By: Cindy Bristow
For players to become confident they need to see success, and depending on their skill level, this may not happen much. This is where ?piling on? becomes crucial to success so read on to figure out how piling on can help your players.
Practice is such a VITAL part of your team?s success, and now, more than ever, team practice is where your players are also building their individual skills.
There are 2 realities about practicing softball:
- One reality is that softball is a difficult skill for young kids to learn because so much of it depends on hand-eye coordination, which takes a while to develop in kids. That?s why, if you coach young players, you know that catching or hitting a moving ball is so difficult for them. It?s not because they aren?t trying or that they aren?t watching or listening to you. It?s because visually tracking a moving object and then moving your hands toward that object at exactly the right time takes lots of time and practice.
- The second reality about practicing softball is that the only way your players learn to have good skills is to first have bad ones. Those early years in softball are filled mostly with struggle and failure that eventually happen less often the more they practice. Good instruction can help, no doubt, but its practice that really chips away at skill.
Fastpitch Softball Free Article on Why It's Important to Practice Piling On
And chipping away at a skill is where the concept of ?piling on? comes in. Whenever we?re working with a player ? of any age or skill level ? we need to add success onto success, instead of building on a base of failure. This is the same concept we use when building a house, or any kind of building we want to last for a long time. Before we start building the walls and putting on the roof, we first need to make sure we?ve created a solid and stable foundation that is strong enough to handle anything we?ll put on top of it. The exact same thing happens when we?re helping players build their skills ? we have to make sure they have a solid, strong base before we go putting layer after layer on top. If the base is good, we can add whatever we need to successfully. But, if the base is weak, the whole thing comes crashing down.
This means whenever we have a player that?s struggling with a skill, any skill, we must find a way for them to be successful, even just a little bit. Success is that solid base layer, so that might mean we have to eliminate a few steps in the process to isolate the problem, or go at a slower speed, or move up to a closer distance. We?ve got to do anything we can to help our players feel even a slight amount of success in order to help them build their base layer ? and only then can we ?pile on?.
For a player to believe they can do something they must first see that they actually can, and that?s where we hold the magic as coaches ? we have the unique ability to help our players see that they CAN do it, or conversely to convince them that they can?t.
While this whole concept probably sounds logical to you and no doubt makes a ton of sense, what gets hard is our lack of patience with the time it takes some players to build their base. Too often the coaching part of our brain starts to panic and think ?we don?t have time for them to take so long learning this?, or ? she?s too important for us this year, she?s got to learn this faster?? We?ve all had those kind of thoughts and yet schedules and urgency don?t change the fact that a weakly built foundation will only create a weak final product.
The next time you?re working with a player, or a group of players pay special attention to the concept of Piling On. Do your best to help pile success on top of success. When a player struggles work with that player to figure out the struggle point. This not only helps get the player involved by letting her start to feel powerful over her failures, but it also helps the two of you become teammates in the solution. When one of your players hits a wall of failure go back to the last point of success and stay there long enough for the success to Pile On before moving on. Actually tell them to ?feel what you?re doing that?s allowing you to be successful? and then have them move back, or go a little faster and have them ?drag the success to where they are now?.
You?ll be amazed at how well this works. You might have to go up and back, or slow and fast for a while for them to actually be able to apply the success, but if you continue to help them pile success on top of success, the results will be tremendous!
When it comes to any skill start slow and add speed a little at a time versus starting out at a million miles an hour and convincing them they can?t do it. Remember that as coaches, we hold the magic so we must use it kindly!
For players to become confident they need to see success, and depending on their skill level, this may not happen much. This is where ?piling on? becomes crucial to success so read on to figure out how piling on can help your players.
Practice is such a VITAL part of your team?s success, and now, more than ever, team practice is where your players are also building their individual skills.
There are 2 realities about practicing softball:
- One reality is that softball is a difficult skill for young kids to learn because so much of it depends on hand-eye coordination, which takes a while to develop in kids. That?s why, if you coach young players, you know that catching or hitting a moving ball is so difficult for them. It?s not because they aren?t trying or that they aren?t watching or listening to you. It?s because visually tracking a moving object and then moving your hands toward that object at exactly the right time takes lots of time and practice.
- The second reality about practicing softball is that the only way your players learn to have good skills is to first have bad ones. Those early years in softball are filled mostly with struggle and failure that eventually happen less often the more they practice. Good instruction can help, no doubt, but its practice that really chips away at skill.
Fastpitch Softball Free Article on Why It's Important to Practice Piling On
And chipping away at a skill is where the concept of ?piling on? comes in. Whenever we?re working with a player ? of any age or skill level ? we need to add success onto success, instead of building on a base of failure. This is the same concept we use when building a house, or any kind of building we want to last for a long time. Before we start building the walls and putting on the roof, we first need to make sure we?ve created a solid and stable foundation that is strong enough to handle anything we?ll put on top of it. The exact same thing happens when we?re helping players build their skills ? we have to make sure they have a solid, strong base before we go putting layer after layer on top. If the base is good, we can add whatever we need to successfully. But, if the base is weak, the whole thing comes crashing down.
This means whenever we have a player that?s struggling with a skill, any skill, we must find a way for them to be successful, even just a little bit. Success is that solid base layer, so that might mean we have to eliminate a few steps in the process to isolate the problem, or go at a slower speed, or move up to a closer distance. We?ve got to do anything we can to help our players feel even a slight amount of success in order to help them build their base layer ? and only then can we ?pile on?.
For a player to believe they can do something they must first see that they actually can, and that?s where we hold the magic as coaches ? we have the unique ability to help our players see that they CAN do it, or conversely to convince them that they can?t.
While this whole concept probably sounds logical to you and no doubt makes a ton of sense, what gets hard is our lack of patience with the time it takes some players to build their base. Too often the coaching part of our brain starts to panic and think ?we don?t have time for them to take so long learning this?, or ? she?s too important for us this year, she?s got to learn this faster?? We?ve all had those kind of thoughts and yet schedules and urgency don?t change the fact that a weakly built foundation will only create a weak final product.
The next time you?re working with a player, or a group of players pay special attention to the concept of Piling On. Do your best to help pile success on top of success. When a player struggles work with that player to figure out the struggle point. This not only helps get the player involved by letting her start to feel powerful over her failures, but it also helps the two of you become teammates in the solution. When one of your players hits a wall of failure go back to the last point of success and stay there long enough for the success to Pile On before moving on. Actually tell them to ?feel what you?re doing that?s allowing you to be successful? and then have them move back, or go a little faster and have them ?drag the success to where they are now?.
You?ll be amazed at how well this works. You might have to go up and back, or slow and fast for a while for them to actually be able to apply the success, but if you continue to help them pile success on top of success, the results will be tremendous!
When it comes to any skill start slow and add speed a little at a time versus starting out at a million miles an hour and convincing them they can?t do it. Remember that as coaches, we hold the magic so we must use it kindly!
