Stack Magazine

Online Training: Stack Magazine provides readers with online and print copy information regarding training techniques based on specific sports, as well as interviews with athletes, and motivational sport information. It is a great resource if you are looking for supplemental workouts, and is especially helpful to see what other (college) athletes are doing within their sport of choice!

Check out this week's feed: Softball - Improve Lateral (side-to-side) Movement:
http://magazine.stack.com/Sport/84/Softball.aspx

What is Your Level of Anxiety?

Follow this link to see your level of Anxiety before competition.

Core Training

For my beloved athletes. I was researching today and came across an online softball blog that aligns well with our personal training. The article gave research evidence that core strength increases pitching effectiveness. What a thought! Huh. Sounds like something we talk about at every lesson!

• Having a professional trainer is important to provide specific, appropriate workouts.
• Building a strong core can prevent injury.
• Core strength contributes to improved pitching and helps prevent bad mechanics (which develop mostly because of weak core muscles)
• Core strength and balance go hand-in-hand.

So.. Keep working on building strength by committing to your weekly workouts outside of pitching lessons! Both pitching and strength training go hand-in-hand.

To see the online blog that I am referring to click here

Effective Pitching

Some very important things for advanced pitchers to keep in focus, so you are able to pitch more effectively.

EFFECTIVE: adj to accomplish a purpose

1. Patience: Between.........every.........single.........pitch............ Take time to look around at the bases and your teammates and shout out the # of outs and where the play is.......... then return to the mound to pitch with energy and focus!

2. Keep this in mind: our priority is to change speeds constantly to throw off batters. So... Warm up all your pitches and use them. Fastball. Changeup. Curve Ball. Drop Ball. Using at least one off-speed pitch for each batter is important.

3. Keep this in mind: BALLS AND STRIKES contribute to outs. We have talked about pitching a strike on the corner, then pitching a ball to chase. If you can get batters to fish for bad pitches, the hits will be "dribblers" to the infield or easy popups. These are outs and well-placed pitches. If girls are swinging, don't give them strikes, but balls to chase.

Movement and speed change = effective pitching.
Movement and speed change = effective pitching.
Movement and speed change = effective pitching.
Movement and speed change = effective pitching.

Movement and speed change = OUTS

Now... Go Get Some Outs!