What If You Don't Have Time to Practice?

You make time. There are quite literally ZERO excuses. If you want to be the best you can be, you will find a way to put in the work. 

I hear this from my pitchers a lot. “I have school and then I have practice and I have homework and blah blah.” I get it and I used those same excuses 100 times. My parents had to get onto me occasionally to work on my game. I didn’t always want to, but I knew I had to. When I did it I felt so proud of myself and guess what? THE RESULTS SHOWED!

It doesn’t matter if you’re tired or not feeling your best. You know who has the BUSIEST schedules? Those elite student athletes that you admire on tv. Here’s a little representation of what their average day looks like…

• 5am: sun isn’t even up. Time to get ready for team lifting 
• 8am: giant exam for your first class of the day
• 9:30am: 2nd class that has your brain turned to mush from focusing so hard
• 11am: lunch
• Noon: pitcher’s practice
• 1:30pm: meet with trainer
• 2pm: team practice
• 4:30pm: another class and probably another exam
• 6:00pm: 4th class of the day
• 7:30pm: dinner and mandatory study hall with team
• 9pm: time to finally shower and get some rest 

AND THEY WILL STILL FIND TIME TO DO MORE WORK ON THEIR OWN! 

They go and use their only free 15 minutes of the day to work on spins or strength training in between classes. They’ll do some tee work before team practice even starts. 

What is that called? DISCIPLINE 

They really don’t want to put in that work a lot of the days but they definitely want to get better so they do what they HAVE to do. There are no shortcuts. Natural talent only gets you so far. 

You don’t have a fancy set up to practice with? Practice your motions in a mirror. Do dry pitching. Practice your spins. Use a ball made out of socks (this is a classic) to throw into your couch or a wall. Use a tennis ball. Set up some pillows against your wall and throw into them. Do those core exercises that coach keeps preaching to you about. Use your imagination! If you’re one of my pitchers you know that I’m always creating drills for you to do with simple everyday objects from the house. Go sprint. Squat jumps. Should I keep going? 

“Dad didn’t remind me.” If you couldn’t remember it yourself then you don’t want it bad enough. 

“I came home from practice, ate, and went to bed.” 

No. You probably spent 30 minutes scrolling on your phone before bed. If you really aren’t on your phone, sacrifice just FIVE minutes to work on quality spins before you hop into bed. 

“I had softball and volleyball practice almost every day.” 

I love that for you. Multisport athletes are awesome! But you chose to play those sports and you also chose to be a pitcher. Suck it up and get to work. 

“I wasn’t feeling good at all last week.” 

Yes, please take time to rest but at some point there was probably a couple days where you had 15 minutes of energy to do drills from your knees or doing weighted ball work into your glove. ANYTHING! 

“I didn’t know what to work on.” 

ASK! My pitchers are told every lesson what they should work on. Take notes. Write it down! Put it in your phone. Take mental notes while pitching and revisit those while getting ready to work at home. Those two things that coach kept repeating… yeah focus on those! If you feel like the coach isn’t giving you any true guidance, find a different coach. 

“I pitch almost every day at home.” 

I’m very proud of you. Truly. BUUUUUUUT what are you practicing? Pitching full distance every day of the week while repeating those same poor mechanics won’t help you improve. They can actually put you at risk of injury! Work on the “boring” stuff. I call it boring because the girls roll their eyes a lot when I tell them they have to do that instead of having fun pitching with dad in the back yard.

You MUST MUST MUST break it down piece by piece. Work on one piece at a time. Don’t move on until that piece is solid. That could take 10 minutes a day, 3 days a week or that could take 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week for MONTHS to fix but if that’s what it takes then that’s what you have to do. 

Pitching is a full time job. If you don’t want to put the work in then let your parents know. Let your coaches know. Save everyone the time, money, and energy. Then go excel at another position on the field. It sounds harsh but you can’t claim that you want to be great while giving the bare minimum. 

Sincerely, 

Me. A girl that regrets not working harder when it was my turn. I had the world in my hands and I was SO* close to being next level and I let it slip. 12 years later and I still think about it almost daily. I have reoccuring dreams of me begging my coach for more playing time. If you truly love this game and love pitching, get your a** up and grind until every goal is reached and every dream has come true.