Suzy Willemssen: Hi! I'm Suzy Willemssen. I am Head Coach for the Blue Jays Gold, which is an 18 and under Junior Olympic Girl's Fast Pitch Softball Team. We're talking about common hitting flaws and their fixes, when the most important things you can do for your players is to help them get a right tension level, with that I mean if we're on the skill of one to ten, one being the girl is not ready, she almost like flimsy wet noodle and ten she is very tight, tense and want you to swing through like that. Usually, when you ask a player or a skill of one to ten, where are you when you have your best hits quite often they'll say, I was around at five or six. So, on this drill we followed the effort drill. I'll be pitching to Megan and I want her to think in terms of five or six, what you'll want to do with you players pitch to them and ask them where were you.
After a while, they'll be able to pick it up, if they weren't ready, if they were too relaxed, too loose they'll say, they're probably like on three or four. As a coach, as you start to doing it, you'll be able to see yourself. If there are two tens, often times that we'll show up in the shoulders, you'll see the hands coming too quickly everything will be really super tight up here. Often, the player said, yes, I feel like I rushed it, I thought like I was like at seven or an eight. Again, it's a great thing for you as a coach, as a player to get feedback, if you watch any of the great hitters hit, now we've watched the olympic teams hitting the other day taking batting practice, they were fluid and flowing and that's what your players need to be. They're going to be successful, when they're going to be relaxed. A relax muscle is actually going to be quicker, by relaxed, I mean a good, nice relaxed tension. You have to be ready on time, but you can't be too tight because you're going to be slow.
So again, this is called the effort drill that I'd like to use front toss with it, I'll be pitching to Megan, she is looking to be five and six, nice and flowing, nice good rhythm. In fact, I'm going to talk about rhythm for a moment. You want your body to be in a proper sequence. So the rhythm would be; Megan was to get nice and flowing. Now she has a faster pitcher, she wants to keep that same rhythm or temple might need to be a little quicker, so it might be a -- if it's a slower pitcher, same rhythm, but she is going to be keep it down a little bit to help her compensate for the slower pitcher. It all stands from her effort or tension level. Again, we want to be five and six.
A good indication that a player is that five and six; again as to they're hitting those line drives hitting fives, often I'll tell the player I want them to aim right from my face because that means you had everything together. Good job Megan. You know always only one of my players to be hitting strikes as well. As a coach, make sure you stay behind the screen, don't get out of here, you get to get play as you'll get nailed, so stay behind, get good rhythm, have your players only hit strikes, and again they're looking for fives and six. I like my players to make an adjustment, if they don't hit it square; I want them to come right back like Megan did right there, I want line shots right up the middle, again a great indication like we're doing long 0:03:55 other things. Look Megan is looking for a nice five, six. There we go, there we go, that's it girl. There you have our effort drill.
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