Do I even try to teach pitching?

[MadBandit22]

I'm coaching s 10u rec team and I have never taught pitching. I've read the I/R sticky thread. We have only pitcher has pitched some, but not much and isn't taking lessons. We have two girls that are interested in trying out, but have never pitched an inning. Do I even attempt to try learning I/R and teach it at the same time or is that a recipe for epic failure? Is there some online lessons I can use as a crash course to teach myself?

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It sounds like it’s going to be a looooong season for you & your team. If you don’t have pitching you will not be very competitive.
Do your research. There is a site called softball spot that helped me out with drills, technique, etc.. early on.
Watch videos of the best pitchers and the best instructors. I like Dee Dee Weiman (former UCLA great pitcher). Her name has changed due to marriage but I am drawing a blank at the moment.
Amanda Scarborough is pretty good and has many videos.
Bill Hillhouse frequents this site and is a great resource to tap into. Bill was/is a Fastpitch pitcher at the highest level of the men’s game.
Pitching the windmill technique is hard and takes a lot of practice to get it right.
A few “Q”s I like to use especially with younger girls is look, point, and step in the direction you want to throw, don’t lean forward and try and guide the ball to the plate, stand tall, whip your arm through, aim, and let it fly.
Slow down when things aren’t going your way, talk yourself through the problem and make adjustments, when your in a good groove pick-up the pace.
Pitching is about muscle memory, repeating the same motion over & over again, and making corrections/adjustments when your motion deviates from the norm.
It’s very important for young aspiring pitchers to understand why something went wrong and know how to correct it.
It helps to have a lot of patience and a short memory. Don’t dwell on mistakes make adjustments and move on to the most important pitch the next one.

 

[CoachJD]

My dd has a natural IR motion and the few other girls I worked with did. I guess I assumed it was the natural go to based on a small sample size.

Could it be the difference between being told to throw fast vs throw strikes? I always told the girls velocity first.

I'm talking way, way before anybody would say throw fast or throw strikes. I'm talking way before you'd have her throwing to a catcher or with batters.

Give a girl a ball and have her stand 15 feet from a net and have her try to pitch it based on what she's observed. Or even just throw underhand. It's going to look like a bowling motion almost every time. I just made a list of pitchers (or "pitchers," if we're being honest about some) I've worked with. Only 1, maybe 2, of the 15 (ages from 10u to high school) them naturally did something that resembles IR. And that list doesn't include the handful of girls who said they wanted to try pitching and after 1 day didn't want to try pitching anymore.

 

[Sparky Guy]

As some of the other posters have said. You need to work on pitching outside of team practices. You need to devote at least an hour to it if you have multiple girls working at the same time, multiple times a week. Trying to work on something a little bit at practice will usually result in little to no benefit to the girls.

Bill Hillhouse has multiple videos he sells. They would be a really good starting place for you to get a good idea of what the correct way to pitch is.

I've been contacted by some rec leagues to teach the girls who want to pitch, What I would do at the very first lesson is bring my DD out to pitch a little bit. I would always get the Oooh's and Aah's from the kids and parents. All the kids want to be able to do that. Then I would sit everyone down and explain to them what it takes to learn how to pitch like that. Then I'd show them my catcher's mitt. It's been fixed several times and the padding in the palm is worm out. The mitt is worn out. Then I'll ask them if they're willing to do that to a catcher's mitt. All of them are gung ho and want to do that. Then I will tell them that learning how to pitch can be very boring at times. Most are still enthusiastic about learning how to pitch.

Weekly lessons will start. For the first few weeks pretty much all of them show up. After a couple more weeks only about half show up. By the end of it there's usually only 1 kid who is doing the work on their own, making improvements and is still eager to learn. The others stop coming when they figure out how much work it actually takes. The lone girl usually ends up going to a travel ball team.

 

[soxtroy@yahoo.com]

At that level you certainly can teach pitching. Read and watch quality videos and learn yourself as you begin teaching. and never stop learning. Proper mechanics are of the most importance. Get out there and learn it yourself. Find articles and videos from quality instructors that teach the same mechanics and stick with that. BE PATIENT!! Finding that release point will take more reps than you can imagine.

 

[santafe]

Coach, it sounds like you‘re going to be called to the pitching plate often. I’m sure you’ll hear about how good your pitching is. I hope they aren’t too rough on you. ; )