You might be surprised to learn that the nation’s best pitching coaches have 5 things they all do the same.
Could you figure out what the pitching coaches from the country’s best college programs all have in common? Well, I’ve done it for you – so here is my list and you just might be surprised.
This is part 1 of a 2-part article about the 5 Things the Best Teach About Pitching. In Part 1 we’ll talk about the 1st 3 things on my list.
Some people think the top schools, like the University of Oklahoma or the University of Florida, simply need to recruit the best pitchers and the rest will take care of itself. Well, those people couldn’t be more wrong. Sure, both of those teams have great pitching, but they also have great hitting, which means their pitchers are constantly facing some of the very best hitters in the game, over and over again.
Pitching successfully at the highest level requires preparation, patience, practice and planning. Each year we bring the very best college coaches together at our annual Pitching Summit and we take a deep-dive into the nuts and bolts of pitching – from pitch calling to practice planning (fall and spring), to charting pitches to building the pitcher’s mental game.
And while attendance at this event is limited to current college coaches, we’ve now made it available to everyone through our just-released Pitching Summit Vault. The Pitching Summit Vault puts you in the room, where you can watch and listen to the best-of-the-best as they talk about “Commanding the Strike Zone”, ”The Physical and Mental Things We Do with Our Pitchers”, “Drills on a Dime”, and so much more!
For a limited time – we’re offering a 15% discount on a Pitching Summit Vault Annual membership. All you have to do is put in this special code at checkout: psdiscount.
In the meantime, while you might not have the caliber of pitchers of an Oklahoma or Florida, here are 3 of the 5 things that you CAN teach your pitchers that the best pitching coaches in our game teach theirs:
- Track What Matters – I’m not just talking about during the game – most of us chart pitches during games. It’s important to track pitches every time your pitchers pitch – at both practices and games. Not only do the top coaches track practice pitches, but they also post the results. Making things public keeps pitchers accountable, helps them deal with both the failures and successes that come with pitching, and creates a competitive and supportive element within your staff.
In our Pitching Summit Vault: Watch as Melyssa Lombardi (University of Oklahoma) takes you through her favorite pitching chart, why she uses it and how it helps make the Sooner pitchers better.
- Plan It All Out – The best never just show up and go willy-nilly into workouts. They plan. Whether it’s mapping out an entire year, from Day 1 of Fall Ball through the Post Season, to detailing what every pitcher is doing every minute of practice, to ensuring you have enough physical space for your pitchers, catchers and hitters. It’s outlining what percentage of your workout will be drill work versus competition, and planning for your pitchers to improve over time while staying mentally and physically sharp and rested – it’s all critical, and it all takes detailed planning. The very best are obsessive over their planning.
In our Pitching Summit Vault: Watch as Lonni Alameda (Florida State University) takes you through her yearly pitcher workout planning, and as John Tschida (University of St. Thomas) shows you 9 different ways he gets all of his pitchers practicing at the same time.
- Constantly Learn & Adjust – Learning new stuff is hard. We all get set in our ways and do what we do, well, because we’ve always done it that way. Turns out, the best-of-the-best are constantly tweaking and probing and changing what they do and how they do things. Not for the sake of changing, but because they’ve learned a slightly better approach, or a more up-to-date method, or the old stuff in newer words. I’m blown away at how engaged our Pitching Summit speakers are, as they sit and listen to the other speakers and coaches, in the hopes of gleaning anything new. Here’s an interesting tidbit – at both the Pitching and Hitting Summits, the coaches all agreed that their biggest area of adjustment is how they deal with their freshmen. So they shared their thoughts on making sure they don’t over-teach or over-change them, and instead, let their freshmen settle in and get their feet wet. The best are always getting better!
In our Pitching Summit Vault: Jen Rocha (University of Florida), Missy Lombardi (University of Oklahoma) and Lori Sippel (University of Nebraska) share how they maximize the contributions from their freshmen, and how they handle them in both the Fall and Spring.
LIMITED TIME OFFER – Sign up Now! Want to learn from the best in the game, and take your pitchers to the next level. For a limited time only – we’re offering a 15% discount on a Pitching Summit Vault Annual membership. Simply put in this discount code at checkout: psdiscount (offer expires 3/7/2018)
