’re going to figure out, Oh, Dan, wasn’t really truthful with us because we get four similar opinions from these other coaches. And Dan’s opinion was very, very different. And then, you know, they find out over time anyway. So, you know, now that being said, there’s still probably a place for everyone because at some smaller schools where they are,  begging for talent and don’t as much have the luxury. Of picking and choosing where they got all these premium athletes and they’re going to take the ones that have the best, you know, ability, but also the best character. Also the best academics, you know, obviously as the ladder goes down, schools have to be less choosy. So they might give a kid who has maybe a not stellar reputation, a chance. And you say, Hey, like maybe, he or she grows up and, we end up getting a bargain or maybe we don’t. And she ends up being the same, you know, Troublemaker that we heard that she was. So, you know, if a player is not getting any looks at all, you know, that’s not to say that it’s going to, it’s probably not because of just her attitude. Again, there’s going to be a continuum. So, you know, you’ve got to be, if you, if it’s a slim chance of playing at a certain school, like your dream school is a, you know, everything’s got all the stars have to align. You’ve got to be. Great academically, great character references, obviously outstanding on the field. You know, if all those don’t align, then you’re probably not going to get your chance at the, picky school that is maybe your dream.  But again, as the funnel  and the level of talent at a school diminishes, you know, you get to lower levels again, they don’t have the luxury of being quite as choosy. So the answer to this question is. Yes, you can certainly, and players absolutely do get crossed off recruiter’s lists by, you know, that on the field performance, but also by bad body language, being a bad teammate, not handling adversity. Well, not handling, you know, poor performance, well, making errors in the field, being a hothead, mouthing off the coaches, those are things that do not fly well. And coach, will you just be like, you know, they’ll scratch you off the list right there. But again, not every school will, so it just depends. They really need an outfield or they really need a shortstop. And, you know, times it’s getting down to the wire or whatever, they might give a kid a chance to grow up and hopefully improve their character and all that stuff over time. But again, I think a lot of coaches know that. You know, players don’t change their personality overnight and they don’t magically change either. So they’re pretty wary about being stuck with someone. Who’s going to make them as coaches miserable for three or four years. Because as a coach, you want to have your program run the way you want it, and you want it to operate smoothly and you want to have fun at your job and a couple players that. Make you miserable can spoil the whole experience. It doesn’t take more than a couple of bad apples to do that. So they are wary. So for you parents out there, you do need, uh, you know, I don’t know that it’s going to help you nagging your kids. If you’re like, Hey, you know, you keep kicking dirt after you make an error, it’s going to get you. I think they’re gonna have to learn the hard way. The problem is that. They won’t know when they’re crossed off a list of scout will come and silently watch and silently crossed off the list and you’ll never know you’re ever in the running for them. And that’s the unfortunate part. And the same thing happens with parent behavior, which I’ve talked about in the past, you know, parents and the bleachers, if you’re that psycho dad or that psycho mom or that psycho grandparent in the bleachers Scouts, we’ll try to figure out whose parent. Or a grandparent you are, and they’ll say, Oh, that’s the dad of number 12, you know, and I’m probably gonna not go with number 12, if he’s going to be a part of the package deal here. So be wary of that. And, again like college recruiting, they have more choices than ever there’s players sending them videos from all over the country. So they do have the luxury of being more choosy, even at lower levels. And so they will select for character as much as they possibly can. Again, I’ve seen examples where they don’t, like I said, I had a player who was,  pretty, obviously not a great body language kid, just in general. Like not someone that  I would highly recommend to his school. He just like, didn’t have a very good attitude to be quite Frank about it. He still found a place to play in college. Did he drop out a year later? He sure did. Because he didn’t handle adversity very well. And, you know, College sports are hard, so that wasn’t surprising either that he didn’t last very long in college athletics, but again, it’s a highly individual thing, but you should be very aware and, you know, pass this podcast along to your daughter. She needs a different voice. And that’s part of it too. When they hear different voices, nagging them or urging them on other than mom and dad. That helps a lot. So fair warning for everyone. You can certainly get crossed off a college recruiters list with bad behavior, character references, et cetera. All right. Topic number two today. I think softball. Tends to use only softballs a lot more than they should. And I’m not exactly sure why, and I could be wrong about this trend, but from everything I’ve seen. I don’t see softball players practicing with baseballs, with tennis balls, with like the little tiny wiffle golf balls or any of those practice tools. I don’t see them practice with them quite as much as in baseball. And I compare the two sports a lot, and I think it’s, it’s interesting just seeing the differences because softball does some things well, compared to baseball, baseball does some things better compared to softball. They’re essentially identical sports, just like little detailed, obviously the way the pitchers pitch size of the field, stuff like that. But all the core skills are similar. So when you’re talking about development, number one, especially with the younger players, you know, young girls have small hands and this is one of the chief reasons. I think girls struggled to have good throwing mechanics is because they’re held back. By having a small hand relative to the ball size when they’re young, even though they use the smaller balls early, they graduate to the full softball, pretty fast. And those tiny hands mixed with a pretty large ball. Doesn’t add well doesn’t bode well for good throwing mechanics now. Well beyond throwing mechanics, smaller balls, they are great for handling coordination and hitting. You know, one of the things a lot of Latin American kids do developing is they’ll hit. You know, little tiny bottle caps with a broomstick they’ll hit sunflower seeds with a blue, the broomstick they’ll hit a little black beans with a broomstick, and these are all really great tools that you can take out of, you know, the, the back alley, you know, playing backyard baseball, and you can apply them to baseball. You can apply them to softball just as equally. So, and again, I don’t think that’s something I see that much in softball. I’m not sure I’ve heard of many softball teams taking a, you know, a bag of kidney beans out to practice and, and bring a broomstick. And having a station where they’re working on really fine hand-eye coordination, so like that, but there’s definitely something to that where if you’re trying to build the ability to square up the ball, Why are we limiting ourselves to this huge yellow softball, you know, get a ball that’s a little more challenging and color that blends in a little more. That’s not so high visibility. Make their challenge, their eyes a little bit, go from different distances and use baseballs. Use tennis balls use. Anything smaller is going to be tougher to square up, obviously, and thus have  a performance enhancement effect on hand-eye coordination and the ability to center to find the center of the ball. When you’re hitting, obviously the same goes when you’re fielding. So I love fielding drills down a tennis court with a tennis ball with no glove. Those are awesome. You can use the rebounder, you can bounce them to each other. You’re really good hops. It’s a great way to work on in between hops and short hops and long hops, all that stuff. Those are very, very underrated, little easy practices that are kind of fun. The same thing goes there. You can use smaller balls, you can use paddles, all those other training tools. But again, I would just urge any softball coach listening to. Think outside the box, as far as the training aid that you’re using and don’t limit yourself just to softball and just think of the ball size is just, it needs to be uniform obviously in the game, because that’s how the, you know, the rules dictate. But outside of that, you know, why not hit. Baseball is ground balls. They’re going to be smaller. It’s going to be tougher to feel them. Why not use tennis balls for fielding drills? Why not hit the mini golf balls that have little holes and little mini golf, wiffle balls? You know, why not hit a bag of kidney beans, every practice into the outfield with a broomstick? You know, any of those things, any of those variations are going to be fun. They’re going to mix things up. You know, and again, they’re going to challenge hand-eye coordination and all that stuff. So. Just think about what you can do outside the box to improve your practices, to improve hand-eye coordination, to make things fun, to mix things up. Those are all good things you can do to improve the quality and fun of your practice. Well, that’s all the good advice I’ve got for today. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while also helping yourself enroll today in one of my online softball courses, my She’s Got a Cannon throwing courses, come with pricing plans for any budget. And my Resolute Athlete, mental skills course will help your daughter or team build the mindset of a champion. Enroll in any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% with code good advice just for being a listener. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email list where you’ll get updates on all my new videos and episodes, nearly 4,000 people get my emails and you should to sign up for the link in the show notes. Lastly, who do you know, who can use some good advice? Please share this podcast with a friend, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to them. Snap softball, YouTube channel, where you’ll find this podcast and hundreds of softball, instructional videos. Back when I was a player, I was always thankful for good coaches and good advice. I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time.

Should you play on a lesser team that allows more playing time? Dan gives helpful insight on things to consider when contemplating this question. Dan also discusses other factors that are important for becoming a D1 softball player rather than just having good skills. Links: Try the Early Work Strength Program for free here. To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com Transcript: EP17 – Should You Play on a Lesser Team that Allows More Playing Time? And, Do D1 Players Have Better Skills or are They Just Physically Better Athletes? You are listening to the Good Advice Softball podcast. I’m Dan Blewett. And on this show, you’ll learn how to help the softball player in your life. Sharpen her skills, improve her mindset and find new confidence through softball. All right. Welcome back to the Good Advice Softball podcast. I’m Dan Blewett on today’s episode. We’re going to cover two main topics. Number one. Should you play on a lesser team that can allow better playing time. And number two, do D1 players have better skills or are they just physically better athletes? So, number one, before we get going, I want to mention my new strength and conditioning program for softball players is called Early Work. You can find links in the description or the show notes of this podcast. The program is now live its been launched. It is ready for you to sign up. So if you’re looking for a strength conditioning program that you can do in your commercial gym or at school or with your team or with your, you know, your niece or your nephew. We offer individual plans, family plans, and team plans. So there’s a great program where  if you have a place to train what you don’t want to either spend the money for a strength coach or be in a sports performance facility for COVID reasons or whatever, but you do have access to a gym that you feel comfortable going to. This is a great program for you. It’s got exercise videos for every exercise. We update the program monthly, it’s got arm care, all this different stuff in it. So it’s a great program and we offer a 14 day free trial. So if you want to give it a shot. There’s no risk and give it a go. All right. So first thing on the docket today, number one, should you play and move to a lesser team to get more playing time? Now there’s two schools of thought about, about this. So number one, players can’t be the best player on every team they play on. That’s very, very rare. So you have to assess. Do I just need to compete a little harder and put in a little more work and pull myself up to this level. Is that where I’m sort of that like in my, just off of getting the playing time that I want. And then if I, you know, I let these players push me a little bit and put in the work and I  still get great coaching and great practice that this is going to be a situation where I might be able to play more in the future. Then that sounds like maybe you should stick it out. Because here’s the thing you don’t want to go to a team where it becomes way less competitive or way less environmentally, similar to what you want. So if you’re a very serious player and you’re putting in lots and lots of work and you really want to play the next level, you want to be around players with the same mindset. So you don’t necessarily want to leave a travel team. Where a lot of players have that mindset to go to a team where you can get a lot more playing time, but it’s more like a rec ball atmosphere because those players aren’t going to push you. The competition is not going to push you as much, and it can be, it can have a very deleterious effects on your overall growth. Like you need people chasing you and pushing you to be better. You know, even Usain Bolt runs a little bit faster when he’s being chased and he’s got a chance to lose, right? So I think it’s important to just assess this and every situation’s different. And it’s hard to give blanket advice. I gave some blanket advice on Twitter and most people agree. Some people push back, but in general, you want to be. Just, you want to be with at least a core handful of players that are better than you, and you want to be forced to say, okay, if I want to continue to start over some of these other girls in the team that are pretty good. That I need to be working my butt off, not just at the field, but at home and in practice. That’s the best scenario because you learn a lot from players who were better than you. You  obviously there’s always opportunities to play. If someone has a really rough patch or there’s an injury, God forbid. But if you feel like you do have, you’re getting some playing time, obviously, maybe not in the role that you want. But it is viable and reasonable that you will get playing time. If you continue to improve, et cetera, et cetera, then that team’s probably in the right spot for you. Now, if there’s like an absolute stud shortstop and a stud third basement, a stud second basement and a stud backup infielder, and you’re like number five for middle infield. And it’s not that reasonable that you’re going to get much playing time at all. And it’s maybe not going to change next year, even if you get better. Cause they’re all getting better too. Then maybe that’s the situation where you want to find a team where you can, you can, alright. I can maybe start at third base. Maybe I can’t start at short on this other team because they still have a great shortstop, but I’m going to get more reps in.  I’m going to get my ground balls and I’m going to get more time. So it just depends. But the big problem today is that parents are just fleeing. If their daughter can’t play, you know, shortstop, it’s like, well, she’s not as good as that shortstop. She can play third base, like while she’s a shortstop. Well, she’s not, if she’s not able to play there on this team. And the thing to remember is if you want to go D1 and you can’t start on your travel team in the position that you want to go, D1 four, You’re probably not a D1 caliber player. So I think a lot of parents, they have these, this pie in the sky attitude. Like my daughter’s going to go D1. She needs more reps. Well, if, again, if she’s not starting on in travel ball, she’s not going to be a D1 player. That’s almost. Without a doubt. True. For almost every scenario. There are certainly exceptions once in a while, where it’s like national powerhouse kind of team where it’s like, we’ve got 61 starters and we got a potentially D1 starter sitting on the bench. That’s pretty rare though. Typically again, if you can’t start at your chosen position on a travel team, then you’re not the player that you maybe think you are. So. I think that’s important to note. But again, like you could definitely find a scenario where you’re a really good catcher, but you’re just behind a stud catcher. Who’s going to catch almost all the games that does happen. And that’s, it’s realistic to say, all right, I just got to go to some, a team that’s a slightly less good and I can get my reps and I can develop because you don’t develop on the bench. So we do know that, right? So you need to find the balance of. How good is he, is the coaching. How good is the team overall? How good is the comradery? How good is the culture? How good is your opportunity to play more in the future? And just to really get better? Because again, if you’re really going to ride the pine 80% of the time, And that team’s probably not a good fit for you, but if you’re to the point where it’s like, Hey coach, put me in left field coach what’s me at third base coach puts me at second. Sometimes like I’m getting my bats. I just wish I could play shortstop more. That might be a team where you stick it out because look put in the work like. You’re getting on the fields so your close, but, you know, I don’t know. Can you out work that player? Can you take her spot if she has a rough couple of weeks, can you get in there and do better and play in that spot? I mean, there are stories over and over and over where, and, and this was actually Chris Taylor’s the Chris Taylor for the Dodgers recently. They said that he was at University of Virginia. He, I think took, there was like a stud shortstop above him freshman year. And then sophomore year that shorts I’ve got hurt, like hurt his quad or something. Chris Taylor went in there and then when that kid came back from his injury was healthy. Ready to go again? He didn’t get a spot back. Chris Taylor kept it. So that happens a lot too. You know, you get your chances. Can you. Be opportunistic and make the most of it. So that’s important. And I think the biggest thing is parents has to be really thoughtful about this because what you do not want to do is pave the road for your kid. If you’re just constantly, we’ll go get a new teams, so you can get a hundred percent playing time. Well, it didn’t get enough playing time here. Well, let’s go get another team so we can get a hundred percent planning time. That’s the wrong, absolutely. The wrong thing to do. It’s absolutely the wrong thing to do. Your kids need adversity. They’re not going to just become CEO at the new company they start at when they graduate from college. They’re going to start at the bottom. They’re going to have to work their tail off for pretty much everything they get in their life. Except sometimes for youth sports, we know that there’s a lot of coaches that, that just make a new team for their kids and favor their own kid. You know, just it’s, it’s a team for little Johnny or little Sally. And of course there’s a lot of coaches that don’t do that. There’s a lot of coaches that coach their daughter’s team, their son’s team. And it’s very judicious with playing time and it’s not about their kid. It’s about all the kids and that’s great too. So it’s never one way or the other. But you just don’t want to pave the road. So it’s nice and smooth for your kid. Let them have to earn things. And so just be thoughtful, but again, if they’re stuck on the bench and there’s just no hope, realistically, not that much hope that they’re going to get significantly more playing time next year. Just remember that they aren’t going to get better from the bench. So. You do want to make sure they get their reps at least probably half the time and get chances. but also do they need to see those life lessons that Hey, playing time is tied to hard work. So if you don’t get the playing time, you work, you want, are you putting in more extra work to, to get some playing time? Or are you still doing the same stuff you’ve always been doing? Cause that’s telling as well. All right. So hopefully this conversation is helpful. It can be difficult to figure out when to jump ship and you might be listening to another parent. Who’s like very eager to jump ship and think that it’s a right, the right decision for you too. But every situation is different, so definitely be thoughtful about it. And don’t just make your decision with only yourself and consideration. Ask other parents, ask other players, you know, ask your daughter to kind of feel around and just try to make an informed decision. And part two, let’s talk about do D1  players have better skills than. Other players in lower levels. So here’s of the things I want you to think about. So in women’s sports, there’s a lot of opportunity for good athletes to pick a sport that really fits them well. So, I was talking to a friend recently who played lacrosse and field hockey in high school and had the opportunity to play both sports at the D1 level and, and kind of got to pick. But when you’re a really physical well, bill athletic high schooler, you have a lot of opportunity and you have a lot of opportunity, especially in softball to make up for a slight lack of skills because of how small the field is. And this is obviously the big talking point with throwing. What I would say with D1 players is when they get to that level, they’ve gotten to that level because they have a better swing than almost all their peers, right. D1 players have to put in a lot of work and they have to have really good softball builds when it comes to their swing. When it comes to their fielding ability, when it comes to things like their catching mechanics, like they’re blocking all that stuff. They’re throwing. And just like the speed of the game in general. So like running, they can’t be super awkward. Like they’re typically very good athletes in general. So the way they swing, the way they field and the way they move are typically very high level compared to other players. That’s a lot of what makes them D1 players is those softball skills and the work they put in. But with throwing, this is sort of in a category on its own. Throwing is often the one that physicality makes up for a lack of skills. And again, I’ve seen a lot, a lot of mid tier D1 schools and especially lower than that. Lots of players. Have very subpar throwing mechanics, but their physicality, the fact that they’re just bigger and stronger and more fast Twitch than their peers allows them to still get enough throwing velocity to play at that D1 level. And that’s just been shown to be true because I’ve watched girls with very poor mechanics that would never fly in baseball because of the size of the field and the speed of the game that they can still get the throw off quickly and get it out and be effective enough. Because the field and the throw is like 45 feet, right? So it’s a short throw if you’re charging ball at third base. So I think it’s important to recognize the difference in skills and physicality and how much physicality can make up for stuff in the women’s game. In baseball, because the field is so much bigger, you kind of have to have a little bit of more equality as far as your skills and your physicality. Like you can’t. Muscle the ball from third to first with bad mechanics, it just doesn’t work that way. But in softball you absolutely. So what’s the point of this? So sure. Number one, strength and conditioning still is a big thing. And again, I think more and more girls are doing strength and conditioning, which is really important. It’s great for their confidence. It’s great for obviously their physicality and their strength and their exit velocity, their throwing velocity, their durability, all those things. So strength conditioning continues to be really, really important for female athletes. And it’s also something that a lower percentage of female athletes do very seriously compared to male athletes today. And so that means there’s more opportunities to gain on girls by doing it yourself. So then what I mean is, you know, if you took a group of a hundred high school baseball players, maybe like 90 of them lift weights, like semi seriously. And that’s just a number I made up. But if you like the girls a hundred girls, maybe it’s only like 60 lift weights semi seriously. And so you have a group of 40 who don’t, who the 60 are going to gain a lot of ground on they’re going to really pull away from. So it’s just something to, to remember. And as far as like the physicality goes. There are obviously some naturally just great athletes. Like they just grow up, they’re bigger and stronger. Like they look like a 17 year old when they’re 14, that’s a big part of going D1. And just going to playing at the next level in general, just being physically developed faster than your peers, but the strength training aspect also speeds that along, but still, I think more of more of the physicality can make up for a lack of skills and softball, but you still absolutely need to have really. Really strong softball skills. So that means putting in tons of hours in the cage, that means putting tons of hours pitching, which softball pitchers are probably some of the most dedicated to their craft of anyone. I’m always impressed by how often softball pitchers are practicing. It’s just over and over and over. Cause they can throw more than the boys can. But just like the focus of their sessions, I think there’s something really unique and special about softball pitchers, from what I’ve seen over the years, that they just really tend to love their craft and put a lot of their, their energy and really enjoy practicing it. So I think all those things are really, really important. But again, I think as parents, you really need to look at your daughters and the players on your team and look at them from the college coaches eyes and say, Does she look like a girl or does she look like a strong woman and strong woman is what you want college coaches to see when they look out on that field, they want to see the physicality. They want to see the athleticism and they want to see the speed and the power bus behind the ball, whether it’s swinging or spraying the bases or making a throw. And so again, the physicality can make up for a lot of deficiencies. So if you don’t have perfect throwing mechanics, but you’re getting pretty big and pretty strong. That’s going to still add a lot of oomph to that throw where you don’t have to get to. You know, having perfect mechanics necessarily to still play the next level. So physicality can smooth over a lot more things in softball. Then again, by comparison and baseball, which I just compare the two because I’m so familiar with both. And I think it’s fascinating to see the differences in the two sports in the way players are recruited, et cetera, et cetera. So again, takeaway here is. Don’t forget physicality. And that comes from the whole family. I mean, one of the big challenges with young athletes is they’re so busy with school, with their social lives, with, with their sports, all the afterschool stuff. Of course today it’s like after zoom stuff. But the thing that most kids lack is the ability to prepare their own food. Well, they don’t eat well unless mom and dad are really helping them. With nutrition and, and planning meals and planning, extra food. And a lot of the parents that are, I think, have done a phenomenal job, that I’ve known. They’re really engaged with their kids about what they’re eating and helping them pack double lunches, like double sized snacks, like. Having them pack tons and tons and tons of food that they’re motivated to eat. That’s a really important part of getting your daughter to the next level. So if she wants to be big and strong and play the next level and have the physicality and put on the muscle and maximize our workouts, she needs to eat like an animal a lot of the time. And that can be harder because you know, girls are sensitive about their weight and appearance, a little more so than the boys are. But, you know, cooking healthy food and giving them, you know, lots of grabbing gross stuff that her grabbing go stuff that’s healthy, like fruit and nuts and protein bars and good granola bars that aren’t filled with sugar and all that stuff.  It is a challenge to give high schoolers enough food to make it through a really long day at school where they’re just constantly busy and run around and burning lots of calories. And have they. Crazy high metabolism of that age. Right? So it’s a big challenge trying to get them that physicality. And I think it does become a very tribal, like the whole tribe. The whole family needs to help them get to that goal because if you leave them to their own is to fend for their own food. And, you know, you pack a sandwich or whatever, just grab food at school. They need to be eating semi constantly to really put on weight and to maximize their workouts and to get to that point where by the time they’re a sophomore or a junior. That they really look physically fit the part of a college softball player. So just something to consider, it takes more than just skills. It takes incredible dedication to building your softball skills, but it does take more than that takes the physicality, the athleticism, because college coaches want to see the durable, you know, future D1 player. On the field when they’re high school, they want to see them. So yeah, that looks like a, that looks like a future D1, so something to consider as you start to look at your training, cause it’s still only in November, right? And so as you’re trying to figure out the rest of the season or this fall off season leading up into the spring season, Really consider those, that sort of, that, that triad, the skills, the strength conditioning and the nutrition, like how is your family going to help your daughter meet her weight, gain strength, gaining goals through healthy? Well, that’s all the good advice I’ve got for today. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while also helping yourself. Enroll today in one of my online softball courses, my She’s Got a Cannon throwing courses, come with pricing plans for any budget. And my Resolute Athlete Mental Skills course will help your daughter or team build the mindset of a champion enroll in any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% code good advice just for being a listener. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email list where you’ll get updates on all my new videos and episodes, nearly 4,000 people get my email and you should to sign up for the link in the show notes. Lastly, who do you know, who can use them? Good advice. Please share this podcast with a friend, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to my. Snap softball, YouTube channel, where you’ll find this podcast and hundreds of softball, instructional videos. Back when I was a player, I was always thankful for good coaches and good advice. I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time.

When are you in a slump? When is it more than just a bad at-bat or two, or bad string of games? And, what do you do about it? Plus, Dan talks about whether or not hitters should be lifting the ball. To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com Transcript: EP16 -Mindset During a Slump in Softball & Lifting the Ball as a Hitter Welcome back to the good advice softball podcast. I’m Dan Blewett on today’s episode. We’ve got two topics. Number one. How do you know when you’re in a slump and when is your, what is your idea of slumping? This is actually a really interesting thought provoking question that I heard, uh, from a coach on another podcast. So I want to talk through this because I think it’s a really interesting talking point and made me reflect on my own career. Number two. Should you be lifting the ball? Paul has a hitter. So obviously launch angle is, um, something that’s trending in baseball. It’s starting to gain some traction in softball course launching. It was just a term for the, uh, angle that the ball leaves. The bat could be straight into the ground. That’s still a launch angle could be a popup. That’s also still a launch angle. But we’ll talk about some of the thoughts on softball and whether, you know, with the constraints of a relatively small field that stays consistent over player’s career, uh, whether you should be actively trying to lift it. Okay. So slumping is probably one of the reasons that players end up leaving softball and baseball. It’s one of the reasons it’s an incredibly hard sport. It’s one of the reasons that. You know, players need a sort of mental training practice and, you know, the mindset is just really, really critical for athletes of all sports, but a lot less. So in the sportswear, no, there isn’t as much of a time gap. Yeah. And there’s a little bit less luck involved. And I know I’ve talked about luck, um, extensively on the, on the show, but obviously. With slumping. There’s a couple of factors mixed in. So number one, you know, there’s bad luck. So you can have quote unquote slump by hitting, you know, you ha you hit a couple of weak ground balls. You hit a couple of popups, a couple of can of corns, but maybe you hit a bunch of rockets, right. At people. That should have been for hits and instead, Oh, for eight, you know, or over 12 or whatever. And so slumping is obviously a multifactorial thing. It’s not just, man, I can’t get a hit or it’s not as a pitcher. And obviously the term slump is used. A little less for pitchers. Uh, but it’s still, I think applies. It’s really just, if we define slump, we’d probably just say that a slump is, you know, a string of bad performances. So, you know, I would use that term for myself as a baseball pitcher that sometimes I’m just in a slump and I always hit a couple, uh, every, every season. So the number one thing is trying to figure out. W, you know, number one, number one. How do you define a slump? So is it over four in one game? Is it going to for 16 on a weekend? Is it going, you know, for, for 26, over the course of all of a week or week and a half or two weeks? I think we have to. Try to define that. And I think it’s honestly a really muddy, the, uh, vague, uh, nebulous, which one of my favorite words, I’m gonna throw it in here. So it’s a very nebulous term. Like what a slump means to one person. It could mean something very different to another. Now I will tell you what a slump is. Not a slump is not one over four game. It’s absolutely not. A slump is not a two over four games. I can tell you that. It’s not that either. So, and the thing with softball and the thing with baseball is these are sports that you play a lot of games, right? So obviously if you’re under competitive travel team, especially if you’re in high school, you know, you’re going to play 30, 35 games with your high school team. You’re going to go play. 40 50 games with your travel team. Then you might play some, you know, a fall schedule as well and play 20 more games you might play, you know, easily 60 to a hundred games over the course of a year as a competitive, um, you know, young softball player. So, you know, if we say we average out and just say you play 80 games in a year, which I think is probably reasonable, and I’m sure some of you listening and say, yeah, my team plays a schedule. It’s like that. Or my daughter, you know, plays in the neighborhood of that many games in a year. You know, that’s, you know, we call it, you know, 250 at bats. I know you’re probably not getting four bats in every game. Uh, but you know, if we take the average, you know, three, three game, four game, let’s just say it’s 250 bats a year. It’s hard to say that, you know, Oh, for eight, which is, say three games, worth three games at an 80, you know, you, that’s going to be a little tiny wave. Over the course of that long season. And really the, the good analogy is, is waves. I mean, a season. Yeah. If you hit 300 for the year, you get 400 for the year. You don’t hit three out of every 10. You don’t get three base hits for every 10 at bat. So you just don’t what happens is you as you go, yeah, six, four 14, and then you go. Oh, four, six, and then you go, you know, seven for nine, and then you go one for 21. That’s what? 300. I have no idea what that averages out to be. Um, so bear with me. My math is way off, off, but that’s how this goes. When you chunk out a whole season as a hitter, it’s never that you consistently get. You know, nine hits out of every 30th pass. That’s not what a 300 hitter looks like. It just isn’t. And it’s just, you know, periods of, you know, very low batting average. So one week you’re hitting one 14, the next week, you’re hitting four 96. The next week you’re hitting two 20, the next week you’re hitting three 88. That’s what a 300 hitter looks like over time. It’s this constant waves up and down, up and down. Now the better, yeah. Hitters they’re waves are, are less. Steve. They’re not as much like that. They’re not one 12, one week and four 96 the next week. And then, you know, one 60 and then four 40 again. That’s not as much what good hitters do, but they still do that. Good hitters are more like, you know, maybe three 91 week and then two 40 the next week and then three 80 the next week. And then two 60, the next week, you know, their waves are shorter. They’re more shallow. It’s a, it’s a more calm looking water, essentially. And so that’s why I think in no way, can you say over four is a slump or over eight is a slump because that’s going to be within the natural variance of what a 300 hitter looks like over the course of a season. And so, you know, as we go. Um, the goal of any player is just to do what you can control to control the, the, the small atoms of softball, which that’s this at bat, but even more so it’s this pitch, right? If you put a good swing on this pitch, that’s coming in, and that means if you identify the pitcher early and you really see it well, and you stay back and you kind of keep in your mechanics as best you, can you put a good swing on it? That’s what insulates you in the longterm? Good hitters, who don’t have really profound slumps, um, who don’t have crazy, insane highs and lows. They end up having really good at baths where they always compete for the bat. They always have really good, um, per pitch recognition, they have good. They just put more good swings on more quality pitches. And one of the things that I think needs to be mentioned here is that there’s this concept of giving it bats away. And my college coach used to mention it. I didn’t really as much know to math until I saw it later on when you don’t see many bats get given away. So in pro ball, you don’t see as many hitters go up there and just like, you know, they, they fly out on a first pitch, you know, breaking ball or it’s just like they take two really hittable pitches over the plate and they’re Oh two. And then they just like wave at a, uh, at a breaking ball in the dirt. You don’t see that as much with, with pro hitters because they’re so good and they’ve done it for so long. They’re gonna take more stuff that they can’t hit, and they’re going to put good swings on stuff that they can. And when they start to get down the count, they’re going to become more selective and they’re going to focus up and, and they have a very competitive at bat to the last pitch. It’s where it becomes rare where you’re like, man, that guy just went up there and gave up. Right. You see this with young kids more and more. So one of the things that increases over time, Is how many competitive of bats, you know, D one softball players have versus, you know, D three softball players or D three versus high school players, and then pro versus D one players. So having lots and lots of competitive, highly focused at bats is one of the things that prevents you from being deep in a slump. So the thing is you’re always a hard hit ball away from being out of it. Right? And of course we know that just through the natural variants and, uh, you know, and random chance and luck, you’re gonna hit squeakers that fall in. You’re going to hit missiles. They get caught, but on the whole, if you hit the ball hard, it’s gonna find, you know, the fielders are going to have less reaction time. And so. They’re going to fall, right? We know that when you hit a bunch of line drives, it’s just keep doing what you’re doing because you hit the ball hard. The low, the limited reaction time of hitters, it’s going to the hits. The hits are going to be there. Right? We all know that, but as players, and this is back to the original point. When are you in a slump? Now another thing, going back to me as a player, I never considered this, this really, uh, this, this concept personally, because I never spent too much time dwelling on it. I had a really rough season. I definitely had some really rough stretches, but my thing was, I knew when I was throwing the ball well, And just like my hitter counterparts. They knew when they were really swinging the bat well, where it was more about again. And I hate using this cliche term, the process rather than the outcome. I knew that if I was throwing the ball well, unify was giving up runs and losing games. You know, I knew that yeah, what I was doing was right. And I knew that this was probably just a little bit of bad luck and maybe some hitters are starting to get to me. And I maybe need to change a little bit about my approach, but I knew what I was throwing the ball well, and when I wasn’t. And so whether the results weren’t there, whether I was quote unquote in a slump, Didn’t matter as much as what I was going to do about it. And that’s what I think the bigger message here is it’s not super important for here to say, Oh, I’m over 12 now. Therefore I’m technically by the book in a slump, right. I was over nine, but now I’m over 10. So now I’m officially in a slump that doesn’t matter. What does matter is when you analyze the fact that yeah, I’ve been kind of struggling recently. I haven’t had a lot of hits. The question is what do I do about it? Do I do something? Does something need to change? Or have I been swinging the bat pretty well? And it’s got a little bit of lucky. Maybe we face a couple tough, a couple of tough pitchers and, and this is the other thing you can, and this is why good hitters who don’t give a bats away. They’re more insulated from slumps. When you give a couple of bats away and then you have your good at bats, you’re still going to have bad luck on your good at bats. And when you give bets, give them, that’s a way you’re going to get nothing for those. Right. But hitters who never give a bats away, they’re giving themselves more chances to get lucky. Essentially, you put the ball in, play more. You’re going to get lucky more, or you put a good swing on it. You’re going to get lucky more and find a hole through both the hard hit ground balls and the weak ones, you know, the hard hit line drives and fly balls and the weak ones. So having this singular mindset, which is all right, I’m going to go up there. I’m going to see one pitch. I’m gonna put one good swing on it. That’s what I can control. Whether I’m over eight or over 16 at this point or two for 24, or it doesn’t really matter. As long as I go out there and I see them pitch and I put my swing on it. So I think it’s an important, it’s an issue. Interesting idea to consider when you consider yourself in a slump. But I don’t know that it’s really relevant. You know, what happened in the past doesn’t matter. And this is another quality of really good players on all sides of the, of the chalk line, whether you’re over 36 has no bearing on whether you put a good swing on this next pitch that’s coming in. Right. So good hitters. Don’t let the stuff that’s already happened and, or their mind, and they don’t let the potential for future consequences. Good or bad. And, or their mind either they just try to stay level and put a good swing on this pitch right now, here in today. So. Ask yourself. If you know, you know, what a slump feels like, if you know what a slump looks like to you, it’s probably, at least I’d say if we want to quantify it, it’s probably at least 20 bats. That’s a big enough sample size where we can say, okay, something’s going on. Maybe we do need to make some mechanical changes or some mindset changes. Like something needs to be fixed. And I would definitely not get. Upset if it’s something in the single digit of a bats or in just a couple innings as a pitcher, anything like that, that’s too small of a sample size where it’s really not clear that anything is anything bad has happened, where it could just be random chance and variance and luck accounting for the couple, you know, couple of hearted balls. I didn’t go for hits and just some unlucky balances and all that sort of stuff. So slumping is a part of softball. The better you handle it, the better. Player you’ll be longterm, but you just want to try to smooth it out by having competitive bats, keeping your mind singularly focused on the present moment. And then just trying to ride it out as best you can. Our second topic today, should you lift the ball now? One thing I think that’s interesting about softball. That’s that’s different from baseball is that the field dimensions are the same from the youth level all the way up, right? The field, the fences don’t really extend back. And when you get to like high school or college, you know, they’re pretty much 200, two 20, maybe two 40 at most, all the way around from, you know, 10 you all the way up, which is, like I said, it’s very different from base one. It’s an, it presents an interesting, um, Idea of how much hitters change over the year, compared over the years compared to the field itself, because in baseball, it sort of scales up, right? Fences are closer. As kids are younger, as kids get bigger, uh, the field gets bigger, but in softball, that’s not really the case, which is, which is interesting to consider. So. With the 220 foot, if we take that as sort of the average of the 220 foot fence dimensions, you know, if you start to look at what it takes to get a ball out, it’s going to be somewhere around upper sixties, 70 miles per hour, or something like that, of exit velocity. And. So when we start to think of it that way, you know, if you can start to hit that off of a tee, then when I need to start considering, okay. Do you have enough pop to be near the fence a lot, right. If you’re consistently hitting the ball in the sixties off of like BP or off competitive batting practice, if you’re hitting a 60 mile power line drives relatively consistently. It might be time for you to start lifting the ball on this is where I think the quantification of, you know, your skills starts to matter, right? So obviously we like pitchers are, especially in softball are pretty good. They’ve been, you know, quantifying their revolutions, the revs for many years. And obviously velocity is easier to calculate than ever with things like pocket radar. And some of these, you know, radar technology is getting cheaper and better. So, you know, we track it there and obviously tracking, um, you know, exit velocity is becoming more and more the norm as we, you know, use that data in showcases and such, but the implications of if you’re a big, strong hitter and, and this is again, going back to baseball. You’re not paid, you know, $20 million in the major leagues. If you’re a three, four or five hitter to hit singles, they don’t want it. They don’t care. If you can hit a hundred, five mile per hour single up the middle, they want that a hundred, five mile per hour hit in the air because it leaves the ballpark. Right. So if you’re hitting in the sixties, those are going to get to the fence with a 20 to 30 degree launch angle. And so. It’s it’s interesting and relevant to start to consider. Hey, if I can consistently hit balls in the 60 mile per hour, exit velocity range, should I maybe start to adjust my swing to start lifting it a little bit more? Because again, you don’t get extra credit for hitting the hardest ground ball through the hole ever. No, it’s a single, whether it’s a one weekly hit ground ball through the hole, or a hard at ground ball through the hole. But you do get credit, obviously for lifting that ball over the shortstop’s head. And now it goes to the fence for a double and plates, two runs, right. Or a triple if it’s your fast and you hit to the right center. Yeah. So for parents and for players, And you typically know who you are when you have, you know, a bigger frame and some strength than you can, and you can put some juice into the ball, but I think it’s a relevant question to ask yourself that if you can consistently hit the ball in the sixties as a high schooler, whether you start to lift it or not. And start to turn some of those missile line drive singles into misaligned drive doubles, and then as you start to fill out and probably get encouraged and, and your confidence grows because you’re hitting more extra base hits, you know, do some of those start to leave the yard and you put a little more time in the weight room. And now those, you know, low to mid sixties, um, hits off the bat, become, you know, upper, upper sixties into the seventies. And now they’re all even the ARD. So. I think this is an interesting concept. I hadn’t thought of this before. Um, and this was a, another, uh, insight from another coach that again, I mean the, the field constraints are the same and we have some pretty strong girls at the high school level, you know, with weight training, strengthening conditioning, being more prevalent than ever, which is great. Um, that more girls are going to be at achieve that. Into this 60 mile per hour, exit exit Velo range, where it’s going to start to make sense, to getting some air, to get some air under the ball. So I hope this episode was thought provoking to kind of abstract concepts of when you should start to lift the ball and start to prioritize more extra base hits and power. And also what does a slump mean to you? And when is a slump actually occurring? Right? Is it. Eight for bats, eight of bats, 12 of bat, 16 of baths, 20 bats. And of course, more importantly than that, how do you combat a slump and, you know, What should your mindset be? If you believe that you’ve found yourself in one. So thanks for listening. I hope you have a great week and we’ll see you here next week on the good advice, softball podcast. Well, that’s all the good advice I’ve got for today. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while also helping yourself. Enroll today in one of my online softball courses, my she’s got a cannon throwing courses, come with pricing plans for any budget. And my resolute athlete, mental skills course will help your daughter or team build the mindset of a champion enroll in any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% code good advice just for being a listener. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email list where you’ll get updates on all my new videos and episodes, nearly 4,000 people get my emails and you should to sign up for the link in the show notes. Lastly, who do you know, who can use some good advice? Please share this podcast with a friend, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And subscribe to my snap, softball, YouTube channel, where you’ll find this podcast and hundreds of softball, instructional videos. Back when I was a player, I was always thankful for good coaches and good advice. I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time. .

When are good and bad times to try and steal bases in softball? Plus, hitting is hard…especially when coming off the bench. Dan gives tips for pinch hitters and coaches to try and make the best of those tight pinch hitting appearances. To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com Full Transcript: EP15 – Pinch Hitting Tips and Basestealing Do’s and Don’ts Welcome back to the good advice softball podcast. I’m Dan Blewett on today’s show. We’re going to cover two main topics first. What are good times to steal? What are not good times to steal? So we’ll talk a bunch about that. And number two. How hard is it to be a pinch hitter? What are some of the considerations and what can coaches do to help make pinch hitting a little bit easier? Alright. So first off, when does it make sense to steal? So here’s the criteria, essentially. The criteria is. Can I steal a base to put myself into a position where my team can manufacture a run with me being there. So to refresh your memory, manufacturing, Iran is when you move her on her over and then move the runner in through a ground ball to the right side or a bonds, and then a SAC fly, or, you know, another ground ball to the right side, whatever. But obviously that’s a manufactured run. So it makes the most sense to steal when. Getting into scoring position farther means the now we actually don’t need base hits to score that runner. So there’s two main times when you want to do this number one. With no outs, you want to try to steal second base. So if you steal second base with no outs, a ground ball, the second baseman will advance that round a third with one out, and now it fly ball to meet him center, field or deeper we’ll score that runner right or left or right field. So that’s one situation where you definitely want to steal second base, if you can, because then again, it doesn’t require a hit to score you ground ball the right side, or a deep sack fly. And then another sack flier groundwater the right side, and you’ll score that runner. It’s a free run and it’s really difficult for the pitcher obviously to defend that. The other scenario is stealing third with one out. So obviously if you steal third with one out, a SAC fly will score you or ground ball to the shortstop or second baseman. If they’re conceding the run, we’ll score that runner and let her score from third. So those are the two main scenarios where stealing a base is helpful. Now the other time is, and this is not a manufactured run situation, but stealing second with two outs. Can be advantageous because now you get a chance to basically eat across Iran with a base hit. So say it’s, there’s no one on and a runner walks with two outs. So now she’s on first with two outs. The ending is still a very low probability of scoring Iran with, you know, you had no one on and two outs and I ever run on first, still three bases away from scoring. But now, if you can steal second with two outs, we just need like one blooper or one ground ball goes through the shortstop’s legs. And that runner is probably going to score from second cause you’d moving on contact. So those are pretty much the three situations where if you’re going to give the green light to a base runner, who’s got the wheels and you know, the catcher maybe doesn’t have the premium arm. It’s going to make more sense. Now, if you have a runner on second with no one out, it doesn’t make that much sense to try to steal a third because you don’t need to get to the third with zero outs because you’re already in a position where two SAC flies will score you from second base. So staying put is probably the safest bet. If it’s going to be at all close, if you’re trying to steal third and again, the, the Cardinal sin is don’t make the first or third out third base. And the reason being. You’re going to score from third with two outs. And are you going to score from second with two outs anyway, so you don’t need to get to third and, uh, you don’t need you to third base with zero outs. For the reason that I just explained, which is that you’re going to score from second with no outs, a high percentage of the time. Anyway. So it’s just a little bit too greedy trying to get to third was zero or with two outs. Now, again, everyone, you know, people who. Want to argue this with me or with others, is they go, Oh, it’s always easier to score and you’re not just 90 feet away. Well, duh, of course it is. But when you get it to the higher levels of baseball and softball, where. You don’t just get to stroll into third for free and runners will throw you out consistently. If you’re not a very good base dealer, then it comes down to risk and reward. And there is just not great reward in stealing third base with two outs, because especially, okay. And this is at higher levels of baseball or softball where, you know, the. Catchers are not trash where it’s not just like, you know, every other pitch in the dirt goes to the dugout and now you score on a pass ball. You know, when it’s, you know, 11, you softball, 12, you softball, 13 new baseball and every fifth pitch goes to the backstop. Sure. Stealing third, you’re probably just going to a walk over to third anyway, on a pass ball. And then if you’re on third, now you have a choice, choice, or a chance to steal or to score on the next, you know, ball that goes through your. Not very good catchers legs. I get that. And that makes sense. But again, when you get to the point where everyone can catch and throw pretty well, and there’s not as many free bases now you have to be really, you have to really justify stealing third base because you’re going to start to get thrown out, doing it. And, you know, it’s just the coaches that have, that are very insistent. That being 90 feet is always better. Um, I just don’t think they really weigh the options. And how likely you’re already are to score from second on a single with two outs because you’re moving on contact. It’s relatively certain, unless you hit a scorcher at somebody. So again, these are the things to consider the best times to steal are with a runner on second. And one out you want to steal a third with one out. Runner on first and no outs or runner and first and two outs cause stealing second with two outs or with no outs, those are both other good situations to steal. All right. So let’s talk a little bit about pinch hitters and how difficult that role is. So obviously it, for most of you listening. There’s not like a dedicated pinch hitter on your team, right? In higher levels of softball and baseball, a bench player. Who’s not really a starter is going to be, you know, the next in line to basically just like, get that pinch, hit a bat in the, you know, the, the sixth or seventh one, you know, it’s coming down the game’s on the line and maybe they’re just gonna sub in for a hitter. Who’s just not as, not as strong, but. What they’ve learned on the baseball side from the massive amount of data analytics they now have, is that basically there’s a penalty of about 40 points in batting average that a pinch hitter takes. So if you were a hall of fame, like 300 hitter and you become a pinch hitter, It’s all we can really expect out of you as they hit about two 60, just because pinch hitting is so difficult. You only, you get less a bat, so you’re less fresh. You sit through almost all the game and then you are called and these stand up and you get a couple of swings and then you jump in there and then you do your best against typically one of the better pitchers at the end of the game. Right? So the that’s, those are the tasks that make pinch and really hard staying mentally locked in during the game. Quickly going from, you know, sitting on the bench to body, physically warm and ready to go and mentally locked in to go in there and have a good at bat. It’s just not easy. And obviously the more bats you’re getting, the more, um, you know, just the more fresh in the game you stay. So. Again, in baseball, they know there’s a basic, a 40 point penalty. Even if you’re a hall of fame hitter, you’re going to hit 40 points less. If you’re moved into a pinch, hit her role. So as a coach, that’s important to know number one, because you cannot expect the same results out of a pinch hitter. If you have someone on your bench, who’s more of a role player. And this is, this is still happens in travel ball. Like, you know, if you have a really premium travel team and you have a player who you’re like, Hey. We’ll take you on the roster, but you’re probably not going to be a starter. Are you okay with that? And they’re like, yep. I just want to be on the team. I want to try to earn my playing time. I know I might not start, but I just want to be there and get better and blah, blah, blah. You know, that happens. So that might be a player who is the pinch hitter, who she gets one start a weekend and a couple of pinch at a bats. Right? So it’s important for a coach to know that. And it’s important for a coach to also help her as best he can by giving her a heads up. To just look know when she’s gonna get in the game. Now, this is where forecasting as a coach is important. And really looking ahead down the line, because what you don’t want to do is look down the lineup and point at someone and say, Hey, you’re now up next. That’s not great. They’ve got to throw off their jacket. They got to hop ups or waving their arms around, get their bat, find their batting gloves and they get basically no chance to, uh, to get ready. Now that happens sometimes. Sometimes it’s just, the game gets weird and that’s the best you can do as a coach. But typically, you know, if it’s like you’re down four to two and the last innings coming up and you look at your batting order and you’re like, okay, if we have a chance to win this game, you know, we’re going to have to send at least five here’s the plate. So one, two, three, four, five, right? That’s our eight hole hitter. She’s probably my candidates, a pinch hit for. Um, so all right, let’s call Carrie up off the bench. Hey Carrie, look next inning. If we get to the eight hole hitter, you know, a little Sally. You’re going to pinch it for Sally. So be mentally ready that if the game gets that far. I’m going to call to you right there. And obviously if we don’t get there, then we don’t. But in that situation, she’s like, all right, now she’s got a half inning before her team comes to bat. Again, to start like mentally getting ready, you know, running around, getting loose, going behind the dugout, getting some swings, like you get a chance to dial in. Now, when this is your role, like for guys who are pinch hitters or girls who are pinch hitters, They start to feel this out. Just like for me as a relief pitcher, I knew when my situation was going to come up because I knew what my role was. And that was again, good communication from my coach. Of course that’s like across the board, just par for the course at a high level baseball and softball. But I knew that I would pitch if we were ahead. Bye. No more than three runs in the eighth inning. That was my, that was my shot when I was a set up man, my second to last season. So I knew if it’s the sixth inning and it’s two to one and we’re winning. I’m like, all right. If the score holds, I will pitch the eighth, or if we only score one more run, I will pitch the eighth. So I mentally start getting ready to say, okay, you know, things are going in the right direction for me to pitch, you know, then the seventh comes up and we’re still up two to one. So it’s like, all right, the next thing is mine, unless something changes. So. You’re mentally, just starting to, to cruise towards going into the game, the same as true, the pinch it or pinch hitters. They have the routine as well, you know, in the fourth or fifth inning, they start to go back into the tunnel, stretch, do their thing. That’s like pregame for them. Cause they know they’re going to pinch it in the seventh, eighth or ninth. You know? So now again, in softball and especially in like youth and travel ball, this is not going to be a much less the case, but again, as a coach, You want to try to map out the game as much as you can and give players a chance to have that role. So if you have a girl who’s sitting in the bench and as she started the previous game, which she’s not going to start this game, but you do think she might pinch hit. If you get there, this is where you say where the game, Hey, you know, a little Tina. If we get to this kind of situation, the sixth inning, I’m probably gonna pinch it for you. So make sure you’re watching the game. So if it’s close and one of these two hitters comes up or they look like they’re coming up, that’s probably where I’m going to go to you and they can watch the game and mentally. Rise and fall with the game and be ready to do that too. So again, the mental part of being a pinch hitter is one of the hardest parts. And that again is because you’re just on the bench, not checked in. You’re hopefully watching the game and still really engaged in it, but being on the bench and just being on the bench. Right. And you can only be so Ingle, so locked into the game, especially when you’re chatting with teammates and cheering them on and doing all this other stuff. So. You know, the best you can do is have an idea of when you might go in the game, your coach communicates that with you, and then you can both be on the same page so that you can be mentally and physically rising up to be ready. Right. When your moment is. Hopefully going to happen. And sometimes it doesn’t sometimes you don’t get the call and you’re mentally ready and you’re hot and you’re ready to go and got your bat and you’re batting gloves on you think, you know, coach might say, Hey, you know, this is your shot. And then it just might not be. And that happens too. But again, pinch hitting is is, is difficult. And the best thing you can, you can do is be. Ready to go mentally and physically, and hopefully have a coach that helps you accomplish both of those things. Well, that’s all the good advice I’ve got for today. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while also helping yourself enroll today. And one of my online softball courses, my she’s got a Canon throwing courses come with pricing plans for any budget. And my resolute athlete, mental skills course will help your daughter or team build the mindset of a champion. Enroll in any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% with code good advice just for being a listener. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email list where you’ll get updates on all my new videos and episodes, nearly 4,000 people get my emails and you should to sign up for the link in the show notes. Lastly, who do you know, who can use some good advice? Please share this podcast with a friend, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to my snap softball, YouTube channel, where you’ll find this podcast and hundreds of softball, instructional videos. Back when I was a player, I was always thankful for good coaches and good advice. I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time.

In this episode we cover common types of softball shoulder injuries and how softball players can train to prevent them. We also discuss the ever-popular agility ladder, and whether or not they actually help players run faster or improve foot speed. Lastly, the term “sport-specific” gets thrown around a lot…does it actually mean anything? To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com Full Transcript: EP14 Good Advice Softball Podcast: Common Softball Shoulder Injuries; Do Agility Ladders Work? Is Sport-Specific Training a Real Thing? Welcome back to the good advice softball podcast. I’m Dan Blewett in today’s episode, we’re going to cover three topics. First. We’re gonna talk about some common shoulder injuries, shoulder ailments that softball players often get. Second, we’re going to talk about agility, ladders. Do they actually work for developing foot speed and quickness and sprint speed, all that stuff. And lastly, we’ll talk a little bit about sports specific training and whether this is, Hey, that actually exists. And B if you actually need to seek it out for your daughter’s training. Okay. So let’s talk about some common shoulder injuries and, uh, you know, throwing and pitching and how they all sort of tie together. So. There’s a couple of things to understand about the climate of throwing injuries. Number one, there’s a lot of research done on baseball pitchers. So pretty much all of that is sort of extrapolated to softball. We’re all humans. Obviously the ball is different. It’s a lot heavier in softball. It’s a lot larger, you know, it’s a 6.7 to 7.2 ounces versus five ounces for baseball. So there’s some differences, right. But. Essentially, there’s not that many differences as far as like where we produce stress, you know, the, the body parts that are most at risk, but here’s yeah. The one, the two main factors, um, for, well, the three main factors for injury. So number one is ball velocity, ball velocity, highly correlated with the shoulder verus torque, which that is the torque. Created from the shoulder as it rotates, super explosive  to throw the ball. So the arm lays back into that sort of like gross looking position. Right. And then it explodes forward. So that towards is very, very difficult on your body. It’s not really, you know, we say that it’s a natural motion. I suppose humans have been throwing objects for a long time, but it’s not a healthy motion. Whether it’s something that we’ve been doing for a long time as humans, or not, at least not a really high velocity, she’s the way baseball, pitchers throw. So the reason I’m mentioning that is that the harder you throw. The more exposed you are to injuries. So softball is a little bit protective in a sense because the ball is heavier. And so it can not be thrown nearly as hard for me as a. A former baseball guy who could throw into the mid nineties. I can throw a softball a little bit of it. 80. I think my peak was 84. Uh, it’s hard to remember, but I know I could get it above 80 and that made my arm feel absolutely terrible. Number one, throwing it that hard. Um, but B 80 is not really that fast. It’s fast enough to, you know, it’s, it’s fast enough to hurt your arm, but not nearly as many pitchers who are not overused hurt their arms, throwing 80 ish. So obviously the harder you throw the, uh, the, the higher that stress goes up now, it’s also very individual. So what stress, the stress, you know, like Sally’s shoulder and sh and Sally’s elbow could handle, might be much greater than the stress that Tina’s shoulder can handle. So there’s not just one level of. Stress that is, uh, you know, like if you reach this point, you know, if we were to measure it, that if you throw this hard and Rav, this amount of stress on your arm, that you’re going to blow your arm on, it’s different for everyone. Some players can be, can go really long, have long careers, uh, with more stress than other players. Do you have very short careers because of injury? So it’s, it’s highly. Specific, but the big thing to know is the harder you throw, the more it’s it’s unfortunately, a double edged sword. The more obviously performance you get, right? It’s a, you can make a lot more plays when you throw harder, but you’re adding speed. Just kind of like a car. If you drive your car faster, the wreck is gonna have more energy. It’s going to be potentially more deadly. So that’s one thing to note a number two were used as a huge factor. I think we all understand that. Um, I know in softball, we sort of will leave, uh, have this naive idea that softball pitching there is like no overuse that you can just throw, you know, 500 pitches in a weekend. Uh, that’s not really true. More and more research is being done. That’s sort of debunking that. So overuse is a big thing. Obviously a softball games. There’s a lot of just overhand throwing. You can play six games in a weekend tournament, no sweat. That’s a lot of throwing. And so overuse is one of the big ones, especially for girls to play multiple sports. So if you’re a basketball player was basketball, doesn’t bleed over nearly as much. Um, cause obviously it is a winter sport or if you’re a volleyball player, that’s the bigger one where you’re hitting a ball. Another obviously another object, um, Obviously the volleyballs have written a soft ball. You’re colliding with it with your arm. You’re not actually throwing it. And typically volleyball season has a decent overlap with at least training off season training for softball. So that’s a tough one. Lots of girls that we worked with over the years who played volleyball had. Consistent shoulder problems because they were constantly doing both a good, valuable practice for two hours, then have softball practice a day later and their arms are just exhausted. So overused is a big one and it’s not exclusively games. Like I said, it can also be the whole scope of your training. So multiple sports included. Basketball also can be tough, not nearly as big deal as, as volleyball. Uh, just because you know, your arms are up overheads. Your shoulders can, can be tired if you’re shooting 150 baskets, um, over a long practice, you know, that’s, that’s not insignificant load on your shoulders. So overused. This is obviously a big one. And the other big one that can tribute to shoulder problems, especially in school players is his shoulder laxity. So laxity just means. Your shoulder joint just isn’t that stable, it’s kind of loose. Most girls have this, uh, because girls have lower testosterone as compared to boys, they tend to have less muscular strength and so less muscular strength just tends to mean their joints are just a little bit looser in general, and they just have a more natural flexibility, uh, because of some other hormonal factors as well. So with, with all of our female athletes that we worked with over the years, we were always. Highly stressing rotator cuff work, and lots of upper body training, just because we want their shoulders to be strong and stable. And that just means when the shoulder, um, when, you know, the, the upper arm, the, the, uh, the humorous one that’s held in the shoulder socket, we want those muscles really like clinging to it and holding it on tight. Right. So the, uh, that’s a really important factor. So those are three big ones. Those are by no means the only injury factors. Um, but those are big ones. So overused, shoulder laxity, uh, and then ball speed. So actually when you have really poor throwing mechanics and softball, at least I don’t think that it really exposes you to more injury. Because the ball speeds are so low. Uh, it’s almost like your body is so inefficient that it just, you’re not going to still going to produce that much stress now. And over the years I’ve seen a lot of players and I haven’t seen a tremendous correlation between. Arm pain and how bad their throwing mechanics are. Really. I see lots of girls with bathroom, mechanics who don’t have arm pain. And then I see some girls with good throwing mechanics that do have arm pain, and I see everything in between. So it’s not necessarily again because of ball speeds. If you had terrible mechanics, but you’re throwing a ball 90 miles per hour, you’d be in trouble for sure. But usually bad mechanics hold you back from throwing very hard at all. And then again, lower ball speeds are protective on the body. So it’s not like you’re gonna, you’re going to blow out your elbow, ligament throwing 44 miles per hour across the diamond. And you’re not really going to probably tear your labor from doing that either. Unfortunately. Um, well, not unfortunately, unfortunately, but you, I hopefully you get what I mean, it’s, uh, you know, as you throw harder and your mechanics actually improve, you actually put more stress through it. So it’s, it’s a, it’s a weird conundrum a little bit. So. That being said, let’s talk about some, some actual injuries that players get. The thing to know is most software will not hurt their UCL, like baseball players. Like I’ve had Tommy John surgery twice, which is an elbow ligament reconstruction surgery. When you throw hard enough or if you’re overused or other factors. You can tear that elbow ligament, that elbow ligament that provides stability in your elbow. Um, but very few softball players end up getting the injury again, because I think probably the number one reason is just ball speeds, how hard they throw are just lower. If you’re really hard throwing softball player, you throw 65. And that just is, is not very hard. So, uh, so UCL tears in the elbow ligament are generally caused by significant overuse and competitive throwing, much more so associated with baseball, pitchers and position players. Position players in baseball are still very infrequently getting Tommy John surgery, uh, or suffering major UCL injuries or partial tears. So it’s really more exclusively limited to baseball players. And then when you also then go to softball, Because again, ball speeds are low UCL tears. They’re not really something that’s significantly a worry. The bigger one is our, our growth plate tendinitis and labor tears. So labor room tears are, so you have a little piece of tissue and your shoulder called your labor room. It helps sort of deepen your socket. So it helps kind of keep your, it kind of wraps around the head of the bone in your shoulder socket and just provides a little bit more depth because your shoulders very shallow. It’s kind of like a golf ball on a tee is the common analogy. So, if you imagine this piece of tissue wraps around the golf ball to kind of hold it in place a little bit better. So the labor room is protected by good shoulder stability. So the stronger your shoulders are, the more rotator cuff work you do. And the lesson again of that natural light, actually that you have the more your shoulders held stable in that joint. And so it’s the bones not banging around and, and sort of like. Damaging the labor, because it’s sort of like moving and jostling around, just like if you know anything, any, any machine, any mechanical device when it has loose things rattling around in it, it eventually sort of destroys itself, right? Like if your engine has a, has a rod loose, it’s going to eventually destroy the whole engine. So that’s pretty much the, the way to think about labor injuries. They’re highly preventable, not always preventable by any means, but they’re highly preventable. And in baseball, Lieberman, shoulder injuries have been on way, way down the last five, 10 years, because we know so much more about how to care for and strengthen the shoulder. Compared to the elbow, which is actually sort of like a passive structure. So labor material are highly preventable with a good rotator cuff and shoulder program that a player is going to do three or four days a week. Um, probably from when they’re like 13 and up, and it could be younger if they start having shoulder problems a little earlier, that just might be an indicator that they need a little bit more of it. So labor and tears are, you know, they can require surgery most of the time, they should not go through surgery because, and again, that’s not advice from me. That’s just saying, you know, most doctors will agree that labor, labor room surgery outcomes are not great. So most doctors try to opt for. Rehab first and exhaust all efforts before undergoing surgery. Um, growth plate is a very common one. We would see one or two players get a growth plate injury every year in my Academy. And I’m not embarrassed to admit that because, you know, number one, you can’t prevent every injury as a, as a strength coach or a coach in general. Number two, uh, it’s really tied to. You know, like it says growth. So when your growth plates are open, which is until you’re, you know, growing you’re done growing there, they can just, they’re going to take some of the stress of whatever you do. So some players never have a growth break play problem. They played tons of softball. They played tons of whatever sport they lift. They run, they do all this crazy stuff. They’re climbing from trees and they never have any growth plate issues. Other athletes. They throw a little bit and they have growth plate inflammation, their elbow hurts. So it’s typically in the elbow or the shoulder where you’d see it. And, uh, it’s not basically what all the doctors have always come back with is they say they can do anything that doesn’t cause them pain. So if they can do a pushup without pain, no problem. If a pushup or, or throwing a ball. Continues to give them pain, then it’s going to continue to set them back. So growth plate, um, growth plate injuries, whether it’s growth, plate inflammation, or a growth plate fracture, which you want, want to avoid a, which can they require surgery, then we’ll have to go in and put a screw into to reattach it. Um, there, you just need to be cautious. So any little bit of any little bit of elbow pain or shoulder pain should be looked at and, uh, they shouldn’t be, or they should evaluate it with an X Ray to see if it might be growth, blatant inflammation, because if it is growth, growth plate inflammation, then you want to take that for six or eight weeks off, which unfortunately isn’t necessary. So let the inflammation go down because if you contain to aggravate it and that’s doing things that aggravate it. So again, you could be at a, you know, hit or, or lift weights. Lots of kids could, could lift weights perfectly fine. They just couldn’t throw, or they couldn’t swing a bat. So it just depends. But as long as you don’t continue to aggravate, it it’ll heal. If you continue to aggravate it, it’ll eventually probably crack and then you’ll have an issue and you might need surgery. So a growth plate injuries are definitely something to take seriously. Uh, the prognosis is not terrifying when, you know, if it’s just a little bit of inflammation, you just give it some rest and don’t aggravate it, but you can continue to be active if it doesn’t bother. Um, but that’s just something to be aware. Last one is, is tendonitis. This is kind of a catch all term. Um, and it can just be, Hey, you know, we’ve got some, again, some laxy in the shoulder. My shoulder’s pretty overworked, uh, or I just don’t have the strength in, and my mechanics maybe are contributing to the issue. And so my shoulders just inflamed and angry at me. And that kind of falls into the scope of tendonitis. So typically when you, when you get tendonitis, you want to address something else, which is, do I need to start to strengthen my shoulder more? Do I need to get an arm care program? Do I need to look at, you know, other issues with my body. Like what’s putting this extra stress on my arm and my throwing too much. Is there an overuse issue? So anytime you go in for arm pain, be sure to check it out. Not from the sense of like, let’s just get a bandaid for it. And just rest it, but let’s also, let’s also reevaluate what we’ve been doing because maybe, you know, six games in a weekend just isn’t good for you. So, and that might be the chief cause. So hopefully this overview of, of, uh, of common throwing injuries is helpful. It’s good. As a parent, just to have, uh, a general knowledge of what’s going on. If your daughter has pain, Alright, talk a little bit about agility ladders. So, uh, as a former strength coach, uh, Academy owner, while I’m still a strength coach, not an Academy owner anymore, we would get parents a good amount. They’d come and say, Hey, my daughter needs to get faster. She really wants to improve her, her home the first time. And you’re like, we really want to, you know, can she do some agility, ladders? Like we really want to do some this and that and make sure she gets faster. So agility ladders have been, they’ve gotten the idea of strength coaches for the last five, 10 years. Uh, because it’s kind of, it kind of falls under the term. Eyewash eyewash is unfortunately it used to be a great term, but now, now it’s been overused. Um, eyewash wash is just when you’re doing something because it looks good, but doesn’t actually do anything. I wash just in the, uh, in the, in the baseball slang and softball slang realm. Also just sorta means when you’re going through the motions, just to look good in front of your coach or your teammates. So. You know, like you’re just goofing off and then coach shows up and then you just immediately jump on the tee and you start swinging that, that girl’s all eyewash. She only works hard when coach is watching. So anyway, the, uh, as far as agility, ladders go, the way you develop sprint speed is this, you learn to put more force into the ground, just like a car. If you put a bigger engine in it, it’s going to go faster. So you learned to put more force in the ground. You do that through strength training. So strengthening your legs, specifically, your quads, hamstrings glutes, right? And then how fast can you apply that force to the ground? So that’s where sort of plyometrics comes in and, uh, taking the strength that you built and learning to teach your body to someone at faster, through faster, um, neuromuscular factors. So that’s sort of the cocktail. And then obviously the third part is do you’re running you’re sprinting mechanics. So having good sprint form makes you more efficient. So you apply more of your power fast. Into the ground, you know, at the right body angles and, and without running on your heels, stuff like that, you get your foot in the optimum position to take the next foot strike. Running the spring mechanics are important, right? But then again, for all players, everyone’s going to have a little bit of a unique gait, the way they run. And some players can run faster than everyone else with subpar sprint mechanics, and some players going to have impeccable sprint mechanics and still be slower. So those are, but it’s still obviously very important to have sprint sprint technique as part of your training. So. As far as agility, ladders go, they don’t do any of those things. They don’t teach you to apply force to the ground faster. So they don’t actually strengthen your legs. They don’t teach you how to apply force faster to the ground. That’s only done through plyometrics really. Um, and plyometrics are typically not jumping up one thing, but actually jumping down from things. So when you jump off a box, Your body has to decelerate your body fast. And so it learns to fire its muscles faster to decelerate it. That’s why you can’t jump off a two story building and be okay because your body can’t decelerate the speed of your fall. Fast enough, you could jump off like an eight foot thing, right. Or maybe like a 10 foot thing. But if you get above that, your body doesn’t have the strength to decelerate your body fast, but through plyometrics, jumping down from boxes and then quickly jumping back up, stuff like that, there’s lots of different types. They teach your, your neuromuscular system to actually fire its muscles faster and summon more of your muscle muscle fibers, quick, more quickly. So a sprinter like Usain bolt. Is both incredibly strong and his body also can summon all that power. So it’s putting like 500 pounds into the ground in one 10th of a second. For example, those are just numbers I’m making up, but that’s where someone else, if they put 500 pounds of force, the same metaphors as him into the ground and two tenths of a second. They’re slower because you saying bolt just hit it right off the ground that when one 10th. So that’s sort of, the formula is helpful asking you apply a lot of force into the ground very, very quickly. So it, Julie ladders, again, they don’t teach your legs too. Become stronger through strength training. They don’t do that. They don’t teach your body to apply force morph more quickly. And Lynn, lastly, they obviously don’t work on a sprint technique. So foot speed is something that you can, you know, agility, ladders and the coordination. They’re good for warmups. They’re kind of fun. So if they motivate athletes, that’s fine. We would use them in warm up sometimes. They’re good for young kids who are still learning to like have body control and just learning general athleticism kind of things we would do with, you know, the youngsters like six to eight. But if you’re looking at sprint speed for the off season, you want to get faster agility, ladders. They’re just not the way to go. All right. Let’s lastly, talk about sports specific training. So this was a Twitter conversation, uh, from a good friend of mine. Recently, he was sort of embroiled in this with other people, even with other strength coaches who were saying. As sports specific training is not really a thing. Well, it’s, it’s definitely a thing. So here’s what sport-specific training is. So most athletes are going to do about 80%. Of the same exercises as any other athletes. So if you’re a swimmer, you’re a volleyball player, you’re an Olympic weightlifter, you’re a softball player. You’re still gonna do 80% of the same things because you’re a human being, right. We’re all humans. And no matter what your sport, you need strength from the animal. You’re part of your side, the front part of your body and the rear of your body. So you’re going to need. Strong, but strong hamstrings, strong quads. You know, you need a strong core because that connects your lower half and your upper half, you need strong arms. Right? So those things are all important. And we want to cover all the basic human movements, which are like pushing something away. Pulling something towards you, hinting at the hips and squatting. And so, you know, like bending at the knees, the hip hinge, um, push pull, or like the four basic movements. And then there’s obviously other sort of variations beyond that. They get a little more granular. But in, in general, like any athlete on any good program is going to do those things. They’re going to do a mix of it, of hindering and squatting movements. That includes like lunges and squats, hinges, lumens include like dead lifts and deadlift variations and hamstring curls, stuff like that. Yeah. Pushing exercises like bench, press dumbbell, bench, press pushups, pulling exercises as is, which are all rowing variations and different angles. So it chin up as an overhead row, obviously a seated row as a horizontal row, stuff like that. Every athlete is going to need to do those. So there really isn’t that much sports, but specificity in those core ones. Um, but then again, you do start to get into it a little bit deeper. So with like a, a softball player, a dumbbell bench press is probably better for their shoulders than a straight bar dead, uh, or bench press. And a pushup is probably better then, you know, maybe dumbbell bench press at first. So. Those, that can be a little bit sport-specific. Now the big thing is the 20%, uh, of things that every athlete’s not going to do. So if you compare a softball players, strength program to a swimmer’s program, A swimmer doesn’t really need to do rotational core exercises. They don’t really need to do a lot of, they do need to, some are rotator cuff exercises, but not really that many rotator cuff exercises. They don’t really need to do that much grip strength either. Right. They’re swimming. So with a swimmer and I actually don’t really know what the extra stuff would be for a swimmer, cause it’s not my expertise, but, um, a swimmer’s program, isn’t going to have some of those things for softball. Whereas for a softball player, the 20% of things is going to be. Probably some, some knee care, right? So it’s a female athlete. So we’re going to do some, uh, lateral hip strengthening to help prevent ACL tears. We’re also going to do a lot of grip strength cause you hold a bat. Grip. Strength is important for both swinging and for throwing. Um, we’re going to do a lot of rotator cuff work, as we mentioned before, because that’s going to protect you throwing arms because throwing arms are a big injury risk. Uh, we’re also gonna do a lot of rotational core work, which is throwing medicine balls and also doing anti-rotation exercises for core stability because you swing a bat and you throw, and those are both rotations sure. Sizes. So those are the sports specific things that. It wouldn’t really make that much sense to program that in again, women’s program or to a soccer players program. Like why do we need to put grip strength into a soccer players program? There’s not a significant need for that. You can certainly put some in there, but it’s certainly not a priority, right? We don’t really need to put money. The rotator cuff work into a soccer players program. They’re not really using their shoulders in the same overuse scenario that a softball players. Sure. Certainly they need posture and rotator cuff is important for every person, but. Not nearly to the extent of a softball player. Right. And then why is this a soccer player need rotational med ball throws. They don’t right. They’ll throw some, some soccer throws in from out of bounds, overhead, but there’s not really a rotational component in softball, or I’m sorry, in soccer. So you can see like, there’s definitely a difference between the two programs the way you do it. But again, the soccer player and the softball player are both gonna get a lot of glute exercises, core exercises, pushing, and pulling and legs and all that stuff. Um, and so there’s going to be, again that, that big overlap, but the really fine tuning things. Those are the things that make a program sport-specific so, um, don’t be misled if you. Like sports. Specificity is not the biggest deal in the world, especially for younger athletes, but it does become a big deal, especially for softball because they do need arm care. They do need rotational work to help develop their bat speed and their throwing speed. There are some definite needs that a good strength coach is going to put into a softball specific training program. Well, that’s all the good advice I’ve got for today. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while also helping yourself enroll today. And one of my online softball courses, my she’s got a Canon throwing courses come with pricing plans for any budget. And my resolute athlete, mental skills course will help your daughter or team build the mindset of a champion. Enroll in any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% with code good advice just for being a listener. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email list where you’ll get updates on all my new videos and episodes, nearly 4,000 people get my emails and you should to sign up for the link in the show notes. Lastly, who do you know, who can use some good advice? Please share this podcast with a friend, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to my snap softball, YouTube channel, where you’ll find this podcast and hundreds of softball, instructional videos. Back when I was a player, I was always thankful for good coaches and good advice. I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time. .

What percentage of fastballs should softball pitchers throw? And, should they increase this percentage? Dan also talks about the windmill pitching motion blending with the throwing motion, and how pitchers can read foul balls. To submit a question for the Good Questions Q&A segment, make a voice recording and email it to Dan at [email protected]. Want to support the show? Enroll in one of Coach Dan’s online throwing courses or his mental skills course. Use code GOODADVICE to save 20% on any course, just for being a listener. Sign up for Dan’s Email list and get his free throwing eBook, and follow up with him on the interwebs: YouTube Channel | Twitter | Snapsoftball.com Transcript: EP13 – Throwing a Higher Fastball Percentage; Pitching Motion Blending with Throwing; Reading Foul Balls Hey, welcome back to the good advice softball podcast. I’m Dan Blewett on today’s episode, we’ve got three topics. Number one, I’m going to talk about pitching mechanics, blending with the throwing mechanics. So I made a video about this on YouTube, and I don’t know that it was properly interpreted. Maybe I just didn’t do as good a job explaining this one as I could have. I probably need to use some examples. So I’m going to try to explain it thoroughly over the magical airways. Um, so we’ll see how this goes. Uh, second one, number two. We’re going to talk about throwing fastballs and soft wall. This is something that I’m a little bit of an outsider too, but I want to talk through the rationale of isle, why softball should be throwing more fastballs than they are. And lastly, we’ll talk about reading foul balls. So I’ve done some videos about pitching strategy recently that are in the queue. They’ll be on my YouTube channel soon. And I want to chat a little bit about that as well today. So number one, let’s talk about the pitching motion, blending with your overhand throwing motion. So, number one, there’s a very real phenomenon. So I’ve seen it many, many times throughout my years, working with softball players, I did two clinics. Uh, this past month saw, you know, of the three or four pitches on each team. I’d say. But I think two girls from each team had this blend in their throwing motion and what it looks like, what looks like is this, the arm back swing tends to just be really high. And it tends to jut up to the sky really, really fast. So when you’re a position player, whether it’s catcher in a field or outfielder, There’s no real good reason for your arm to shoot up into the sky. And there’s no good reason for your arm to stay, check out straight. Like your arm goes over your head when you’re doing your windmill motion. Uh there’s no, again, there’s no like real good reason for your body to do that. And when you’re a visiting player, obviously, if you’re a windmill pitcher, Then your arm is going to be doing that motion over and over and over when you practice. So it stands to reason that this would just start to blend in with your overhand throwing motion, right? Like the way your arm action is when you pitch is very different than the way you overhand throw in softball. So. I worked with a girl. And this is what I explained to my YouTube video that we worked together for man a really long time between I think, sixth grade. And, uh, when I sold the Academy, I think she was 16 or 17. So pretty long time. And like clockwork every year we’d come back and her throwing mechanics would have been more look more like her pitching motion than our throwing motion, where she just starts to. Really elongate her arm gets this really long back swing with her elbow, very straight and reaching to the sky. And the main problem that’s caused is that the upper arm. So this is your bicep, essentially your upper arms should be. Flat like parallel with your shoulder line or slightly below your shoulder line when your stride foot hits. So when you feel the ground ball or you catch a fly ball and you start your throw and you stride, when that stride foot comes down, which would be your left foot for a righty, your shoulders should be level. With the ground essentially, or slightly uphill and your upper arm again, this is like where your bicep is. That would be in line with those. Yeah. Shoulders never above it. Sometimes a little bit below it. A little bit below it’s. Okay. Any amount above your shorter line is bad. So it’s bad because your shoulder pinches, and that’s just fancy terms for your, basically the shoulder muscles or the, the, the, the shoulder muscle starts to hit the bone of your shoulder girdle as it tries to raise overhead. So if you want to do this while you’re sitting there driving your car, if you just lift your arm straight up to the side, like you’re making a snow angel while you’re standing, you’ll feel that your shore starts to pinch and starts to get tight. And it really can’t go that much higher. That’s the impinging, like your shoulder muscles are hitting the bone and it’s not going to let it go that much farther. So this is what happens when you start to raise your hand or your arm overhead too much in your throwing motion. Obviously when you’re doing the, the windmill style pitching, the arm is going way above your head and then slinging back and slingshotting through to release the pitch. So. You know, again, this back swing of the way, your honor arm goes above your head, and there’s not really like a shoulder pinch component to it, which is a major component in the overhand throw. That’s where they just start to have a disconnect. So the windmill motion is very much up and down and around with a long arm. And the overhand throwing motion is hands separate down elbow and shoulder blades, pinch back, and then the body rotates and the arm is bent at around nine degrees or less. So they’re very different. Uh, they’re very different throwing emotions and they don’t really have the same sort of movement pattern to them. So again, the, the window motion is back up and around and the throwing motion is shoulder blades pinched behind the body. And then the core rotates. So, this is not a problem that every pitcher has. So that’s number one. So if your daughter’s a pitcher, she might not have this issue, but a lot of players do and in varying degrees. So it just depends on the player. It depends on how stable they’re throwing mechanics are. Depends on how good their throwing mechanics are. Um, and just, I guess, depends on. How they grew up and how they were taught early. And then just again, like how plastic their mechanics are, some players are more plastic than others where they’re just like constantly changing other players. Like they throw the same way when they were 10 as they do when they’re 17. So it just depends. So this is something to look out for. I’m not sure. I explained the may, this just, wasn’t one of my best videos on YouTube. Um, and I probably needed. To, to show some examples where, um, and I do have some, so I’ll probably do that maybe in a follow up down the road, but at some to look out for. So if your daughter is a pitcher, Get some slow motion video of her from the side and watch her, her back swing of her throwing arm and see if you can see the influence of her pitching motion. See if you see it kind of a long game, they get really long, have this big arm circle and see if it raises above her shoulder line. I bet you that in, you know, if, if 10 people here listening to this, I bet three or four of your daughters will. Show signs that their windmill motion has sort of blended in with your throwing away. Okay. All right. Second on the docket today, let’s talk about throwing fastballs. So. I was puttering around YouTube a little bit, and I found a channel called fast pitch power. So shout outs of fast pitch power. And, uh, I watched literally one, exactly one video. I watched the one that interested me, which was. A guy talking about how many pitches a player should throw. And I liked his opinion on it. And I also liked that he briefly mentioned that he thinks softball players should be throwing more fastballs that they, than they do. And he actually referenced baseball. He said, look in baseball. These guys throw 60 to 70% fastballs yet in softball. We’re nowhere close to that. He said, and I don’t understand why he said it’s not that easy to hit a straight pitch. And we should be relying on this strong, fast pitch, uh, as one of our repertoire. So I was doing some, uh, some foul ball stuff and some stance and some take stuff. So for my YouTube channel, I did a video on reading foul balls. I did another one on reading, um, hitters takes. So in doing that, I found myself talking about. All those things being predicated off of swinging off the fast ball. So if you’re a pitcher that throws fast balls, that’s your fastest pitch. Right? And so then when you throw a hitter, your fastest pitch, they’re going to have to see how their bat speed matches up. Like do, can they catch up to that? Right. And so if you’re not often throwing fastballs, you’re not often getting this Intel as to whether a girl can catch up with your fastball. So say you’re a pitcher and you throw 60 miles per hour, which is hard obviously for, um, high school or below. If you throw a 60, there’s a lot of girls who you’ll just throw that ball by them. Right. But you really won’t know that until you throw your fast ball and see how they swing. But if you’re a pitcher who’s throwing 30% fastballs or 40% fastballs and you’re throwing lots and lots of off-speed stuff. You’re not really getting to get this sort of like set point where you can say, okay, relative to my fastball, this girl’s bat speed is X it’s this fast, or it’s this slow, she can catch up or she can’t or whatever. And then from that we know, okay. Off speed pitches have to beat their off-speed compared to what they’re also be compared to your face fastball. So if you’re always throwing up speed junk, and you don’t really throw your fastball, it’s not really, off-speed really relative to anything else. You’re really just throwing a lot of slow pitches. So if you threw all drop balls, for example, It’s not an off speed pitch. It’s just the speed. Right? And obviously that’s an extreme example. No one does that, but if you’re throwing such a high percentage that most of your pitches are off speed, then off-speed is your speed and fast ball is essentially speed to that. So, When the fastball ratio gets below 50%, which it sounds like it is. And that there’s really not a high prevalence of throwing fastballs in softball, which I also don’t understand because it’s still around ball. It’s still around bat and it’s easily your locate, your straight stuff, like your fast ball over anything else. Right. So, I don’t really understand historically where that’s come from. I’ve had this conversation with a couple, a former division, one players that I know, and they’re like, yeah, they don’t really throw that money fast balls, but it’s not like female athletes are just like going to destroy these. Are they, I mean, is the fastball really that easy to hit? I don’t think it is, especially, you know, 60 miles per hour from such a short distance. They’re still reaction time. You locate it. Well, I mean, you don’t just automatically hit a dinger on an outside third fastball just cause it’s straight. But the big thing here is having that set point relative to the off-speed stuff. So say you’re throwing fastballs down the middle and the first pitch of the bat and a girl swings and she fouls it off and she’s way behind it. So she’s a writing. She fouls it off down the first baseline. She’s really late that tells you that her bat speed is slow. Based on your fast ball. So now you can bring the fast ball farther inside, farther in towards her, and she’s going to have an even tougher time of getting around it. Now you’ve also found another good, valid reason to throw a second fast ball that a bat. And then this is what baseball guys do so well. We throw our fastball often and that gives us a basis for saying, okay, I just threw my 92 mile per hour fastball down the middle. And this guy. It was way, it just got blown past him. So this guy can’t catch up to 92 down the middle. Therefore, if I throw a 92 on the inside corner of the plate where he, he essentially has to get his barrel out, even faster. Then he’s going to have even less of a chance to catch up to my fastball. So then you do that. You go inside and he’s even later. So now you’re like, okay, I can beat this guy on fastballs. Probably I can go up. I can go inside again. Or if he starts to try to cheat and catch up, now I can bounce a curve ball, or I can throw a change up and he’s going to be just. Done right. But when you’re never throwing enough, fast balls, you’re not getting that Intel about bat speed. You don’t really know because if you throw a first pitch drop ball, you haven’t learned anything about their bat speed because everyone can catch up to an off speed pitch. Right. And when you throw a first pitch change up or a screw ball or whatever, You’re not learning anything about their bat speed because everyone can catch up again to an off speed pitch. So to have this Intel, to get a set point and get an idea of what a hitter’s bat speed looks like, you have to throw the hard stuff, and it’s not to say you have to suddenly throw it all the time, but you have to throw it in off, especially early in the counts to get an idea of where hitter’s bat speed is. And then you start to manufacture the bat after that. So. If you go down down the middle of the first pitch and they put a decent swing on it, maybe they just put it in place it’s over. Or so you go out or half and they fouled off just foul where it was an outside location and they fouled off fouled and they’re like, okay, that’s probably on it. For the most part, maybe they fell on straight back and you’re like, okay, definitely right on it. Right. So throwing fastballs gives you an idea of what hitters can do, and it’s still just not that he’s a barrel, the ball up, and most girls don’t have that much pop anyway. Like how many girls are taking you deep in 13, you softball, where you have to really actually be afraid of them swinging the bat and making contact, not really that money. Right? So. Obviously I’m an outsider to softball. And, um, I think if anything is some fresh eyes helps that because a lot of people need to ask question, not just do things the same old way they’ve always been done. Um, but at the same time, there’s a lot of lessons from baseball that softball players can learn from. And vice versa. There’s a lot of things going on in the software world that maybe baseball can learn from. But I think the main thing here is that if you’re going to get some of this Intel and I encourage you to check out my upcoming YouTube videos in the next couple of weeks about reading foul balls, about reading hitters, stances, and about reading, how hitters take pitches. Cause that’s important too. Those concepts kind of break down. All you’re throwing is junk because you don’t really get a good set of where their bat speed is and what they can do naturally is hitters. Okay. So let’s in this last segment here, let’s go into. Reading foul balls. So I am going to have to go back to throwing fastballs here. So everything I’m going to assume right now is you’re throwing a fast ball, a heater, something hard right down the middle. So if you throw and we’re going to for this, for all intents, as per the intents and purposes here, everything is going to be assumed essentially down the middle. And the reason it’s good to throw the ball down the middle on first pitches, not all the time, but some of the time is that it’s. If you execute right down, the middle hitters are going to show you exactly how good their bat speed is. Because if you throw a pitch down the middle and a hitter, can’t catch up to it. It tells you right then they’re definitively that their bat speed is slow relative to your fast ball speed. If you throw on the outside corner, however, for the first pitch and they swing late or they foul it off to the opposite field, it doesn’t tell you as much about the sheer velocity of the pitch relative to their bat speed, because the location also plays a role. And now you have two factors to consider, and it’s not clear, which of them is the predominant factor. So throwing the pitch down the middle of the plate early, Gives you again, two things. Number one more margin for error for throwing a called strike and getting ahead, which is critical. And number two, it’s going to give you more relevant Intel about how fast their bat speed is because you’re giving them your fastest pitch. So if they can’t catch up to your fastest pitch right down the middle, they’re definitely not able to catch up to the facet that same fastest pitch, that fast ball on the inside bar of the plate. And it’s going to give you ideas of what you should and should not do. So if you throw a pitch, so let’s, let’s talk for foul ball, number one, foul balls, the opposite way. So if you’re writing, it means spraying them over the first base. First base side, if you’re left to the third base side, if you throw a fast one on the middle and a hitter swings late and they foul it to the opposite field, that’s telling you that they don’t have enough bat speed. To catch up to your fastball. Now they could be like indecisive. So there’s always context, right? You have to read it. They could be, maybe they’re looking, sitting on a drop ball and they got a fastball. So that’s not really going to tell you if it was their bat speed or if it was just fact that they were looking for the wrong pitch or maybe they’re just indecisive and they just, you know, we’re kind of like Spacey and just decide to swing late. But a lot of times when you feel like you’re watching and you say, okay, they took a pretty normal swing. It seemed like they were on it. Like they were ready. Like there was something floating around their brains too much. That that was a pretty good indicator of them taking a hack at me. Then you have a good idea of where their bat speed is. So if they swing at that first pitch and they out off late, it tells you a good amount about what you should do the rest of the bat, which is probably bring the ball into them. With your fast ball, stay hard or go up with your rise ball against staying with your fastest pitches. Because if they can’t get around on a pitch down the middle, they definitely can’t get around on pitch inside and they definitely can’t get can’t get around up. So if you throw it in the middle of your fast ball and they fell it off late, and then you throw them a change up, you just help them. You just gave them extra your bat speed to catch up to you through them. A slower pitch when their bat matches a slower pitches speed. That’s a really critical point to understand this happens. All the time in baseball, because we do throw a lot of fast balls and you’ll see fat pitcher go, boom, fastball by you. Boom. Another fastball by you. Then there’s a new curve ball and the guy smokes into the gap and you’re like, What what happened? Well, you just gave him an easier, slower pitch to hit when he proves doesn’t have any bat speed. So again, this is another reason that fastballs should be part of your repertoire. That that’s an important thing to be doing. Uh, the second type of firewall, let’s talk about pitches, fouled straight back. So when a foul ball is fouled straight back, it typically means what we think it means, which is essentially that they’re on it. But obviously, you know, if, if hitters were perfectly accurate with their barrels all the time, Then they wouldn’t be miss hitting stuff. Right. Everything they’d swing. That would be a line drive. They’d just destroy the ball all the time. But we know that pitch, that hitters get the ball right down the middle and they pop it up. They get pitches right in their wheelhouse and they hit a routine ground ball to short. So those are like barrel inaccuracy problems. They’re just not getting the barrel to the ball. As well as they hope they would. And that happens on foul ball straight back as well. So when you see a hit or foul ball straight back, it means you just kinda got lucky a little bit and natives tend to miss just beneath it. And they might not miss the next time. So it’s probably time to switch pitches, whether it’s switching locations or switching pitch velocities altogether. Yeah. The next type is the looping opposite field pop up. That goes foul. So this one, it’s kind of like, if you’re righty, you’ll pop it up and it’ll kind of meander over your dugout or you’ll hit it, you know, over the, on deck circle. So slightly to the opposite field side and up. This one is typically saying that the hitter got overpowered a little bit and their barrel dipped beneath the ball. And they’re also slightly late. Those factors combined. And it just kinda depends on the hitter’s swing and all that. But typically if they’re falling it off that way and high under the sky or high end of the sky, it means they got underneath it, obviously. And their barrel was just kind of dragging through the zone. So maybe they were, you know, just like a little bit overpowered and couldn’t get their barrel to the top of the ball. And that’s why they pop it foul. Lastly, the last type is pulling it, pulling it foul. So if they pull the ball foul, obviously this means that they’re ahead of it. That they’re on time with it, whatever, but there’s still red herrings here as well. So if you pull a ball foul with authority, A, you could just have great bat speed and great hands and you have better bat speed in the pitcher does velocity, or you could be ambushing the pitcher and you’re just like, Hey, it’s two and Oh, I know a fastball’s coming. So I’m going to just like take a huge leg kick and I’m gonna be ready and I’m gonna go whammo. That happens as well. And on first pitches, a lot of times girls will ambush where they’ll gear up and they’ll start their swing early. Because they have a good idea of pitches coming to the center part of the zone. So sometimes when to hit her, pulls the ball foul, it’s not because she’s got great bat speed. It’s because she’s ambushing you. And she’s trying to get her bat start early to try to like drive the ball and kind of cheat her way out of the bat in the first pitch. So you have to read into it and watch the hitters and look for context and try to figure out which of those things it actually is. Because if you just look at the foul ball and say, Oh man, this girl’s got crazy fast bat. Well, let’s wait a minute. Does she actually, or did she just kind of like cheat her face off and just was ready for it? So it’s hard to know. A lot of times the, the spot in the batting order will give you some clues. What they’ve done early in the, earlier in the game. If there’s previous a bath, we’ll give you clues. Also your own velocity will give you clues. So if you throw really hard and you see a girl smokes, a ball, foul pulls a foul off you, and she’s like the eight hole hitter. Chances are the eight hole hitter. Doesn’t have enough velocity to get around on you if you’re actually a hard thrower for your level. So in that situation, this is happened to me plenty of times in my career, if an eight hole hitter like yanks me found the first pitch, I’m like, Screw you bro. Like you just took a free hack cause you’re just trying to catch. Cause you know, you don’t have any bat speed and that’s often the case. Whereas, you know, the usual suspects, actually the ones who are going to be at a pull, you foul, which are like two hitter, three hitter, four hitter, maybe five hitter, right? The people with the bigger bats, the bigger bodies. So if it’s not a two, three, four, five hitter, you know, we’ll include the one hole hitter in that as well, usually too. So it’s not like the one through four, one through five, whatever the best four or five hitters on the team. Then you should probably like raise an eyebrow with them and say, how did you get around on me? If you’re a hard thrower, if you’re not a hard thrower, then you know, more people are going to get around on you and you have to kind of figure that out on your own. But again, well, foul can often mean that they’ve got great bat speed hands, and you just started using start changing speeds and mixing it up location wise as well. Uh, or again, it could be that kind of red herring where they’re ambushing you they’re just like geared up, they’re guessing fast ball. And they’re just trying to get the bat start early sometimes because you’re a hard throw and they know it. There’s going to be like, I got to start early and that’s normal. Right. Because they don’t want to just like not cheat and go down, swinging know they’re going to get with, with, with so. Those are all important factors to figure out and make sure if you’re reading foul balls, like a, you know, you have someone else so that your catcher to bounce ideas off you like, Hey, why do you think she swung? Like that was she actually laid on that pitch? You know, this is where having a good battery, the pitcher and catcher. Is important. And you’re always going to be able to bounce ideas off each other. Sometimes as a pitcher, it’s harder to tell where a pitch was. Um, because your eyes we’ll leave. We’ll leave the middle a little bit. Right. As you release stuff like that. So having a catcher to say, Hey, you know, Hey catcher, um, you know, where was that pitch? Was it as far in, as I thought it was? Or how did she get around on that? Or why do you think she wrote that ball foul? You know, those conversations are important. So the mind game in pitching is, is always important and players should be as, uh, as observant as possible using stuff like reading, foul ball, their advantage. That’s all the good advice I’ve got for today. If you enjoy the show and would like to support me while also helping yourself. Enroll today in one of my online softball courses, my she’s got a cannon throwing courses, come with pricing plans for any budget. And my resolute athlete, mental skills course will help your daughter or team go the mindset of a champion enroll in any of my courses through the links in the show notes and save 20% code good advice just for being a listener. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly email list where you’ll get updates on all my new videos and episodes, nearly 4,000 people get my emails and you should to sign up to the link in the show notes. Lastly, who do you know, who can use some good advice? Please share this podcast with a friend, subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And subscribe to my snap, softball, YouTube channel, where you’ll find this podcast and hundreds of softball, instructional videos. Back when I was a player, I was always thankful for good coaches and good advice. I’m Dan Blewett and I’ll see you next time. .