It seems that no matter how many squats you do, how many variations you use, or how often you do them it will not prepare your glutes for the first few days of softball practice.

Not even my practice, rather from helping Alex practice. Do you realize how hard your bum gets squeezed while throwing a fastball softball pitch? How about crouching down in that catcher’s squat?  And, let’s not even discuss the upper back, mostly between the shoulder blades, achiness!

Alex had softball practice today. Team practice, that is. Indoors even. Afterwards, we had some lunch, she worked on some homework, I did some laundry, then she asked if I could help her practice a bit.

Naive chump that I am agreed. I did insist (demand?) that I would not be running after any balls. She agreed. So we played catch for a while. Then she pitched and I tried to catch — at least the good pitches. Then she wanted to practice batting, so I pitched for a while.

When my throwing hand was barely mobile from the cold, I called it quits. I had gotten the pitch-back out of the barn earlier so she was more than welcome to continue pitching or throwing at it. She declined, picked up all the balls and other stuff and actually put it all away.

A miracle, I tell ya!