How to increase softball pitching speed

When discussing  softball pitching velocity development, there are several major aspects to consider while helping an athlete improve velocity. We believe that every single athlete has a maximum “potential velocity” within their body. This is based on factors such as height, strength, ability to stabilize & fast twitch muscle fiber recruitment (Higher percentage of type 2 fibers). One aspect to helping the pitcher gain more velocity is helping them become a more efficient mover. This will enable them to get as close to their personal “max velocity”as possible. From there we work towards helping them become a better overall athlete in order to increase the “max velocity” that their body can potentially produce.

Major aspects include:

Movement efficiency; the more efficient you can help the athlete learn to move, the closer they will get to reaching their potential velocity. 

Increasing strength & athleticism  We need to find a way to raise the ceiling of the athletes “potential velocity”.  At Delta we see a large correlation between the pitchers with the hardest fastballs and their strength numbers in the weight room. It can also correlate to their athletic movement metrics in areas such as sprinting speed and vertical jump. 

Intent to throw hard. We see a sizable number of softball pitchers who are simply afraid to fail and afraid to throw hard because in their mind, although completely untrue, more speed equals more walks. They fail to understand that both aspects can be addressed simultaneously (Throwing high velocity strikes). Often this mindset occurs because somewhere back in the learning line, the athlete or a Coach prioritizes focus on instant gratification of winning a game at the U10-U12 level in place of true pitching development. They are convinced that they shouldn’t worry about throwing hard and should just baby the ball to “throw strikes”. This mindset then buries itself into the athlete’s psyche and becomes subconscious behavior. The result of this change in focus, is that the athlete will never quite allow themselves to truly move well and throw a max effort fastball. Remember, a stressed, worried, or scared athlete is a tight athlete. Tight movers don’t throw to their max potential velocity, strong athletes that move loose and fast do.

Movement

Teaching athletes to “move better” is the route most pitching coaches go when trying to help softball pitchers throw harder. Unfortunately these attempts, though well meaning, are mostly done by verbal cueing and throwing a large amount of pitches to a catcher. This approach, unless working with an athlete who has extremely advanced muscle mind connection, very rarely yields the intended results. Even if the athlete makes progress, they tend to revert back to old habits before the next “lesson” if the lessons/repetition volume isn’t correctly programmed over the proper time period. We tend to find that the athletes who have success under this method of teaching are the outliers/elite athletes. These are the kind of athletes who would most likely  have self-organized elite movement patterns by themselves. Lessons are great for sharpening pitching skills and learning new pitches but usually will not help with adding velocity, just as throwing a pre-game bullpen is not going to help gain velocity.

Avoiding Too Many Verbal Cues

“Over Cueing” is another common issue we run into with many of our athletes. We believe that the excessive amount of verbal mechanical commands will often cause the athlete to overthink every detail of the delivery. 

I’m sure most who have been around the softball circuit have seen this scenario before; a pitcher throws a bad pitch, she then catches the ball and begins to feel out her throwing mechanics in slow motion on the mound before throwing her next pitch. This is usually a bad sign (some can compartmentalize the “feels” but most cannot). If an athlete is thinking about how they are moving in times of competition, they are not focusing enough on the task at hand. 

Over Cueing can lead to overthinking. When pitching, the athlete should feel like they are riding a bike. The last time you rode a bike, did you have to practice how your knees moved before riding? Of course not, you just did it, because your body has already done the necessary work to turn the act of riding a bike into a mindless exercise. That’s how pitching should be in a game, pure competition & completely mindless. Mindless is relaxed, which in turn, is LOOSE AND FAST. 

Create Constraints

If 100% of a players pitching training is focused only on mechanics, what do you think they will do in a game? Most will end up thinking mechanics which results in overthinking the game.  We must fix movement issues by not overly verbal cueing, but with other methods. But how? First, we must identify their kinetic movement inefficiency. Where is the energy not being transferred effectively? Is optimal energy being produced?

 Once those questions are answered, the next step is creating drills that put the athlete into certain “constraints” that will force them to move correctly without over-thinking the task. These movements must challenge the pitcher to move in ways they may never have before and probably can’t effectively do at the moment. If they are performing only drills that they can do perfectly, they are not getting better. The end goal is to constrain and challenge the athlete through very difficult athletic patterning movements, this approach helps the pitcher learn to move efficiently without “over cueing” verbal commands. That’s where a knowledgeable Coach’s job really matters. Having a tool box of different drills and movement based throwing exercises used to help fix a wide variety of different movement inefficiencies is critical. In addition, knowing under what circumstances to use the drills is the key to helping athletes improve. 

 That means allowing the athlete to fail

When patterning new movements failure will inevitably be part of the process, if a pitcher has never moved a specific way how do you expect them to do it well without failing when first making the change? This includes accuracy;  timing and release point are integral parts of throwing strikes. When you attempt to help change movement to make a pitcher a more efficient mover their timing to front foot strike as well as the timing of their circle will change. In the short term this will create inaccuracy for a short period until the movement pattern sets in as muscle memory, this is a necessary part of the  process. That is why we do not work on building velocity within a month of the season and never in season, a pitcher will not be allowed the time to create positive change. We have kids and parents come in all the time during the season asking for help throwing faster, most don’t like it when we tell them no, we cannot build velocity when pitchers are still playing games. VELOCITY BUILDING IS AN OFFSEASON PROCESS!!

Strength/Athleticism

The softball pitchers with the best power production capabilities usually throw the hardest. 

There are several variables that create what we call “potential velocity”. Let’s start off with the most obvious, size. The tallest pitchers usually have more potential velocity due to angular velocity of their arms. The longer the lever, the more angular velocity produced and thus the easier it is for them to throw hard. 

 Putting this variable to the test, what do you think the average velocity is for a SEC college softball pitcher? We don’t have a large amount of direct data on the matter, but a safe guess might be around 65-66mph. Regardless of the actual number, pitching at a school in the SEC is high on every softball pitchers list of potential heights to reach.  

You only make it to that level if you’re the best of the best, so let's do some research. If we take the top four performing teams in the SEC from 2019 and look at their 2020 rosters to see the average height of the pitchers listed you get an idea. The teams rosters we looked at were Alabama, Tennessee, LSU & Ole Miss. There are 19 different pitchers listed on all of those teams rosters for 2020 and the data is what most would expect, 11 out of the 19 women were 5’10 or taller with an average height of 69.84 inches. The average height being almost 5’9 for the sample group with one outlier of 5’6, a pitcher from Ole Miss by the name of Taylor Bachmeyer.  Another famous outlier in the softball pitching world is Amanda Scarborough, who at 5’5” had a decorated career pitching at Texas A&M University and is now an analyst at ESPN. Unfortunately height cannot be taught.

So how do pitchers like Taylor and Amanda at their respective heights produce an upper velocity fastball? The simple answer is a combination of strength, stability and fast twitch muscle fiber recruitment. If an athlete is not blessed genetically with height and wants to throw hard enough to be a high level college pitcher, they’ll have to train to be both stronger and faster in order to produce the same velocities as taller pitchers. 

Without a high level ability to produce power, a pitcher can move as efficiently as possible but may lack the “potential velocity” within their body to produce elite level pitching speeds. Fortunately, with the right athlete who buys into a good training regimen both in the weight room and with dynamic movement based velocity training, the artificial “potential velocity” ceiling of that potential velocity ceiling can be raised. 

Weighted Balls *Gasp*

Basics needed for velocity improvement are the weight room, speed/fast twitch muscle fiber training and a program of weighted overload and underload balls for throwing. Of course, all of these things have to be properly understood and programmed. We are by no means advocating for a Dad or Coach unfamiliar with these things, to try and help his girl lift and throw unsupervised weighted balls. Make sure that if you go that route, do it with a professional.  Whether that be a weight lifting professional or a throwing professional that understands periodization of a proper weighted ball throwing program and Central Nervous System Fatigue in high velocity throwers. Don’t just throw them on a Sunday and wait for five days to throw them again on a Friday.  Understand that there involves complex programming to all of this. Poor programming will do more harm than good and we believe this is where the negative stigma of weighted balls comes from. Well meaning instructors or parents who lack the scientific understanding of underhanded throwing velocity development. There is a reason we do not implement weighted balls with lessons, lessons are to inconsistent to program the athlete correctly. Using weighted balls with inconsistent implementation or without structured programing is borderline negligent.

Intent to throw hard and the athlete’s buy-in to the process. 

This is something that tends to keep coaches/trainers up at night and turns them into armchair psychologists. Why does it seem like some pitchers can’t give 100% into throwing hard? Why do some pitchers’ velocity drop 5-6mph in a game vs a training environment? This one has a lot to unpack and much of it depends on individual circumstances. This is why it is very important to read a pitcher’s body language and ask them questions. It’s important to get to know the athlete in order to understand what the issues may be. However, there does seem to be a few re-occurring circumstances that will set a pitcher back when it comes to the intent to throw hard.

YOUTH VELOCITY DEVELOPMENT

One theme seems to be that somewhere down the learning line, in the early stages of a young pitchers development say U10-U12, an athlete had a span of walking hitters.  A Dad Coach or Volunteer parent (dead set on winning a summer U10 tournament) tells the kid “just let them hit it” or “make them earn it” knowing at that age most young hitters will get themselves out as they are not very advanced. This sets the precedent moving forward that velocity & command are mutually exclusive, so an athlete begins to correlate throwing fast and in-accuracy. 

In reality the best pitchers in college do both.  A few famous quotes come to mind when we at Delta Sports Performance encounter this type of problem.

 “I hit the ball as hard as I could, I found the fairway later”- Tiger Woods “ I hit the ball as hard as I could and found the court later”- Andre Agassi

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to allow an athlete to struggle, however accuracy should ALWAYS be chased WITH SPEED. Let me say that again for youth coaches to digest it. A youth pitcher needs to learn how to pitch while trying to throw fast! If they think that accuracy is the only thing that matters, it will cause the problem of tightening up anytime something goes wrong and teach them to aim the ball. Let your pitcher learn to fail, pick themselves up and continue to throw hard. I promise it will yield better results in the long term. Plus, if their goal is to pitch at an extremely high level they will never do it “aiming” the ball at low effort.

Randy Johnson, the Hall of Fame baseball pitcher is a perfect example of this. Early in his career, he threw really hard with control issues. Did he start to throw slower, did he drop down to 86mph to “let them hit it”? No, he worked through it and eventually he began to learn to control it. He then went on to become one of the best baseball pitchers of all time. 

There are ways to help an athlete undo the type of mental damage associated with the idea that control and hard throwing don’t go together.  However, it takes time, patience and a load of repetition. The athlete may not feel comfortable at first, but given time, the right throwing regimen, and the right environment these issues can and have been resolved. The players that have these issues tend to be the ones that either hate pitching or hate the sport of softball in general. Helping the pitcher get past the mental block of velocity vs control within pitching performance, can help reinvigorate their love for the sport and is always the most rewarding as an instructor.

Measure Speed!!!!

I honestly hate that I have to say this but use a REAL radar gun. I’m done with people claiming velocities based on estimates or non reliable radar devices, use a stalker (most accurate) or a pocket radar (budget version, very reliable). Measure velocities all the time and make the player compete against themselves! Don’t guess or make them guess, most players don’t even have the mind body connection to understand max effort, if you are not using a radar gun consistently to track numbers a lot of athletes will have bad intent to throw hard. Hold them accountable, by always measuring their speed. Let them learn what their max intent is by measuring and telling them their velocities on every pitch!

Results

Theories are great, but they start to become real when they are tested and paired with results. “In Theory” and “In Practice” are two very different things. Many people have great theories but do those theories yield the results that are sought? This is the question most people really want to know. Three years ago, we held many of these same theories I’ve outlined above (we’ve learned much more about the details since then) and we knew nobody else around Milwaukee had a real velocity based program for underhand softball.  We decided to put our theories to the test and create one. A structured program that allowed for specific individualization of drills for specific movers to help improve specific athletic deficiencies from strength to movement & athleticism. For example, if we have a small fast athlete, we allowed ourselves room to switch up their program for strength development. Every good program marries structure with individualization. The structure is important so that the athlete gets the necessary amount of repetition to make lasting changes and the individualization allows for us to focus more on individual athletes deficiencies. So far, the results have been very positive. We will split up the results into two groups, one group age 14 and above (the age where most of our velocity programs implement some type of weight training along with movement and throwing based training) and under 14 years old (where movement and throwing based training is the only aspect of the program as girls that age are not mature enough for the weight room.). 

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Over 14

Player A starting velocity: 52.8mph Final Velocity Test: 60.1mph (Junior HS)

Player B starting Velocity: 47.6mph Final Velocity Test:55.3mph (Sophomore HS)

Player C starting Velocity: 50.1mph Final Velocity Test: 56.6mph (Sophomore HS)

Player D starting Velocity: 48.8mph Final Velocity Test: 56.5mph (8th Grade)

Player E starting Velocity: 48.1mph Final Velocity Test: 55.1mph (Freshman HS)

Player F starting Velocity: 59.1mph Final Velocity Test: 64.6mph (Sophomore HS)

Player G starting Velocity: 52.8mph Final Velocity Test: 58.1mph (8th Grade)

Player H starting Velocity 55.3mph Final Velocity Test: 61.2mph (Junior HS)

Player I starting Velocity: 53.9mph Final Velocity Test: 58.5mph (Junior HS)

Player J starting Velocity: 43.5mph Final Velocity Test: 47.9mph (8th Grade)

Player K starting Velocity: 48.8mph Final Velocity Test: 50.4mph (Sophomore HS)

Player L starting Velocity 52.2mph Final Velocity Test: 55.3mph (Senior HS)

Under 14/ No lifting:

Player A starting Velocity: 43.7mph Final Velocity Test: 48.1mph (7th Grade)

Player B starting Velocity: 42.9mph Final Velocity Test: 48.9mph (7th Grade)

Player C starting Velocity: 40.4mph Final Velocity Test: 41.8mph (6th Grade)

Player D starting Velocity: 44.3mph Final Velocity Test: 47.1mph (6th Grade)

Player E starting Velocity: 37.4mph Final Velocity Test: 42.4mph (6th Grade)

Player F starting Velocity: 43.0mph Final Velocity Test: 46.2mph (6th Grade)

Player G starting Velocity: 41.6mph Final Velocity Test: 44.3mph (6th Grade)

Player H starting Velocity: 48.1mph Final Velocity Test: 51.2mph (6th Grade)

Player I starting Velocity: 44.6mph Final Velocity Test: 48.8mph (7th Grade)

Conclusion

Basically, the first step to throwing harder is an assessment of where a pitcher is at. First know where their velocity is at, use a radar gun and consistently measure. Know the limitations of the pitcher, do they move efficiently? What do they lack athletically, is it speed, strength or mobility? Is their mindset positively impacting their velocity or negatively impacting it? Find the aspects they can improve on and focus on those areas. If an athlete moves really well already but lacks strength and speed, focus on raising their “potential velocity ceiling”. If they are strong and an elite athlete but don’t throw hard focus on either their movement efficiency or their mentality.  This of course is a simplification and most of the time the puzzle can be very complex, THERE IS NO QUICK FIX!! However velocity opens doors and closes them in the pitching world, learning to throw hard & knowing how to develop velocity should be at the top of every softball coaches and pitchers list of priorities in order to compete at the highest level.

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