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I begin today by recounting one of the most ridiculous comments I have ever heard. Some bright person suggested that pitchers could gain significantly by engaging in a sport which would result in a sort of "over training" that would improve their strength while enhancing their windmill motion. The sport of choice? Bowling! As I said, that is a ridiculous assertion. Another assertion of far less dubious distinction but wrong, nonetheless, is the suggestion that pitchers would benefit tremendously by training via long distance running. Finally, the over training practice commonly used which really gets me nervous involves using a 12 ounce ball to pitch under the assumption that throwing with a much heavier ball will vastly improve speed. Yes, over training does build strength and can improve stamina and speed. But this must be done sensibly and demonstrate a higher degree of common sense than that evident in some of the foregoing.
Let's quickly dispense with the idea that bowling is a reasonable training activity for windmill pitchers. To begin with, think hard about the movement of the bowler and how that differs from the movement of the windmill pitcher. The bowler rests the ball in her hand with the palm facing skywards and the fingers hooked into holes drilled into the rather heavy ball. She aligns her body so as to allow her arm to swing down and place the ball in the right visual tunnel - just about the same one every time. She walks rhythmically forward to gain some momentum, steps forward and places the ball down as she swings her arm forward in a measured manner, spinning the ball with her stiff wrist so as to hit the pocket in the right place and hopefully knock all the pins down. She gauges her speed so as to get the movement just right in an effort to hit the same place just about every time. She does not roll the ball as hard as she possibly can or even close to that. The spin she creates is the result of releasing the ball with her hand to the side of it and sweeping the hand upwards in a "shake hands" position as she follows through.
Now contemplate the windmill pitcher for a moment. She does not walk forward because that is not permitted. She must obtain momentum via weight shift and a minor sort of rocking (fallling?) forward into a single stride. She opens her shoulders and hips about 180 degrees. She raises her arm as quickly as possible over her head and then downwards through the release point - something no bowler would do absent some mood altering ingestion.
The ball wrests more in her fingers than in her palm the way a bowling ball is held. She alters her arm angle ever so slightly and uses her fingers and wrist to spin the ball. If she is throwing a plain fastball, she may cock her wrist backwards and then as she comes to the release point she snaps the wrist to get the greatest possible spin and speed on the ball. If she is throwing a movement pitch, she will alter her wrist cock accordingly but then, again snap the ball so as to get the greatest possible spin of the desired type. The fingers play a much greater role in spinning the ball. And the wrist is loose, not stiff, as it snaps.
If a bowler did an arm movement like a windmill pitching at any point, she would injure her arm and possibly other body parts. If the windmill pitcher threw like a bowler, she would be slow and get little advantageous movement on the ball.
Bowling and windmill pitching have very little in common. The largest similarity between the sports is they both use a ball. They both involve converting inertial force into a thrown object though, in the case of bowling, speed doesn;t fit anywhere into the equation. Maybe the only other similarity is they involve somewhat, though not totally, similar underhand movements. I can throw a bowling ball down the ally as hard as anyone I know. When I bowl, people often stop and watch. Then they giggle. And the scoresheet shows the futility of a fast-bowled ball.
The stiff wrist is critical to bowling. It would be a killer in fastpitch. Bowling with the fingers used similar to windmill would result in nothing less than a bloody bowling ball. I don't care to go on about the differences between the sports. As I said, it is an absurd comparison. But the thinking behind it really stems from the theory of over-training which tells us that doing something a little more than usual will build the strength necessary to get stronger at the desired activity. And that generally is a correct approach, depending on what it is you are trying to improve.
The second assertion of using long distance running to improve pitching, or any sort of play on the softball diamond for that matter, is one I criticize carefully. Running a mile or two, maybe more, regularly is a very important part of healthy living and should be encouraged for any athlete. Every person who steps onto any athletic field is made better by being in better shape. Running for conditioning purposes can help an athlete in so many ways that I cannot possibly hope to list them all. But from the perspective of merely improving the play of an otherwise in-shape softball player because it will somehow make them stronger or better at some skill, well, that is a wrong assertion.
Fastpitch softball is a sport which requires many very short explosive movements. The longest duration of any exercise might be when playing on a field with no outfield fence and a ball is hit well over the outfielder's head. Either the kid who runs out the homerun or the outfielder pursuing the ball gets a sustained exercise of perhaps 12-15 seconds. Of course, the outfielder will switch out of adrenaline mode if she finds herself sprinting to retrieve the ball for more than about 6 seconds, knowing, as she does, that they ain't gonna get nobody out on this play! The baserunner will not likely be able to leg out a homerun if it takes her more than say 14-15 seconds no matter how far she hits the ball. So the longest possible exertion is perhaps 15 seconds.
A maximum 15 second assertion which requires sometimes rapid recovery stands little to gain from greater cardio-vascular health. Track sprinters at say the 100 meter distance do not spend a lot of their effort to run distances of say five miles and thereby improve their cardio. Sure, they're in great shape and that is necessary. But when they are working towards better outcomes in competition, they focus on explosion and repeating short sprints rather than performing marathons. That's not really a question. An athlete doesn't even really use the same systems for generating energy for the muscles when she performs a 10 second sprint vs. when she runs for a several minutes.
When swimmers train for their particular distance, the sum total of their training may involve a pretty good number of yards or meters. But for someone who sprints in their races, that long total distance results from many shorter sprints. They do perform over-training but, for example, someone who races at say 100 or 200 meters, is likely to perform race-level training at perhaps 25% to 75% of the race distance repeatedly with short amounts of rest between each rep. When reps at say 500 meters are performed, the swim usually involves some sort of stroke mechanics concentration or shorter sprints during the rep and slow downs in between. So even when the athletic endeavor involves over-all longer periods of time, the training does not involve significantly greater than the race distance.
Power lifters, for example, who lift say 300-400 pounds in their particular exercise do not perform 30 rep sets at one tenth to one quarter the goal weight of competition lifting. They do perform rep lifting to improve strength, recovery and general conditioning. But using one quarter weight in order to extend the exercise to use body systems never used in competition is largely a waste of time. That's true in almost every sport one can imagine. Fastpitch should not be considered any different.
Many pitchers do in fact use their legs. Leg strength is important if the pitcher relies upon it to generate speed. But given the nature of the sport, the leg part of the exercise during game conditions involves quick, very short bursts repeated about 10-20 times with about 10-30 seconds of rest between reps, followed by about a 5-10 minute rest during which no exercise occurs - unless of course the pitcher hits the ball over the outfielder's head and needs to leg out an extra-base hit. Then, of course, the pitcher repeats this routine until she is driven out of the game or it ends. Without judging the practice, if a pitcher is one of THOSE aces, she perhaps has to repeat this routine for as many as 300 iterations of the pitch in a day. The typical pitcher probably has to perform the exercise 100 plus times a day, possibly two or more days in a row.
I am not sure I see how running 5 miles per day, 4 or more days per week really helps the pitcher in the performance of her duties. It cannot hurt to be in shape for many reasons. But one does not develop the capacity to maintain speed through the explosion-recovery-explosion routine, no matter how many times it gets repeated, by running long distance. You don't even use the same muscle fibers in the two activities. Notwithstanding Forrest Gump's fictional accomplishments on the football field as well as those on the open road, someone who explodes in motion needs those fast twitch muscles to be developed well in excess of the longer twitch ones.
My conclusion is running is generally good to get an athlete or anyone in shape, though we won't address the impact on the joints of running on macadam. Athletes in this sport never run more than 240 feet. Far more commonly, they run 60-120 feet, even when they play the outfield. Therefore, it is common to see softballers limit their running distance to repeated sprints of 60 feet or less. I have seen both pitchers and other players perform sprints as short as 10 feet in speed-agility training. Yes, many college and high school softball athletes have coaches who make them run distance to get in better overall shape. But this is mostly wasted effort, not to mention time, if the athlete is already in good shape and the desired outcome from the exercise is explosiveness - faster pitching, faster running, better outfield performance, etc.
Taking a step back and looking just at the outfielders who are perhaps the only athletes on the field whose actual game benefits at all from distance running, in my humble opinion, their running should be done on surfaces similar to the outfield itself, i.e. grass of somewhat uneven nature. The reason outfielders benefit from running is because they must learn to run while keeping their heads quiet in order to vector balls in flight. By contrast, no matter how good of a distance runner a player is, if she bobs her head or allows it to bounce when she runs, she will have trouble tracking balls in the outfield.
Rather than having outfielders run miles on blacktop, I would prefer to have them run sprints between foul lines in the mid outfield with somewhat minimal recovery periods. Those runs would be over training for the outfielders. They're probably too long. You would perhaps get better results by limiting them to runs from the foul line to dead center since they'll never have to run any further than that. More importantly, the runs involve a realistic surface. And if they have to track balls towards the middle and end of that sprint, that would be best.
Personally, I would rather just put outfielders in the field and hit or throw balls to them for long periods of time to combine explosion-recovery-explosion training with other skills like tracking and mechanical issues at the same time. What is more critical to me than any outfielder's need to be in good distance running shape is her ability to keep her head virtually motionless when chasing line drives and flies. Good distance runners often keep their head motionless to conserve energy. But simply having your outfielders run distances is not going to engender that particular behavior.
Finally, I have seen large numbers of girls warming up or training while using those overweighted balls. I have a set of balls which range in weight from 8 ounces up to 12. The regulation fastpitch softball is 6.8 ounces. These we9ighted balls can be purchased individually or in a set of progressively heavier balls. The cannonball weighted training softball is often seen at fields and practice tunnels. Those weigh about 16 or so ounces, more than double the weight of a softball.
I do not have a problem with pitchers or others using over-weighted balls to train for softball but the way they are used often makes me nervous. I haven't read the literature for the cannonball but I have for other brands of weighted balls. And this literature advises against performing full windmill (and other throwing) motions while using weighted balls. Rather, the manufacturers encourage users to do motion isolation drills - partial motions - with their products. They do this for a particular reason - lawsuits. They don't want the legal liability when someone gets injured or perhaps ends their career by blowing out a shoulder while performing full windmill pitches with their product. That should tell you something.
The manufacturers tend to suggest certain specific, very limited drills like wrist snaps. Others who advise about how to train pitchers and others warn in all CAPS or boldly against overuse, more than 15-20 throws per session. For this, I am going to be a little over cautious. I don't think anyone should do a full windmill with a 12 ounce or bigger ball. My reason for taking this approach is I want all pitchers to do what they can to avoid injuries because the quickest way to make your pitching speed drop off is to be forced to undergo surgery followed by a months long rehab.
I really do want pitchers to get faster. But as I look out onto the vast pitching world, I seldom, if ever, see a perfect or near perfect motion. Actually it is a rare occurrence when I observe pitching motions that I do not see something that can be corrected which would yield better speed. So my suggestion is, before you go try to find something that will yield you greater speed, take care of the little things. Work on your mechanics. Then, take a look at the pitching motion as a whole and figure out what it is about it that can yield you greater speed.
There are few people in this sport who would dispute that pitching speed comes largely from the first and last parts of the motion. Some would deny that the beginning, the legs, provide much speed. Some emphasize the legs more than the arms towards the end. But almost nobody suggests that it is the in-between that generates the greatest speed. Yet, when you use weighted balls for a full motion, you are working the middle part in a manner which may be dangerous to your body.
I suggest to you, and here I have to steal from one visitor with whom I have frequent exchanges, that the windmill motion is a bullwhip. It begins with the biggest, heavy part of the body exploding into motion. The inertial force of the body created via the legs at push off is roughly equivalent to the first motions of a bullwhip - when the user thrusts the handle forward before creating the whipping movement.
To be clear, the in-between stuff is largely a harnessing of this inertial force. It isn't unimportant but it is not some weight-lifting move. It is the mechanics of the body as the force is run from the handle down towards its end point that are more important than strength. A good circle is very important to speed. But you do not need super strong (over-trained) muscles to accomplish the task.
On the other side, as the arm comes towards release point, the inertia moves towards the tip of the whip. Here muscular explosiveness again comes into play as the bicep and other arm muscles are invoked to transfer the inertial force to the finger tips as the ball is released. Obviously, weighted balls do not help the leg explosion. The weight of an over-weighted ball, used in a full windmill, wears on the shoulders and other body parts as the mechanics convert the body's inertia towards its end point. And then, at the end of the motion as the arm comes forward and the forearm muscles are invoked, this is where we tend to see weakness in the human body and precisely here that we need to work muscles, as well as mechanics, to realize greater speed.
Many folks in both baseball and softball mistake the weighted ball for some kind of panacea to improve throwing speed and strength. If that were the valid, then baseball players would be able to throw tennis balls very far and softball players would be able to really make a mark throwing a baseball. It doesn't work that way. If you were limited to throwing softballs for a long period of time and then picked up a baseball, I suggest that you would be very uncomfortable throwing the smaller ball. Maybe I don't need to tell you this. Maybe you have already tried it. I have. I used to love throwing a baseball. But after years of throwing with my kids using the 11 inch and then 12 inch ball, I hate throwing that little baseball. It feels awkward in my hand but more to the point, its lighter weight sort of bugs me. I might be stronger than I was but my mechanics for throwing the baseball are so messed up that I completely spaz out. I think I can actually throw the softball almost as far as a baseball. That shouldn't be true using the over-training logic. But it is true.
I read a comment on some product-buying web site made by a person who had purchased over weighted balls for training. That comment said, "Good way to warm up quickly ... compare it to swinging a heavy bat before batting." Do you use a heavy bat before stepping up to the plate? How much heavier? Does it work for you? Really? What does it do?
Guys in the big leagues use heavy bats, sometimes a mere steel rod, before stepping up to the plate. I suppose that after all the effort and money that is put into the sport, this must work and be important. But what are they doing when they swing the steel rod? The only thing they are doing is loosening up their bodies to prepare to swing their real bats. Anyone who picks up a very heavy bat and tries to improve their timing by swinging in the on-deck circle using that heavy bat as the pitcher pitches is fooling themselves. The timing of a swing has more to do with decision making than it does with being able to swing something heavy. If anything, you might mess up your timing by swinging too heavy of a bat because you are conditioning yourself to make a decision far too early. This is why I have never purchased my kids a donut or one of those weighted sleeves to place on their bats. I can see using a weight to loosen up but once you are loose, take the darn thing off and take some swings using your real bat by itself.
A worse practice involves dry swinging a significantly heavier bat than the one you use in games during the off season to build strength. When you do this, you are altering your swing mechanics - the more important element of a powerful swing. You are transferring weight to parts of the body in greater proportion than they will be used when you actually step up to the plate. If you use to much weight to train with, your swing is going to be all out of sync when you use an unweighted bat in games and scrimmages.
I suggest that a one ounce difference will give you all that you need. That means using a 32 ounce not a 34 ounce practice bat if you use a 31 in games. That means not taking a bunch of dry swings using a weight during the off season. I have nothing against bat weights used to loosen up briefly but don't think that a singles hitter will become a homerun goddess by using 4 or more ounces on her bat during the off season. The effect of using a significantly over weighted bat beyond the mere loosening steps is mostly psychological.
Moving back to pitching, a very slightly heavier ball may offer some over-training benefits especially for pitchers who have very good mechanics - a rare occurrence. Rather than buying 12-, 16- or more ounce balls, you can really make your own device without much effort. If you take very small nails and pound them into regulation softballs, you can create your own weighted balls. (Do I need to mention that there are benefits of using a real ball? The weighted softballs I bought are somewhat difficult because the seams are not raised the way real balls are. When you use them too much, you can lose the feel of the real ball.) So if you take real balls and put very small weights inside them, you can get a little over-training without endangering your body, with very little cost, and without loosing the feel of the ball. Very small nails (I don't know what they are called) can be pounded into ordinary balls at the holes for the seams. You can take a 6.8 ounce ball and turn it into a 6.9 or 7 ouncer. That really should be sufficient.
It is worth noting that most of the pitchers I see trying to use heavy balls to increase speed tend to be relatively slower pitchers. That is, they do not throw 65. They want to head in that direction. So they try whatever they can find in an effort to improve their speed. I cannot remember the last time I saw a really fast pitcher working with a weighted ball other than in the early stages of a mere warm-up when they are just waking up their muscles.
Fast pitchers have things which make them throw fast. They may have bodies made for the purpose - for example those 6 foot tall girls with long arms and fingers (i.e. longer bullwhips). They may have superior mechanics - this is probably the most common cause of speed. They may have a relatively high percentage of fast twitch vs. slow pitch muscle fibers. They may have developed their fast twitch muscles rather than the slow twitch ones. They may have built up their muscles for fast pitching through many, frequent, effective practice sessions while using proper mechanics since they were pretty young. But most likely, they did not achieve speed through weight-lifting of any particular sort.
I entitled this piece "Over / Under" and you may have noticed that the primary focus is "over." I'm not all that sure what to say about "under training." I sduppose I addressed it inadvertently when I discussed working explosive movements like softball players doing 10-15 foot sprints. I think under training has a similar place in sport as over training. Generally, the effects are psychological. Sometimes there can be real physical advantages but they aren't quite as powerful as some seem to think.
If you are used to swinging a 32 ounce bat, you train adding several ounces to it for dry swings, your real bat probably feels like an under training. Your bat speed will be very fast relative to the heavier bat. Similarly if you never add a single weight to your bat but, instead, train by using a light bat, your swing will should be quicker. Some folks like to use this technique - not necesasarily for swinging - in order to generate explosive speed in various movements. For example, some pitching coaches and trainers try to improve arm speed by having pitchers work with lighter balls.
I don't really know if this approach works. I suppose it could but I think the difference is, again, psychological. In track, swimming, and certain other sports, the athletes taper down their practice loads as championship competition approaches. This has physical effects as well as psychological ones. I suppose the physical effects are more important but I never want to devalue psychological impacts. By the time one enters the competition, one is about crazed by the lack of work. I remember as a swimmer that I felt as if I was going to kill someone if I wasn't allowed into the pool to compete.
Another thing swimmers do aside from tapering down their workouts is to shave their bodies under the theory that it cuts resistance in the water. I don't know in quantitative term s how much this matters. But I can tell you that cutting your head hair down to the nubs or shaving your head and then removing all or most of your other body hair does make you feel different in the water. I remember in college swimming in the conference championship meet. I placed fourth or fifth in the preliminaries. Then, we we came onto the pool, the guy who had finished behind me in prelims had shaven his head before the finals and removed I suppose most of the rest of his body hair. I had spent my time more wisely, going out into the Bronx and finding some low-life bar and pool hall in which to spend my meal money. I beat baldy by quite a bit. His time was slower in the finals. Mine was faster.
So under training may have some beneficial results but I think much of this is tied to the psychological. The one exception to this, I believe, happens when one is working fundamentals like pitching or swing mechanics. I believe that an athlete can work on mechanics without the tools and thereby help to train the body to perform better. I have used this in swimming, baseball and football. For example, I believe I greatly improved my ready position at linebacker and my stance for both offensive and defensive line by practicing it and moving from it without any equipment on, while working in front of a large mirror.
I was once putting too much weight on my fingers in down football stances. Coaches corrected me but the final result, which they highly approved of, involved putting too little weight on the hands. They wanted my head way up but once I started working this on my own, I quickly saw that I was not in a good explosive position. Working off the field, out of gear, gave me the best tool to fix my stance. I did the same thing for swimming my main stroke, butterfly, an d vastly improved it. Also, working in front of a mirror without gear or a ball in my hand was a far better way to improve my catching mechanics. I imagine the same is true for windmill pitchers - although it is very difficult to get girls to work their mechanics on their own, in front of a mirror because they feel stupid doing so.
When we use video to show a player major things she is doing wrong - not when we break down the smallest aspect of, for example, a swing - we are really doing something that could be done in front of a mirror. And if a kid under-trains by performing a swing or her windmill motion without a bat and ball, I think she can condition her muscle memory almost as well as she can on the field. I expect this can be accomplished with an underweight ball but I hesitate to suggest either that or a significantly underweight bat. There are just too many risks associated with this practice.
So in summary, I believe there are benefits to both under- and over-training. Those benefits are somewhat limited and these techniques need to be used sparingly and intelligently. No pitcher is going to get anything out of using a bowling ball! I hope I have explained myself well here but if you have questions, comments, etc., please feel free to write in with them. The only thing I ask is that you do not simply provide your opinions or tell me how you think it is OK for pitchers to throw full windmill using a 16 ounce ball. I have, I think, made clear why I am against this. I would prefer to be pointed to scientific studies which refute my opinions rather than merely consider contrary points of view.
Information From: www.girls-softball.com
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Let's quickly dispense with the idea that bowling is a reasonable training activity for windmill pitchers. To begin with, think hard about the movement of the bowler and how that differs from the movement of the windmill pitcher. The bowler rests the ball in her hand with the palm facing skywards and the fingers hooked into holes drilled into the rather heavy ball. She aligns her body so as to allow her arm to swing down and place the ball in the right visual tunnel - just about the same one every time. She walks rhythmically forward to gain some momentum, steps forward and places the ball down as she swings her arm forward in a measured manner, spinning the ball with her stiff wrist so as to hit the pocket in the right place and hopefully knock all the pins down. She gauges her speed so as to get the movement just right in an effort to hit the same place just about every time. She does not roll the ball as hard as she possibly can or even close to that. The spin she creates is the result of releasing the ball with her hand to the side of it and sweeping the hand upwards in a "shake hands" position as she follows through.
Now contemplate the windmill pitcher for a moment. She does not walk forward because that is not permitted. She must obtain momentum via weight shift and a minor sort of rocking (fallling?) forward into a single stride. She opens her shoulders and hips about 180 degrees. She raises her arm as quickly as possible over her head and then downwards through the release point - something no bowler would do absent some mood altering ingestion.
The ball wrests more in her fingers than in her palm the way a bowling ball is held. She alters her arm angle ever so slightly and uses her fingers and wrist to spin the ball. If she is throwing a plain fastball, she may cock her wrist backwards and then as she comes to the release point she snaps the wrist to get the greatest possible spin and speed on the ball. If she is throwing a movement pitch, she will alter her wrist cock accordingly but then, again snap the ball so as to get the greatest possible spin of the desired type. The fingers play a much greater role in spinning the ball. And the wrist is loose, not stiff, as it snaps.
If a bowler did an arm movement like a windmill pitching at any point, she would injure her arm and possibly other body parts. If the windmill pitcher threw like a bowler, she would be slow and get little advantageous movement on the ball.
Bowling and windmill pitching have very little in common. The largest similarity between the sports is they both use a ball. They both involve converting inertial force into a thrown object though, in the case of bowling, speed doesn;t fit anywhere into the equation. Maybe the only other similarity is they involve somewhat, though not totally, similar underhand movements. I can throw a bowling ball down the ally as hard as anyone I know. When I bowl, people often stop and watch. Then they giggle. And the scoresheet shows the futility of a fast-bowled ball.
The stiff wrist is critical to bowling. It would be a killer in fastpitch. Bowling with the fingers used similar to windmill would result in nothing less than a bloody bowling ball. I don't care to go on about the differences between the sports. As I said, it is an absurd comparison. But the thinking behind it really stems from the theory of over-training which tells us that doing something a little more than usual will build the strength necessary to get stronger at the desired activity. And that generally is a correct approach, depending on what it is you are trying to improve.
The second assertion of using long distance running to improve pitching, or any sort of play on the softball diamond for that matter, is one I criticize carefully. Running a mile or two, maybe more, regularly is a very important part of healthy living and should be encouraged for any athlete. Every person who steps onto any athletic field is made better by being in better shape. Running for conditioning purposes can help an athlete in so many ways that I cannot possibly hope to list them all. But from the perspective of merely improving the play of an otherwise in-shape softball player because it will somehow make them stronger or better at some skill, well, that is a wrong assertion.
Fastpitch softball is a sport which requires many very short explosive movements. The longest duration of any exercise might be when playing on a field with no outfield fence and a ball is hit well over the outfielder's head. Either the kid who runs out the homerun or the outfielder pursuing the ball gets a sustained exercise of perhaps 12-15 seconds. Of course, the outfielder will switch out of adrenaline mode if she finds herself sprinting to retrieve the ball for more than about 6 seconds, knowing, as she does, that they ain't gonna get nobody out on this play! The baserunner will not likely be able to leg out a homerun if it takes her more than say 14-15 seconds no matter how far she hits the ball. So the longest possible exertion is perhaps 15 seconds.
A maximum 15 second assertion which requires sometimes rapid recovery stands little to gain from greater cardio-vascular health. Track sprinters at say the 100 meter distance do not spend a lot of their effort to run distances of say five miles and thereby improve their cardio. Sure, they're in great shape and that is necessary. But when they are working towards better outcomes in competition, they focus on explosion and repeating short sprints rather than performing marathons. That's not really a question. An athlete doesn't even really use the same systems for generating energy for the muscles when she performs a 10 second sprint vs. when she runs for a several minutes.
When swimmers train for their particular distance, the sum total of their training may involve a pretty good number of yards or meters. But for someone who sprints in their races, that long total distance results from many shorter sprints. They do perform over-training but, for example, someone who races at say 100 or 200 meters, is likely to perform race-level training at perhaps 25% to 75% of the race distance repeatedly with short amounts of rest between each rep. When reps at say 500 meters are performed, the swim usually involves some sort of stroke mechanics concentration or shorter sprints during the rep and slow downs in between. So even when the athletic endeavor involves over-all longer periods of time, the training does not involve significantly greater than the race distance.
Power lifters, for example, who lift say 300-400 pounds in their particular exercise do not perform 30 rep sets at one tenth to one quarter the goal weight of competition lifting. They do perform rep lifting to improve strength, recovery and general conditioning. But using one quarter weight in order to extend the exercise to use body systems never used in competition is largely a waste of time. That's true in almost every sport one can imagine. Fastpitch should not be considered any different.
Many pitchers do in fact use their legs. Leg strength is important if the pitcher relies upon it to generate speed. But given the nature of the sport, the leg part of the exercise during game conditions involves quick, very short bursts repeated about 10-20 times with about 10-30 seconds of rest between reps, followed by about a 5-10 minute rest during which no exercise occurs - unless of course the pitcher hits the ball over the outfielder's head and needs to leg out an extra-base hit. Then, of course, the pitcher repeats this routine until she is driven out of the game or it ends. Without judging the practice, if a pitcher is one of THOSE aces, she perhaps has to repeat this routine for as many as 300 iterations of the pitch in a day. The typical pitcher probably has to perform the exercise 100 plus times a day, possibly two or more days in a row.
I am not sure I see how running 5 miles per day, 4 or more days per week really helps the pitcher in the performance of her duties. It cannot hurt to be in shape for many reasons. But one does not develop the capacity to maintain speed through the explosion-recovery-explosion routine, no matter how many times it gets repeated, by running long distance. You don't even use the same muscle fibers in the two activities. Notwithstanding Forrest Gump's fictional accomplishments on the football field as well as those on the open road, someone who explodes in motion needs those fast twitch muscles to be developed well in excess of the longer twitch ones.
My conclusion is running is generally good to get an athlete or anyone in shape, though we won't address the impact on the joints of running on macadam. Athletes in this sport never run more than 240 feet. Far more commonly, they run 60-120 feet, even when they play the outfield. Therefore, it is common to see softballers limit their running distance to repeated sprints of 60 feet or less. I have seen both pitchers and other players perform sprints as short as 10 feet in speed-agility training. Yes, many college and high school softball athletes have coaches who make them run distance to get in better overall shape. But this is mostly wasted effort, not to mention time, if the athlete is already in good shape and the desired outcome from the exercise is explosiveness - faster pitching, faster running, better outfield performance, etc.
Taking a step back and looking just at the outfielders who are perhaps the only athletes on the field whose actual game benefits at all from distance running, in my humble opinion, their running should be done on surfaces similar to the outfield itself, i.e. grass of somewhat uneven nature. The reason outfielders benefit from running is because they must learn to run while keeping their heads quiet in order to vector balls in flight. By contrast, no matter how good of a distance runner a player is, if she bobs her head or allows it to bounce when she runs, she will have trouble tracking balls in the outfield.
Rather than having outfielders run miles on blacktop, I would prefer to have them run sprints between foul lines in the mid outfield with somewhat minimal recovery periods. Those runs would be over training for the outfielders. They're probably too long. You would perhaps get better results by limiting them to runs from the foul line to dead center since they'll never have to run any further than that. More importantly, the runs involve a realistic surface. And if they have to track balls towards the middle and end of that sprint, that would be best.
Personally, I would rather just put outfielders in the field and hit or throw balls to them for long periods of time to combine explosion-recovery-explosion training with other skills like tracking and mechanical issues at the same time. What is more critical to me than any outfielder's need to be in good distance running shape is her ability to keep her head virtually motionless when chasing line drives and flies. Good distance runners often keep their head motionless to conserve energy. But simply having your outfielders run distances is not going to engender that particular behavior.
Finally, I have seen large numbers of girls warming up or training while using those overweighted balls. I have a set of balls which range in weight from 8 ounces up to 12. The regulation fastpitch softball is 6.8 ounces. These we9ighted balls can be purchased individually or in a set of progressively heavier balls. The cannonball weighted training softball is often seen at fields and practice tunnels. Those weigh about 16 or so ounces, more than double the weight of a softball.
I do not have a problem with pitchers or others using over-weighted balls to train for softball but the way they are used often makes me nervous. I haven't read the literature for the cannonball but I have for other brands of weighted balls. And this literature advises against performing full windmill (and other throwing) motions while using weighted balls. Rather, the manufacturers encourage users to do motion isolation drills - partial motions - with their products. They do this for a particular reason - lawsuits. They don't want the legal liability when someone gets injured or perhaps ends their career by blowing out a shoulder while performing full windmill pitches with their product. That should tell you something.
The manufacturers tend to suggest certain specific, very limited drills like wrist snaps. Others who advise about how to train pitchers and others warn in all CAPS or boldly against overuse, more than 15-20 throws per session. For this, I am going to be a little over cautious. I don't think anyone should do a full windmill with a 12 ounce or bigger ball. My reason for taking this approach is I want all pitchers to do what they can to avoid injuries because the quickest way to make your pitching speed drop off is to be forced to undergo surgery followed by a months long rehab.
I really do want pitchers to get faster. But as I look out onto the vast pitching world, I seldom, if ever, see a perfect or near perfect motion. Actually it is a rare occurrence when I observe pitching motions that I do not see something that can be corrected which would yield better speed. So my suggestion is, before you go try to find something that will yield you greater speed, take care of the little things. Work on your mechanics. Then, take a look at the pitching motion as a whole and figure out what it is about it that can yield you greater speed.
There are few people in this sport who would dispute that pitching speed comes largely from the first and last parts of the motion. Some would deny that the beginning, the legs, provide much speed. Some emphasize the legs more than the arms towards the end. But almost nobody suggests that it is the in-between that generates the greatest speed. Yet, when you use weighted balls for a full motion, you are working the middle part in a manner which may be dangerous to your body.
I suggest to you, and here I have to steal from one visitor with whom I have frequent exchanges, that the windmill motion is a bullwhip. It begins with the biggest, heavy part of the body exploding into motion. The inertial force of the body created via the legs at push off is roughly equivalent to the first motions of a bullwhip - when the user thrusts the handle forward before creating the whipping movement.
To be clear, the in-between stuff is largely a harnessing of this inertial force. It isn't unimportant but it is not some weight-lifting move. It is the mechanics of the body as the force is run from the handle down towards its end point that are more important than strength. A good circle is very important to speed. But you do not need super strong (over-trained) muscles to accomplish the task.
On the other side, as the arm comes towards release point, the inertia moves towards the tip of the whip. Here muscular explosiveness again comes into play as the bicep and other arm muscles are invoked to transfer the inertial force to the finger tips as the ball is released. Obviously, weighted balls do not help the leg explosion. The weight of an over-weighted ball, used in a full windmill, wears on the shoulders and other body parts as the mechanics convert the body's inertia towards its end point. And then, at the end of the motion as the arm comes forward and the forearm muscles are invoked, this is where we tend to see weakness in the human body and precisely here that we need to work muscles, as well as mechanics, to realize greater speed.
Many folks in both baseball and softball mistake the weighted ball for some kind of panacea to improve throwing speed and strength. If that were the valid, then baseball players would be able to throw tennis balls very far and softball players would be able to really make a mark throwing a baseball. It doesn't work that way. If you were limited to throwing softballs for a long period of time and then picked up a baseball, I suggest that you would be very uncomfortable throwing the smaller ball. Maybe I don't need to tell you this. Maybe you have already tried it. I have. I used to love throwing a baseball. But after years of throwing with my kids using the 11 inch and then 12 inch ball, I hate throwing that little baseball. It feels awkward in my hand but more to the point, its lighter weight sort of bugs me. I might be stronger than I was but my mechanics for throwing the baseball are so messed up that I completely spaz out. I think I can actually throw the softball almost as far as a baseball. That shouldn't be true using the over-training logic. But it is true.
I read a comment on some product-buying web site made by a person who had purchased over weighted balls for training. That comment said, "Good way to warm up quickly ... compare it to swinging a heavy bat before batting." Do you use a heavy bat before stepping up to the plate? How much heavier? Does it work for you? Really? What does it do?
Guys in the big leagues use heavy bats, sometimes a mere steel rod, before stepping up to the plate. I suppose that after all the effort and money that is put into the sport, this must work and be important. But what are they doing when they swing the steel rod? The only thing they are doing is loosening up their bodies to prepare to swing their real bats. Anyone who picks up a very heavy bat and tries to improve their timing by swinging in the on-deck circle using that heavy bat as the pitcher pitches is fooling themselves. The timing of a swing has more to do with decision making than it does with being able to swing something heavy. If anything, you might mess up your timing by swinging too heavy of a bat because you are conditioning yourself to make a decision far too early. This is why I have never purchased my kids a donut or one of those weighted sleeves to place on their bats. I can see using a weight to loosen up but once you are loose, take the darn thing off and take some swings using your real bat by itself.
A worse practice involves dry swinging a significantly heavier bat than the one you use in games during the off season to build strength. When you do this, you are altering your swing mechanics - the more important element of a powerful swing. You are transferring weight to parts of the body in greater proportion than they will be used when you actually step up to the plate. If you use to much weight to train with, your swing is going to be all out of sync when you use an unweighted bat in games and scrimmages.
I suggest that a one ounce difference will give you all that you need. That means using a 32 ounce not a 34 ounce practice bat if you use a 31 in games. That means not taking a bunch of dry swings using a weight during the off season. I have nothing against bat weights used to loosen up briefly but don't think that a singles hitter will become a homerun goddess by using 4 or more ounces on her bat during the off season. The effect of using a significantly over weighted bat beyond the mere loosening steps is mostly psychological.
Moving back to pitching, a very slightly heavier ball may offer some over-training benefits especially for pitchers who have very good mechanics - a rare occurrence. Rather than buying 12-, 16- or more ounce balls, you can really make your own device without much effort. If you take very small nails and pound them into regulation softballs, you can create your own weighted balls. (Do I need to mention that there are benefits of using a real ball? The weighted softballs I bought are somewhat difficult because the seams are not raised the way real balls are. When you use them too much, you can lose the feel of the real ball.) So if you take real balls and put very small weights inside them, you can get a little over-training without endangering your body, with very little cost, and without loosing the feel of the ball. Very small nails (I don't know what they are called) can be pounded into ordinary balls at the holes for the seams. You can take a 6.8 ounce ball and turn it into a 6.9 or 7 ouncer. That really should be sufficient.
It is worth noting that most of the pitchers I see trying to use heavy balls to increase speed tend to be relatively slower pitchers. That is, they do not throw 65. They want to head in that direction. So they try whatever they can find in an effort to improve their speed. I cannot remember the last time I saw a really fast pitcher working with a weighted ball other than in the early stages of a mere warm-up when they are just waking up their muscles.
Fast pitchers have things which make them throw fast. They may have bodies made for the purpose - for example those 6 foot tall girls with long arms and fingers (i.e. longer bullwhips). They may have superior mechanics - this is probably the most common cause of speed. They may have a relatively high percentage of fast twitch vs. slow pitch muscle fibers. They may have developed their fast twitch muscles rather than the slow twitch ones. They may have built up their muscles for fast pitching through many, frequent, effective practice sessions while using proper mechanics since they were pretty young. But most likely, they did not achieve speed through weight-lifting of any particular sort.
I entitled this piece "Over / Under" and you may have noticed that the primary focus is "over." I'm not all that sure what to say about "under training." I sduppose I addressed it inadvertently when I discussed working explosive movements like softball players doing 10-15 foot sprints. I think under training has a similar place in sport as over training. Generally, the effects are psychological. Sometimes there can be real physical advantages but they aren't quite as powerful as some seem to think.
If you are used to swinging a 32 ounce bat, you train adding several ounces to it for dry swings, your real bat probably feels like an under training. Your bat speed will be very fast relative to the heavier bat. Similarly if you never add a single weight to your bat but, instead, train by using a light bat, your swing will should be quicker. Some folks like to use this technique - not necesasarily for swinging - in order to generate explosive speed in various movements. For example, some pitching coaches and trainers try to improve arm speed by having pitchers work with lighter balls.
I don't really know if this approach works. I suppose it could but I think the difference is, again, psychological. In track, swimming, and certain other sports, the athletes taper down their practice loads as championship competition approaches. This has physical effects as well as psychological ones. I suppose the physical effects are more important but I never want to devalue psychological impacts. By the time one enters the competition, one is about crazed by the lack of work. I remember as a swimmer that I felt as if I was going to kill someone if I wasn't allowed into the pool to compete.
Another thing swimmers do aside from tapering down their workouts is to shave their bodies under the theory that it cuts resistance in the water. I don't know in quantitative term s how much this matters. But I can tell you that cutting your head hair down to the nubs or shaving your head and then removing all or most of your other body hair does make you feel different in the water. I remember in college swimming in the conference championship meet. I placed fourth or fifth in the preliminaries. Then, we we came onto the pool, the guy who had finished behind me in prelims had shaven his head before the finals and removed I suppose most of the rest of his body hair. I had spent my time more wisely, going out into the Bronx and finding some low-life bar and pool hall in which to spend my meal money. I beat baldy by quite a bit. His time was slower in the finals. Mine was faster.
So under training may have some beneficial results but I think much of this is tied to the psychological. The one exception to this, I believe, happens when one is working fundamentals like pitching or swing mechanics. I believe that an athlete can work on mechanics without the tools and thereby help to train the body to perform better. I have used this in swimming, baseball and football. For example, I believe I greatly improved my ready position at linebacker and my stance for both offensive and defensive line by practicing it and moving from it without any equipment on, while working in front of a large mirror.
I was once putting too much weight on my fingers in down football stances. Coaches corrected me but the final result, which they highly approved of, involved putting too little weight on the hands. They wanted my head way up but once I started working this on my own, I quickly saw that I was not in a good explosive position. Working off the field, out of gear, gave me the best tool to fix my stance. I did the same thing for swimming my main stroke, butterfly, an d vastly improved it. Also, working in front of a mirror without gear or a ball in my hand was a far better way to improve my catching mechanics. I imagine the same is true for windmill pitchers - although it is very difficult to get girls to work their mechanics on their own, in front of a mirror because they feel stupid doing so.
When we use video to show a player major things she is doing wrong - not when we break down the smallest aspect of, for example, a swing - we are really doing something that could be done in front of a mirror. And if a kid under-trains by performing a swing or her windmill motion without a bat and ball, I think she can condition her muscle memory almost as well as she can on the field. I expect this can be accomplished with an underweight ball but I hesitate to suggest either that or a significantly underweight bat. There are just too many risks associated with this practice.
So in summary, I believe there are benefits to both under- and over-training. Those benefits are somewhat limited and these techniques need to be used sparingly and intelligently. No pitcher is going to get anything out of using a bowling ball! I hope I have explained myself well here but if you have questions, comments, etc., please feel free to write in with them. The only thing I ask is that you do not simply provide your opinions or tell me how you think it is OK for pitchers to throw full windmill using a 16 ounce ball. I have, I think, made clear why I am against this. I would prefer to be pointed to scientific studies which refute my opinions rather than merely consider contrary points of view.
Information From: www.girls-softball.com
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