What's up softball players I'm Coach Dan Blewett. In today's
video, let's talk about how to prevent high overthrows that
sale over your target players had.
Alright, so if you're new here, I'm coach Dan, I'm a former pro
baseball pitcher and softball throwing expert. If you're a
fastpitch player or slowpitch player, check out the links in
the description below. I've got tons of new videos, I've also
got online courses to walk you through step by step, how to
improve your throwing. So in today's video, let's talk about
how to prevent those high overthrows word sales. The first
thing I want to talk about number one is the common
throwing flaw in softball of having a low elbow, where you're
here on release where elbows below your shoulder line, this
is a big reason. And it's very difficult, nothing I can solve
in this video, when you have a low elbow, your arm tends to
accelerate downward. And so when it does this, the harder you
throw, the more your arm gets beneath the ball as you
accelerate it. So this problem compounds itself in the sense
that the harder you try to throw it, the more the ball is going
to go up, because you're going to try to get it up at the at
the top at the very end. When you have improved throwing
mechanics, you're gonna get to tug yourself with your glove arm
overtop of the ball and drive it downhill. So that's my first tip
here, this is the really important one that I tell
everyone is that when the throws are sailing on you, a lot of
times you need to take this glove arm and you need to pull
it a little bit harder, you need to crunch down take this elbow
to your hip pocket. And this is what's going to sort of
cartwheel you overtop of the ball. So instead of pushing
through it and shoving it up, now you can get above it and
drive it downhill. That's the big thing. Now, if you just
threw a ball away from shortstop in a game, you're not, you're
not going to be to do that right then right, you're not going to
make that adjustment. But when you're playing catch with your
friends, that's the time to feel for these adjustments when
you're throwing and hitting them in the head and head to head and
then sailing one, tell yourself, okay, I need to sort of like tug
myself down a little bit harder with my front side, because that
sort of cartwheels me above the ball. And then that's going to
get me from here to here, or now I drive it downhill. So that's
the big one. The number two tip for not making these overthrows
that sail away, are getting closed. So if you don't do a
good job of getting your feet close to your target, now you're
accelerating early, your arm doesn't have time to get into
its proper position, go through its whole timing sequence all
that. And now because your body's ready to throw and your
hips start to accelerate, and your arms not ready, it's going
to be not in the right position, and it's going to usually chuck
it a little bit high, or you're gonna have to slow it down. To
be accurate, you don't want either of those things. So your
footwork is critical. So once you vacuum up that ground ball,
make sure you get your feet turned all the way so you're
perpendicular, then your glove on goes out. And now you can get
on top of it. But again, if you're lazy with your footwork,
and you're a little bit open with your chest, that means my
chest is slightly towards my target instead of completely
closed, turned away from my target. This is often what's
going to make the ball sail.
The last thing, and this is something I know no one wants to
hear is accuracy is a mind body problem more than anything, you
can have terrible mechanics, and still hit your partner in the
chest all the time. I've seen it over and over and over in
baseball and softball. And the other thing to ask yourself is
well, how do these players make these crazy throws on the run
and still that they're there, you know, first baseman in the
chest? Like how do they do that? It's that mind body connection
where the more you throw. And the more you experiment with
throwing you throw different ways you throw going left going,
right, the more you have a really rigorous throwing routine
and you practice lots of different techniques, you just
became a you just become a good thrower in general. So those are
really important. That's a really important aspect of
aware. A lot of players who have accuracy problems, they just
don't throw enough or they don't have this really deep focus
where they're focused on how did my body feel when I threw it
away or when I didn't. So hopefully this was helpful,
obviously, overthrows are a big problem in softball. So this is
a issue that you have, make sure you tinker with some of these
tips in your pregame routine. And do it in between innings. So
when you're warming up, you're taking ground balls or you're
taking fly balls, work on your front side, work on your
footwork, do those things in your game if you have time
between innings to do that as well. Alright, thanks again for
watching. Be sure to check out the links in the description
below where you'll find my online courses, other videos,
all that good stuff, and I'll see you here in the next
softball video.