The original Pharisees were a sect of Judaism in the era of the Second Temple. Like the other sects at the time the Pharisees claimed that their message was the one true message. They are known in the Christian tradition due to a famous quote from Matthew 23:3 "So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach" or in a more consise version, "Do as they say not as they do."

So who are the fastpitch Pharisees? They are generally former pitchers who instruct kids they way they were instructed as opposed to the way they actually pitch. The most famous quote about the fastpitch Pharisees would be "Do as they do, not what they say."

Here is an example of Fastpitch Pharisees. Megan Denny, a University of Texas standout (2004 - 2008), describes the pitching motion in an episode of Fastpitch TV. She carefully shows how it works and at the end she throws a pitch to show how it looks in real time. The images on the left are from her teaching and the images on the right are from her actual throw. The action images are a bit blurry but they should show everyone, except perhaps some fastpitch Farisees, that what she does on the back side of the circle is different that what she says she does.

	On the left she is showing what she says the arm should look like at that point in the circle. She has the ball facing second base and the wrist cocked and the elbow pretty straight. On the right, in her actual pitch, she arrives at the same position. In practice all great pitchers (except possibly for Megan - because this is not actual game video I don't know if she actually looked like this in her prime) have the ball facing third base (RHP) and the wrist is not cocked back.
	This is the next available frame on the action video. Again on the left she is showing what she says the arm should look like at that point in the circle. She has the ball facing second base and the wrist cocked. On the right, she looks like every other great pitcher at this point in the arm circle with the ball facing towards 3rd base and the wrist not cocked. It's not perfectly clear but the yellow of the ball definitely obscures the hand.
	This is the next available frame on the action video. On the left she has the ball facing down and the wrist is really primed for the powerful wrist snap. On the right, she looks like every other great pitcher at this point in the circle with the ball facing towards 3rd base and the wrist is not cocked.

She says and shows a lot of great stuff in that episode, but the back side of the circle is I'm sure what she learned as a youth and she has never checked back with reality. Here's a link to the entire episode.

Almost all pitchers who learned before 2005 (not an exact date but somewhere in there) were taught the importance of the powerful wrist snap. Other things widely taught then were the need to fully extend the arm all the way around the circle and to have the wrist cocked on the back side with the ball facing second base on the way down. This was the understanding of how things worked and was so widely taught that nobody seemed to question if it made sense or not. There are several good clips of an actual throw in this one minute video clip of Amanda Scarborough.

Throughout human history, much of what we have held to be unquestioned fact has turned out to be incorrect. The sun and stars revolved around the earth. The human body from 1912 to 1956 was thought to have 48 chromosomes which was confounding to researchers of that who could only find 46 - but they didn't challenge the 48 they had learned in medical school. Before Eadweard Muybridge photographed a trotting horse it was widely assumed a horse always had at least one foot on the ground. In much the same way, high speed video showed in clear detail for the first time how pitchers actually pitched.

As high speed high definition video became inexpensively available, analysis showed that none of those things commonly taught happen during an actual pitch. But the pitchers who worked so hard on those things in their youth believe that they are part of their technique when indeed they are not, at least for pitchers throwing above 53 mph or so. So they teach what they were taught, not what they do, because they really bevieve that they actually do what they were taught. Somewhere along the line their natural athletic ability took pver and allowed them to find the optimal technique. So it is possible to become a great pitcher with good technique while learning bad technique, but the odds are far, far higher of having early and lasting success if the technique learned is what pitchers actually do.

I had a very interesting encounter that shows the depth of conviction of the typical fastpitch Pharisees. I was doing a clinic and the other clinician, a former pitcher, was teaching the wrist snap and arm locked out straight. I offered to show her video of great pitchers so that we could teach the same technique but she declined saying that she knew how to pitch. She had her students and I had mine. One day she was throwing some pitches and I took slow motion video of her. I asked if she wanted to see it and she eagerly watched a couple of pitches. Then I pointed out that her technique was exactly what I was teaching and not what she was. She did a double take, watched some more, then went over to her students and said, "Jim has it right, do it his way." The next week she was teaching the old way and I asked her why she had gone back. "My technique must have slipped since college." And she really believed it.

I saw Cindy Bristow, a member of the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame and publisher of the Softball Excellence newsletter present at an NSC clinic. I chatted with her about PitchingMagic and she asked me to send her the link. She wrote back and said she liked it. She was presenting at NSC again the following year and she remembered me and the website. We talked a bit about pitching coaches that teach things that the video evidence show don't happen. A couple months later one of her articles was a rant about former pitchers, herself included, teaching their students exactly what they learned instead of thinking it through. Here is her quote. You’d be amazed at how most things that fall under the "common practice" of pitching make zero sense. Check out the article

John Tschida was a clinician at an NFCA clinic when Kirk Walker was showing what he had found on high speed video, in particular that the wrist doesn't snap at release. John asked so see it again, and asked for numerous other examples, all of which showed that same thing. A few months later he came out with his Mega Pitching Drills DVD and in the introduction to the section on wrist snap drills he said that he had seen video that showed the wrist doesn't snap and in fact one time he was pitching with a cast on his wrist and his speed did not go down, but he presented the wrist snaps anyway.

Sports Pharisees are not unique to fastpitch pitching. Here is a link to an acticle by Chris O'Leary that talks about baseball hitters not teaching what they do. He quotes Don Mattingly, Tony Gwinn and Mark McGwire, then shows how their swings differ from what they say they do. There are numerous examples in pretty much every sport that the best coaches were not the best players. There are always exceptions and if you can find a former top notch pitcher who teachers how she throws, that could be ideal. On the other hand they tend to be in such demand that they are often too busy to accept new students.

In their day, the influence of the Pharisees over the lives of the common people was strong and their rulings on Jewish law were deemed authoritative by many. In today's world the fastpitch Pharisees, because of their pedigree of having been great pitchers, have a strong influence over young pitchers (and their parents who are paying the bills). Their words are often accepted without question because they are, after all, perceived experts. The students who dutifully follow what they are told and stifle their natural athletic talent, may do very well at 10U and 12U. But in the end, there is a reason why all the great pitchers in the world arrive at pre-release (when upper arm makes connection with the body) with 30 - 45 degrees of flex in the elbow, the ball still facing 3rd base (for a RHP) and the wrist not cocked. The reason? It simply works better than anything else.