Vision Skills in Softball

Suzy Willemssen: Hi! I'm Suzy Willemssen. I am Head Coach of the Blue Jays Gold, which is an 18 and under ASA Junior Olympic Fast Pitch Softball Team. We're talking about common hitting flaws and some drills you can give your players to make some corrections. Right now, we're going to talk about some vision drills. The first one we're going to do is called ball call. Pretty basic, if you can't see the ball, you're not going to be able to hit it. So, we want to give you some tools to give your players for them to work with. Again, so they'll be able to recognize, pick up the ball little quicker. The sooner you can pick the ball up, it's going to give you more time to make that one decision which is no, not to swing. The more time you give, the more successful you are going to be. Again, I'm going to reemphasize, we're doing our front toss. So Megan wants to be keeping her gaze looking out at the screen. In fact, with the vision drills when you're doing any Tee work, front toss work, we'd like to say we want you to look long even though we're working short. So in fact, I might encourage Megan to even stretch path and look about where the pitcher would be, and high school ball that's going to be 40 feet and in college and ASA Gold now 18 A ball it's going to be 43 feet. So look where the pitcher is then kind of bring her gaze in, keep her eyes nice and fluid, pick-up where I'm going to release the ball around at my hip. In fact, our lead hitters, they keep their eyes very fluid and some will start at the shortstop area, bring their gaze in. Some will start at second place bring their gaze in, some behind the pitcher some in front. Whatever, is going to work for you to again keep your eyes nice and relaxed. I listened to Jessica Mendoza the other night; she kind of does a soft focus and keeps her gaze around the hip. So this is something that your players need to practice. See what works best for them. Right now again, we're going to do some drills to help them pick up the ball sooner to work on their vision. So this first one we're going to do is, ball call, reverse ball call. Megan is going to look away; I'm going to get behind our front toss screen. We I release the ball I'm going to say ball, then Megan is going to turn her head pickup the ball and then swing. Often players will want to start their swing before they pick up the ball. No, we want to learn to see the ball then make our swing. Another little thing you want to make sure when your players are turning their head, again she is going to be looking away, you want to move your eyes first then turn your head. Quite often, players will be like this and then their heads pulling out, and hey, here is a fun thing you can do with your players, to tell them how important this is to have proper head movement and using their eyes to track the ball. Stand in front of your player, and ask them to follow your finger by moving their head. Move your head, alright. Megan's probably lost side of my finger. Now, tell your players to keep their head perfectly still and just use their eyes to follow your finger. I would say 99% of your players are going to answer, which way was easier to follow your finger and then they're going to say when I kept my head still, when I use my eyes. So again, this is why it's so important to be using the vision drills and if you do something like this with your players a lot of times instantly they understand yes, I need to keep my head still and let my eyes to follow the ball, track the balls with my eyes and not by using and jerking my head all the way around. Ball, ball, ball, ball, ball, good job Megan. Ball. Now we're going to add a variation. This next drill is called face the fire. Again, it's going to be working on using our eyes to track the ball, keeping our head perfectly still, Megan is as you can see it's going to get behind the play. She is going to start her motion and then I'm going to pitch the ball when she gets pretty much in her stance in a position to hit the ball and start her swing. So, this one's called face the fire, again she is going to be looking at me the entire time, keeping her eyes leveled and straight up and down, straight up down, levels across, straight looking at me. The side benefit of doing the face the fire drill, go ahead Megan - again, we talked getting some rhythm in our swing as well. So, you can see she has got it nice and flowing, hitting great shots certainly. Her head, her eyes are nice in level. A good two eyed look at me. Again, this one is called face the fire. Great job. Alright. Now we're going to give that you can have your players do, we're going to use an eye patch. When your players are working on Tee's it's really common for them to have the Tee be looking down and swinging away. Again, that action is not going to transilient to the game because quite often what they'll do is that when they get to the game they'll do here. We don't walk around this way, we don't leave this way you can see how my eyes are tilted and this is a very common flaw that we also see in players. So by putting the eye patch on them again, if you hitter -- you can see Megan has got on her left eye, it's going to force her to one, turn her head, so she is going to get a good two-eyed look at the pitcher. Also we encourage her you to tell them and you got to keep your eyes nice and level. So again, two-eyed look at the pitcher when they wear the eye patch, it really forces them to do so and also it seems to help with their focus and concentration as well. So those are three drills, simple drills as you can do with your players to work on their vision skills.