Whats up, softball players, parents, coaches?
I'm coach Dan Blewett. in today's video.
Let's talk about nine reasons,
not nine reasons, that fast pitch players and softball players in general
have typically struggle with their throwing mechanics,
struggle to throw side arm, struggle to throw as hard as they want.
Why there is this throwing mechanics sort of epidemic in softball.
All right, so let's jump right into it.
Some of these tips are going to be a little bit controversial, some of them
not so much, but I hope that at least one of these tips today
and the reasons that, you know, softball players struggle with throwing,
hopefully at least one of them encourages you to do something different.
That's the point in this video, not to like nit pick or pick on anybody,
but there's a lot of problems that I thought a lot about this, about
why do softball players seemingly struggle so much with throwing?
Whereas young baseball boys don't?
It's not like the quality of coaches at 10, you 11, you 12,
you're that much better in baseball and softball.
Really, they're just the same parents who have some experience in the game,
or maybe not really the demographic of coaches and kids, not that much different.
So let's talk through some of those reasons why
I think softball girls struggle more than the boys do.
So, number one, the traditional throwing drills are just bad.
The throwing drills that we use and most throwing progressions for softball
are ones that were originated in like the 80s,
and they really haven't evolved since then.
Baseball has dropped a significant amount of the throwing drills
that softball still uses every single day.
That includes these risks, wrist flips, pointing the ball away
to centerfield drills, these drills where you start pause
just like this with the ball and your arm staying straight up to the sky.
Those are drills that baseball has phased out.
We don't do those anymore.
I was taught those little kid or tons of girls and boys are taught
those years ago, but baseball has moved on and softball has not.
So that's number one.
Number two, girls are not encouraged to use their feet enough.
One of the things I've stressed in other videos in my online courses
with baseball and softball is that if you move your feet fast
and that's practicing, just,
you know, gathered up like an infielder, gathered up like an outfielder,
move your feet, shuffle them quick, get your feet going fast,
which is how a lot of Latin American ballplayers grow up doing.
They have really fast feet, are always moving their feet.
That makes a huge difference.
Behind teaching the body to you to work as a whole, as a unit,
as a system, rather than we just do all these flat footed throwing drills.
The body never really works the system.
When you just start to move and you're just going, your body
figures out how to throw in an efficient and powerful sort of way.
We didn't do throwing drills back in 1950, in 1930,
when baseball was just starting to get going. Right.
But yet players figured out a way how to throw really
well on the farm out in rural America, whatever.
Number three, girls don't long toss enough.
This is a cultural thing.
And softball, it doesn't seem to be stressed like it is in baseball.
Now, there's some controversy with long.
There's been some studies by the American Sports Medicine Institute
that says that long toss at high angles in baseball, the stone was done.
In baseball, it increases elbow stress.
Is that a reason to cut out long toss altogether?
I don't think so.
But the point is, boys have grown up with long toss
and they're encouraged to do a couple things.
Long toss, use their hips well, go uphill, their shoulders well.
And they are encouraged to throw the crap out of the ball,
because if you try to throw it farther and farther away from you,
you learn to be aggressive and really finish and follow through
and just have some sort of like anger into the way you throw.
And those are important skills.
A lot of girls, they are very timid when they throw theyre throwing darts,
they're just like
they don't have that aggression was long toss really helps to develop that.
So I would encourage you to start some amount of long toss
into your practice, whether it's with a softball or a baseball.
I do recommend that softball girls throw baseballs from now and again,
that is going to help you develop some of those.
Again, aggression really good follow through,
just getting through the ball and some other things
which I won't go into now
mechanically about tilting
your shoulders up and using your back and your front side better the next one.
And this one's going to be controversial.
Is idolizing D1 softball players
and the things that they teach too much when it comes to throwing and hear me out.
So, look, softball players don't grow up getting like overhand
throwing instruction.
Not really. Really.
What they're taught is
they learn the same basic throwing drills again that I talked about,
most of which are wrong.
And they've grown up
with most of the throwing mechanics stuff that's just like has been debunked.
You know, like the way we taught kids how to throw in the 80s and 90s
and 2000s has largely been debunked.
So a lot of those drills are just getting passed on from one kid
who's now a D1 player who deformity one player is now out coaching.
So you have to really consider your source.
You might be working with an amazing former D1 softball player
who's a great player, a great coach, a great person,
great hitter, a great fielder, great catcher, whatever.
But you have to ask yourself, do they really have throwing expertize?
The reason I do what I do
is because I was a baseball pitcher so long time ago, my first softball
throwing lesson, a girl said to her dad said, hey, you're a pitcher.
You teach boys how to pitch. Can you teach my daughter how to throw?
And I was like, yeah, of course I can.
It's a little bit different, but of course I can.
You don't really grow up with that. Fine.
That that heavy influence of throwing a.
Any baseball pitcher that's your whole life is overhand throwing
softball players,
you just throw well enough and then you just really focus
on your hitting or your pitching or catching your fielding.
It's a tertiary skill that's not worked on that much,
so that when you get a D1 softball player who maybe is just teaching what she was
taught as a kid, she's now passing on those same outdated throwing drills
and maybe incorrect throwing mechanics
lessons from, again, years past that baseball has moved on from.
So consider your source again.
I know this is going to be controversial,
and I know it's picking on some former D1 players and some coaches.
But look, you have to ask yourself, as a parent or a coach who wants the best
for your daughter, is this person really a valid throwing expert?
Or were they just a really good player?
And maybe what they say for hitting is amazing and gospel,
but throwing might not be so.
The next one, throwing distances are often too short.
When I watch players warm up,
when they're just playing catch, whether it's between games.
They're sometimes throwing like 20 feet away from each other, 30 feet away.
I watch coaches had ground balls to players 40 feet away.
And so now this keeps players back in the cycle
where they're just sort of like throwing darts.
They don't have to throw it very hard.
And so when you don't have to throw the ball very hard,
this is me included, you know, throwing with the low, in the low to mid 90s.
If I'm 30 feet away, I'm going to throw a dart.
I'm going to have as pushy as pushing through all this low elbow,
because that's what my body says, hey, this is what we need to do
to get the job done when you're super close.
So if you're teaching your girls to be really, really close, whether they're
taking ground balls, warming up, whatever, it's going to hurt their mechanics.
You need to stretch them out a little bit.
So even if they're just taking ground balls in between innings or in pregame
or you just hitting them ground balls, stretch them out enough,
whether it's just like, you know, 55, 60, 70 feet to where they actually have to
put some oomph into it, move their feet, use their body to get the ball there.
Obviously, in softball, there's going to be a lot of short
throws, especially for a second baseman, for pitchers on the first, et cetera.
But when you're trying to develop better throwing mechanics,
you need to stretch them out just enough
where they have to use their whole body and they can't resort to.
All I have to do is throw a dart to get it there.
The next reason that softball players
struggle with the throwing is the big, heavy softball.
So I did a video about this all linked to it in the description
below about, you know, a how to grip it and why I think it bothers
why I think it hurt is a detriment to your throwing mechanics.
But basically, this seems like the big one of the big variables between young boys
and young girls. Girls are no less athletic than the boys are.
They're no less capable than the boys are physically.
But yet this big heavy ball, I think it affects your mechanics
and negatively because the way you have to take it out of your glove
when it's so big, it's the equivalent of me throwing like a grapefruit.
I have big hands.
That's what I showed in the video. I got this little mini watermelon.
But again, think about what the softball
is doing to your mechanics when you're young.
And I'll give you a quick anecdote. I dated a girl many years ago.
She grew up on a farm playing catch with her dad, throwing baseballs.
She, like, never threw a softball.
Years later, when we dated in our in our twenties, she had a cannon for an arm.
Like I was shocked how hard she threw.
And I was like and she had great mechanics,
like she just naturally threw really, really well.
And I was like, what did you do?
And someone teaches like, now I just play catch my dad on the farm.
And I think the variable at hand was the fact that she used a baseball
and not a softball.
So when she was growing up, she the smaller, more manageable, lighter
object to throw, which her body naturally figured out
how to do it better than this big, heavy, clunky softball.
So this is another reason why I think that when you're young or when your daughter
is young, throwing a baseball or even a tennis ball at times,
just mixing it up and not always being tethered to this like cannonball.
Softball is a good thing for your throwing mechanics.
The next reason there's an
obsession with backspin and I know a coach out there on the Web
who talked about it all the time about needing it 12-6 backspin
when you throw and this isn't really physically possible.
I've talked about this
in other videos as well, when your arm angle is like right here.
The ball is going to spin coming off of your arm angle.
So if you're throwing from here, you can't possibly produce spin.
That's 12 to six.
So when you start talking about 12, six backspin, you want to get carry that.
That's all fine and good.
You don't actually get 12, six packs, but you get one to seven backspin or,
you know, 10 to eight backspin, depending on what your arm angle is.
And this is a myth that actually really holds people back
because you can get back spin throwing with a low elbow like this.
And again, I'll link to a description video below where I completely explain
the show examples.
This is a big problem when
we're perpetuating myths and passing them down
through the bleachers or through coaching or whatever.
It continues to hold people back.
And so you cannot get 12 to 6 backspin unless you throw from an arm
angle like this.
When you throw from down here, you're not going to get pure 12, six packs
and you're going to get one. Seven might write itself a little bit.
But in general, if you're a catcher or whatever,
you're not going to throw 12-to-6
unless you have this bizarre arm action right here, which doesn't really work.
So get this notion out of your head, your arm,
your spin of your throat is going to match your arm slot.
So whatever your arm slot is.
Your sidearm, you're going to get three to nine spin.
That's good because that's you being behind the ball.
So the real thing is being behind the ball, not getting twelve six.
So whether you're 1-7, 10-8 or 9-3,
you should get behind the ball spin, which means you're through the center of it
rather than looking for this one of the six men,
which doesn't really exist in real life.
And my last one is that coaches seem to be resistant to change and softball.
And one of the things that's been helpful to baseball coaches
who have been resistant to change because it's just a human condition, more
resistant to change, even when new evidence is that slow motion
has been very prevalent in baseball.
You see on major league games, they have slow motion replays all the time.
There's tons more slow motion video done for like
pitching analysis, which pitching is a big expensive business.
You know, you make twenty million dollars if you're an average
major league pitcher these days and make it a free agency.
So there's a lot of money in breaking down pitchers, mechanics.
And so it's really hard to hide as a pitching coach in baseball
because someone can say, hey, coach, you've been teaching my son this.
But look, here's five major leaguers who don't do it that way.
Which which is it the best in the world?
I see them on slow motion doing this.
But you're telling them to do that. It's really hard to hire even as a coach.
So a lot of coaches have to really think
critically about what they're doing, what they're teaching,
when video evidence is right in front of them, essentially debunking it.
And this goes back to my point about throwing drills and softball.
There's really hasn't been any accountability to say, hey,
this drill that you've been teaching since 1990 doesn't work.
And it also doesn't actually
accurately reflect what happens in a real throw in a real game.
But in baseball, there's been this tons of slow motion
because there's so much technology and so much money flowing downhill
from Major League Baseball that no one can hide from it.
So coaches use get out your phones, get out,
you know, take some video of your players.
And if you really want to grow and change and help your daughter, help the players
on your team really think critically about what you've been teaching and why.
And some of these notions of like where the arm is
when you're ready to throw a how fast
you have to get out of your glove, which is a big misnomer.
All those sort of things can quickly be figured out.
Just they're looking at slow motion
video of higher level players, especially baseball players.
One of the problems, again, going back to taking video of D1
players is a lot of Division-1 players have bad throwing mechanics.
So if you're looking at them as the Premiere example,
unless you're looking at,
you know, some of the best PAC, PAC 12, the best schools
where a lot of those players do have good throwing mechanics,
you can still get a lot of bad examples.
So it's tough because, again, bad throwing mechanics are so pervasive in softball.
That's why I use a lot
of baseball examples in my videos here, because you get weeded out.
If you don't throw really, really well, you cannot play D1 baseball.
It just will not happen. So there's a little bit of that.
So make sure that you're using technology and asking yourself,
why am I teaching what I used to teach? Is it still relevant?
What evidence can I have to support what I've been teaching or what
someone else has told me I should be teaching?
There's a lot of evidence out there
that's evolving, and I'd like you to take advantage of it.
So the wisdom on softball, throwing mechanics and drills
and throwing velocity, all the stuff, it's been evolving for the better for sure.
I've seen growth. I've seen a lot of it change.
And it's it's improving.
But the point of this video today was not to pick on any sort of group of people,
but to urge you if you're watching, especially if you made here to the end,
that it is time to to think outside the box and wonder what can I do
differently in my daughter or my team's throwing routine or my throwing routine.
If you're a player yourself and why do I have
some of the long held views that I might have been holding on to?
So, again, if you're teaching something that you never really questioned
why you're teaching it
or you were taught as a player and now you're teaching it as a coach.
Those are red flags.
And you need to examine what you're doing and why.
So you can say, OK, yeah, I actually took a long
think about it, and I actually do still believe what I used to be taught.
Not everything from back in the day is wrong, but a good amount of it is.
So you have to be, again, a critical thinker about it.
Use the evidence that's available to you.
Use some of the technology that's available to you.
And hopefully today's video help
jog a little bit of change in what you're doing.
All right. Thanks again for watching. I'm coaching. Blew it.
I'll see you here in the next video.