Let it Eat

This is a fun drill for any overhand thrower. Baseball or softball, young or old. On the included video, we did the drill inside a batting cage. It can also be done in a net in your backyard or there are so many portable nets I have seen on the baseball and softballs fields. I like this drill because it encourages athleticism and it promotes throwing fast. If your team has a pocket radar gun or some type of device to measure throwing velocity, use it. It makes the drill more fun for the players. The players I have seen make a competition or game out of it. One can keep score on who improves the most, not who only who throws the fastest. This often leads to your players towards learning the proper warm up, to practice away from the field, to do the band work that we are going to introduce and to improve their athleticism by moving fast. To do this drill get 40-50 feet away from the net. In our video, we were thirty five feet away from the net. Our player in the video, Payton, gained about 25 feet in his momentum moving forward. He used a simple step behind foot work, a simple shuffling of the feet. One can also use heel to heel shuffle forward. This is the footwork involved in throwing the ball across the diamond or throwing longer distances. The timing of the weight transfer is important when doing this drill and when throwing across the field. When the athlete improves their footwork and improves the timing of proper weight transfer, they will see an increase in velocity. That is a reason we want to measure and document each players throwing velocity and their increases. Remember the grip we use is extremely important as well. What else is important , come on? The throwing hand and arm working in the magic circle. This is a drill I like because it is enjoyable for the athlete, it teaches athleticism and it is a skill we can measure. Each coach can add his or her own twist to make the throwing drill more fun to his or her particular team. A fun fact for everyone, an elite throwers arm travels at 8500 degrees per second, meaning the arm would spin around 24 times before coming to a stop! Whaaat! This fact I read years ago in an article in popular mechanics about throwing velocity. Stay safe everyone and enjoy throwing the ball. It is for everyone.