I’ve worked with many high school baseball teams over the past few years as a strength coach, but have never done women’s fast pitch softball. Other than the obvious underhand pitching style and the more contact oriented batting style(and the necessary training for those styles), what can you savvy veterans tell me that could help? Before you comment on the lack of testosterone in these athletes, let me tell you that some of them are packing more Big T than some football players. Some of them are farm girls from rural Alabama, so they are hosses. Thanks for the help.
Remember…it’s called FASTball. Because of the shorter distances and smaller field dimensions, speed (or more correctly accelleration)is really important and in all directions. A team with several fast players is always really dangerous. Defence has to be flawless or the fast girls will take advantage of those mistakes and advance runners and eventually score.
Base running is very little “sprint” technique and more pure power. Size is not that important for hitting. One of our best U-19 hitters weighs 117 lb. and can hit the fence at 256’ on a regular basis. To develope hitting power we use a 6 lb. steel bar and hit a basketball off a T. For fielding we teach the girls to scrammble from the knees, back, stomach. They really like that stuff. Lots of bounding, skipping, hopping and long jumps before they even pick up a ball or bat.
Now share your baseball stuff.
TNT
With baseball I have used lots of explosive lifts as a base. (particularly squats, power cleans, push presses, deadlifts,) I like to use a lot of core exercises, expecially rotational core exercises. A favorite of mine is the full contact twist, which can result in explosive gains in bat speed. You have to carefully moniter your athletes when you first get started on that one to make sure they don’t injure their backs through improper use/too heavy a load. I like posterior overhead reaches to functionally train pitchers. I’m partial to functional training too, so I like the T pushups to stabilize the all important (and often injured) shoulder muscles and I like the single-leg bent-over row to work the hips and back without having to go super heavy. The of course we do plyometrics. Sorry if I ramble on, but I’ve used many different exercises to reach the same goal: Increase functional strength, get more explosive, and decrease injury prevelance. I appreciate your help, I hope this can help you a little.