Softball Performance Blog
SoftballPerformance.com Blog provide softball tips, softball drills on softball hitting, softball pitching, softball training, and coaching softball.
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Softball Coaching and Training - The Importance of Video Analysis
As I told you 2 days ago, I spent the weekend doing professional development in Portland, Oregon. I took the NFCA Coaches College 402 course on advanced analysis of hitting and pitching with Kirk Walker, Margie Wright and Don Slaught. While I had previously been exposed to a lot of the course mate …
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Softball Hitting - How to Hit Homeruns
Hitting homeruns or rocket shots aint easy. However, curiously, if you ask any hitter who just hit one out of the park to describe what she was thinking about right before she hit the ball and how her swing felt - you will find that most hitters will give you pretty similar answers. If you ask a hi …
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Coaching Youth Softball - Working with the Body, Not Against It
They say that ..the day you stop learning you die. ..coaches who stop going to clinics and courses and always seeking better ways of doing things should retire. all the most successful people in society are lifelong learners and never stop learning. Well, since I am not anywhere close to dying or r …
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Softball Training Tips - How iPods Can Help You Perform Better
Not long ago, I wrote about how cell phones (texting, talking, email, etc.) can be negatively impact a players focus, social interaction within a group environment, and even lead to rudeness and direspect sometimes. Are Cell Phones Negatively Affecting You and your Team? Kids arent only addicted to …
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Marie-Eve Arcand - An Angel Left Us
Exactly a month ago today, I wrote about an amazing young lady - Marie-Eve Arcand who had just gotten into a car accident and was in pretty bad shape and in the coma at the hospital. Life and Softball - What Really Matters Today, at the very young age of 23 years old and after fighting hard for slig …
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Are Cell Phones Negatively Affecting You and Your Team?
The other day, I was reading a article in a coaching magazine that was sort of a debriefing about the summer Olympics. I found one of the elements discussed by the author very interesting and definitely something I can relate to - how the presence of cell phones might negatively affect an ath …
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6 Mental Training Tips - How to Improve Your Mental Toughness
The mental is such a big part of our game. Its often the determining factor between success or failure. Almost every day, I get emails from players, coaches, and parents about how to improve confidence or be mentally tougher. I thought I would share with you a few tips to help you become almost in …
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Softball Hitting - Batting Practice is Much More Than Swing Training
Today, I was talking to the coach of a 14U team who is struggling at the plate. They havent been hitting well this year at all. After asking him several questions, it became pretty clear what the problem might be. You see - according to him, they work a lot on hitting. I told him that they work a …
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Softball Training - The Importance of Recovery and Regeneration
Its the Thanksgiving break in the US. Notice the word "break". At some point, the body always need a break to "recover and regenerate". It could also be said that you need to "relax and re-energize". No matter how you say it - its the fact that you do it that counts. …
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Softball Conditioning - Quick Workouts Do Work!
Tonight, while driving back from practice, I was listening to my voice messages on my cool new iPhone. One of the messages was from one of the elite members of my Softball Performance Achievers Club. Since I had about 30 minutes of driving to do. I decided to call him back right away. Personal …
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Softball Pitching - How To Easily Get 80% of Batters Out
Ive coached at pretty much all levels of the game going from rec 8U to college and international softball in the ast 20 years. Ive coached and watched a lot of softball games in my life. A couple of years ago, I even spent an entire summer scouting (charting pitches, identifying pitching patte …
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Softball Hitting - How to Quickly Increase Bat Control
The best hitters in the world (those with great batting averages) have extremely good bat control. They may not have the most power but they basically can do what they want with a bat. This is a common characteristics of elite hitters - they control their bat. Working on bat control is certainly not …
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Softball Training - Functional Testing Gives You a Competitive Edge
Today was an interesting experience. I took my entire 16U team to a sports training facility in downtown Montreal to be assessed and screened by certified athletic trainers. It was not your traditional fitness testing. It was what we call a "functional assessment". They …
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Softball Skills Training - Learning Takes Time
Coming back to coach at the 16U level is an interesting experience. I realize more than ever than kids today want results now. If it doesnt work right away, its no good! Why is that? They are used to getting everything right away. They live in a world with - Instant chat - Instant texting - I …
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Softball Tips - 10 Rules to Shift the Odds In Your Favor
Im a firm believer is shifting the odds in your favor. Softball is somewhat of a complex game. Yet, to be successful, it comes back to accomplishing a few very simple things. Doing those simple things will "shift the odds in your favor." What are these simple things? Heres my top 10 list …
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Lessons From Coach Obama
Earlier this year, in the spring, I was working with a young hitter who also happened to be a very good pitcher. Let me rephrase that. I was working with a terrific young pitcher who was wasting her time swinging the bat - in her mind. You see, she was coming from a baseball family wher …
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Softball Nutrition Tips - Eat More to Perform More
For those of you who dont know, in addition to coaching softball, being a softball peak performance coach, Ive also been teaching at the community college level for the past 10 years or so. I currently teach nutrition, sports conditioning, and weight training classes. Ive also taught sports psycholo …
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Softball Injuries - Dynamic Warm-Ups Prevent Long-Term Overuse Injuries
One of the things I am doing with my new 16U team this fall is put all of my athletes through a functional assessment. I hear you: "What the heck is a functional assessment me give you an analogy. When you intend to buy a used car, before you pay for it, you take it to an independent expert me …
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Off-Season Softball Training - Focus on Hitting and Pitching
Its the off-season. Its time to: 1) Rest and recover from last season. 2) Heal injuries. 3) Do conditioning to get faster, stronger, more powerful, and prevent injuries. 4) Work on fundamentals. In other words, its time to get better for next season! Often, people wonder - what should I do more of? …
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Softball Training - Are Dynamic Warm-Ups Workouts?
One of the many questions that I get from softball players doing dynamic warm-ups for the first time is: "Is it normal that Im sweating and feel like I am working out?" My answer is always: "Yes and No. Yes, because you arent use to the exercises yet and its working the&nb …
Softball Performance Blog
