Last week I wrote about insights I gained about overhand and underhand throwing at the annual NFCA conference. At the conference, coaches are really eager for practical knowledge – the strategies and drills that make a real impact. They crave the kind of guidance that can be put to use immediately. However, I like to add in what's neglected - team culture building.

As Christian Conrad, the Assistant Coach at the University of Arizona, wisely put it, "Instill in your team members a sense of great self-worth, that each can be the most important on the battlefield at any given moment."

In 2017 we were holding our summer camp in Forest Park on the soccer field turf. One of my uncle's students came. Uncle John has been a pitching coach for 30 years and taught me and many of the Practice Pro instructors how to pitch, along with probably thousands of other players from this area. He still coaches, and that year he sent one of his 9-year-olds to my camp. We had each player throw a few pitches at the beginning to see where they were at, and lo and behold this kid could pitch the drop, rise, curve and screw with perfect spin! They weren't moving, but having control over different rotations at that age was amazing to me. The body awareness and athleticism this girl had was incredible.

I had always taught 9 and 10 year old's how to spin movement pitches (from standing at the release position), and was able to get a few players to execute one or two of them. But seeing that young player at camp made me have more confidence in their potential and in myself as a coach. If Uncle John could teach it, so could I.

You need to put your body in a position that allows you to be explosive. You also need to harness that explosiveness. Here's a question. When you hit are you standing with your legs bent, weight slightly back? Or is your weight on your front leg? They are bent with your weight back!

You have a choice: make practicing painfully boring and unproductive, or make it fun. One of our values at Practice Pro is “hard work.” In saying that, we don’t mean you must suffer through doing things you don’t want to do. We also don’t mean to push yourself to your physical and mental limit every single practice. It’s necessary to do that sometimes, of course, but when we say to do “hard work” we mean two things.

Here are six games we play at pitching school. I encourage you to incorporate them into your personal pitching practices. If you are taking our lessons, we send you recaps weekly of games, drills and tools of what we did during class. You’ll have tons of resources to make practice fun.

We need to teach pitchers what words mean - especially those we adults take for granted. At the 2019 National Fastpitch Coaches Association national convention, I heard Kai Correa talk about infield defense. He's the infield/baserunning instructor of the San Francisco Giants. He  explained to us what the word “athletic” means. When we see someone who is “athletic” she has a penchant for being 1) bent at the knees, 2) bent at the waist, and 3) light on her feet. That got me thinking.

 My story starts at just eleven years old. At this point, I had been pitching for a year or two.

By no means was I the best in my rec ball program but I was not the worst at this point either. My team and I were playing in a playoff game. I came in to relieve our ace pitcher. As I threw my first few pitches I heard the other team’s coach tell his team, “Wait on it! She is as slow as tee ball.” Thinking back on that now, that comment does not even make sense. Surely my ball was moving a little faster than one just sitting still on a tee, but at that point, it was the end of the world to my young mind. I finished out the inning but afterward, I was devastated.

I told my parents and my private coach about what I had heard with tears streaming down my face. From that point on I was more motivated than ever to prove that coach wrong. That one comment, some random coach made, to motivate his team drove me to work harder than ever and to truly want to prove him and anyone else who doubted me wrong.

Your team coach and pitching coaches always come prepared with a plan to your practices and lessons. So, why not do the same for yourself? As we learned last week in pitching school, the equation for luck is:

Luck = Preparation + Opportunity.

Without proper preparation, you won't be able to capitalize on the opportunities that come your way during games.

By pre-planning your solo pitching practices, you can turn them into a more engaging experience. You'll be more likely to follow through, feel a sense of accomplishment upon completion, improve your time-management skills, and most importantly, expedite your progress. The more organized you are, the fewer wasted pitches there will be, the less time wasted on distractions, and the less monotonous your practices will become.