Learn where every young athlete should start their training from an Olympic gold medalist, and 4X All-American! We’re talking fastpitch softball with Michele Granger.
Today, we are talking fast pitch softball with one of the greatest to ever play the game. dominant pitcher Michelle Granger. We’re talking about what young athletes should focus on as they begin their path in sport, be it football, baseball, basketball, soccer, or in this case, fastpitch softball. Michele, at the age of 15 was playing for Team USA in softball. She got an early lesson in how to prepare for sport from some of the best playing the game at the time. And she took that with her over the course of her career as a player, as an Olympic athlete as an Olympic gold medalist ,as a professional and then as a coach at the rec, high school and college level. She now coaches college pitchers, and knows what’s going on in the game, and she knows how young athletes should get ready.
As a quarterback. I always used to love to listen to athletes from other sports today, if you’re a young athlete, even if your sport is not fastpitch softball, Michelle has some nuggets about training for you.
Where should athletes start their training?
I’m a big believer in practice a lot before you ever go in a game. When you get on the mound in a game, the only way to be comfortable is to have the basics and the fundamentals down pat, before you ever get there. You hear a lot about kids wanting to play games, and the game part is fun. Don’t get me wrong. But if you have a strong base, then you’re going to be prepared for the game. So work on your fundamentals work on your mechanics
A lot of the fundamentals for QB’s and pitchers start in the same place.
My dad was a baseball guy, right, he didn’t know softball pitching from anything else. So he just took what he already knew from golf and from baseball, and applied it to softball pitching. A lot of it was kind of unique at the time, because a lot of women were just going straight forward towards the plate and using all upper body and he was a big believer on lifting the front leg higher like a baseball pitcher does rotating on the back foot and then landing on a strong front side and getting that resistance so that you could throw the ball anywhere in the zone and control the level by the open your hip.
One thing I noticed in quarterbacks all over the place, from the youth levels, high school, college, even pro quarterbacks, you look at them, and mechanically, a lot of them could really clean up their game. How much better is it for an athlete to start early with those basics with the mechanics and getting all that right?
Well, it’s immediate right? So the first thing when you’re talking about the basics when you’re 10u or 8u pitcher and you start getting those fundamentals down with your stride with your balance with your arm swing, you’re just going to get better and better as time goes by. As a general rule, if you do a little bit of research, all quality pictures, at least for softball, and I think in sports, in general, have certain things that hold true to each, each person that’s doing well. Then there’s the flavor, that makes you a little bit different, and that really can’t be replicated. A lot of pitchers, when they’re starting try to replicate what would make me unique or Lisa Fernandez unique or Jennie Finch unique. That’s not what you want to pull, right? You want to pull their timing, how they’re holding the ball, how their bodies are positioned those things.
And so it’s about reps, isn’t it?
It is about reps. But I think one of the biggest mistakes kids make in their pitching regimen today is not doing drill work. I very rarely, my entire career stood on the mound and threw for an hour or two hours at a time in practice, it was always intermittent. It was more interval training, do a drill, come back to the mound, do another drill come back to the mound. And that’s how I put on so much speed. That’s what I did. That’s how I got comfortable. I knew I was throwing 70 when I could throw a ball from dead centerfield over the plate on a line. That’s how you know.
I threw and made sure I had the basics down. And once I had the basics down, everything else was an add on. And then the drill work Honestly, it is the saving grace because it picks your mechanics back in line and you don’t even know you’re doing it.
Comment and ask us any questions we’d be happy to answer them here at jttps://www.eliteathletestv.com . Please share this out with teammates, family, friends, other athletes. Anybody who you think can benefit. I appreciate you watching a little fastpitch Softball Training from one of the greats of all time on how to get better at your game.
