Do you ever find yourself watching other teams warm up, pitchers throwing, and mechanics and think to yourself "she's doing this wrong" or "she needs to to do this..."
What do you say this most often about?
What hitting mechanic do you see performed incorrectly most often?
What pitching mechanic do you see performed incorrectly most often?
Carol I am viewing the above statement as if I were in the stands or just making an observation. While on tour with CNST I did it all the time especially at the ISF Championships to see what the best in the world did.
Throwing mechanics for the most part is very poor in travel ball as there is no weight shift, they move their hand straight back instead of ball down and elbow up. Look at how they land flat footed, they do not step on the ball of the foot or flex their knee, the back leg does not come around, the glove side arm is not used to assist the throwing shoulder and they do not finish with the ball hand touching or crossing to the glove side thigh area.
The hitters are still being taught to swing down and chop the ball in the ground. They use no balance, little to no weight shift (
why use it in hitting if you can do it to throw) , they do not measure off from the plate, their load consists of mainly tilting backward or just leaning backwards and if they step it is flat footed with their toes pointed towards the pitcher, throw their hands at the ball or step, stop and throw the bat head at the ball, roll their wrist and hit their shoulder or back. You see the bat laying backwards and the coach explains you will get to the ball faster, bat held straight up, coach explains it will take the loop out of the swing, during soft toss the parent/ coach is throwing every ball in on the hitters hands so they must pull every pitch in warm ups, no variation by working across the plate inside to outside, not using a timing drop drill, no extension drills to promote the high finish, no on deck timing swings with the pitcher...but a lot of self torture by the hitters slapping their backs and shoulders
You can tell a lot about the coaches when you see what the team does in general as to throwing mechanics and hitting mechanics, no weight shift for hitting usually poor throwing mechanics. We teach situational hitting as well as trying to put it in the parking lot. I especially like the early spring games when the parents pull the cars up close to the fences because it is cold and we get a wind shield and then the others back away until they recognize the hitter and pullback closer...probably was their daughter :lmao:
Happy Holidays
Howard
