10/20 yd sprint times for softball

[nap]

@star61

Not to be a spoiler, but going through the hassle of accurately timing a 10m sprint for a softball player is lost on me. No coach in his right mind would rank a softball player based on a tenth or two in a 10m sprint. Speed is important, but not nearly so much as game skills and game awareness.

Training to improve speed is important, and a huge part of that is reaction time. Batters often hesitate for up to a full second after a big hit before deciding that they better get down the line. Time batters from the moment of impact (bat on ball) to first base. This will teach them to get out of the hole quicker and will improve home to first time more than any sprint program. Second, put a stopwatch on first to second, first to third etc. after a hit ball, again starting time on bat to ball impact. This will improve reaction time as well as working on sport specific sprinting. As far as timing goes, absolute accuracy is not that important. If you can get repeatable results (prescision) then you can monitor progress.

Bottom line, I think the time spent by the athletes and coaches trying to time 10m sprints to the hundreth of a second is wasted time that could be better spent on skills and actual sprint training.

Knowing where athletes are (baseline) and evaluating (testing) whether the program you are running is developing their athletic qualities is fundamental to a well planned program.

These types of tests are best standardized away from the diamond and used as a measure of general acceleration improvement.

I think the 30 yard is a much better test for softball athletes, as a 10 m would require a lot of specific skills in max strength and explosive power.