The Importance of a Good Practice-Rest Balance

You all probably know that adequate rest is important for preventing injury. Believe it or not, it’s also essential for developing solid mechanics early in a pitcher’s development.

What Is Muscle Memory?

We talk about muscle memory a lot on Fastpitch Power. For those of you who may not have heard this term before, here is the gist of it:

Your muscles have a programmed memory for movements they’ve done over and over again. When a baby learns to walk, it struggles because it does not yet have any muscle memory for walking. Once you develop that muscle memory, walking isn’t even something you think about; your body just knows how to do it. You all have muscle memory for things you do every day, big and small. For example, if suddenly the buttons on your cell phone got switched around, you’d probably find your fingers going to the old place even though it’s no longer correct.

Learning to pitch is all about developing muscle memory. In the very beginning, a pitcher has to think hard about every single element of the motion in order to get her body to do what she wants it to do. The goal is eventually to ingrain the correct pitching motion in the muscle memory so the body does it automatically, and the pitcher can worry about what pitch to throw rather than how to throw it.

So what does this have to do with rest?

Don’t Push Your Kids Too Hard

Obviously, the way to develop muscle memory is through repetition. Regular practice is absolutely essential, and basically the more you practice the quicker your muscles will learn the mechanics.

However, the quality of that practice is as important as the quantity. Whatever motion you repeat the most is the motion that will become ingrained in your muscle memory. Exhaustion will almost always cause a young pitcher’s mechanics to break down. So during the early stages when muscle memory is vulnerable, it can actually be detrimental to spend too much time throwing while tired.

When Is It OK To Pitch Tired?

After a pitcher’s muscle memory has developed somewhat—you can tell by her speed and command, which will become consistent—it’s alright to start stretching her out. It is important to work up to pitching a whole game with an even amount of strength from start to finish, and at first the pitcher will probably have to battle through tiredness to get there. Just make sure she’s not doing it at a stage in her development where it could ruin her mechanics.