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Intrinsic Feedback: With minimal extension during my throw, I likely felt little elbow pain giving me positive intrinsic feedback on my throw. 

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Intrinsic and Augmented Feedback

I experienced many different kinds of feedback on my skills and techniques while growing up playing sports. Softball was the sport that I took the most seriously, and welcomed any and every type of feedback I could get.

At a young age, we discovered that I naturally hyperextend my elbows, and I developed tendinitis in my bicep as a result. This quickly became a form of task-intrinsic feedback when learning to throw. Being an infielder/catcher, it is important to have short and quick throws. You don't want to extended your arm too far back, instead, the ball typically doesn't go much past your ear. This results in throws that have more of a quick snap/dart throw technique. If I ever extended my arm too far, I would know right away because of the shooting pain and numbness that would travel down my arm due to the tendonitis. I was able to receive instant and natural feedback and knew that when I felt pain, I needed to shorten my extension and focus on snapping the ball closer to my ear.

Flipping over to offense, I focused a lot on the mechanical breakdown of my swing. Although there is also a fair amount of intrinsic feedback that can be interpreted based on the pop of the ball off the bat and where the ball is hit, I also found that I was able to learn a lot from watching videos of my swings and hits. These videos provided beneficial augmented feedback that helped me understand the parts of my swing that need adjustments. In real time, the hit happens so fast that it can be difficult to notice the specific pieces of my swing that needed to be fixed, but having the ability to play it back, slow it down, and examine my swing step by step provided a supplemental piece that helped me improve significantly.

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My pitcher who I worked with for 6 years. We were usually the battery to drive the game from the circle and behind the plate...except when we forgot the signs. 

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Proactive Interference

Softball was considered my "main sport" in high school. In the spring, I played for my high school team, and then in the summer and fall, I played for a club team. Although I had the same coach for both teams, our club team had girls from other schools, so we had to change our pitch signs when switching from spring to summer season. Normally, changing signs is an easy adjustment, however, our pitcher was the same pitcher for our high school team, and I was her catcher for both teams. Having played together for multiple years, we had a good flow and worked together well, except when we had to switch from spring to summer.

My pitcher and I would get into a consistent routine when it came to pitch calling, and the numbers assigned to each pitch became an automatic association - 1 means riseball, 2 means change up, 3 means curveball , etc. However then 1 was changed to fastball, 2 was changed to dropball, and 3 was changed to change up. My pitcher and I often automatically reverted back to our original signs due to the proactive interference of remembering the routine of our previous spring season. This interference became especially problematic when only one of us reverted back. It often resulted in us getting crossed up and out of rhythm. For example, if I called for an inside riseball, but then my pitcher threw an outside dropball (essentially opposite pitches), the ball would move differently then what I was expecting, which is problematic. Thankfully, by the end of summer, we would be back on the same page, but there were always random instances that  proactive interference would occur again, and we would forget the summer signs and naturally return to the signs from spring season.

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A riseball pitched by All-American, Rachel Garcia from UCLA. Her back spin causes the ball to shoot up at least minute, making it extremely difficult to hit. 

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Defense Wins Championships, But Dingers Do Too

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Defense Wins Championships, But Dingers Do Too

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Transfer of Learning

Being a catcher for so long, I have worked with many different pitchers who have their own unique way of winding up and throwing. Despite the small differences in pitchers, each pitch type has a unique spin and movement that is a pretty universal technique for all pitchers. For example, a rise ball will appear to have a backspin and comes towards the plate straight, but then shoot up (rise) as it crosses the plate through the strike zone. A drop ball has the opposite effect due to a forward top spin that causes the ball to "fall off the table" and drop towards the ground when it crosses the plate.

Through my years of experience as a catcher, I learned the spins of each pitch, and developed the skills to be able to anticipate where the movement would break to be able to effectively catch it. Knowing the spins and how the pitch should break across the strike zone helped me provide adequate feedback to my pitchers and also improved my skills as a catcher with my ability to track the ball and catch it through the zone.

Not only did learning how to recognize each pitch help me improve as a catcher, but it also had a positive transfer to my skills as a hitter. When pitchers can throw a ball with a lot of movement, hitters often struggle because of their inability to track the ball and lack of knowledge of where it will break across the plate. However, I was able to transfer my knowledge from catching to hitting and was often able to recognize the pitch being thrown. This improved my effectiveness as a hitter because not only did I know what pitch was being thrown at me, but I was able to anticipate where it was going to break and adjust my swing accordingly.

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Timing is everything. This is a great shot of the timing of my swing meeting the ball out in front just before the front of the plate.

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Temporal Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff

One thing that I have learned over the years of playing is that timing is an essential element to successful hitting. If you swing too early then the ball hits off the end of the bat. If you swing too late then the ball either hits off the bottom of the barrel or handle. The goal is to meet the ball out in front of the plate and off the middle of the barrel, or also known as "the sweet spot." This spot provides maximum pop off the bat that usually generates harder and faster hits. The importance of timing is why hitting is classified as an anticipation-timing task.

There are two important factors of anticipation-timing which includes receptor and effector anticipation. Receptor anticipation is knowing how long the ball takes to travel to the plate. Effector anticipation is knowing how long the swing is to meet the ball. It usually only takes a couple pitches match in order to match the anticipation and get the right timing down. However, there's one pitch that can throw  the anticipation-timing off entirely, and it's a change up.

The change up is an off-speed pitch that is usually 7 to 10 miles per hour slower than the pitcher's fastball. It's not always thrown often, so it can be difficult to detect as a hitter, especially when accurately adjusted to the timing of their normal pitches. With a pitch coming in much slower than what the hitter is used to, anticipation-timing is completely thrown off because of the sudden change in receptor anticipation, and usually the hitter's solution is to adjust the effector anticipation by slowing their swing down. This adjustment often causes a breakdown in the mechanics of the swing which results in either a solid swing and a miss or a rough hit off the end of the bat. This demonstrates the results of temporal speed-accuracy tradeoff in that when a movement is required to be made in a shorter time, like a fastball, the action is more accurate and there's a better hit, versus when a longer movement time is required, like a change up, the action is less accurate and the hit is less solid.

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A glorious slide to complete a delayed steal after successfully using the PRP of the first baseman to my advantage.

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Psychological Refractory Period

As a baserunner, one of my favorite things to do was to mess with the opposing catcher. Knowing how much baserunners could get into my head when catching, I loved to return the favor when I was on offense. My favorite way to do this was by delay stealing.

Each pitch, I would take a larger and larger leadoff, hoping to bait the catcher into throwing it down to try to pick me off. However, once I saw the catcher throw it down to first, instead of diving back like most runners do, I would switch directions and steal second. This usually worked very effectively because the first baseman who was set up for the tag at first, had a delayed throw to second due to the psychological refractory period. The catcher and first baseman were ready for the tag at first when I was expected to dive back, however, when I turned to second, the first basemen would have to finish their response to the catch and tag before being able to switch movements and throw the ball to second. The delayed response by the first basemen reacting to the action of having to catch the ball first before throwing typically gave me adequate time to steal second.