“If I have a week or two off, I feel my abs are the first thing to go. “If I have a week or two off, I feel my abs are the first thing to go."
Images: Duane Hart Sporting Images

Keep It Flexible

Before every session we have 15 minutes for general warm-up stretches. I’ll normally do a lot of ITB work on those rollers. I also like to work any pressure points with massage balls – just to work out any tension from previous sessions.After weights we then do another 15 minutes of stretching where we focus on our quads, our hip flexors and – particularly – our backs. When you’re doing a lot of lifting and then backing that up with hitting, your back muscles really feel it. That’s why we’re putting such an emphasis on our core strength, doing these heavy squats and lunges. A strong core really relieves the strain on your back.

To A Tee

I always start a hitting session with a warm-up on the tee – hitting a stationary ball into a net. Using the tee I’ll work through different locations on the plate. There are nine different zones on the plate – imagine a noughts-and-crosses grid – and I’ll work my swing from inside-low right up to outside-high. If I do ten strikes in each of those locations, I’m satisfied that has taken me through all nine areas of the strike zone. I can also add more variety to that by raising and lowering the level of the tee.

The tee is great because it really highlights any flaws in your swing. You know where, say, an inside-low pitch should go; you know where that ball should hit the net. Ideally if you receive an inside pitch you should be hitting it to left field, if you receive an outside-high pitch you should be hitting it to right field. If the ball doesn’t hit that spot on the net then there’s a flaw in your swing. The tee is great for giving you immediate results; it means you don’t waste your bats when you’re in front of a live pitcher.

Staying on the tee, I’ll then usually work some hits straight up the middle, line drives. I’ll be aiming for a target around waist-height, middle of the net. The focus here is on my extension. If my swing is technically in sync – I’m balanced, I’m extending through the ball – then I should be hitting that target every single time. Of course that doesn’t happen! But it’s a good hitting routine you can do on your own that gives you immediate feedback on your swing.

Watch It Live 

With live pitching we normally start with a front toss, where the pitcher is standing about four metres in front of you throwing the ball through a hole in a net. Obviously they’re not pitching the full motion. This is a good warm-up to receiving live pitching.

With live pitching we can hit off our team- mates if they’re available – of course that’s a pitching workout for them, too. We normally have a catcher involved as well, because you want to make it as game-like as possible. The problem at the moment is that, with our world champs team, there are only two other girls in Queensland at the moment, so it’s hard to get enough quality live pitching. A lot of the girls are over in Japan or Italy, playing in professional leagues, so we’re all very dispersed. That’s why most of our training is either individualised or done in small groups. This makes it hard to recreate game situations.

Occasionally we’ll hire a men’s pitcher to come out and pitch to us. This is good because they throw it harder and faster than a female does, so it’s really good practice for us. Having faced top-quality men’s pitching, when we go to the world champs and face, for example, the USA, we’ve seen that movement, that speed before. Having said that, we don’t have a high budget, plus we have to use men who are in our area, so we’re probably lucky to get live hitting against a male pitcher once a week.We also use pitching machines. They’re good for simulating the speed, but they don’t simulate the movement of a pitched ball. Still, it’s probably the next best option after live pitching.