Catching and Catchers discussion Catchers stances

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I use two general receiving stances. The first is relaxed and the other is the "man on base" stances. I am seeing in the fastpitch world a movement to go to one stance for both no person on, less that two strikes as well as the person on or two strikes stance.

Here are the two stances:

And another side view of the ready position:

I am seeing more and more of the type of stance that Asheley Holcombe uses.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3buCZ15H3U

I don't want to teach something because that's how it is commonly taught and used, even by awesome catchers. I want to always unlearn and learn so I can help out players more and more.

 

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I dont think there is a right or a wrong. Ive seen both and they both work fine. Last winter I took my dd to one of the best softball catchers in the game and she taught the primary\secondary type stance. But Holcombe is also one of the best and she uses the single stance.

 

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I wonder how the single stance works when kicking out to the left or right? It seems that the Holcombe version could work for things to the front but would lock you in and not allow the side to side movement.

 

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I think the choice of stance aqlso depends on arm strength. DD's pop-to-pop from her knees was just a hair less than from the ready stance (both times were extremely lethal). So she would stay with the somewhat relaxed mode. This also tends to mis-lead the base-runner and kind of baits the runner into trying to steal.

Besides, if my DD got up in the ready stance, the ump would have a hard time seeing. 5' 11".

 

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I dont think there is a right or a wrong. Ive seen both and they both work fine. Last winter I took my dd to one of the best softball catchers in the game and she taught the primary\secondary type stance. But Holcombe is also one of the best and she uses the single stance.

The biggest difference in what catchers do as far as stance or how they throw the ball down to second has to do with the power of their arm. A catcher with the super strong arm can have bad form and or stance and it works, why because the Strong arm makes up for the bad technic. This is less than 1 out of 100 catchers. With the use of great technic and stance, this can save a catcher .5 to a full second on pop time which most catchers need to make up for their average arm strength.