Different Ways to Utilize Softball Pitching Machines

Different Ways to Utilize Softball Pitching Machines
By guest author: Lincoln Hawk

As a softball coach or a player, it's important to practice with the best all-around equipment, and an example of this would be softball pitching machines. This piece of equipment is very versatile in that it can be used to help improve your skills in many different aspects of the game. Here are a few ways that softball pitching machines can be used to improve your overall performance:

Outfielding

One way to use softball pitching machines is to adjust the machine to throw pop-ups to your outfielders. You can practice catching pop-ups, as well as chasing down pop flies that are "hit" away from you. You also could lower softball pitching machines to simulate line drives to the outfield that need to be fielded and thrown back to the infield. It's as important to field the ball in the outfield as it is to catch pop flies.

Infielding

To work on taking ground balls in the infield, you can set softball pitching machines to fire line drive grounders. You can also adjust the speed of the machines to simulate weakly hit grounders that infielders will need to run in on.

Hitting

The most obvious use is for throwing pitches so you can work on improving your hitting. You can adjust the machine to practice hitting pitches with lots of arch to them, or to pitch softballs that are a little bit flatter. If you are a fastpitch player, you can increase the speed of the machine to help you improve your contact as a hitter.

Team Drills

You can utilize softball pitching machines to work on team fundamentals. One way is to set up situational drills, such as having a runner tagging up from third trying to score. Use the machine to throw pop-ups to the outfielders. Have the outfielders catch it and relay it in back to a middle infielder, who will in turn fire it back to the catcher to tag out the tagging runner.

You could also simulate a game by having the players who aren't starters in the field act as base runners. You can then adjust the pitching machine to "hit" the ball to different parts of the field as the base runners advance. You can make a game out of it by making the fielders have to run laps or do pushups if the base runners score so many runs. This will encourage the fielders to pay more attention to what they are doing on the field, which will hopefully translate onto the field during a real game.

For more information on where to find softball pitching machines, check out pitchingmachines.zoostores.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lincoln_Hawk

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