Pitching Drills
Softball success starts on the mound. Two softball pitching drills coach the circle throw and pushing off a pitching rubber. A softball coach then explains how to put them together to perfect the pitching motion.
Transcription:
This drill in pitching is a upper-body isolation drill. It's very important that the pitcher has a good circle and knows that her weight has to be back. With Heidi on her knee, her weight is going to stay back because she's blocking with her front leg and her circle's going to come straight through. She's gonna go forward with her circle and she's gonna snap through. This teaches an athlete a perfect rotation on her circle. When the pitcher is doing this drill, their target is between 10 and 15 feet away. They have a target of 10 or 15 feet because they're really not working on length of their throw, they're working on their circle.
Heidi is now going to do that lower-body isolation drill so she can work her push. Again, she isolates her weight to her back leg and again as her arms come through, she transfers her weight to the front leg. Once the athlete advances a little bit in pitching, then they're going to start using their legs and pushing off the mound. This drill, Heidi can see how far she can extend her push. She started with her push halfway on to the pitching rubber and now she's gonna try to a get three-quarters of it on the pitching rubber.
This drill is called the "rock back explode forward" drill. Heidi is now going to put all of her motions together in her pitch. She's going to start with her weight on her throwing-hand foot and her glove-hand foot off the ground.
She's going to push and explode forward with a great circle. Wow, that was perfect. This drill takes our two prior isolation drills and puts them to work and the athlete can feel exact drive to a catcher. As you see on the mat, there's a black line. This is called the power line for pitchers. On all the pitcher's drills, they use the power line to make sure they are going directly to the catcher. This keeps their body on line all the way to the catcher, it keeps their circle on line, and keeps their feet on line. A pitcher's body follows the feet, so if they step off line, one way or another, that's where their body's going. Therefore, weight's transferring away from the catcher and their pitch loses power.