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by Gerald Warner, Softball Pitching Instructor
When it comes to pitching
speed, tall softball pitchers with good physical coordination can
(but
don't always) have
an advantage over height-impaired pitchers with shorter arms.
That doesn't mean that short
pitchers should feel inferior to their loftier counterparts.
Quite the contrary. Arm speed (and
consequently the speed of the ball) at the release
point is what ultimately determines the speed of the pitch. A
pitcher with a longer arm has a speed advantage ONLY if she
makes the arm circle in the same amount of time as someone with a
shorter arm.
2004
USA Olympic team pitcher Cat Osterman
takes a leaping
stride of nearly
8-feet
Therefore, a shorter girl
can be a successful pitcher if she
uses various techniques to increase
her arm speed (such as increasing the arm's "whipping"
action, closing the shoulder faster, increasing wrist snap, and in
most cases simply developing a stronger commitment) and, in
addition to her fastball, she develops a good repertoire of
off-speed and breaking pitches.
Typically, a good softball
pitcher completes the hip-to-hip windmill rotation in about 2-tenths
of a second or less. The distance the ball travels in the arm
circle during that time, as you can see on the chart below, ranges
from 10 feet (for those with shorter arms) to
more than 15 feet.
Therefore, to make the ball go
faster at the release point, the choices are to
either:
(1) lengthen the arm, thus creating a longer radius
of the circle, and subsequently
a
larger circle size (circumference = 3.1416 x diameter) , or
(2)
make the rotation quicker by increasing arm speed.
Since
stretching the arm to make it longer isn't a practical solution, we
teach our pitchers how to make the arm rotation
faster.
So if you
are an experienced pitcher and you want to add another 5 or 6 miles
per hour to your fastball, all you need to do is to make the
rotation 2-100ths of a second faster
(Make the arm circle in 18-100ths of a second instead
of 20-100ths
second).
Only
2-100ths of a second faster…that's your
goal!
The
article above can be downloaded and printed from Microsoft
Word
Do you want to
reprint this article or use it on your website or in your
newsletter?
As long as it is not for profit,
our only requirement is that you first notify us, then include the
following sentence:
Article by Gerald Warner of
PitchSoftball.com
and include a reference to this
website: www.pitchsoftball.com
If you have
questions or need more information
E-mail us, or
call Pitching Instructor Gerald Warner in Colorado at
(720) 200-4575
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