OTHER CHAPTERS
Some people may say that hitting a round ball with a round bat is the hardest thing to do in baseball and softball. I disagree. A hitter walks to the plate knowing they will have only one decision to make…swing or don’t. A catcher, on the other hand? We have so many things we need to be aware of, actively thinking about in any given moment of the game. How many outs are there? What’s the count? What did the hitter do their last at-bat? How is my pitcher throwing today? Which of their pitches aren’t competitive today? Where are my infielders positioned? Is this a bunt situation? Could the runner try to steal in this count? We have to process all of that before we even get to making the decision to receive or block the pitch. I truly believe blocking is the hardest skill to execute at a high level in both baseball and softball.
Blocking is hard for many reasons, but the top two that stand out are fairly simple.
First, blocking is hard because it hurts. It’s not easy to turn off the part of our brain that tell us to get out of the way objects flying at us. From birth we are programmed to protect ourselves when objects that could hurt us are moving towards us, and it is incredibly difficult to reprogram that instinctive reaction.
It’s no secret that catchers are going to get hit by baseballs and softballs, and it’s going to hurt, sometimes a lot. Catchers are going to get beat up pretty routinely. But, they are more at risk to injuries due to poor technique and approach than any other reason.
Catchers that haven’t developed the muscle memory necessary to just react to a ball in the dirt will get defensive and may put a part of their body, that isn’t protected by equipment, in harm’s way. However, by reinforcing a consistent approach to blocking, catchers won’t think about the ball hitting them, instead they will simply execute the movements they have been trained to.
In all my years behind the plate, I can honestly say that the balls that hit me, but stayed within a playable distance from my bod didn't hurt nearly as much as the ones that lead to a runner advancing to the next base.
The next time you block a ball off one of your arms, and you have the seam marks (also know as a “catcher tattoo”) to prove it, make a point to show your pitcher. Not because you are tying to showoff, but because you want to show them exactly how far you’re willing to go to protect them and their pitches. You’re letting them know you’ve got their back and want them to feel more comfortable throwing the ball low. As a matter of fact, when the pitcher isn’t worried about a catchers willingness to block, they end up more relaxed, and as a result throw fewer balls in the dirt.
The second reason why blocking is hard: We often won’t know when we have to do it.
While we may have be fortunate enough to catch some talented pitchers who don’t throw pitches in the dirt all that often (unless they are asked to), most pitchers will be fairly unpredictable when it comes to pitches thrown into the ground.
This obviously becomes slightly less and less of an issue as pitchers mature, but it also means that their mistakes are being thrown harder and with more movement, continuing to make a catcher’s job still very difficult. On average from the youth levels to high school, it takes a typical pitch about one half of a second (i.e. five tenths of a second) to get leave the pitcher’s hand and reach the dirt in front of a catcher.
In that half of a second, the catcher has a lot to process. First, we have to determine “am I receiving this pitch or am I blocking it?”. If we’ve determined that we need to block the pitch, we then need to identify where the ball is going. “Am I blocking down the middle, to my right or to my left?”. Once we’ve established a direction, then we need to get our body there. The sequence of movements we make while sending our body to the ground means EVERYTHING. If we are out of sequence, we are risking our ability to get to the spot in time to control the ball off of our body.
While keeping the ball in front of us is generally good, a block is truly only going to be as good as the play a catcher can make after it, or the runner they made think twice about attempting to take the next base as a result of it.
there are plenty of scenarios where we keep the ball in front of us but the baserunners still manage to advance. If the catcher is young, or new to the position, they should be praised and given positive reinforcement for demonstrating that they recognized the ball was heading towards the ground, and did something with their body in an effort to keep the ball in front of them. But, at higher levels of play that won’t be good enough. We are only as good as the play we can make after the block.
So, how do catchers deal with these challenges? Having a consistent approach is the first step. This allows catchers to establish the muscle memory necessary to instinctively react to pitches thrown into the dirt, rather than having to think about the mechanics of blocking.
In order to establish that muscle memory, we first need to understand the specific approach we're going to take. We will utilize two slightly different approaches to blocking, both dependent on the pitch type and location. Both of those approaches rely on our brains knowing what a block should feel and look like after we have completed it.
If we don’t know what the final position feels like after we have executed an efficient and successful block, it’ll be very hard to establish a consistent approach. So we’re going to start by looking at the finished blocking position.
FINISHED BLOCKING POSITION - MIDDLE:
KEY POINTS:
1. Knees should be spread apart at a comfortable width. We don’t want to be too narrow since that could cause us to become top-heavy and lose our balance. We also don’t want our knees spread too far apart, since doing so can lead to our upper body sitting more upright. When our chest is upright, the ball is more likely to ricochet forward and away from us rather than straight down. We want the ball to hit our body and end up within an arm’s reach in front of us.
2. Bring the feet as close together as they can comfortably be (everyone’s body is different in terms of flexibility and hip mobility, so some people may not be able to get their feet to touch. Others may) The goal is to make an effort to get them moving towards each other during the block. The quickest path between two points is a straight line, so we want our body to go straight to the ground during a block down the middle. To do this, we’ll need to replace our feet with our knees. However, If our feet don’t come together while we’re pulling them underneath us, they’ll likely go up and when we land on the ground, the only two points of contact we’ll have with the ground will be our knees. Since our upper body will be coming forward over top of our legs, the momentum can lead to us falling forward out of control. But if our feet come as close together as they can, we’ll establish three points of contact on the ground, similar to a tripod effect with our knees and our feet together behind us. This will enable us to make adjustments on the ball while moving to the ground without losing control of our upper body during the block.
3. We want to keep our butt off of our heels. If we sit all the way back onto our heels, we risk our upper body straightening up (vertically) and allowing the ball to deflect forward and away after it hits us. This will make it harder to track down the ball in time to make a play. By keeping our backside elevated off our heels we give ourselves the ability to keep our shoulders further forward than the front of our knees. This will create an angle with our chest that all but guarantees the ball will deflect downward towards the ground after it hits us. Now, there may be some athletes with a longer lower body who may need to modify this position. Some taller catchers may need to let their backside sink into their heels to avoid creating too large of a gap between their legs due to the length of their bodies, and they will still be able to create a downward angle with their chest. There is certainly some flexibility in terms of body position, but ultimately we need to make sure that we are keeping our shoulders forward and our chest pointed to the ground in front of us.
4. Our throwing hand should stay behind the glove, next to the glove hand, and remain in a relaxed fist. In the heat of the moment anything can happen, and if our throwing hand somehow makes its way out from behind the glove, we want to make sure that our fingers are still tucked into a fist and protected. If we rest the palm of our throwing hand on the back of our glove with an open hand, the thumb on our throwing hand can be left exposed to the ball. I make it a point to say that the hand should be behind the glove but also NEXT to the glove hand to avoid the catcher crossing their wrists. When the wrists cross in an effort to get one hand behind the other, the forearms of the catcher sit in front of the chest protector. If I had the choice between getting hit in the chest protector or the arm, I’m not choosing the arm. By keeping the hands next to each other, it allows for the forearms to sit on the side of the body, exposing more of the chest protector to the ball, and giving the catcher a better chance to control the ball after it hits them.
5. The tip of the glove should be the only part of the glove touching the ground. If we lay the back of the glove on the ground, not only does it provide the ball a ramp up into our body where the ball will hit our glove or chest while moving upward (remember we are trying to deflect the ball downward), but it also brings our forearms together in front of our chest protector, making it harder for the ball to get to the chest protector where we’ll have the greatest chance of controlling it.
6. We want our chin tucked, but our eyes up. We want to keep our neck protected, but we don’t want to limit our ability to follow the ball with our eyes so that we can track it down and make a play with it. If we tuck our head too far or too early, we’re giving ourselves almost no chance of seeing the ball come off our body, and the ball would have a greater chance of hitting the top of our helmet and ricocheting far away from us.
Now that we have established where we want to end up, we need to figure out how to get there. We’ll separate these approaches into four categories: fastball blocks down the middle, fastball blocks to the side, offspeed pitch blocks down the middle, offspeed pitch blocks to the side.
FASTBALL BLOCKS DOWN THE MIDDLE:
When it comes to blocks of fastballs thrown to the middle of our body, we have to remember that the quickest path between two points is a straight line. We want to make sure that we are being as direct with our body to the ground as we can possibly be. In order to accomplish this, we also need to understand which part of our body has the ability to accomplish this the fastest. That body part? Our hands. Our hands are the fastest moving parts of our body. Some have suggested that because they can run fast, it’s their legs that should pace this skill. The reality is our legs move US fast, but our legs are not our quickest body part. Our hands can be quicker and far more precise than any other part of our body, and we’re going to take advantage of that while blocking.
Our hands have the innate and extremely unique ability to show our brain where we want the center of our body to go. We want to get hit by the ball in the middle of our body. The days of attempting to field a ball in the dirt are over. Our goal is to allow our gear to do its job and absorb the energy of the ball. Drive our hands to where we will meet the ball, and our body will follow.
In a worst case scenario, if our hands get there first, we still have a very good chance at stopping the ball. If our lower body fires first, and our hands are late there’s a good chance the ball goes between our legs.
On a fastball block down the middle, our hands should get pulled directly in between our feet, with the throwing hand pulling down first, and the glove turning over and pulling next. The faster our hands get to the ground, the faster our body will.
We want our upper body to follow over top of the hands as they make the move to the ground. We don’t want to fold our body over at our midsection and get too low to the ground with our chest and shoulders, but we do want our chin to start tucking and our upper body to start creating the angle necessary to keep the ball close to us after it hits our body. Imagine a string attached to our throwing hand that is also attached to our chin. The hands trigger the move to get over the ball.
Keep in mind, we don’t want the catcher to bring their throwing hand all of the way down to the ground. Doing so will force the forearm of the throwing hand to cover their chest protector instead of sitting off to the side of it. We want the throwing hand to rest behind the glove and next to the glove hand. That way the throwing hand provides support to the glove and we maximize the chances that the ball hits the part of our body where we can control it the best (our chest).
Once our hands have gotten to the ground, and the tip of our glove is touching, the rest of our body will follow. We don’t have a lot of time when blocking a fastball, so we need to get our knees to the ground as quickly as possible.
The fastest way to do that is to replace our feet with our knees. It helps to think of movement like a carpet being pulled out from underneath the catcher’s feet. The feet go back (and hopefully together to maintain the tripod effect we discussed earlier in this chapter) and the knees drop in a straight line down to the ground. The goal is to end up in the perfect blocking position detailed earlier.
In a training environment, it is very important to understand that this position is not natural and building muscle memory will be the key to instinctively getting into that position in the middle of a pitch. The best way to help solidify a consistent approach is to physically fix the block after we hit the ground on each and every block we execute in practice.
Our brain is the most powerful muscle in our body. After each block a catcher fires to the ground, there’s a very small window of time to correct any flaws in the finished blocking position. To be clear, there will ALWAYS be something to fix. Our brain is only going to remember the last position we were in. If we fire a bad block and end up in a finished position that doesn’t give us the best chance to control the ball, it’ll remember that process unless it’s fixed in that moment. The brain is always trying to remember how to repeat each physical process we put our body through. Walking, running, throwing, our brain is looking to make each of those movements instinctive. The same goes for blocking.
If we fire an awful block in a training environment, and simply stand up to reset and do it over because we were frustrated with the result, our brain is most likely to remember (and potentially reinforce) the physical movements of the poorly executed block. However, if we take the small amount of time after each repetition and fix the final blocking position, our brain is much more likely to remember that position instead of the mistake. It will have a much easier time getting into that position the next time.
Should catchers fix a block they fire in a game or while working on recovering from a block to make a throw in practice? Absolutely not! If there is a play to be made, our job is to go get the ball.
COMMON MISTAKES/MISCONCEPTIONS:
There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to blocking and what will allow us to get our body in a position to control a pitch thrown into the ground the best. Unfortunately, a lot of these have been around for a while and some coaches today still swear by these approaches. The most common mistake a lot of catchers make on fastballs thrown into the ground to their middle, and one that is a result of old-school information, is to gain ground on blocks as a default approach.
Here’s the problem with going forward on a block. For one, our goal should be to absorb as much energy from the ball as possible. Moving forward into the ball only adds energy to it, and likely pushes it further away from our body, making it harder to make a play off of. Some coaches may suggest that the catcher just has to be quicker, but we’ve already established that the catcher has on average about a half-second to read the pitch, and actually get their body into a finished blocking position. A move forward takes more time because our knees are rolling to the ground along an arc, a curved path. It takes longer for us to get to the ground this way and, because of that, we will still be moving forward as the ball hits our body.
The other issue with this approach is that it accomplishes nothing even if we were to get to the ground in time. Fastballs skip, they don’t bounce. So the idea that we’ll somehow be cutting down the distance the ball has to bounce over us is very flawed since that will almost never happen. We don’t need to cut down the distance, we need to get to the ground as fast as possible. Moving forward doesn’t accomplish this.
Now, is there ever a reason to move forward into a block? Yes, there is. Offspeed pitches. Breaking pitches take longer to get to us, and those pitches bounce. Those pitches (curveball, changeup, knuckleball in baseball and a changeup or dropball in softball) are thrown slower and come to the ground at a much steeper angle that will often require us to move slightly forward. We’ll cover this particular approach later, but in the case of fastballs? Stay back.
The other very common mistake we see catchers making on this kind of pitch is they attempt to “pick” or field the ball with their glove rather than trying to block it with their body.
This can be the result of a fear of getting hit and hurt, or it can be something they were taught. Usually, a catcher who has not built up the muscle memory to create an instinctive reaction to a ball in the dirt will be the one more prone to attempting to field the ball. I have, however, heard of coaches telling catchers to attempt to pick fastballs in the dirt as a default approach. The argument for it being that the catcher doesn’t have enough time to get to the ground on a fastball. This couldn’t be further from the truth and it will hurt a catchers ability to block other pitches as well, as it gives them an alternative approach to blocking that can lead to more balls getting past them.
If we have 0.50 seconds to get our body in position for a block, that may not seem like a lot of time. But, it should only take a catcher about 0.30 seconds to move through the physical act of blocking. Which means, if they can recognize a ball that’s been thrown into the dirt within the first 40% of that pitch’s flight to home plate they will have a relatively easy time getting their body to the ground in time.
However, if they misjudge a pitch in the dirt by just a half inch, they could end up letting the ball get by them and put the other team into scoring position, or they could give up a run that could cost them the game.
One very simple rule catchers should always live by: “When in doubt, block it out!” Any pitch that a catcher thinks has even the slightest chance of heading into the dirt, a catcher should be firing a block. The worst thing that will happen if the ball doesn’t reach the ground? The ball hits them and stays in front of their body, allowing them to make a play if there is one to be made. But attempting to pick as ball off the ground, or risking attempting to receive a borderline pitch that might end up in the dirt? Those pitches often make their way to the backstop. Fire the block!
FASTBALL BLOCKS TO THE SIDE:
Our lives as catchers would be so much easier if our pitchers only threw balls in the dirt to the middle of our body. That most definitely is not our reality. After all, a pitcher’s ability to induce swings on non-competitive pitches out of the zone is a key to their success, so we want them to feel comfortable burying a ball in the dirt anywhere on purpose as well.
In order to be consistent with this skill, we’re going to need to take a slightly different approach to blocking to the side.
Our hands become even more important here. Their ability, when held together and touching the ground, help the brain figure out how far out midline needs to go. Even more important, it helps tell the brain when it should stop and shut down the body movement to the side. Both of those abilities are integral to a catcher being a successful blocking catcher.
We’re going to break up this skill into a three step process. In the middle of a full speed block nobody but the catcher, and perhaps a professional catching instructor, should be able to tell the order in which the catcher executed these steps. Each of the movements involved in a block are overlapping each other, one step leaking into the next until the end of the skill. Which is why the sequence is so incredibly important. If we are out of order with these steps, it become very difficult to maintain a seamless move to the ground. Efficiency is a word you’ve already read plenty of times so far in this e-book, and it’s very important here as well.
STEP ONE: HANDS TO THE BALL:
As is the first step in firing a block down the middle, we are going to start this block to the side with our hands as well.
We want to keep our hands together while we send them to the ball. Now, the handedness of the pitcher can play a role in our hands needing to go further than the ball to account for the trajectory of the pitch (when blocking a fastball to the right with a right-handed pitcher on the rubber, our hands will need to travel an inch or two beyond where the ball is thrown, and vice versa on a ball thrown to the left with a lefty pitching).
We want to keep this ball close to our body after it hits us, and ideally have it funneled back toward the middle of the field (but still behind the plate). In order to accomplish this, we must make this move with our hands without turning our body in the direction of the ball, the opposite direction our chest needs to be facing when the ball makes contact with our body.
STEP TWO: BACK KNEE TO THE GROUND:
The order our knees head to the ground is vital to the success of a block. If our front knee comes down first (we call it “dropping anchor”) all adjustability goes out the window. It also makes it very hard to control the momentum of the body and limits our range to the side.
Some of you may have seen professional catchers utilizing this approach, but not only is it less-effective at any level, they are also playing on a field that is perfectly manicured every single day (packed clay, layer of Turface on top that allows for a catcher to pretty much slide to wherever they want to go with whichever knee). The average catcher around the world will NOT be playing the majority of games on a surface like that.
By driving our back knee to the ground first, we maximize our ability to make mid-block adjustments, it also enables us to cover more ground to the side since we can use our back leg to power our drive out behind the ball more efficiently.
I will say that even if catchers are playing on a well manicured playing surface, dropping the front knee down first makes it much harder, if not impossible for the catcher to go any further to their side, or to get their chest turned back towards the middle of the field.
STEP THREE: FRONT KNEE STRAIGHT FORWARD:
The final step in the block to the side is to get our our chest closed back towards the middle of the field. We want the position of our chest protector to mirror the path of the pitch so the ball hits our body flush and doesn’t merely deflect off somewhere we cannot control it.
To accomplish this, all we need to do is drive our front knee straight forward. We want to avoid letting that knee continue pushing off to the side since it will prevent our body from closing around the ball, and won’t allow us to get our chest turned towards the middle of the field. Remember, the more chest protector os exposed to the ball, the greater chance the ball hits it, and the greater chance we are able to keep the ball close to our bodies by absorbing the energy of the ball.
The finished position should be almost identical to that following a block down the middle, except the feet do not need to come together in the back since there is no explosive movement up and back with the feet. The feet will almost always be in contact with the ground, and once our knees are on the ground we’ll have four separate points of contact providing stability.
Catchers need to understand that this approach should be the one they default to on borderline pitches. If a catcher fires a block down the middle on a ball well off-center from their body, the chances that ball actually stays close is very small. But, getting our body turned behind a ball that was thrown close to the middle? That still allows the ball to hit our chest protector and most likely keeps the ball in front of our body.
Now, other than allowing the front knee to drop to the ground before the back, the most common mistake we see catchers making is not leading this skill with their hands.
We will often see catchers initiate the block to the side by jag-stepping with their lead foot in the direction of the block in an effort to cover more ground. There are a number of things wrong with this approach, but none more than the fact that in order for our foot to go to the side, we have to pick it up off the ground first. Let me say that again…we have to pick it UP off the ground first. If we jab step on a block to the side, we will always go up first. Seeing as the ball is going down, we can safely assume that would be very counterproductive to our goal of getting to the spot before the ball does.
What jab-stepping also does is throw the sequence we need our body to hit the ground out the window.
As I noted above, I cannot stress just how important this is. When we fire a block to our sides and the hands come down last, we are relying on gravity and friction in order to slow and stop our body. While both of those things are great to rely on in a vacuum, we need to be far more precise that that approach allows us to be. If we aren’t accurate with our blocks we risk coming up short and the ball hitting part of our body that isn’t going to absorb the energy well enough to keep it close (our arms), or we could overpursue and and up leaving a path for the ball to get right by us.
Another mistake we see catchers making on blocks to the side is that they pull their hands/glove to their hips instead of the ground.
It makes complete sense…the catcher is attempting to get into the finished blocking position as quickly as possible, and that is where their hands are going to end up at the end of the block. The problem, however, is that by not letting the hands get out to the ball first, we aren’t telling the brain where to line up our middle and when to stop, and we risk being less accurate with the block. So, catchers need to make sure the hands reach away from their middle to the ball and allow the rest of the body to follow them.
When working on this skill, it’s also important for the catcher to realize that they do not need to go fast right off the bat. Going fast with sub-efficient mechanics doesn’t speed a catcher up, it reinforces bad muscle memory, and will make any flaw in their block that much harder to fix over the long haul.
To create a consistent approach, break down each of these blocks slowly at first. This will help ensure that the response to a ball thrown into the dirt is an instinctive one which keeps the ball close and allows the catcher to make a play.
BLOCKING OFFSPEED PITCHES :
One of the most powerful tools a pitcher has is to throw pitches which not only keep hitters off balance, but also induce swings at pitches they couldn’t possibly make solid contact with. Offspeed, or “breaking balls” are pitches that we want our pitcher comfortable throwing low in all counts and situations, knowing that there is a chance they will find the dirt. They need to trust that we will be able to stop it.
The approach on pitches like this is going to be slightly different than with fastballs. As we discussed earlier in this chapter, fastballs skip into the catcher and get to homeplate quicker. Breaking pitches are slower, have a steeper trajectory towards the plate and will often bounce after hitting the ground because of this.
Because the ball will come off the ground different on a breaking pitch than it does on a fastball, we’ll need to account for that in our blocking technique on these types of pitches.
Knowing that we have a little bit more time to get to the ground on these types of pitches, we can use that time to give ourselves a better chance to prevent the ball from bouncing off the ground so much that it becomes impossible to control. We’re going to use the knowledge that our body will follow our hands to our advantage and cut down the distance between us and the ball.
We’re not going to go too far forward since we still have a hitter whose bat we want to respect. But, they are almost always moving forward away from us and we need to account for the bounce and the spin of these kinds of pitches.
Does this mean that a catcher should always gain ground on an offspeed pitch? Definitely not. Every pitcher is different. Each pitch we see from pitchers is different. The approach should be flexible based on what a catcher sees in front of them on any given pitch. Some offspeed pitches will break down to the ground very late and we don’t need to change our approach at all compared to how we would block a fastball. Some will break very far out in front of home plate and we’ll actually need to stand up to block it.
A few key points of focus for pitches we do need to come a little forward on:
1. We must keep our shoulder in front of our hips while we send our hands out in front of us to the ball. The natural instinct will be to let the shoulders roll back as our lower body drives forward. This will lead to one of two problems. One, our chest will be completely upright at the moment the ball hits us. This could make it hard to control how the ball comes off our body . Or two, in an effort to make up for the last issue, our chest will launch forward at the point of contact with the ball, pushing it far away from us and giving the runner’s on base a chance to advance.
2. Catchers must account for the spin of a pitch. Now in softball, the pitches that actually have spin (curveball, screwball, etc) are thrown at almost the same speed as a fastball, so softball catchers will not have to deal with this issue as much as baseball catchers since there will be more force behind a breaking pitch and the ball won’t be as affected by the spin. Baseball catchers will need to plan for the “kickback” of a curveball. Again, every pitcher is different. Some throw a 12-6 (up to down) curveball. Others throw a sweeping curveball. Both are going to act differently as they hit the ground in front of us. Both should, at the very least, lessen the amount our chest gets turned back toward the middle of the field, and in some cases require us to turn in the opposite direction from where the ball was thrown.
Though, a general rule of thumb is that the further the ball gets off to our side, the less the ball will be affected by the spin when it hits the ground. The more extreme angle the ball is taking to the side of our body, the more the force behind it will eliminate the affect of the spin. So the further the ball is from our middle, the more we will be required to get our body turned back towards the middle of the field to control it.
BLOCKING - FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Blocking is by far the hardest skill for a catcher to perfect, and that is why it alone is the skill which determines how far any catcher will go in the games of baseball and softball. Do you know what they call a catcher who cannot block at the next level? They call them a first baseman. Seriously. A catcher who can’t block will lose their job before they can make it to the backstop to retrieve the ball that got by them. It’s that simple.
When catchers are learning this skill, it’s incredibly important that coaches understand any reaction to a pitch in the dirt which signals that they recognized the ball heading towards the ground is a positive one. But, if the catcher continues having issues pulling the trigger on balls in the dirt, the first question has to be “how much time are you spending working on blocking?”. If we as catchers don’t own these techniques in a training environment, asking ourselves to perform them in a game with live pitches being hurled at us is nearly impossible. Catchers need to find opportunities to build the muscle memory necessary to force and instinctual reaction to a pitch thrown into the dirt. Until they can do that, they won’t be able to master this skill.
How do we form muscle memory? Practice. Consistently spending time on any skill is the only way to see progress. Work on blocking to each general blocking direction (middle, right, left) by firing dry blocks (no moving ball) to the ground. Fix every single block in order to cement that intended end result/body position into the brain. If we reinforce the same response to a ball thrown into the ground as often as possible, the brain won’t have any other option when it happens in a game.
One last recommendation: While we have a separate drill library that outlines the drills we can use to improve on these skills, the most important drill is the one you don’t ever do. Whatever you do, NEVER ATTEMPT RAPID FIRE BLOCKS….EVER! The single most destructive blocking drill is rapid fire blocks. Blocking is about programming the neural pathways in our brain to have one response to a ball in the dirt. There is flexibility as far as the exact movement we make based on the pitch and location, but the response should be consistent. The only thing that rapid fire blocks does is help to reinforce bad muscle memory associated with the skill. The second block will never be as good as the first, and as a catcher continues that drill fatigue will set in. When a catcher gets tired during that drill the technique falls apart. Remember this…our brain only remembers the last process it went through. If the last block we fired was inefficient, that is what it will consider the appropriate response to a ball in the dirt, and it will become that much harder to make future adjustments.
If you want to push a catcher to get quicker, recommend they go through speed and agility training, turn the velocity up on the pitching machine or move closer to throw the ball to them. All are ways to help a catcher get to the ground quicker. But, simply asking a catcher to figure out how long they can hop up and down before they collapse isn’t a productive use of practice time. In fact, it’s incredibly counter productive.
