Controlling Hitters: Hitting Spots and Changing Speeds

Myndie Berka has trained hundreds of successful pitchers. Her pitchers have:

• earned scholarships at over 60 different colleges and universities
• competed at the Women's College World Series at the NCAA DI, DII, NAIA and JUCO levels
• been named collegiate All-Americans
• been collegiate national strikeout leaders at both the NCAA DI and DII levels

There's more that goes into pitching than just throwing a ball across home plate and hoping that batters don't hit it. All too often, developing pitchers focus on throwing strikes and fail to develop the discipline to throw to precise locations while mixing speeds.

Myndie Berka delves into the art of pitching, showing more advanced pitchers how to control and neutralize hitters by hitting spots and varying speed. She takes you through an ordered and detailed development of drills to help pitchers improve their ability to hit locations. You'll also learn a series of instruction on the development of alternative change-up techniques that will help keep hitters off balance.

Developing Focus Points

Teach your pitchers the physical adjustments they must make to hit their spots consistently. Coach Berka discuses focus points and release points, which helps pitchers develop the feel and visual focus needed to control the ball both in the zone when they need a strike and around the zone when they are ahead of the count.

Drills for Hitting Spots

Missed spots often result in the opposing batters making solid contact, so having good command is something pitchers need to excel at. Coach Berka offers 12 drills for pitchers to employ when practicing hitting their spots. These practical visual feedback drills require simple tools available to any pitcher. Advanced location drills are demonstrated and explained to provide a simple and effective training routine for pitchers to hone their location performance and begin to understand the selection of location, based on the count.

In one particular drill - One Skips - pitchers try to skip the ball off home plate to practice keeping the ball low. Gradually, pitchers progress to hitting a knee-high, then chest-high target. Throughout the drill, Coach Berka reinforces the art of pitching by helping players understand where they want to miss, if they happen to miss their spot. All pitchers miss spots, so it's important to know where to miss when it happens.

Change-ups

The changing of speed can be the most crucial part of controlling the hitter. Coach Berka teaches a variety of change-ups starting with the Flip, modifying it to develop a Curve Change, and then the Shove change using six different grip variations. For all change-up techniques, Coach Berka provides a logical sequence of drills and progressions for learning the pitch, as well as which one may be most beneficial based on the strengths of the pitcher.

Coach Berka teaches not just mechanics, but the art of pitching. This video will teach your intermediate and advanced pitchers how to control hitters by hitting their spots and changing speeds.

91 minutes. 2016.