Finding Common Ground & Sprinting is… Rotational?

Thought for the Week: We’ve all been dealt some pretty crappy groceries over the past month. How can we use these groceries to make a five star meal? 

Finding Common Ground

Back at the ABCA in January, Vanderbilt head coach Tim Corbin spoke about the importance of staying centered. From winning national championships to experiencing the death of current players, Corbin’s groups have seen it all. They’ve been at the highest of highs and the lowest of lows as a program – but they’ve never lived in those moments for long. Emotions such as jubilation and devastation are a part of life, but they are not sustainable. In other words, no one can survive at the peaks or valleys of life; they must find a middle ground where they can navigate the emotional highs and lows of life.

This idea of staying centered could not be more applicable to player development. Andy McKay – Director of Player Development with the Seattle Mariners – spoke about this at the Bridge the Gap seminar saying how we tend to gravitate towards one end of the spectrum when it comes to training players. We’re either old school or new school, launch angle or swing down, self organization or internal cueing, and intent or slow is fast. Instead of seeing both sides of the argument, we tend to jump to one side of the teeter totter and plant our roots there. We become so sure of what we’re doing that we become blind to what’s on the other side. 

One of Eugene’s biggest breakthroughs as a coach was when he stopped jumping to one end of the spectrum and decided to see both ends of it. Instead of just rolling with the new school trends of swinging up, throwing hard, and using external cueing, he decided to dive into the old school and see why cues like “swing down” or “be easy” worked for guys. This is how he came to the realization that everything works and everything sucks. When you boil it down, there is a time and place for everything in player development. It’s all about application. 

If we spend all out time on one end of the spectrum, we lose the ability to influence players that need the other end of it.

If we gravitate towards one end of the spectrum, we lose feel for the importance of what’s on the other side of the spectrum. Some guys might need to think easy, other guys might need to think about throwing the piss out of it. Some players need to think to swing down, others might need to think the opposite. If we spend all out time on one end of the spectrum, we lose the ability to influence players that need the other end of it.

As coaches, we need to find common ground when it comes to player development. If you want to influence as many players as you can, you need to keep an open mind and see things from both sides. Instead of jumping on new trends and clinging to the latest research, let’s see things for what they are and try to stay centered.

Sprinting is … rotational?

Both Altuve and OBJ step closed and kick back with their back foot – and it’s not by coincidence.

Pitching and hitting a baseball requires requires movement from multiple planes of motion – most notably the transverse plane which deals with rotation. Elite baseball athletes are really good in this plane of motion because they are training in it all the time. As a result, it should be no surprise when we see guys like Nelson Cruz and Mike Trout launch golf balls into orbit.Good rotation is good rotation.  

However, it is a little different when we see someone like Odell Beckham Jr. – who has no recent or notable background in baseball – pick up a bat and launch baseballs in batting practice. As a wide receiver, you’re doing a lot of cutting, leaping, bounding, and sprinting – but not a lot of rotating. Since we know power is plane specific and is quick to go if it’s not trained, how in the world is OBJ able to barrel balls over 350 feet with little to no baseball training? How can he get really good at rotating without ever really needing it on the football field?

Well, he does train rotation – and he trains it A LOT.

To understand this, let’s go back to reciprocal movement. All human beings are pre-programmed for reciprocal cross-body movement. The easiest way to explain this is to think about how all humans walk. When we step forward with our left leg, our upper body counterrotates around our pelvis and moves the right arm forward. When the right leg goes forward, the upper body counterrotates and sends the left arm forward. This counterrotation creates optimal length-tension relationships that store potential energy which is used to create movement through assistance from the fascial system. The constant counterrotation of the torso around the pelvis is reciprocal cross-body movement. We also don’t just see it when we walk – we see it in all human movement. 

As the bowler extends his right arm forward to bowl the ball, his right leg kicks back to give his pelvis a stable base for his torso to rotate around (source).
Jack Eichel uses reciprocal movement (see back leg kick back as stick moves across his body) to get off a wrist shot (source). This kick back move is very common in hockey – and it’s the same exact move Altuve uses to get his swing off. 

When our upper body works one way, our lower body anchors us down by moving reciprocally in the opposite direction. The lower half stabilizes and gives our upper half the ability to mobilize around it. This helps create efficiency, force, and direction required for human movement. If we want to rinse out a wash cloth, we can’t move both of our hands in the same direction. One hand needs to twist in one direction while the other counterrotates and twists in the other direction. Our upper half represents one hand and the lower half represents the other hand. To efficiently remove water from the wash cloth, both sides need to work in opposition of each other. This is exactly what our body does to create reciprocal cross-body movement.

If we look at baseball players, we are going to see reciprocal movement as they rotate to swing or throw. When the upper half mobilizes and works to get across the body to deliver the bat or ball, the pelvis anchors down and stabilizes. This move does not need to be taught – it’s already inside of us. Altuve and OBJ don’t both step closed and kick back by coincidence; we’re all pre-programmed for cross-body reciprocal movement. If anything, we coach most kids out of it. Don’t believe me? Check out how the lower half of an uncoached kid compares to one of the best hitters in the game. 

Lower half looks pretty similar, huh?

It’s also not just a hitting thing, either. 

Notice how Max Scherzer’s back foot kicks back and re-anchors after ball release so he can get across his body (source).
Darren O’Day is also able to create an anchor point using his back leg – even though it is not connected to the ground. Think about the action a bowler uses to get across his body (source).

So since we have an understanding of what reciprocal movement is and the importance of it when it comes to rotation, let’s go back to sprinting. Just like walking, when we sprint our pelvis and torso are constantly counterrotating against each other with every stride we take. When the left leg drives forward, the pelvis rotates so the left side is slightly in front of the right side. The torso counterrotates by driving the right shoulder slightly in front of the left shoulder. In essence, both the trunk and pelvis must ROTATE around the spine and against each other to produce force, direction, and efficiency. This is exactly what happens throughout the course of a baseball swing or throw. When a hitter or pitcher makes their move out of balance, the torso slightly counterrotates against the pelvis as it moves forward to remove slack going into foot strike.  After foot strike, the pelvis counterrotates against the torso as athletes work to get across their body.  

Notice how in elite sprinters how the pelvis and the trunk are counterrotating against each other with every single stride they take. The pelvis and torso do not drive forward in a straight line – they are rotating towards the midline of the body. This is our body’s reciprocal engine at work (source).

Sprinters might not look like they’re rotating, but when we break it down it becomes more and more clear they’re actually rotating in tight windows around their spine with every single stride. Without even thinking about it, OBJ become really good at rotating by sprinting. We just happened to see how good he was at it when he picked up a bat and took some cuts. 

Training Videos

Will Marshall – Why Training Barefoot and Blindfolded works! 

Troubleshooting Quarantine Training Problems – Throwing too far out in front 

Eugene Bleecker – What does training with “intent” even mean?

Eugene Bleecker – The pitfalls of letting kids become their own best coach 

If you’re interested in more training videos like the ones above, make sure to check out the 108 Membership page for training content, player GIFs, and more! 

What Makes Elite Athletes Elite?

I was in a discussion with Eugene and I asked him what he thinks separates elite athletes from everyone else. His response: The brakes. The best athletes in the world are able to stop better than anyone else. NFL running backs and NBA point guards need an elite set of brakes to make quick cuts, change direction, and create space. Baseball players need these same brakes to produce and accept force quickly and efficiently. If there is a time constraint involved, there needs to be a set of brakes to operate in that window of time. The only thing that changes is the task.

Saquon Barkley is able to throw on the brakes and get back up to top speed quickly to make sharp cuts and avoid defenders. (source)
Luka Doncic’s ability to decelerate tests in the 90th percentile of all NBA players – making his step back jumper a deadly weapon to create space.(source)
Justin Jefferson slips by a couple of Clemson defenders by throwing on the brakes (source)

If we break down a hitter or pitcher, the first thing that must stop is the pelvis. Since movement is initiated from the midsection of our body, stopping movement must also start there. When the pelvis stops, the torso is able to takeover and pick up speed so it can eventually accelerate the arms and then the bat or ball. An easy way to think about this is to think about cracking a whip. For you to make the whip crack, you need to bring your arm to an abrupt stop so the energy can be transferred into the whip. If you drag your arm through and never bring it to a stop, you won’t be able to snap the whip through.    

If you’re trying to see if a hitter slows down his pelvis, watch what happens after contact. In a good decel, the pelvis should actually counterrotate towards the catcher to provide a stable base for energy transfer up the chain. If we go back to cracking the whip, your hand is going to reflexively move up after you move it down to crack the whip. This countermove helps you accelerate the whip and gives it direction to travel through space. Your pelvis does the same exact thing to accelerate the torso and give your barrel direction through space.  

Watch Harper’s hips counterrotate after contact – indication of a good pelvis decel, from 108 Hitting Course

When you can teach your body how to throw on the brakes quickly and efficiently, it’ll look something like this: Effortless pop. The best do it better than anyone else. 

The Brain Maps Backwards

When executing a specific skill or task, it is advantageous to focus on the end because of our brain’s ability to map backwards. If your brain can see what it looks like at the end of the movement, it can learn how to piece together everything that happens before it. It’s much easier to build a Lego house when you have a picture of what it should look like in front of you.

In a baseball context, Eugene likes to back chain the delivery by getting kids to recoil or “pimp the finish.” The arm recoil is a muscle spindle reflex (see conversation with C.J. Gillam for more on this) where posterior musculature in the shoulder contracts to protect itself after being fully lengthened into ball release. This move helps decelerate the arm safely by absorbing and dissipating a large amount of tension at the end of the throw. You cannot create this kind of tension unless the pelvis stays closed and the hips and torso throw on the brakes. In essence, focusing on recoiling and decelerating the throwing arm can help the rest of the sequence throw on the brakes.

From the hitting side, something Eugene has had a lot of success with is trying to get hitters to emulate this move from Mike Trout:

Notice how Mike Trout steps across with his front foot right after finishing his swing. This is the move Eugene was fascinated with. For Trout to pull this move off, he needs to be able to work into the ground, keep his pelvis closed, stop his pelvis, stop his trunk, and rotate in a tight window. Knowing this, Eugene told some of his hitters to try stepping across just like Trout after contact – and he’s had a lot of success with it.

Understanding how to tap into key moments at the end of a sequence can unlock a multitude of moves before it. If you know what to look for, you can make your job as a coach so much easier.

Finding “It”

Discovering and consistently recreating a player’s most optimal movement solution is synonymous to drawing five perfect circles – we’re working to get as close as we possibly can without ever actually achieving it. While it’s important for athletes to extrapolate a wide range of movement solutions early on, they need to eventually hone in on one where they have the most success and can consistently recreate it through feel. We know no athlete has ever swung the bat the same exact way twice, but we also know that really good athletes work within a narrow bandwidth of movement solutions. Not everyone moves the same way, but everyone has an optimal way to move. Unlocking this move is what Eugene calls the process of discovering “it.” 

Sue Enquist, former head softball coach at UCLA, told a story about what separated her All-Americans from the rest of the hitters on her team. She said how some hitters would swing better in drills and others would swing better in games than in drills. Her All-Americans swung the same way all the time. They got their best swing off regardless of the context or the situation. They didn’t use a wide range of different swings – they narrowed in on one that made sense for them. They got as close to their perfect circle as they possibly could.

As coaches, we’re trying to get athletes to draw five perfect circles as best as they possibly can – we’re helping them unlock “it.” We’re searching for that move where everything clicks and it unlocks the most power and the best results with the least amount of effort possible. We’re trying to find ways to replicate that move when conditions inevitably change around them. When they lose that move, we’re trying to find the quickest ways to get them back on track. Everyday is a research project where all roads traveled lead towards “it.” We may not ever achieve it in full totality, but we’re going to work to get as close to it as humanly possible.

Week 1 at 108 Performance

I’m going to document my thoughts on a weekly basis throughout the course of my internship at 108 Performance. Below are my thoughts from week one, the on boarding process, and some helpful tips I’ve picked up along the way.

Five Tools

The first thing that really stood out to me after my first appearance in the shop is the amount of stuff they have lying around. When these guys say everything works and everything sucks, they really mean it because they have tried it all. If there’s something Eugene thinks might help a player, he’s going to try it. It doesn’t matter if it’s a plyo ball, football, club, bowling pin, PVC pipe, swimming flipper, or floatie – it all works if it creates good movement. Everything they do is designed to create a specific movement. As Eugene says best, “I’ve never seen a bad hitter that moves well.”

Really good players move really well. Unfortunately, most kids have been taught how not to move well throughout their careers. As a result, a lot of what Eugene and his team do is uncoaching; the moves that we all need are already inside of us.  

An eight year old showing a clean arm spiral just like Max Scherzer

This prompted me to ask a question: “If you had to eliminate every training tool in this shop except for five, what would they be?” 

Below are the answers I got from Eugene and Will Marshall

Eugene – Pitching

  1. iPad 
  2. Baseball
  3. Heavy ball
  4. Light ball
  5. Water ball

If Eugene could eliminate everything else, he would keep the baseball and the iPad. There’s no better way to capture movement outside of your own two eyes than it is to video it. Two dimensional video gives you a lot of information about what’s going on and can give you a point of reference for future interventions. Eugene likes to use both full speed video and slow motion video. Full speed video helps you absorb the activity in its purest form and gives you a feel for rhythm, tempo, sequencing, fluidity, and efficiency. If you spot an energy leak through full speed video, slow motion video can be used to dive deeper into what’s going on.

Outside of the iPad, the regular ball, light ball, and heavy ball give Eugene the specificity he needs along with some slight variation to keep things fresh. Based on the needs of the athlete, a heavier or lighter implement could help create better movement solutions. Guys who need to pull out a lot of slack (loose movers) might benefit from throwing something heavier. Guys on the other end of the spectrum (tight movers) might need something lighter to prevent movement compensations.

Eugene loves water balls because they create instability that forces the co-contractions of muscles that are necessary for the production (rate of force development) and acceptance of force in small window. Athletes need to be able to create tension at the right moments of time in order to capture energy and efficiently transfer it to the bat or ball. Using water balls helps create feel for this.

Eugene – Hitting 

  1. Heavy long bat
  2. Light long bat
  3. Short bat
  4. Baseball
  5. Soccer ball

Eugene loves long bats with guys who struggle with creating space and bat path. The length forces hitters to clear space with their upper half to deliver the barrel and keep good direction through the middle of the field. The light and heavy versions are designed with the same intention of the heavy and light baseballs – some guys will do better with a heavier or lighter based on how they pull out slack. Short bats force adjustability through the zone and delivery of the barrel. If you have a guy who yanks balls and has a tough time decelerating, giving them a short bat is a great way to teach them how to deliver the bat head without pulling off.

The soccer ball is something Eugene loves to use to teach hitters how to strike balls. Pitchers and hitters have to create a lot of force in a short window of time. Hitters especially have to do this because they are at the constraint of the unpredictability of the incoming pitch. Thinking about “sticking the ball” helps create feel for when hitters should apply force in the swing. Doing too much too soon creates inefficient moves that become difficult to pull off when velocities increase. A cue Eugene likes to use when teaching hitters how to stick balls is “pretend the ball is 500 pounds.” While a soccer ball is not 500 pounds, it represents a constraint that forces athletes to learn how to brace and deliver their bodyweight into contact.

Will Marshall – Pitching

  1. PVC pipe
  2. Baseball
  3. Core Velocity Belt
  4. Waterbag
  5. 7 ounce ball

Will loves the PVC pipe to create feel for specific moves on the mound such as the plane of rotation, keeping posture, getting around the front hip, or teaching the shoulders to work with the hips to deliver the ball. The Core Velocity Belt helps create awareness for the hips and how they move down the mound. Eugene and Will talk a lot about how the extremities (arms, legs) should be slaves to the midsection. Trying to create tension in the arms or legs can create bad moves that expend a lot of energy. Using the belt teaches athletes how to bring focus to their hips so they can control their center of mass down the mound. All movement starts from the middle of the body. If you want to teach efficient movement, the hips are a great place to start.

Teeter Totter

Something Will talked about was how everything is on a teeter totter. Certain cues, feels, tools, and drills work to represent one of two ends on the teeter totter. For example, if thinking about getting on top is at one end thinking about throwing the ball sidearm is at the other end. Both of these cues work, but problems can arise when coaches or athletes spend too much time on one end of the teeter totter. Anything you overindulge in can hurt you. Some cues or drills may work really well right now, but they may not work so well in another training session. It doesn’t matter what you do – the only thing that matters is the movement created

Thinking about getting on top is great until the elbow climbs up and gets out of the plane of rotation. One day you might need to think about staying into your backside – another day you might need to think about getting out of it. Getting out and around your front hip works until you start spinning out of it. 

Don’t get married to certain drills or cues – they only work if they create the right moves. 

The Two Biggest Constraints

As a coach, the two biggest constraints you’re going to have to work around are a hard wired Central Nervous System (CNS) and a preconceived notion on how a task should be completed. Our nervous system controls human movement by creating pathways that guide how a movement should be executed. Repetition strengthens and increases the speed of these pathways so they can become automated. As a result, automating the wrong way to do a skill becomes a tough challenge for a coach when trying to create a new pattern. If you’ve squished the bug ever since you were nine years old, it’s going to take a lot of time to break that habit when you’re a junior in high school.  

Misconceptions on how to achieve a certain task are just as tricky. Kids can cling to bad information and misinterpret certain cues that can influence bad movements. Thinking about throwing over the top is alright until you create an excessive amount of arm tilt that pulls you out of the plane of rotation. Trying to create a lot of force in your swing may work until you create big moves that don’t play against a live arm. As a coach, you need to be able to explain what kids are doing wrong, why it’s not ideal, how you can create a more beneficial pattern, and why that pattern is better than the one they currently have. Kids today have more information than ever. If you can’t articulate exactly what you need them to do and why, you’re going to have a tough time building buy in.  

Kids that don’t have a hard wired CNS or a variety of misconceptions about how to perform a task are going to be easier to mold because their clay is fresh. The more clay gets molded, the tougher it is to create a new shape. Making meaningful movement changes requires time for a lot of athletes. Guide the exploration from the top and teach athletes the importance of patience. If Rome wasn’t built in a day, your delivery isn’t going to get overhauled in a day either.

We Don’t Write Programs

Something Eugene and Will talked about a lot was their stance on traditional throwing or hitting programs. In their opinion, general programs that prescribe specific exercises and rep ranges fall short because they neglect the main thing that matters – the movement created. If you give five different kids rocker throwers, two might do them really well and the other three might butcher them. General programs will tell you what to do and when, but they can’t monitor how they are being done. What athletes need is constantly changing based on how they’re moving and what they feel. Following a general program doesn’t allow for this freedom and creativity.

The only thing you can do wrong as a coach

The options you have as a coach to influence good movement are limitless. Bad drills or cues don’t exist. As Eugene says best, everything works and everything sucks. The only thing you can do wrong as a coach is make everyone do the same thing. Different players have different needs – you cannot possibly satisfy them all through one training program. Moves are constantly changing, evolving, and adapting to constraints placed on the system. If you’re not evolving with them, you’re playing from behind.

One size fits all programs will generally follow the shape a bell curve – 20 percent will get better, 20 percent will get worse, and 60 percent won’t see any change at all. If you’re okay knowing 80 percent of your kids won’t see any improvement, feel free to use the same program with everyone. If you’re not, take the time to tailor one to each individual.

Greatness is not a gift, it’s an Obsession

Some people like it, others love it, very few live it. The best players and coaches aren’t successful because they love it – they’re successful because they’re obsessed with it. When it turns into an obsession, nothing will stop you from getting what you want. There’s no doubt in my mind that Eugene, Will, and the rest of the 108 staff are obsessed with pushing this game forward. This next year is going to be a lot of fun.

The Process of Unlocking World Class Instincts

It’s the evening of October 13, 2001 and the New York Yankees are on the road playing the Oakland Athletics in game three of the American League Division Series. The Yankees have fallen behind in the series two games to none and are on the brink of elimination. Mike Mussina is in his seventh inning of work trying to preserve a 1-0 Yankees lead with two outs, Jeremy Giambi on first base, and Terrence Long at the plate.

Long connects on a mistake from Mussina sending the ball past a diving Tino Martinez and deep into the right field corner of the Coliseum. Giambi races around the bases to a roaring crowd as Shane Spencer races to the ball with the relay tandem of Alfonso Soriano and Martinez lined up to home. Spencer scoops the ball up and fires it high over the heads of Soriano and Martinez. Giambi is being waved around third base and all of a sudden seems he’s going to score off the errant throw – until Derek Jeter comes flying in from the infield.

Jeter handles the one hop on the run and makes a tabletop flip halfway up the line from foul territory. Jorge Posada receives the strike from Jeter and swings back to make a one handed tag on Giambi’s right leg just inches before his foot touches home. Giambi is called out and 55,000 cheers are turned to groans of disbelief. The Yankees would go on to win the game 1-0 and would take the next two to win the series in five games. Many believe Jeter’s heroics turned the tide in the series and helped propel New York to its fourth consecutive fall classic.

It is, to this day, one of the greatest plays in postseason history.

This situation was not new for Jeter – the Yankees practiced it every single year in spring training. As soon as the ball gets by Martinez and rolls towards the right field corner, the defense automatically concedes two bases to the batter and takes the next tick of strategy: A potential play at the plate. Soriano and Martinez quickly set up the tandem relay for home and Jeter hangs back around second base. His job is to see the play unfold, check where the runners are, and determine where they have the best chance of getting an out. If he sees that they do not have a chance at home and instead have a play at third, Jeter is to redirect the relay and go to third. If the play is at home, he lets the throw go through – if it’s a good throw.  

Before Jeter sprinted over to his position as third cut off man, he took a peek to see where Giambi was. Knowing the situation, Giambi’s speed (or in this case, lack of), and how far he was from home, Jeter knew they had a play at the plate before Spencer even scooped up the ball. He recognized the high throw right out of the hand and rushed to get in position to receive it – actually arriving a hair late. He knew he had a play at third base, but he also knew he had a chance to get Giambi at home. Unable to get his feet set, Jeter took a calculated risk and made a quick tabletop flip across his body. If the exchange and the flip are not perfect, Giambi is safe. 

The best part about Jeter’s flip was the Yankees never practiced going home in this situation. If Jeter touches the ball, the play is probably going to develop at third base. If you watch the play unfold, it’s pretty easy to see Giambi would have been out by 10 feet if Spencer made an accurate throw to Soriano or Martinez. However, some things just don’t work out according to plan. 

Jeter knew he had time and knew where he was going to go with the ball if he got it. The problem was that he should never have to touch the ball if the play develops at home. He had never practiced this play before in his life. With the game and series on the line, Jeter trusted his gut and made one of the most iconic plays of his career by trusting his instincts.

The rest is history. 

 

 

What are Instincts?

“Everything you need to be great is already inside you. All your ambitions and secrets, your darkest dreams… they’re waiting for you to just let go. What’s stopping you?” – Tim Grover, from Relentless

The word instincts is derived from the Latin word for “impulse.” They are, by definition, an organism’s innate pattern of behavior when presented with a specific stimulus. They are not a reaction but an inborn complex pattern of behavior that is beneficial for survival. Psychologist Sigmund Freud described instincts through his physical apparatus of the Id, Ego, and Superego. The “Id” – i.e. instincts – represents the deep, instinctual, and unconscious components of human behavior. These elements are rooted in sexual and aggressive desires and are in constant competition with the rational “Ego” through what is known as the pleasure principle: “The psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate gratification of any impulse.” In essence, we’re born with the Id and we learn the Ego. The Superego becomes the battleground where these two constantly fight for our attention.  

When we think of instincts as they pertain to sport, I think Tim Grover – trainer of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwayne Wade – sums it up perfectly in his best-selling book Relentless: “No thinking. Just the gut reaction that comes from being so ready, so prepared, so confident, that there’s nothing to think about.” 

If Jeter thinks about what to do as Spencer’s throw comes in from right field, he’s too late. If he can’t anticipate the bad throw out of the hand and be in position (yeah he was late, but he still got there) to make a play on Giambi, the Yankees might not make it out of that series. This level of awareness cannot be measured or trained in ways that can be quantified. Great tools give you the opportunity to be a great player, but great instincts give your tools the ability to surface when the lights turn on. When the stakes rise, the best trust their instincts and elevate their game. Jeter was one of the best when it came to this – and he is in great company. 

Wayne Gretzky used his lack of physical ability to develop a style that helped him develop into one of the greatest players in NHL history (image source).

Wayne Gretzky was far from the average physical specimen of the average National Hockey League player. He wasn’t very big, fast, or strong – but he had instincts like no other. His lack of physical tools forced Gretzky to learn a different style of hockey and develop an incredible vision that helped him navigate the ice like an NFL quarterback. Gretzky talked about this in the documentary In Search of Greatness saying his style was necessary for survival. In other words, Gretzky’s greatest weaknesses forced him to develop his greatest strength: His instincts.

“Gretzky doesn’t look like a hockey player. . . . Gretzky’s gift, his genius even, is for seeing. To most fans, and sometimes even to the players on the ice, hockey frequently looks like chaos; sticks flailing, bodies falling, the puck ricocheting just out of reach. But amid the mayhem, Gretzky can discern the game’s underlying patterns and flow, and anticipate what’s going to happen faster and in more detail than anyone else in the building.” – from 1997 article, New York Times Magazine 

Jerry Rice was no different. Scouts today wouldn’t even bat an eye if they saw his 4.84 40 yard dash time, but it sure didn’t stop him from becoming one of the best receivers in NFL history. Steve Nash didn’t care that he stood four inches shorter than the average NBA player – you would have thought he was 6’9 the way he played. Rocky Marciano’s short arms looked like a disadvantage from the outside, but they instead influenced a style of boxing that helped him go 49-0 in the ring. Our jaws tend to drop when we marvel at the pure physical ability of athletes, but the reality is measurables don’t win games. David Epstein, author of bestselling books The Sports Gene and Range, said it best in the documentary In Search of Greatness: We have a tendency of making things important because we can measure them, not measuring them because they are important.”

Gretzky, Rice, and Nash didn’t fit the mold. They changed the mold and fit it to their style. They didn’t depend on others to figure it out for them – they trusted their instincts and found a way to make it work. Through years of hard work, preparation, and study, these athletes changed the game by understanding it at a level no one else was willing to go. Great physical tools get your foot in the door; great instincts use those tools to dominate. It’s easy to find guys with great physical tools that never panned out. It’s really tough to find a great player that didn’t have great instincts. 

“At some point, you stopped doing what came naturally and started doing what you were told. You took all your crazy urges and ideas and desires, and you stuffed them down where no one could see.” – Tim Grover, from Relentless

The paradox then becomes this: Instincts, by definition, are created in the absence of learning. They are pre programmed into our internal hardware as humans. No one teaches us how to walk or how to know when we’re hungry; they’re instinctual. However, I don’t think instincts in sports follow the same laws. Feel free to argue, but I don’t think Derek Jeter popped out of the womb and knew exactly how to execute his iconic flip. I’m pretty confident Tom Brady didn’t just intuitively know how to differentiate man coverage, zone defense, or a combination of the two. Wayne Gretzky probably didn’t just wake up one day and realize playing along the boards and behind the net would be an incredible advantage for him.

This nature/nurture argument manifests itself through an intriguing question: Can we teach athletes instincts?  

Through my research I think we can – but it’s not a black or white, yes or no answer. Below is why I think so.

 

 

Building the Foundation

“The player who knows WHY beats the player who knows HOW.” – John Kessel, USA Volleyball

To start off this debate, I don’t think there is a specific formula that can unlock world class instincts. If you were looking for the easy way out, don’t bother reading the rest of this. Sports are infinitely complex and will always be because they are played by human beings. If you give a piece of information to five different individuals, you might get five different interpretations. Some guys might take it and run to the library with it while others might leave it on the backburner with their two week old math homework. Some athletes have a drive and a passion just waiting to be unlocked; others are just worried about what they’re having for dinner after practice.  

This is where I think nature comes into play. No one told four-year-old Wayne Gretzky to draw a hockey rink on a notepad and trace the puck while watching Hockey Night in Canada. No one forced Trevor Bauer to ride to the park with buckets of baseballs on the handlebars of his bike and work out for up to four hours. You didn’t have to drag Pelé into the street to play pick up street soccer games that lasted all day long. When these guys were born, they had a burning passion for sports that was waiting for a spark to ignite it. When they found that spark, they took it and ran with it. None of what they did was work – they did it because they loved it. Their WHY was greater. 

If you can’t build or unlock a burning passion for the sport within kids, you might as well throw instincts out the window.

This is a great place to start as a coach and is something I’ve talked about with Eugene Bleecker, founder and director of player development at 108 Performance. If you can’t build or unlock a burning passion for the sport within kids, you might as well throw instincts out the window. “There is so much to learn that it’s going to take a lifetime to do it anyways,” said Bleecker. “If they don’t love the culture and if they don’t love the game, it’ll be hard for them to want to put the time in to see it.”

If you want to build a passion for sports at a young age, there are two things you can do to give them a pretty good head start: 1) Encourage them to watch games and 2) Encourage them to play unstructured pick up games with their friends.

Jared Wagner, standout basketball athlete at York College of Pennsylvania, talked about the importance of watching games saying, “I think (building instincts) comes from watching sports at a young age. I think it’s important for things to be taught and then you see them happening when you watch games on TV.” Wagner believes his early interest in basketball and baseball and watching guys like Nomar Garciaparra and Rajon Rondo drove his intrinsic desire to win. “You are intrinsically motivated by the sport and guys who are intrinsically motivated put in extra time, whether it be thought provoked or just naturally like watching games on TV,” said Wagner.

If we look at the science behind this, Daniel Coyle shared his formula for achieving deliberate practice in his best-selling book The Talent Code. Step one, called “chunk it,” requires athletes to absorb the entire skill. Absorbing the skill in its entirety builds an internal blueprint for what the skill should look like when executed correctly. This is the nurture part of the argument when it comes to instincts. We aren’t born with the blueprint for what a high level delivery looks like, but we start to piece it together when we watch some of the best athletes in our game. Kids are awesome imitators. If you give them a visual blueprint for success, they will start to connect the dots through experimentation. This is where part two comes into play.

When you can get kids to absorb the skill, the next step is to usually get out of the way and let them start to figure things out implicitly (i.e. without a dad coach barking at you every single swing). If you’ve ever picked up a wiffle bat and tried to imitate your favorite hitter, you’ve already done this without thinking about it. While unstructured backyard games seem innocent on the outside, I think they are a non-negotiable if you want to develop athletic instincts. It’s no coincidence Gretzky and Pelé spent their childhoods playing with their friends in the backyard. It ultimately became the foundation from which their creativity flowed as athletes. 

Researchers found players who made the 2014 German national soccer team spent more time playing in unstructured pick up games over those who just missed the cut (image source).

In the documentary In Search of Greatness, David Epstein brought up a study on the 2014 World Cup champion German national soccer team. Researchers looked at the development path of players who made the team, players who just missed the cut, and differences between the two groups of players. Of all the variables investigated, they found one difference: The players who made the national team had a lot more time in small sided unstructured play when they were younger and continued with more of it into their professional careers. In other words, they guys who made the national team played more backyard sports than the ones who didn’t. 

“What seems like pure, untainted, mystical creativity is, in fact, the consequence of a lifetime of devotion.” – Matthew Syed, from Bounce

Unstructured play allows for freedom, creativity, and imagination that cannot be replicated in a structured setting. If kids are placed into structured environments too young and too frequently, they lose the ability to develop their own style. Epstein talked about this saying, “We see this in chess. If kids study too rigidly, they literally become stuck in a certain pattern of playing and hit a plateau and never get better. They have to be given a certain amount of unstructured time to create and to find themselves.”

Gretzky believes we’ve lost this today. He said, “If you take 10 kids to a pond today and said to them ‘Alright go play,’ they’d say, ‘Alright, what do we do?’ Because they’re all so structured now. We’ve lost our creativity and imagination that we used to have in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.” If that doesn’t make you think, Ken Robinson – British author and speaker – brought up a pretty amazing fact in the documentary from a recent report: On average, kids today in urban settings have less unstructured time than the average high security prisoner.

I mean, those guys at least get to go outside for an hour every day.

Kobe Bryant used to look for one trait when he was hiring for his business team: curiosity. Kids cannot develop curiosity, creativity, and use their imagination when they’re constantly being told what to do. Don’t overlook the importance of the backyard growing up. If you can get kids to watch games and take what they see to the backyard, you have the chance to develop the passion required to compete at the highest levels of sports. The more diverse their game selection is, the better their instincts will be. Pick up basketball, football, wiffle ball, soccer, and other games all play an important role in long term athletic development. 

If you can get kids to watch games and take what they see to the backyard, you have the chance to develop the passion required to compete at the highest levels of sports.

If they don’t love it and do it on their own time, they’re never going to progress to a point where they can even scratch the surface of developing athletic instincts. 

 

 

How the Best Create an Edge 

“You can teach instincts if you can teach kids how to concentrate.” – Chuck Tanner, former manager Pittsburgh Pirates, 1979 World Series champions

Whenever I would talk about developing instincts with my good friend Carmen Fusco, we would always come back to this quote. Through Carmen’s experiences in Major League Baseball, he has become a firm believer that the conversation about instincts must start here. Players with great instincts learned how to build feel for the game through unparalleled focus and concentration. There are a lot of moving parts in a baseball game that must be taken into account in order to make quick, accurate decisions. If you can’t be alert and focus for two to three hours in a practice or game, you’re going to have a tough time gathering information and filtering through it to make good decisions.  

If we break this down from a baseball standpoint, let’s look at the role of a middle infielder. Throughout the course of a game your average shortstop must be aware of the inning, score, outs, count, who’s at the plate, their tendencies, the speed on the bases, what’s at stake, what possible plays could happen, and what to do if the ball is hit at them. They have to understand where to go with the ball if it’s hit hard, softly, to their forehand, backhand, or if they catch a line drive. They have to know where to be on a ball hit in the outfield gaps, down the line, or directly at the outfielder. If a mistake is made, they need to be able to adapt on the fly and figure out the next tick of strategy. They’re constantly anticipating and looking several steps ahead so they can be in position to make plays. As soon as the ball left Long’s bat, Jeter was already looking three bases ahead and anticipating a potential play at the plate. He didn’t have the time to react to what was going on – he had to anticipate.  

These types of decisions are made in every single sport. When I was talking with Kris Kruszka, assistant baseball coach at D’Youville College, he shared a story from when he played linebacker for his high school football team. To determine if the play was going to be a pass or a run, Kris was taught to look at the feet of the offensive linemen. If the first step was back, it was a pass play. If the first step was forward, it was a run play. This small detail gave Kris the ability to anticipate plays and stay one step ahead of the offense.

Being able to pick up these details requires a lot of time and experience – something you can’t teach in a few practices. It takes years and years of first hand experience to see past the chaos, observe the fine details, and use them to anticipate specific plays. Matthew Syed talked about this in his book Bounce sharing a story from Desmond Douglas – the greatest UK table tennis player in history. Douglas, known for his incredible speed and quick reactions on the table, was tested in 1984 to see how his reaction speed compared to his teammates. The tests revealed something spectacular: Douglas’ reactions were the slowest on the England national team – even slower than the team manager. The results were not wrong. Douglas didn’t have very good reactions at all, but he was a totally different animal when it came to table tennis. He didn’t need good reaction skills to develop lightning quick speed on the table – he needed to know where to look. 

Mark Williams, one of the world’s leading experts in perceptual expertise in sport, talked about this in Bounce saying, “Top tennis players look at the trunk and hips of their opponents on return in order to pick up on the visual clues governing where they are going to serve. If I was to stop the picture in advance of the ball being hit, they would still have a pretty good idea about where it was going to go.

“It’s not as simple as just knowing about where to look; it is also about grasping the meaning of what you are looking at. It is about looking at the subtle patterns of movement and postural cues and extracting information. Top tennis players make a small number of visual fixations and ‘chunk’ the key information.”

Through years of practice, Douglas was able to understand how to key in on specific parts of his opponent so he could anticipate what was to come. He built a large database of movement solutions through practice, figured out how to group the key information (i.e. chunking), and learned how to unconsciously pick up on certain cues that predicted specific movement outcomes. He was fast because of his knowledge – not his reactions.

Tim Grover, trainer of Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, and Dwayne Wade, on the importance of knowledge when it comes to developing instincts (image source).

This is the same process hitters use to determine what a pitcher is throwing. Every pitch hitters are extracting information that includes how pitchers come set and grip the ball, fluctuations in rhythm and tempo, arm action, arm slot, and ball flight initially out of the hand. Over time, hitters are able to pick up on certain cues that reveal information about what is coming. Some pitchers fumble with their grip if they’re throwing an offspeed pitch. Others drop or slow their arm if they’re throwing a breaking ball. There’s a reason why pitching coaches teach their pitchers not to “tip” their pitches; the more unpredictable they are, the more successful they’ll be.  

Syed talked about this in Bounce saying, “When Roger Federer returns a service, he is not demonstrating sharper reactions than you and I; what he is showing is that he can extract more information from the service action of his opponent and other visual clues, enabling him to move into position earlier and more efficiently than the rest of us, which in turn allows him to make the return. . . Top performers are not born with sharper instincts; instead, they possess enhanced awareness and anticipation.” 

To Syed, instincts in sports cannot be innate – they must be learned. He said:

“No, Federer’s advantage has been gathered from experience: more precisely, it has been gained from a painstaking process of encoding the meaning of subtle patterns of movement drawn from more than ten thousand hours of practice and competition. He is able to see the patterns in his opponent’s movements in the same way that chess players are able to discern the patterns in the arrangement of pieces on a chessboard.

“It is his regular practice that has given him this expertise, not his genes. Speed in sport is not based on innate reaction speed, but derived from highly specific practice.”  

As coaches, we have to understand knowledge is power when it comes to building instincts. Our practices need to have a high level of focus so kids start to observe more and build a large database of movement solutions. Through practice they’ll start to figure out how to group what’s important so they can recognize similar patterns in the future. They need to understand the importance of the details and know where to look so they can pick up on these subtle, but crucial, nuances. Understanding situations is a must. If the ball is in play, every player on the field must know where to be and why. You must teach them the game in order for them to build a feel for the game. This is impossible without specific, focused practice. 

 

 

Designing the Right Environment

As a coach, the environment and culture you create is everything. We are all products of our environment. The Toronto Blue Jays will likely open 2020 with a lineup that features three young men who all had fathers that had successful big league careers. This is no coincidence. From the time these guys were born they were in a big league environment and on a name to name basis with some of the best players in the world. To be in this kind of an environment is an incredibly powerful tool that, all genetics aside, more than likely had a significant impact on their journey to the big leagues.

Cavan Biggio, Vlad Guerrero Jr., and Bo Bichette all grew up watching their fathers tear it up in the big leagues (image source).

Kris Kruszka credits a lot of the success he had as a player to the environment he grew up in. All four of his brothers played baseball and competed in other sports such as basketball, football, and cross country. They commonly found themselves playing backyard hockey, wifflel ball, and any other sport they could get their hands on. These experiences helped Kris learn how to play the game and break it down so he could find a competitive advantage over his siblings. In essence, the environment he grew up in built the foundation for the competitive nature he took to the field as a player. For these reasons, he thinks the environment is everything when it comes to developing players with instincts. 

As for what this environment should look like, I think there are a few things you should focus on if you want to build players with instincts. First off, hard work must be the norm. Players with great instincts know they’re good at what they do. They know they’re good because they’ve spent hours and years studying the game and perfecting their craft. You don’t just all of a sudden develop a great feel for the game – you need to be around it for a long time. When people saw Joe Burrow take the field for LSU this past season, they saw one of the greatest seasons in college football history. What they didn’t see was the countless hours he spent off the field preparing, breaking down film, bouncing ideas off coaches, and finding ways to exploit the weaknesses of their upcoming opponent. He didn’t build the killer instinct required to captain a championship program overnight – he did it through a lifetime around the game. 

If you aren’t willing to work when no one is watching, you don’t have a chance. Preparation yields confidence; confidence breeds instincts.

If you want your players to work harder, make it more appealing. In other words, make it fun. John Wooden’s pyramid for success was built from the foundation of two cornerstones that remained unchanged throughout the course of his career: industriousness and enthusiasm. He spoke about this in his autobiography They Call Me Coach. Wooden said, “There is no substitute for work. And to really work hard at something you must enjoy it. If you’re not enthusiastic, you can’t work up to your maximum ability.”

One of the easiest ways to make your practices more fun is making them competitive. Roy Williams, Hall of Fame basketball coach at the University of North Carolina, makes his players compete in every single drill they run – something he got from his mentor and fellow Hall of Fame coach Dean Smith. Adding competition to your environment does a multitude of things for players – focus becomes razor sharp, intensity heightens, work ethic improves, and enthusiasm skyrockets. As a coach, a whiteboard, a marker, and a numbered list from 1-5 is a culture game changer. Every single day your players are now competing against each other in everything they do so they can own rights to the top of the list. Pulling a 405 deadlift takes on a completely new meaning when it means you can cross off your buddy’s name and write yours in their place. Falling from the leaderboards is more than enough motivation to work and get back to the top. The best athletes love competing and getting in the trenches with guys who want to shove it up their ass. If you want to create an environment where people love to work, use this burning obsession to your advantage.

Another way to make your practices fun is to practice the extraordinary. Baseball is a repetitive sport by nature and requires mastery of the monotony. However, this doesn’t mean practices always have to be monotonous. When you practice the extraordinary, you get a dual effect – kids love it because they’re having fun and they’re also getting better because they’re experimenting to find various solutions to motor problems in a proprioceptive rich environment. These kinds of plays might not happen all the time, but your kids will benefit from practicing them. Take your shortstops deep into the hole and have them make Jeter’s iconic jump throw across the diamond (yeah, he was a decent player). Try and get your outfielders to do their best impersonation of Mike Trout robbing a homerun. Have your middle infielders try some tricks from Brandon Crawford or Brandon Phillips’ famous behind the back flip to start a double play. If kids see something cool on TV from one of their favorite players, have them try it out at practice. This only adds to their curiosity, creativity, and enthusiasm for training.  

If you want to build a culture of lifelong learners, creating enthusiasm for curiosity and creativity is a great place to start.

Second, you need to create an environment that praises curiosity and creativity. Curious players become students of the game. Creativity helps them develop their own unique style for success. Kids who are curious are going to make time on their own to watch games, pick up on new things, and ask questions about what they don’t understand. They collaborate with others to get a different perspective on how to attack a problem. These guys are the ones that are constantly asking “Why?” and if they don’t get a sufficient answer they’re going to find it. If you want to build a culture of lifelong learners, creating enthusiasm for curiosity and creativity is a great place to start. You can only give kids so much as a coach. Your best results are going to happen when you empower kids to do it on their own.

Give them specific players to watch so they can learn from their style, how they move, and how they attack the game. Encourage them to incorporate what they see and investigate parts of their game that could use improvement. If you’re working with a player who struggles with their change up, have them study Pedro Martinez, Luis Sastillo, and Stephen Strasburg. If you have a kid who lacks physical ability, show them a player who’s excelled in spite of the same disadvantage. A lack of size didn’t stop Steve Nash, Steph Curry, or Allen Iverson. If you’re trying to teach a player a specific strategy, have them study the greats in action. There’s a reason why Kobe’s fadeaway looked oddly similar to Michael Jordan’s

When you can get kids who love the game and love to work, your next goal should be to prepare them for the game. Competing in games is hard. If you want to prepare kids for games, your practices need to be hard. Geno Auriemma, Hall of Fame basketball coach of the Connecticut women’s basketball team, constantly makes his practices difficult by changing the rules, score, adding players to the offense, or subtracting players from the defense. Whenever his players get comfortable with something, he adds an element to make it harder. This is how Auriemma sifts out the good players from the great ones – the good players break down; the greats ask for more.  

Luke Walton, current head coach of the Sacramento Kings, learned about this first hand from his experience coaching Kobe Bryant. “Kobe realized that practice should be as hard as games, if not harder,” said Walton. “Whatever drill there was, whatever scrimmage it was, he was talking trash to make everyone else step their level of play up—almost picking fights, because that brings out the edge in people. And you need that edge to win in this league.”

Researchers conducted a study in 1990 on elite level figure skaters to see what helped differentiate them from their less elite counterparts. The main difference researchers found was elite level skaters regularly attempted jumps slightly beyond their current capabilities. Practices from elite level skaters did not look as pretty as the routines they showcased. In fact, their training involved a lot of bumps and bruises – but it’s exactly what helped them become elite. Every time they fell they got right back up and tried it again. With time, patience, and a lot of hard work, they started to hit jumps, turns, and spins that used to put them on the ice. Great training sessions aren’t concerned with how good you look or feel. Learning is messy – building instincts is no different. 

“If people knew how hard I worked to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.” – Michelangelo 

Practicing at the edge of your abilities is not easy -it’s draining. It is normal and easy for us to gravitate towards the things we enjoy and excel at. We love practicing our favorite jump shot or spinning off our best breaking ball the same way we fall victim to our sweet tooth. Indulging in sweets neglects your diet; indulging in your strengths neglects your opportunities for growth. Practicing your strengths is a great way to make you feel good – it’s not a great way to prepare for games. 

It is very difficult to address an opportunity for growth, develop a process to attack it, and work relentlessly to turn it into a strength. Operating at the edge of your capabilities, getting outside of your comfort zone, and accepting the inevitability of failure is an arduous process. However, there is a price to pay for excellence. Michelangelo said it best: “If people knew how hard I worked to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”  

While there is much to dive into about the design of practice and the process of building a skill, the bottom line is this: Games are hard. Getting better is hard. Building instincts is hard. If your practices are easy, you aren’t helping kids do any of these – practice accordingly.   

Conclusion

Below are some thoughts from above when it comes to developing instincts in sports:

  • Kids need to start with a passion for the sport. Encourage them to watch games and play unstructured pick up games in the backyard when they’re young. It won’t ever feel like work if they love it. 
  • Creativity, curiosity, and imagination help kids develop a unique style to help them find their formula for success.
  • Focus and concentration enables kids to unconsciously chunk important information and use subtle nuances to anticipate specific plays. 
  • Knowledge is power. Guys with great instincts have spent a lifetime learning the game. 
  • Preparation yields confidence; confidence breeds instincts. 
  • Adding competition helps increase the enthusiasm for training.
  • Break the monotony by practicing the extraordinary. 
  • Practice must happen at the edge of one’s current abilities for optimal skill development.

Instincts may be innate by definition, but instincts in sports must be built through a lifetime of learning. If you can facilitate an environment where kids can do this, you give them a chance to do so.

Feel free to reach out with any questions or thoughts of your own. 

Resource Review: The Hard Thing About Hard Things

I recently read and reread Ben Horowitz’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business when there are no easy answers. It’s probably the best business book I’ve ever read as it reveals the excruciating realities of running an organization and strategies for dealing with difficult decisions. Throughout the book, I was able to pick out some key points that resonated and draw some parallels to coaching baseball. Below are my thoughts. 

The Fine Line Between Fear and Courage

“In high school football, being able to handle fear is 75 percent of the game.” – Pg. 4

Heard this one before? Baseball might not have the physical confrontation of football, but it does not make it any less scarier. For many of us, sports are our first experience in dealing with fear. The idea of no fear is a myth – all athletes must learn how to deal with fear. Horowitz learned this at a young age and used this experience to help prepare him for his time as a CEO. If you think playing a kid’s game is difficult, just try managing a million dollar business that’s weeks away from bankruptcy. 

To understand the fine line between fear and courage, Ben shared a quote from Cus D’Amato – legendary boxing trainer – on page 209. It read:

“I tell my kids, what is the difference between a hero and a coward? What is the difference between being yellow and being brave? No difference. Only what you do. They both feel the same. They both fear dying and getting hurt. The man who is yellow refuses to face up to what he’s got to face. The hero is more disciplined and he fights those feelings off and he does what he has to do. But they both feel the same, the hero and the coward. People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.”  

When Ben was running Loudcloud and Opsware, he never once felt brave. Most of the time he felt scared to death. However, he learned how to ignore these feelings by having the discipline to make necessary but unpopular decisions. He calls this the courage development process. For every hard, correct decision we make, we become a bit more courageous. For every easy, wrong decision we make, we become a bit more cowardly. 

As coaches, we’re going to be faced with plenty of difficult decisions that test our courage and ability to lead. We’re going to be responsible for a group of young men that look up to us for answers. When things go wrong, no one is going to take the consequences harder than us. We have to learn how to take ownership in these situations, but we can’t take things too personally. When things go wrong we can’t just put the weight on our shoulders. Horowitz explained saying:

“I thought that it was my job and my job only to worry about the company’s problems. Had I been thinking more clearly, I would have realized that it didn’t make sense for me to be the only one to worry about, for example, the product not being quite right – because I wasn’t writing the code that would fix it. If I insisted on keeping the setbacks to myself, there was no way to jump-start that process. . . A brain, no matter how big, cannot solve a problem it doesn’t know about.” 

At the end of the day, however, it is your company. You’re going to call the shots and make the decisions when everything seems like it’s falling apart. If you feel fear in these moments, understand you’re not alone – it only makes you human.

Plenty of people ask Horowitz what the secret sauce is when it comes to becoming a successful CEO. He said, “Sadly, there is no secret, but if there is one skill that stands out, it’s the ability to focus and make the best move when there are no good moves. It’s the moments where you feel most like hiding or dying that you can make the biggest difference as CEO.”

Taking Care of the Most Important Thing

“Flowers. Flowers are really cheap. But do you know what’s expensive?” – Pg. 8

The question from above comes from Ben’s father as the two sat in 105 degree heat with three crying kids because Ben couldn’t afford air conditioning. When Ben asked what his dad replied, “Divorce.”

It was at this moment that Ben realized he was going to lose his family if he continued on the course he was on. He had never considered that he didn’t have unlimited bandwidth and could do everything he wanted to simultaneously. He said, “I thought I could pursue my career, all my interests, and build my family. More important, I always thought about myself first. When you are a part of a family or part of a group, that kind of thinking can get you into trouble, and I was in deep trouble. I had to stop being a boy and become a man.

“By doing everything, I would fail at the most important thing.” 

Don’t become so clouded by your passion that you fail to take care of what really matters. 

Why your employees need a clear set of expectations and training for their job

“People at McDonald’s get trained for their positions, but people with far more complicated jobs don’t. It makes no sense.” – Pg. 105

When you bring people into a company, they need to become assimilated as quickly as possible so they start growing your company immediately. If you want to get them up to speed, you need to first lay out exactly what their title is, what their responsibilities are, how to do their responsibilities, and how they will be measured or graded. This is accomplished by defining the expectations for each job and training the employee how to do it.  

Nick Saban and Bill Belichick, from HBO documentary The Art of Coaching

Bill Belichick – head coach of the New England Patriots – is very precise with his assistants about what will be expected of them. Nick Saban talked about this when working under Belichick in Cleveland saying:

I think that probably working for Bill Belichick probably helped me the most in that regard, because it’s really the first person that really defined the expectation for what he wanted everybody in the organization to do, whether they were in personnel, whether you were a coach, whether you were defensive coordinator. And that made the job so much easier for me and it made me grow as a coach, because I knew exactly what was expected.”

When you can set a baseline for expected performance, the next most important thing you need to do is train them how to do it. People are going to be your most important asset in a business. Hiring the “right guy” will only take you so far if you do not lay out how they are supposed to do their job. Andy Grove, author and well-known businessman, talks about the importance of training saying there are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training. If your employees aren’t being trained, a disconnect is created between management and the employee. If employees aren’t aware of what should be done, how it should be done, and when it should be done, the only person you should be mad at as a CEO is yourself. 

Oh, and “not having the time” to train your employees isn’t a good enough excuse for Ben. “Keep in mind that there is no investment that you can make that will do more to improve productivity in your company,” said Horowitz. “Therefore, being too busy to train is the moral equivalent of being too hungry to eat.” 

If you have clearly laid out what each person in your organization needs to do and how to do it, you have given yourself the ability to hold them accountable. If you want to keep your group aligned towards a common goal, you need to be able to keep everyone – yourself included – accountable to what they’ve agreed on. This process requires one of the most uncomfortable things you need to do as a CEO: giving clear and honest feedback. 

Horowitz talked about the importance of feedback saying, “Companies execute well when everybody is on the same page and everybody is constantly improving. In a vacuum of feedback, there is almost no chance that your company will perform optimally across either dimension. People rarely improve weakness they are unaware of. The ultimate price you will pay for not giving feedback: systematically crappy company performance.” 

Ben Horowitz, from The Hard Thing About Hard Things (image source)

There are several keys to giving good feedback, but one of the most important is not sugar coating it. Ben described this using a story where he had to give feedback to a senior employee. He tried to give it using the sandwich technique where he wrapped the negative feedback between a couple of positive compliments. After Ben finished, she responded, “Spare me the compliment, Ben, and just tell me what I did wrong.”

When feedback is constant, honest, and immediate, it becomes the norm for your organization. If there’s a problem that needs attending, people won’t hide it because they’re afraid of being wrong. Your organization needs to be comfortable sharing bad news. Ben said, “A good culture is like the old RIP routing protocol: Bad news travels fast; good news travels slow.” If you let the bad news spread without addressing it immediately, you’ve opened up the opportunity for politics – what we’ll discuss next. 

How to Minimize Politics in your Company

“Political behavior almost always starts with the CEO. . . In fact, it’s often the least political CEOs who run the most ferociously political organizations. Apolitical CEOs frequently – and accidentally – encourage intense political behavior.” – Pg. 147

Politics, in Ben’s words, is “people advancing their careers or agendas by means other than merit or contribution.” No one likes politics, but plenty of people will use them. Trying to run an organization without knowing how to recognize and manage them is a recipe for disaster. Step one is learning how to set the tone from up top. 

Ben has found two techniques useful when it comes to managing politics. First, it’s imperative to hire people with the right kind of ambition. People with the right ambition are going to be motivated by the success of the organization while the people with the wrong kind of ambition are obsessed with their personal success. Getting the right people on board is going to be your best defense against political behavior. If you brought on someone who was motivated by a personal agenda, you need to examine your hiring process and find out why you made a mistake. Your people are the most important part of the organization. You cannot afford to shoot yourself in the foot and bring on people who have political motives.

The second technique Ben used as CEO was building and adhering to a strict process that would handle potentially political issues. These include performance evaluation and compensation, organizational design and territory, and promotions. This makes sure that employee compensation, raises, and promotions are done as fairly as possible and internal conflicts are handled efficiently. You’re going to get to a point in your business where people are going to complain about behavior or even competence. If it’s about behavior, you need to address the issues with both parties in the same room. If it’s about competence and it’s something you’ve known about, you’ve let the situation go too far and that employee more than likely needs to be terminated. If this is something you haven’t heard before, you need to disagree with the initial assessment and do research of your own before coming to a conclusion. 

The Right Way to Lay People Off

“People won’t remember every day they worked for your company, but they will surely remember the day you laid them off.” – Pg. 71

If you have decided you need to lay people off, you need to act on your decision as quickly as possible. If there is a gap between your decision and execution, you invite room for politics. When you’re laying off someone who trusted you and worked hard for you, you need to come clean as CEO. This starts by being accountable for the performance of the company.

“You are laying off people because the company failed to hit its plan,” said Horowitz. “Company performance failed. This distinction is critical, because the message to the company and the laid-off individuals should not be “This is great, we are cleaning up performance.” The message must be “The company failed and in order to move forward, we will have to lose some excellent people.” 

A layoff breaks trust, especially with the people who survive the layoff. They interacted and had relationships with people who you’re going to have to let go. They care about how you treat them. As CEO, this is a really important time to be visible in the company. Don’t hide and let the emotions of a layoff get the best of you. Be present and show people that you care. Help laid off employees pack up their things and carry stuff to their car. They need to know that their efforts were appreciated. 

At the end of the day, a lay off is not an open dialogue the way feedback is. Stand strong behind your decision and use words like “I decided” instead of words like “I think” or “I might.” Their future in your company is non-negotiable. This is especially important when you have to fire managers, executives, or other people of power within your organization. You owe them clarity on what happened and how you plan to help them move on. 

You can’t let them keep their job, but you can absolutely let them keep their respect.  

Peacetime vs. Wartime CEOs

“There may be nothing scarier in business than facing an existential threat. So scary that many in the organization will do anything to avoid it. . . If you have the better product, why not knuckle up and go to war?” – Pg. 89-90

As a business, you are likely in one of two times: peacetime or wartime. Peacetime, as Horowitz explains, is “(T)imes when a company has a large advantage over the competition in its core market, and its market is growing.” The primary focus for companies in peacetime is expanding the market and reinforcing the company’s strengths. There is more flexibility for creative thinking within the core mission of the company. An example of this is when Google required its employees to spend 20 percent of their work on new personal projects during its dominance in the search market.

On the contrary, wartime is the exact opposite. “In wartime, a company is fending off an imminent existential threat,” said Horowitz. “Such a threat can come from a wide range of sources, including competition, dramatic macroeconomic change, market change, supply change, and so forth.” While a lot of management books focus on peacetime CEOs, few cover the ugly realities of  navigating a business through wartime. During this time, there is no room for individual creativity – there is one bullet and it must hit the target. Survival is dependent on strict adherence and alignment to the mission. An example of this was when Steve Jobs returned to Apple when it was weeks away from bankruptcy. There was no room for individual creativity like Google – everyone had to follow the plan Jobs designed. 

Operating in peacetime and wartime requires a significant contrast in leadership strategies. They are as follows below:

Peacetime CEO Wartime CEO
Focuses on big picture, empowering employees to make detailed decisions “Cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive”
Spends time defining culture War defines culture
Knows how to manage big advantage Paranoid 
Manages language, tone Rarely speaks in normal tone, without swearing
Works to minimize conflict Heightens contradictions
Expand market Win market
Sets big, hairy, audacious goals “Too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand”
Focuses on employee satisfaction and career development Focuses on making sure employees don’t get shot in battle 
Can exit any business they are not #1 or #2 in Has no business that is #1 or #2 

 When you’re building a business, there are no silver bullets. Everyday you need to assess where you are, where you want to go, and how you can bridge that gap. Peacetime CEOs have the flexibility to expand the market and build on what they currently have. Wartime CEOs have no room for bullshit – they have to go through the front door and “deal with the big, ugly guy blocking it.” 

Some can manage peacetime better and others can manage wartime better. Very few are able to manage both. In either case, things are bound to eventually go wrong. These moments will reveal your identity as a leader and a company.

“There comes a time in every company’s life where it must fight for its life,” said Horowitz. “If you find yourself running when you should be fighting, you need to ask yourself, “If our company isn’t good enough to win, then do we need to exist at all?””

Follow the Leader

“Perhaps the most important attribute required to be a successful CEO is leadership.” – Pg. 219

While there is no prototype for the perfect leader, Horowitz shares three things all great leaders have in common: The ability to articulate the vision, the right kind of ambition, and achieving the vision. 

Articulating the Vision

  • Can you create a story that encapsulates the core reason for your existence?
  • Is the vision interesting and compelling enough for people to buy into it?
  • Can you articulate the vision and keep people around when everything is falling apart?

All great leaders are great storytellers. The best way to determine the strength of your narrative is if people really believe in you when everything has gone to hell. The story you create is going to get the right people on board and keep them on board through good times and bad. If people don’t know or believe in the vision, they won’t follow you down the same path. 

The Right Kind of Ambition

  • You need great people to work for you
  • You can’t get great people to work for you if they don’t know you have their best interests in mind and in heart
  • “Truly great leaders create an environment where the employees feel that the CEO cares more about the employees than she cares about herself.” 
  • If you talk the talk, you have to walk the walk

You don’t need to be a ruthless, gutless dictator to manage a successful company. If you want to attract great people, you need to show your employees that you care about them. People want to know that their work and well being is important to you. If they trust that you have their best interests in mind and in heart, they will run through a brick wall for you. 

Achieving the Vision

  • Do people believe you have the competence to get the job done?
  • “Will I follow her into the jungle with no map forward or back and trust that she will get me out of there?”
  • Don’t let confidence ruin your competence 

Buying in to your vision ultimately comes down to whether people believe in you as a leader. You have to know your stuff if you’re going to achieve your vision as a leader. If you don’t, people aren’t going to trust you. If you do, don’t think you’re confident enough to get by with what you have. “Indeed, the enemy of competence is sometimes confidence,” said Horowitz. “A CEO should never be so confident that she stops improving her skills.” 

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

“Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes. They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic. They are hard because you don’t know the answer and you cannot ask for help without showing weakness.” – Pg. 274

If you want to succeed as a leader, you need to understand that hard things suck and they are never going to stop. You can complain about why they suck or you can embrace the suck. If you accept that things aren’t going to go your way, you give yourself the ability to deal with them as a normal part of the process. It doesn’t matter if you’re a CEO or a baseball coach – the same rules apply.

Joe Maddon sporting one of his favorite quotes: “Embrace the Suck”

At the same time, no one has ever done it the same way before. You bring a unique skill set to the table that no one can tell you how to use. The sooner you embrace this, the quicker you can take advantage of it. 

“When I work with entrepreneurs today, this is the main thing I try to convey,” said Horowitz. “Embrace your weirdness, your background, your instinct. If the keys are not in there, they do not exist. I can relate to what they’re going through, but I cannot tell them what to do. I can only help them find it within themselves.” 

How playing has impacted my coaching career

Playing and coaching baseball are two different things. There is overlap in how the game is learned and processed, but being a good coach is totally different than being a good player. As a player, you only have to understand one language and style – your own. As a coach, you can’t just rely on what helped you as a player. You need to understand the language and style of each and every single kid on your team. Your experiences as a player can help you get a head start on this, but there is much more work to be done if you want to help as many kids as you can. 

While the style I learned as a player will not help all the kids I coach, I’ve learned that my experiences as a player have built the foundation for who I am as a coach today. They gave me different perspectives and taught me how to see things through a different lense. It gave me the ability to spend time and learn from men with wisdom from years of skin in the game.   I started to figure out what I liked, what I didn’t like, and what I needed to learn more about. While I was only getting started, my journey as a player fueled my love for coaching and helping other people. My playing career won’t determine whether I have success or not as a coach, but it was a crucial starting point in my career as a teacher.

Below are some of the most important things I’ve learned as a player that will help me as a coach.   

  • Never stop learning 

I was very fortunate to grow up with family members, people, and coaches who were obsessed with learning. As a result, their passion for growth ended up rubbing off on me. Since baseball was something I loved and wanted to get better at, it became the motivation for my learning early on. I picked up books, read articles, watched videos, and asked questions when I couldn’t figure something out. It wasn’t perfect early on, but it didn’t need to be because you can’t figure out what you like until you find something you don’t like. This early obsession helped build the foundation for my coaching philosophy today, but more importantly it taught me how my teaching will always change and evolve. New information is going to come out and is going to change the way we think and train our athletes. There’s no shame in looking back five years ago and seeing how differently you would do things today. If anything it shows a tremendous amount of growth. You can’t have these kinds of realizations if you don’t have a mindset of a life-long learner. If you don’t make a commitment to learning and challenging what you know on a daily basis, this game will pass you by. Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden said it best: “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” 

Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden (image source)
  • There is no one way to do it

Snowflakes and fingerprints are akin to ball players: Not a single one is the same. Every player is going to develop their unique style through years of experimentation and practice. If you want to get the most out of your playing career, you need to understand what works best for you. Some things may work better earlier in your career and may not work as well later on. Other things may not work out initially but may turn out to be beneficial down the road. You may need to think about swinging down on the ball to hit line drives. Your teammate might need to think the opposite to get the same result. You may need to think about side arming the ball to sync your arm into the plane of rotation. Your teammate may need to think about getting on top of the ball and pulling it through. The more guys you’re around, the more you realize that there are a multitude of ways to do this thing. If you can carry this approach into your coaching career, you will find it’s much easier to maximize your influence over the ones who can’t. 

  • Daily discipline

One of the most important questions you can ask yourself on a daily basis is, “What is my plan to get better today?” From the time you wake up until the time you go to bed, you need to have a plan as a player for how you’re going to get one percent better every single day. This involves how you study, prepare, eat, sleep, train, and work to perfect your craft. The catch is everyone knows these things are important. I don’t think anyone will argue that sleeping eight hours a night, doing your homework, lifting weights, eating a balanced diet, or getting swings in the cage are bad things. In fact, many players know exactly what they should be doing to be successful. The problem is very few actually have the discipline to do them.  The discipline to do what is necessary every single day has been one of the most important things I’ve learned as a player. Every single day you need to show up, punch the card, and put in work. If you don’t wake up with a plan to attack the day and crush your goals, you will be eliminated. This process doesn’t get any easier as a coach. Instead of just being responsible for yourself, you are now accountable for a group of young men that all look up to you. If you don’t have the discipline to show up and put your best foot forward on a daily basis, your team will suffer the consequences. You can either suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Choose wisely. 

Choosing between the pain of discipline and the pain of regret, from Andy McKay (@AndyMcKayHG)
  • Don’t be afraid to go against the grain  

“It is impossible for a pitcher to be confident in competition if he is concerned with others’ evaluation of him.”  – Harvey Dorfman, from The Mental ABC’s of Pitching

One of the worst things you can do as a player is just try to “fit in.” Having the courage to stand up for what you believe in and take the road less traveled is a requirement if you want to separate yourself from the pack. Not everyone is going to have the same goals and ambitions as you. Some guys are going to be more prone to trying new things and others are going to be rigid in their ways. You may like to use weighted baseballs but the rest of your teammates may think they’re a waste of time. It’s totally okay if you do things that everyone doesn’t agree with – the only opinion that should matter is yours. The most successful people don’t look for what everyone else is doing – they look for what they’re not doing. Jerry Seinfield illustrated this best when he said, “Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” If you want to differentiate yourself from the crowd, you need to have the courage to act on your own ideas and make your own path. Your career is too short to care about what other people think. 

  • The game doesn’t owe you a thing

For everything you put into this game, you are not guaranteed anything in return. Players and coaches are constantly being influenced by things that are out of our control. Even though we don’t like to admit it, this game is largely dictated by luck and chance. Sometimes we hit the jackpot and find the right place at the right time with the right people. Other times we hit the three balls right on the screws and all we have to show for it is an 0-3 day. The sooner we get to grips with this the better. If you think your hard work entitles you to success, you’re going to have a miserable career. You’ve got to be willing to put skin in the game and accept that you have very little control of the outcomes if you want to last. The game will reward those who put in time and persist, but it will not reward you on your watch. Baseball has gone on long before you and it will go on without you – it does not owe you a thing. If anything, you owe the game everything. Never forget where you stand. 

The game will reward those who put in time and persist, but it will not reward you on your watch.

  • Believe in yourself 

At some point in your playing career, you are going to get to a level where you absolutely get your ass kicked. The obstacles you face will be greater than you’ve ever seen before. People who you counted on will let you down and your heart will be broken. Things that you cannot control will negatively impact you. It is during these moments when your confidence and belief in your abilities will fluctuate more than ever. When your back is against the wall, the one person that is always going to have your back is yourself. Before anyone else believes in you, you need to have the courage to believe in yourself. Coaching is no different. If you don’t believe in your ability to teach and lead, you’ll never get the young men in your program aligned and on board with your vision. It’s no coincidence that the best athletes and the best programs have a great sense of belief. You’ll always be at the constraint of the confidence you have in yourself. Don’t sell yourself short. 

  • Humility 

There are two types of people in this world: Those who are humble and those who are about to be. If you’ve ever played baseball before, you should understand this better than anyone. One day you’re 4-4 and feeling great and just 24 hours later you could be 0-4 with three punch outs. One outing you throw seven shutout innings and feel invincible and then the next outing you can’t even make it out of the first. The second you think you have this thing figured out is the second you don’t. Learning how to handle failure is important, but handling success requires you to check your ego at the door. The best have the humility to remember the tough times and understand their work is not finished. If you are not humble about what you do, this game will humble you quickly. The season is going to be filled with peaks and valleys that take you to the most extreme emotions. The best way to handle these moments is to center yourself through humility. Never get too high and never get too low. 

  • It’s just a game
Augie Garrido, from Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach (image source)

At the end of the day, baseball is nothing more than a kid’s game. Your success as a player or as a coach does not make you a better human being. Your batting average or win loss record does not entitle you to anything. If our ego and self worth is wrapped up in the stat sheet, we won’t be able to see the beauty of this game, the experiences it gives us, and the people we meet along our journey. The game is so much bigger than us and it always will be. The odds of you winning the final game of your season is miniscule. As Tim Corbin says, we need to be playing the infinite game and that is the game of life. Baseball gives us a unique platform to teach this. 

Legendary baseball coach Augie Garrido spoke about this in his 2008 documentary Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach. After a game at Kansas State, Garrido said:

“This is important… not for the game… not for the fans… But because what it does for you as you mature and grow, you start to get mentally tougher so that anything you do in your entire life – you will be able to out-compete anyone around you. Ultimately, it comes down to what LIFE is really all about… Having the courage to make the decisions to act on your own thoughts and ideas and become who you want to become.”

Baseball is a beautiful vessel that helps us teach kids lessons that will last beyond their playing days. As a player, you learn how to grapple with adversity, face your fears with courage, become a part of something greater than yourself, sacrifice for the common good of the group, take ownership and responsibility for your actions, and learn from those who have paved the way for you. It is through this process, just like Garrido said, that we start to become who we are meant to be. If you fail to recognize that baseball is just a game that allows you to do this, you’ll miss out on the most important part. 

Don’t let your ego get attached to the wins and losses. Baseball isn’t who you are – it’s just what you do. 

 

Coach the Human Being First

“Our job is to make change, connect with people, interact with them in a way that leaves them better than we found them and more able to get where they’d like to go. Every time we waste that opportunity, every page or sentence that doesn’t do enough to advance the cause, is a waste.” – Marc Megna

As coaches we’re constantly searching for that next piece of information that is going to help our kids. We’re looking for drills, cues, and other physical tactics that will help take our coaching to the next level. We experiment with different methods, tools, and use our experiences to refine future training sessions. We spend so much time invested into the physical part of the game and how we can build better athletes – but are we equally invested into the human being in front of us?

For everything we do to help build a better athlete, we cannot forget that we are coaching a human being that has a personality, emotions, feelings, motivations, and drives. We all come from a variety of backgrounds and share unique experiences that mold our interpretations and perspectives. We’re constantly being shaped by our interactions with other people, the challenges we take on, how we perceive shortcomings and success, and what makes us feel fulfilled or unfulfilled. There is nothing more complex in this world than a human being. If we automatically assume we know how to deal with the human portion and jump straight to the athlete, we are terribly mistaken. 

For everything we invest into the physiology side of things, we need to at least equally invest in understanding how humans operate. Each kid we train is going to have a multitude of thoughts, opinions, and is going to perceive things slightly different than us. Some kids will have stronger personalities and others will be more introverted. Some are going to be visual learners while others may be kinesthetic or auditory learners. Trying to coach these types of individuals in a vacuum will not work. There’s a reason why legendary basketball coach John Wooden never treated all of his players the same. If we know that no two kids are ever the same, why would we treat them the same way? How do we know how to treat them differently if we never take the time to work on it?

Our effectiveness as a coach is at the constraint of our ability to understand and relate to the human beings we teach.

Our effectiveness as a coach is at the constraint of our ability to understand and relate to the human beings we teach. If we put the athlete before the human being, we are neglecting the very thing that makes that individual unique. If kids can’t see that we care about them outside of their sport, they’re not going to care much about what we tell them in their sport. You may think that knowing the kid’s name, where he came from, or what he likes to do takes away from your training time, but it’s actually maximizing your ability to influence them. Ken Ravizza – one of the early pioneers in bringing the mental game to baseball – said is best: “Kids don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” 

Blaming the shortcomings of our athletes on their inability to “buy-in” without reflecting on what we could have done better is known as fundamental attribution error. In essence, we shift blame to make ourselves feel better about a situation where our coaching did not help. However, Brett Bartholomew – strength coach and founder of Art of Coaching – explains that buy-in is simply trust plus commitment. If you haven’t given athletes a reason to trust you, they are not going to buy-in no matter how hard you coach them. This is why coaching the human being is so important. If you haven’t taken the time to understand your kids outside of their sport, they’ll have little reason to think you care about them. This erodes trust and will be a huge barrier if you want to have any kind of influence in their career. If they trust you and see that you care about them as a person, they’re going to be committed to you. This is where you can start doing some meaningful stuff as a coach.  

We work in a relationship-driven profession. What you get out of kids is going to largely depend on what you put into them. Just the way you take notes about a training session, it is worth setting aside some time and space where you can jot down things about an athlete that will get you to know them better as a person. You’re not going to have the best relationship with all of them, but making the time to invest in your kids will help all of your relationships improve. When you have great relationships with your kids, you have the ability to bring the most out of them. This is all you can ask for as a coach. 

Below are some tips to help you start doing this. 

  • Know the athlete’s first name

You might have laughed when you read this one, but think about it. How many times have we introduced ourselves to an athlete, asked for their name, and then 15 minutes later we totally forget it? If we’re lucky, they’re wearing their last name on their back and we can bail ourselves out by using “nice work (insert last name)” or “great stuff big guy.” It’s easy to pull out the cliches and hand out some fist bumps, but how often do we reflect and really try to remember someone’s entire name? More specifically, do we even know the first name of our athletes? 

This piece of advice comes straight from Dale Carnegie’s timeless read How to Win Friends and Influence People. Carnegie said:

“Most people don’t remember names, for the simple reason that they won’t take the time and energy necessary to concentrate and repeat and fix the names indelibly in their minds. . . We should be aware of the magic contained in a name and realize that this single item is wholly and completely owned by the person whom we are dealing. . . and nobody else.” 

Our name shares a unique connotation that is only recognizable to us. Think about how you’d respond to a request when you hear your name vs. hearing “hey sport/man/guy/etc.” If someone takes the time to remember and use your name when talking to you, it’s going to get your attention and you’re going to be more likely to do what they ask. If they can’t remember something you told them 10 minutes ago, you’re probably not going to think of them the same way. We learn a lot about a person in the first few interactions we have with them. If you want to show someone that you care, call them by their first name. You’d be amazed what a difference it makes. 

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” – Dale Carnegie

Don’t use a bad memory, a busy schedule, or “I’m really bad with names” as an excuse for why you can’t concentrate and remember someone’s first name. Ask for it, repeat it, and use it as much as possible. Carnegie says it best: “Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” 

  • Know their family 

An athlete’s family is the most influential group of people they will ever come into contact with throughout their life. These people are with the athlete all the time and help give them structure, support, encouragement, and an opportunity to live out their dream on the playing field. If you want to build trust early on, it is worth taking the time to build a relationship with their family. If you go out of your way and learn the names of their parents, their occupations, siblings, and their interests, the kid and his parents will notice. Just like names, doing these things requires no talent – only focus, concentration, and a little bit of work. 

I think coaches too commonly point fingers at parents and describe how difficult it is to deal with them. If you want to be effective as a coach, you can’t avoid conversations with parents because you don’t like to deal with them. If you aren’t able to talk to parents, genuinely listen to them, and explain the what, why, and how behind your training, they have no reason to trust you with their kid. Any parent out there is willing to die for their kid. They’re not involved in their careers because they want to sabotage them – they want the very best for them. If you don’t understand the importance of interacting with parents and understanding their wants, desires, and concerns, you’re not going to keep the kid around. 

Parents can be your best friend or your worst nightmare. Show them that they’re very important to you and they’ll do the same to you. It’s not always going to be perfect, but they will respect you if you make the effort to hear them out. Their kid will notice too. 

  • Know what their interests are outside of sports

You only see kids for a small portion of the day as coaches. There’s a lot that goes on outside the playing field that is very important to that athlete. This includes other sports, hobbies, school, music, and other ways they like to spend their free time. Some kids may love to play video games or pull out a favorite Netflix show after school. Others may like to crack a book or journal about the day. Some kids are huge sports fans and can rattle off the starting lineup for their favorite baseball team. Other kids may be more inclined to go out and play pick up sports instead of watching them. Finding something they really enjoy gives you the opportunity to get them to open up. The more they talk, the more comfortable they start to become around you. 

Knowing their extracurricular involvement can also give you some leverage when finding ways to come up with language that sticks. Instead of telling a kid what a good ready position looks like, tell him to guard someone in basketball. This is what Brett Bartholomew describes in his book Conscious Coaching as talking in color. Instead of just telling kids what to do, explain it to them using language that they would understand. Having a hitter who can’t pick up the ball with two eyes? Tell them to watch their favorite TV show on a big screen in center field. Can’t figure out how to fix a flailing glove side? Tell the kid to use his glove arm as his scope just like he’d use it in Fortnite. There is no right or wrong answer for the messages you create to help things stick. The more creative the better. 

Knowing kids outside of their sport gives you the ability to open communication lines that will help further your effectiveness as a coach. Don’t miss out on these opportunities.  

  • Find things that you can relate to

This one works with the last point of getting to know kids outside of their sport, but I thought it was worth explaining this one on its own for a few reasons. For one, being able to relate to a kid is much more powerful than just knowing something about a kid. Having a commonality in terms of interest or experience is a great way to start a conversation, break down a problem, and collaborate to find the best solution. This is a big reason why a lot of good coaches played the sport they coach growing up. They know first hand the highs and lows from playing, the challenges you’ll face, the solutions they tried, and things that other teammates have tried as well. Instead of just telling kids what to do, they can share their own experiences and make it a much more collaborative environment. 

Finding things to relate to is also going to help build trust. You make yourself more human by sharing with kids your love for video games, basketball, or reading. Kids want to be able to talk about things outside of their sport and share experiences with you. If you can open up these communication channels with kids, you give yourself the ability to reach them on a much deeper level. If you have a superficial understanding of the human being you’re dealing with, your influence will only go so far.  

  • Ask for their input

One of the most important things you can do as a coach is involve your athletes in their training process. One of the best ways you can do this is by asking a simple question: “What do you feel?” Instead of just talking the kid’s ear off, you’re inviting him to do the talking and offer feedback. By getting your athletes to open up and offer their thoughts, you give yourself the ability to understand where they’re coming from, what they’re focusing on, what’s clicking, and what doesn’t make sense. Asking how they feel doesn’t get you any of this and usually gets you the answer “good.”

As you get the athlete to talk more, you start to understand their language. You get a feel for the cues and words they use to create specific moves. Some guys may just see the ball and smash it. Other guys may need to think about being smooth or trying to stay on the ball longer. Telling a kid to keep his eye on the ball (as if they were trying to hit blindfolded) is not as valuable as having a kid tell you he’s trying to see it on to the bat longer. When you can speak their language, your connection and influence becomes much more effective. 

The answers you seek are the right questions away. Get kids to open up about their training, listen to them, and use their feedback to help improve your ability to collaborate and solve problems. Make them feel heard and get them involved in their training process. It’s their career – not yours. 

  • Keep track of important events

All of our kids have important and exciting things going on off the field. Ask about them, keep track of them, and follow up about them. This could be anything from a birthday, band concert, family vacation, basketball game, a big test, or a college visit. If it’s important to them, it should be important to you. Be a part of their life and show them that you’re excited about the things that are important to them. It’ll mean more to them than it will ever mean to you. 

  • Show vulnerability

We’re not perfect as coaches. We have faults, shortcomings, and we fear the same things our kids do. We’ve all faced obstacles, adversity, and been in situations where we’ve doubted our ability to teach and lead. At the same time, we’re a mentor to kids who all have “stuff” going on in their lives. This could be anything from issues at home, problems in school, breaking up with their significant other, lacking confidence in their abilities, or trying to juggle a job with training, school, and playing their sport. Kids aren’t looking for a perfect leader – they’re looking for someone that can be on the same level with them. They want to relate to someone who’s felt pain and who’s been in the same situations that they have. They don’t need a leader with a bulletproof vest – they need a leader who’s willing to take off the armor and be vulnerable

“Our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability.” – Brené Brown

Brené Brown, researcher and bestselling author, talked about the importance of being vulnerable in her book Daring Greatly. She said, “You can’t get to courage without rumbling with vulnerability. . . Our ability to be daring leaders will never be greater than our capacity for vulnerability.” Brown defines vulnerability as, “The emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.” Moments where we may feel vulnerable as a coach include bringing up parts of our past that we’re not proud of, admitting we were wrong about something, benching your star player because he violated team rules, relieving a good friend on your staff, or telling a player he can no longer be a part of our program. All of these moments challenge us to make a lonely decision. Facing these situations head on requires courage that we can only access by being vulnerable.

Showing vulnerability is not a sign of weakness – it’s a sign of strength. It is a difficult thing to stand out in the crowd and make decisions that put you in the open. If you want to lead and be a mentor to young men and women, you can’t hide from these moments. “Embrace the suck” and be present when everything is going wrong. If we’re going to see our kids on some of their worst days, we need to be visible on ours. Being a great coach doesn’t require perfection, but it does demand authenticity. You can’t maximize your influence if kids can’t see who you really are. Brown said it best: “We need to trust to be vulnerable, and we need to be vulnerable to trust.” 

Theodore Roosevelt described the need to be vulnerable in “The Man in the Arena.” It reads:

“The Man in the Arena” by Theodore Roosevelt, image source

Don’t run away from moments that challenge us. Be present, be transparent, and be vulnerable – your kids need it. 

  • Keep it real 

Kids don’t need wishy washy motivational speeches, sandwiched criticism, or for you to tell them it’s alright when it’s really not. They need you to be real with them. They need a mentor who’s not afraid to say the things they need to hear. Shielding kids from the truth because you’re afraid it will hurt them is not helping them. Brené Brown says it best: “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.

In the Art of Coaching podcast Episode 38, Michael Boyle – owner of Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning – brought up the sad reality that we live in a consumer based culture where people will lie to get in your pockets. We have coaches and programs up the ass that are destined to add 10 mph to your fastball or get you into the Division I school of your dreams. We have plenty of people who are more than willing to share their greatest success stories and paint them through social media channels that only show you the good stuff. As a result, we’re blinded to the moments that aren’t so glamorous. 

The large majority of the athletes we train are never going to make it professionally. We’re going to work with some athletes who regress with us. If you’re not able to recollect a time where you made an athlete worse, you’re lying to yourself. Kids don’t need a coach who can guarantee them something that they simply can’t promise. They need someone who’s going to keep it real with them. We can’t make promises we can’t afford to keep. We can’t let a kid think he’s Division I material when he can’t hit 82 on a good day. We can’t lie to kids because it will make them feel better. We’re only hurting them in the long run.

If there’s anything we can guarantee kids throughout this process, we can guarantee them honesty with themselves. If they show up every day, work their ass off, and exhaust every resource possible to become the best version of themselves on a daily basis, you have the privilege of looking yourself in the mirror without remorse. In essence, you’ve achieved John Wooden’s definition of success: “Success is a peace of mind which is a direct result of the self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”  

John Wooden’s definition of success, image source

Be the mentor that your kids need and tell them what they need to hear. If you keep it real with them, they’ll always respect you for it – even if they don’t like it now. 

24 Myths that are Making your Pitchers WORSE: Part 2

See part one of this series here

In this article, we’ll dive into items 12-24 on what you should NOT be doing if you want to develop high level pitchers.  

  1. Weighted Baseballs are More Stressful on the Arm

For starters, if you’re in the anti-weighted baseball group make sure your son does not pick up anything that does not weigh exactly five ounces. Throwing things like tennis balls, softballs, dodgeballs, rocks, whiffle balls, snowballs, and footballs could seriously put them at risk for getting hurt.

(Hint: Throwing balls that do not weigh exactly five ounces is perfectly okay.)

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about what classifies as a “weighted baseball.” For one, saying “weighted baseballs” are bad is meaningless because any ball that has some sort of weight is a weighted baseball. How did we figure out that the five ounce one was the safest? Why does adding (overload) or subtracting (underload) an ounce from the ball all of a sudden make it dangerous? For all we know, the five ounce one seems to do the most harm…

Stress is NOT bad. We need stress in order to create specific adaptations that supercede our previous skill level.

The overarching argument against weighted baseballs is some form of they are more stressful and thus more dangerous to throw with. Before we get into that argument, I think we need to understand the role of stress. Stress is NOT bad. In fact, we need stress in order to create specific adaptations that supercede our previous skill level. This process is called supercompensation and was made popular through Hans Seyle’s General Adaptation Syndrome. When a system is placed under conditions of stress, the fitness level initially decreases. Supercompensation happens when the system has been given adequate rest to recover and develop a new fitness level that supersedes the previous baseline. These positive physiological adaptations are what we are chasing as coaches and athletes. If we are not stressing the system, we are not able to create these adaptations and improve. Thus, understanding the dosage, timing, and method of applying stress becomes the better question (which is a really good one, by the way).

The General Adaptation Syndrome, image source

While we now understand that stress isn’t necessarily bad, it is worth looking at comparisons of stress levels between different weighted baseballs. Driveline Baseball has done research that compares the peak shoulder internal rotation torques and medial elbow torques for baseballs 4 through 7 ounces. Their findings are below:

see full article for more information, image source

What you’ll notice is the peak torque levels actually significantly decrease when the ball weight increases. This is contrary to what most people think about overload implements – even though we know a lot of NFL quarterbacks have had success slinging 14-16 ounce  footballs without needing elbow surgery. If anything, the baseballs that might be “more stressful” to the system are the underload baseballs. 

At the same time, using a cookie cutter weighted baseball program is not your fast track to adding 5-10 mph (if anyone offers you a program and guarantees you x mph, don’t walk away – run). Using weighted baseballs does not mean you are automatically going to gain velocity. Weighted baseballs are nothing more than a tool that you should have in your toolbox as a coach. Some people might really benefit from them and others may want nothing to deal with them. As a coach, you need to be able to assess each athlete and find the lowest hanging fruit before you dive into an aggressive weighted baseball program. The best programs are the ones that do a lot more than the run ‘n gun weighted ball fun stuff that you see on Twitter (i.e. proper warm ups, recovery, building throwing capacity, developing a quality strength program, hydration, nutrition, etc.). 

Weighted baseballs are not bad. They are a tool. 

To sum it up: Weighted baseballs are not bad. They are a tool. If used correctly, they can be a great way to build high level movements that improve velocity, command, and arm health (see research for more on this). If you use them like an idiot (i.e. see study where kids players were making max effort throws with two pound balls), you’re probably not going to get better. 

  1. Mound work is more stressful than flat ground work

In baseball we have this myth that throwing off of a mound is more stressful than throwing off of a flat surface (apparently the idiots who created baseball forgot throwing off an elevated surface is bad). As a result, a lot of coaches will have pitchers work from a flat surface when practicing their pitches or delivery between outings. While there may be a time or place for flat ground work, it’s not quite accurate to say flat ground work is less stressful than mound work. 

Driveline Baseball recently published a case study where they took elbow torques of mound throws, flat ground throws, and compared the two. When they normalized for velocity, what they found was flat ground throws were actually more stressful than mound throws. They hypothesized that this was the case because of a lack of movement efficiency from a flat ground throw since we know stress does not have a linear relationship with velocity. Randy Sullivan and the Florida Baseball Ranch also investigated this myth at the 2019 ABCA Convention and found in their case studies that the average torques from mound throws and flat ground throws were nearly identical.

A 2014 research article reported similar findings saying, “Flat-ground throwing at even the shortest distances had similar biomechanical loads compared with pitching from the mound, yet at significantly lower ball velocity. This illustrates the mechanical advantage and increased efficiency of throwing from a mound.” 

If pitches are being executed off of a mound in a game, you are doing a disservice if all of your work between outings is off of a flat ground. 

As for the application, using the safety argument for flat ground throwing doesn’t really hold up against the research we have. Flat ground work can be a convenient way to get some work in if you don’t have access to a mound. However, the game is the most important thing. If pitches are being executed off of a mound in a game, you are doing a disservice if all of your work between outings is off of a flat ground. Too much flat ground work can disrupt the timing of your delivery and create movements that don’t scale off of a mound. As Sullivan says best, “Anything you overindulge in can corrupt you.” There can be a time and place for flat ground work, but it must be managed so the most important work is being done off a mound. Mound work is going to drive greater movement efficiency and is going to create the most game-like environment so you can better transfer your training to the playing field. 

  1. Velocity doesn’t matter

To start this one off, we need to detach ourselves from baseball and ask ourselves this question: “In what sport would we want to give our opponents more time to make decisions?” I don’t know about you, but I don’t think there’s a single sport out there that would want their opponents to have more time to make decisions. When it comes to pitching velocity, this is exactly what we’re doing – we’re giving the batter less time to determine whether they should swing or not. If you don’t think this is a competitive advantage, don’t waste your time reading the rest of this.  

All opinions aside, we know that velocity plays at the big league level. Offensive production falls off of a cliff when the radar gun starts lighting up numbers in the mid to upper 90s. Toronto Blue Jays General Manager Ross Atkins spoke about this in a Washington Post article saying, “You’re right that (front offices) are obsessed with velocity, and the reason is that it works. It is definitely the hardest thing to hit. It changes approaches, for sure. You can’t hit velocity without getting geared up to attack it.”

Below are the offensive slash-lines of MLB hitters in 2018 when facing four different pitch speeds.

  • 92 mph:  .283/.364/.475
  • 95 mph: .259/.342/.421
  • 98 mph: .223/.310/.329
  • 101 mph: .198/.257/.214

Adding velocity also benefits your breaking ball by improving its movement profile and effectiveness off of your fastball. It’s really tough to lay off of a mid to upper 80s fastball when you’re geared up for 98 on every single pitch. On the contrary, it’s going to be easier to lay off of breaking stuff when you have a lot more time to make a decision on their best heater. If you can speed up someone’s bat, your breaking ball just got better.  

While velocity doesn’t tell you whether you can pitch or not, it helps you get your foot in the door. “Velo is king, at least in the draft process, amateur ball and up into minor league ball,” said Trevor Bauer in a New York Times article. “Once you get to the big leagues, and you’re here, getting outs and stuff like that is king. But up until the big leagues, velo is king, and in the minor leagues, guys that have poor results but throw really hard get a lot more opportunities than guys that have really good results but throw 86 or 88.”

Velocity can be trained and it will improve your effectiveness as a pitcher. Believing it’s not is probably just an excuse for why you don’t throw hard. If you’re working with kids that want to take their career to the next level, you need to track, measure, and train for velocity. The average fastball velocity at the big league level in 2019 surpassed 93 mph – up from 89 mph in 2002. If you aren’t encouraging kids to move fast and let it eat, you’re playing from behind. 

  1. Lactic Acid “flush runs”

This one was one of my favorite ones to dive into because I think all pitchers have heard some variation of a “flush run” or running long distance to “build up your legs.” I started by pulling out Episode 19 from the Elite Development Baseball Podcast by Eric Cressey. In the podcast, Eric talked about why long distance running is common with pitchers and why he thinks there are better alternatives out there. Some of the main points from the episode were:

  • Lactic acid is not the cause of muscular fatigue
  • Physiological adaptations are incredibly specific
  • Research has shown there is not a significant amount of lactate present in pitchers post throwing  
  • Developing a good aerobic base is important to accelerating the recovery process between training sessions
  • Maintaining an adequate aerobic base requires a low frequency and intensity

If we compare long distance running to pitching a baseball, we come up with a pretty significant contrast when it comes to energy demands, recovery intervals, and exertion levels. Using long distance running to “build up your legs” for pitching is not going to create an adaptation that is specific enough. Pitching a baseball requires the creation and dissipation of a large amount of force within a short timeframe. Long distance running cannot create these types of demands that would transfer over to throwing a baseball. 

As Eric alluded to, flushing lactic acid out of your system is a myth when it comes to recovery. Dr. Stephen Osterer of Baseball Development Group did an awesome job explaining the misunderstanding behind lactic acid in his Recovery resource  (well worth checking out if you’re interested in this kind of stuff). He said:

 

“Mistakenly termed ‘lactic acid’, lactate is a natural byproduct of anaerobic metabolism that is used as a source of energy. Lactate has been wrongfully labelled the direct cause of muscle soreness after an acute bout of exercise – a sensation mediated instead by the inflammatory process from tissue breakdown – as well as causing the deep burning feeling and acute localized fatigue. Commonly, lactate has been the justification for several post-game or exercise recovery interventions, such as flush runs of active cool downs. This is problematic for several reasons. The first is the obvious short term timeframe in which higher lactate concentrations return to normal – usually within an hour. If we are undergoing more exercise within that hour, then attempting to influence lactate concentrations may be an advantageous step. But if we otherwise have days prior to the next competition is there a need to speed up the naturally occurring process? Moreover, although a few studies have shown reductions in lactate removal following an active recovery protocol, lactate itself has not been considered a strong predictor of training recovery or return to performance.”

 

Using distance running for pitchers does not “clear lactic acid” (not like it’s important anyways), it doesn’t build specific adaptations to throwing, it sabotages training economy that could be put into things that would actually help you get better at baseball, and it puts you at a higher risk of getting injured (running cross country is a horrible way to get into “baseball shape”). If you understand these risks and still want to go for a 15 minute jog after your start the next day, feel free. Don’t take something out of a kid’s program that he really enjoys. However, you cannot shove long distance running down the throats of your players when we know it just doesn’t match up against the physiology. 

Building an adequate aerobic base is important and should be prioritized for optimal recovery, but it’s a lot easier to build and maintain than most people think. Your training should help you throw a five ounce baseball – not run a 5K. 

Feel free to check out some more thoughts from Eric on this here and some thoughts from Driveline on the same topic. 

  1. Developing a sixth pitch

Understanding when to develop a new pitch is a really important question you need to address before allocating a huge chunk of training economy to learning that pitch. If you’re looking at adding a new pitch, you need to first understand your current arsenal. How does each pitch stack up against your competitive peer group in terms of velocity, command, and movement profile? What kind of batted balls typically occur when you throw that pitch? Does it get any whiffs? What kind of confidence do you have in it?

If you’re not sure about any of these questions, start with this one: “Bases loaded, two outs, 3-2 count with the game on the line – how many of my pitches would I be able to throw in this situation?” If you can’t throw any of your pitches with this kind of conviction, you don’t have a pitch. If you can only throw two of your five pitches in this situation, you don’t need to add a sixth pitch to the mix. You need to look at the three you can’t and either scrap them or work on them. I would take a guy that can go balls to the wall with two pitches over a guy that dabbles with 12. 

We all have a limited amount of time. Determining how we best make use of that time is going to have a huge impact on your development on the mound. We can only allocate so much time and energy to the various things we want to work on. Find the lowest hanging fruit and work up from there. You don’t need to add a 12-6 curve, slider, and change up if you’re a freshman in high school that tops out at 69. You just need to throw the ball harder. If you find that adding a certain breaking ball or change up would compliment your arsenal without sacrificing much needed training economy in other areas, by all means go for it. 

Get really good at one thing before adding something else. It’s easy to fantasize and dabble with adding a new pitch to your mix for the upcoming season. It’s tough to evaluate where you are and see if you actually need that pitch.  

  1. Icing/Non-Steroid Anti Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs, i.e. ibuprofen)

This one is a big one in the baseball community as you’ll commonly see guys pop a few Ibuprofens before throwing and throw a couple ice bags on their arm after throwing. If this is your daily throwing routine, you should really read this next section. If Dr. Gabe Mirkin – the man who invented the RICE (rest, ice, compress, elevate) protocol – no longer advocates its use, why would we use it with our athletes?  

If we look at recovery, tissue repair requires three stages:

  • Inflammation (gasp)
  • Repair
  • Remodeling

To get to step two of the recovery process, you must go through step one. This means inflammation is not a bad thing that you should avoid – it is step one to getting you back on the field. Inflammation helps accelerate the recovery process by bringing blood, nutrients, oxygen, and other first responders to the injury site. They help clean out the damaged tissue and prepare it for the next step of the recovery phase. If you’re using ice to “reduce inflammation,” you are preventing the body from going through a necessary step in the recovery process. Icing injured tissue constricts blood vessels and limits the amount of blood flow to the injured site – the exact opposite of what your body is trying to do. Gary Reinl – one of the world’s leading experts in recovery – says it best: “You can have inflammation without recovery, but you cannot have recovery without inflammation.”

If you’re icing to reduce swelling, you are again working against your body when it comes to tissue repair. Reinl explained this in a Youtube video with Kelly Starrett – author of Becoming a Supple Leopard – saying how swelling is the end result of the inflammatory stage. Swelling is a natural phenomenon where blood vessels in the injured site are dilated. This helps open up the area so the good guys (blood, nutrients, etc.) can get in and clean up the damaged tissue. This process must run its course before getting to the repair stage. Swelling, thus, does not become the problem. The problem is the evacuation of swelling at the end of the cycle. 

Swelling is not the issue – the inability to evacuate swelling at the end of the inflammatory process is. Icing does not help you do this. 

This is where the lymphatic system comes in. Your lymphatic system is a series of one way bags of fluid that are designed to evacuate swelling via muscle contractions. The last part of that is the most important because the lymphatics is a passive system. This means if you are not actively contracting muscles around the site of damaged tissue, there is no way for the lymphatic vessels to evacuate swelling. Icing and immobilizing damaged tissue does not help accelerate recovery – it prevents your lymphatic system from doing its job. If anything, you’re increasing the likelihood for more swelling because the swelling that was already there now has nowhere to go. Swelling is not the issue – the inability to evacuate swelling at the end of the inflammatory process is. Icing does not help you do this. 

Reinl also made a point to mention icing will make you feel good in the short term because it cuts off the signal between the muscles and nerves. This is why using NSAIDs like Ibuprofen or Aleve can be a misleading treatment option for your nagging arm. When using anti-inflammatories, you shut off the signal completely. Your nervous system is designed to protect you and keep you out of danger. If you inhibit your body’s ability to let you know when there is pain, you run a great risk of hurting yourself and creating long term issues. If you have pain, Aleve and ice is not going to help solve the issue. It’s going to mask the actual problem that needs treatment. If you have pain, ditch the pills, ice packs, and get assessed by a professional who has experience dealing with overhead throwing athletes. 

Key Takeaways:

  • Inflammation is not bad. It is the first step of the recovery process that must be completed before steps two (repair) and three (remodeling).
  • Icing prevents the inflammation process by constricting blood vessels and limiting the amount of blood flow to the injured site – the exact opposite of what your body is trying to do. 
  • The lymphatic system is a passive system that works to evacuate swelling through muscle contractions.
  • Icing and immobilizing an injured area prevents the evacuation of swelling and can actually create more swelling. 
  • Icing an injured site blocks the signals between muscles and nerves making you feel good temporarily.  
  • NSAIDs completely block the signal between muscles and nerves. 

Reinl also did a podcast with Eric Cressey about this subject. See their interview here for more information and alternative methods to icing for recovery. 

If you have damaged tissue, don’t ice it, immobilize it, suppress it with anti-inflammatories, or do anything else that would prevent it from healing. You’re better off just getting out of the way and letting your body do what it knows how to do best. If anything, use the old advice of “just walk it off” and help your lymphatic system help you. 

  1. No pain, no gain

In the Phoenix Rehabilitation presentation from part 1 of this series, Monica Johnson shared a statistic that really bothered me as a coach: “46% of injured adolescents report being encouraged to play through arm pain.” When we encourage kids to play through pain so we can win some meaningless travel baseball tournament championship, we are putting an adrenaline-infused kid at serious risk. We’re basically telling them to ignore the body’s message to us that something is wrong. We’re encouraging them to play through something that should be addressed. When we do this, kids are going to be more likely to hide pain from us in the future because they know we’ll be upset when we have to pull them from the lineup. When we create these kinds of associations with pain, we lose the ability to protect our athletes when they’re actually hurt. 

As coaches, we need to create transparency with our athletes where they should comfortable speaking up if they are in pain. We need to create relationships with physicians who can take care of our kids and detect early warning signs for serious injuries. It’s not okay if your starting pitcher needs eight Ibuprofen to throw every seven days. It’s also not okay if your starting shortstop has shooting pain every time he picks up a baseball. 

Winning baseball games should not come at the expense of the health of your athletes. “No pain, no gain” is not an acceptable answer. If there is pain, something is wrong and it must be addressed. 

  1. Pitching to the hitter’s weaknesses over your strengths

John Wooden was not a huge fan of scouting reports. When his assistants tried to bring up the tendencies and strategies of his opponents, he didn’t pay too much interest. Wooden knew that if his teams played to the standard of UCLA basketball, it wouldn’t matter who they were playing or what they did – they would win regardless. I think this strategy could not be more applicable to a position that typically wins 70 percent of its battles. If you make good pitches and get into favorable counts, you will beat hitters a large majority of the time. This starts by understanding how to play to your strengths.  

If we pitch with the intention of exposing the weaknesses of hitters, we run the risk that we get away from our strengths. If we’re facing a guy who can’t hit curveballs but out curve is our least confident pitch, it makes no sense to throw two uncompetitive breaking balls and find yourself in a hitter’s count where you have to pitch to his strength. You’re better off going right at guys with the pitches you have confidence in regardless if it’s a strength of the hitter. If your stuff sucks, that’s a whole different problem.  

If you don’t know your strengths, now is a good time to figure those out. You need to have awareness for the pitches you have the most confidence in. Know what pitches to go to when you need a strike, ground ball, and swing and miss. Know which pitches play better against left or right handed hitters. You can’t become a great competitor if you don’t have a great feel for your bread and butter on the mound. 

Don’t fail with your worst pitch. Go to war with your best stuff. 

 

Images from @pitchingninja

  1. Two strike “waste pitches”

This is something I wrote an article about a little bit ago. Read it here to understand the pitfalls of conventional wisdom when it comes to pitching with two strikes. If you don’t want to read it, I’ll summarize it using one question: “Why would you shrink the strike zone when you’re working in the most advantageous count as a pitcher?” 

Ditch the 50 foot curveballs and the four seams painted four inches off the black. Be like Greg Maddux and go right after guys.

image from @pitchingninja
  1. In Game Mechanical Cueing

Revisiting part 1, the optimal focus of attention for athletes in game situations is a specific external mindset. As a result, your language in games should encourage this kind of a mindset. If a pitcher needs to be over the rubber in a game, you as a coach need to be over the rubber with him. If you’re using vocabulary that encourages an internal focus of attention, you’re working against his ability to keep things simple and compete with confidence.

Be very careful how you talk to pitchers when they’re warming up, throwing their pre-game bullpen, between innings, or when you talk to them during mound visits. When you’re in a game, all you can do is compete with what you have that day. Sometimes everything will be working, sometimes nothing will be working, but most of the time you’re going to be constantly fighting, compensating, and making adjustments in games. Jon Lester said it best in Heads Up Baseball 2.0: If I have 30 starts in a season 5 will be with my A game, 5 will be with my C game, and 20 will be with my B game.  

If we know an external focus of attention works in games, we need to teach kids how to make adjustments externally with their eyes. Instead of making them worry about their mechanics, teach them to pick up a visual that helps them make adjustments and execute specific pitches. If Sammy is walking everyone in sight, the last thing he needs to hear is he’s falling off the mound, his throwing arm is late, his front leg isn’t bracing, and he’s not following through with his pitches. If anything, the best thing you can do is get him to breathe, get locked in on a focal point, and get him to start throwing with conviction (see Building a Process Oriented Athlete for more on this). 

To understand the importance of your language in games, see the excerpt below from Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik’s The MVP Machine:

Pitching Coach Brent Strom guiding a rookie through a tough outing, excerpt from The MVP Machine by Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik

Notice how Brent Strom didn’t yip the kid up about his arm action, lower half, or any other number of distractions. He instead used a little bit of humor to get the kid out of his head. Some of the best mound visits you can make won’t require a word about baseball. At that point, you have to compete with what you’ve got. Life isn’t perfect – it’s messy. Don’t miss out on an opportunity to teach kids this.  

Sometimes you fix the ship, other times you patch a hole and keep pressing on. You can’t have an athlete work on a specific pattern and try to compete at the same time in a game.

This is something to keep in mind when you’re making mechanical adjustments throughout the course of a season. As mentioned before, it is helpful for athletes to internally focus on a specific movement when first learning it. This internal focus helps them get a feel for the pattern so they can practice it, master it, and eventually make it automatic. The key to this is the shift from an internal focus to an external focus. If you can’t get athletes to execute the pattern using the external focus, you’re not going to be able to use it in games. As a result, you need to be able to pick your battles as a coach. Sometimes you fix the ship, other times you patch a hole and keep pressing on. You can’t have an athlete work on a specific pattern and try to compete at the same time in a game. If your movement patterns are that bad that they’re affecting your game performance, you shouldn’t be playing games to begin with.

Don’t yip kids up when they’re already yipped up to begin with. Kids need to be in a state of mind where they’re ready to compete. If they’re worried about 69 different mechanical cues while also trying to send guys back to the dugout, you’re going to have a recipe for disaster.

  1. “Just throw strikes”

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: Pitcher X is in the middle of a walk parade while everyone on his side of the field is telling him to “just throw strikes.” I mean, seriously – did you think he was trying to throw balls? Do you really think that telling him to “just throw strikes” is all of a sudden going to make him throw strikes? Better yet – do you really think a ten year old has elite command of the strike zone when he can barely walk and chew gum at the same time?

The language you use with kids is very powerful – especially when they’re young. Young athletes are constantly fighting cognitive dissonance – they want to do things that make them feel good (winning) and avoid things that make them feel bad (losing). You as a coach are going to play an important role in that because kids are going to look to you for approval in a lot of situations. When you praise and commend them, they’re going to feel good. When you scold them, they’re going to feel bad. Thus, influencing kids depends on providing reinforcement for specific behaviors. The issue becomes this: You’re going to have the tendency to reinforce skills that might play when they’re younger but don’t play when they get to the big field. Two examples of this are:

  • Making hitters look stupid with horrendous breaking balls
  • Beating balls into the ground and either a) beating them out or b) letting the defense kick the ball around

When we reinforce poor breaking ball habits and beating balls into the ground, we’re sending messages to kids that doing these things are good and they should be repeated in the future. However, we know butchering a curveball is eventually going to catch up to that kid and it’s either going to get killed in high school or his arm is going to suffer. We also know that beating balls into the ground is going to create a steep bat path which prevents kids from driving balls in the air with authority. Ground balls and shitty breaking balls might help you win 12U tournaments, but they’re not going to help you win when it really matters later in their career. 

Giving kids who have an underdeveloped neuromuscular system the task of commanding a sphere three inches in diameter to a target 50 feet away is not an easy thing to do.

This is where “just throw strikes” comes into play. For one, we know that velocity is a significant barrier if you want to pitch at the next level. We also know that throwing strikes in youth baseball is equivalent to flipping a coin. Giving kids who have an underdeveloped neuromuscular system the task of commanding a sphere three inches in diameter to a target 50 feet away is not an easy thing to do. If we think about the movements that kids are going to make when they’re a) trying to throw the piss out of the ball or b) trying to dot up a corner, we’re going to get a significant contrast. One of those deliveries is going to build a foundation that will help kids pitch at the next level (yes, you can train velocity and command at the same time). The other one is going to create something that mirrors a robot trying to throw darts. You tell me which one you’d rather have. 

We make this even worse when we throw some variation of “just take a little off and hit the zone.” What we’re really saying to the kid is: “You can’t throw hard and throw strikes at the same time.” When we create this association, we essentially put a governor on that kid’s ability to throw hard because he’s worried about not throwing strikes. This is what’s known as the speed-accuracy trade off. This refers to the relationship between performing a specific skill with precision vs. how fast we can do it. If we look at this relationship at the major league level (see graphic below), we notice that there really is no velocity trade off for command. Developing command is not as simple as just telling a kid to ease off the gas pedal. There’s a lot more that goes into it. In some cases, telling a kid to slow it down might make their command worse

If your kid isn’t filling up the zone like Greg Maddux in 11U, don’t panic. Most kids are pretty bad at commanding the baseball simply because they don’t have the size, strength, coordination, or repetitions to figure things out. If anything, your best bang for your buck when they’re young is to develop speed. Research shows that kids ages 7-12 years old have a one-time window to develop elite speed as their skeletal structure is outgrowing their muscular structure. This creates tightly bound muscles that are very good at moving fast. If you spend these years doming up kids over their ability to dot corners, you are missing out on a huge window of opportunity to develop arguably their most important asset on the mound. 

If you’re working with kids who struggle finding the zone, don’t shrink it – expand it. We know most youth hitters aren’t exactly the most disciplined in the first place. Widen the zone, give kids the freedom to move fast, and throw out worrying about the end result. USC is not panicking if your 12U strike percentage is under 65 percent. However, you will be panicking if you’re a senior in high school, you’re topping out at 72, and you’re not getting any looks because you were too busy taking a little off and just throwing strikes. If the language you use is not helping kids develop skills that will scale, you’re wasting your breath.

If the language you use is not helping kids develop skills that will scale, you’re wasting your breath.

Let kids move fast, throw hard, and create an environment where they can start to figure out how to command a ball implicitly (i.e. without a barrage of meaningless verbal cues). The messages you send kids at a young age will have a huge impact on the rest of their career. You can’t expect kids to navigate the strike zone with pinpoint precision early on. Keep it fun and let them throw fuel. You’re better off refining command as they get bigger, practice more, and refine their neuromuscular system. Command is built largely through feel. You can’t develop feel if you’re domed up about walking the entire lineup because you’re “throwing it too hard.”  

  1. “Pull the lamp shade down”

The curveball is one of the most butchered pitches out there so I wanted to reserve some space to talk about it briefly here. Trevor Bauer does a really nice job explaining this in his Youtube pitch design video. I would highly recommend checking it out for more info on this. Below are some of his main points from the video:

*See 11:25 for curveball 

  • Cues like “twist it,” “pull the lamp shade down,” and “karate chop it” don’t actually describe what is going on at release and are poor ways to try to teach the pitch.
  • While you want to get to the front of the ball to create front spin, you want to pronate through the pitch instead of pulling down around it. 
  • Pronating through the pitch helps promote a healthy deceleration pattern. 
  • Don’t try to manipulate this with your wrist – lock your wrist in place. 
  • To create front spin, lock your wrist in a supinated position so your middle finger can get to the front of the ball. 

A really good question that came up in the discussion was when should pitchers start to learn a breaking ball? I think that is an awesome question that requires a lot of investigating from several different angles. From the things I’ve read and the people I’ve talked to, there really isn’t a need to showcase a spinner in games before 14 (see thoughts from Driveline). Early on, your goal should be to build a fastball that is above your competitive peer group in terms of velocity, command, and game effectiveness. Kids are going to get emotionally attached to pitches that help them win games when they’re younger. This means that they will get attached to a horseshit breaking ball that plays at 12U but won’t play when they get older.

Instead of keeping fastball mechanics and letting the grip create the movement profile, kids are going to slow their arm down and try to create movement in the wrong places (ex: creating a lot of lateral trunk tilt to get on top, dropping the arm to create more horizontal movement). This alters their delivery and can have a negative impact on the rest of their arsenal. The curveball is a complex pitch that takes time to learn and ultimately master. Giving it to kids who lack neuromuscular control and are fighting to compete against fatigue and other variable conditions in a game environment is a recipe for disaster. 

With this, I think Christian Wonders provided some really cool insight on this topic on Eric Cressey’s podcast (link here). If kids show sufficient movement quality at a young age (i.e. being able to do a push up, play catch without getting a cardio workout in from chasing balls), Christian sees value in teaching kids how to spin a ball early on. We know that throwing a curveball is a specific skill that must be learned through practice. If kids haven’t learned how to spin a ball when they’re 15, 16, or 17 years old, it becomes much more difficult to learn because they don’t have the repetitions or feel for holding a supinated position.

Below are a few tips that Christian discusses in the podcast when first learning a breaking pitch:

  • Teach kids how to hold the proper grip (don’t overlook this one).
  • Use carefully selected cues (he uses shoot the gun to the ground) to create a top to down front spin (think 12-6 or 1-7).
  • Never throw more than two curveballs in a row. Keep fastball arm speed a priority.
  • Get to the front of the ball and drive late arm speed.
  • Address lower half mechanics (i.e. loading/unloading the back hip) to determine if kids are physically able to get into positions where they can create the correct movement profile. 
  • Try to keep delivery within an imaginary tunnel to prevent kids from spinning off the pitch and creating side spin.
  • Learn one breaking ball before you learn two. 

Play for the long term when developing a spinner, but don’t wait until it’s too late because you’re afraid of getting hurt (hint: current research doesn’t suggest curveballs are more dangerous). 

  1. Missing the forest for the trees

As mentioned above, your goal as a coach should be getting kids to play their best baseball at 17, 18, and into their early 20s. Your goal is not to develop the best 12U team in the world. If kids aren’t growing and developing a skill set that will help them compete at the next level, you are doing them a disservice. If you are abusing the players on your team who hit puberty first, you’re damaging their love for the game and the chance they’ll continue to play throughout high school. If you burn up your ace traveling the country at 16 years old and land him on the surgery table, you might have cost him the chance to go to a Division I school and play professionally – all for a couple of tournament trophies.   

Taking advantage of kids for our short term interests must end. We cannot pitch in baseball games 12 months out of the year and expect kids to stay healthy and continue to have a passion for the game (ASMI has found kids who pitch in games more than eight months out of the year are five times more likely to get hurt). We need to build the athlete first and give kids opportunities to try out other sports before shoving one down their throat. We need to let kids experiment with other positions instead of labeling them as a “pitcher only” at 14. If Jacob DeGrom played shortstop through his junior year of college, I don’t think you need to rush your high school kids to specialize on the mound. 

Most importantly, we need to be the authority figure that has the discipline to step in and tell our best pitcher that he’s reached his pitch count and he can’t pitch anymore. We need to allow time for our number one to return to mound shape instead of rushing him back for a game that he is not prepared for. We need to forget about the wins and losses and instead focus on what’s next for that kid. If what we’re trying to do doesn’t fit in the long term plan for that athlete, we cannot do it. If he does not have a long term plan, make one. 

image from @pitchingninja

Do it the right way and play the long game. You owe it to your kids. 

 

  

 

 

24 Myths that are Making your Pitchers Worse: Part 1

I was recently able to have an interactive discussion with baseball coaches and players from the south central PA area. The discussion was centered around developing the complete pitcher by eliminating common training myths and misconceptions. The discussion also featured a presentation from Monica Johnson, PT, DPT, of Phoenix Rehabilitation who gave tips from the perspective of a physical therapist to help keep athletes healthy.

 

We were able to cover 24 things that you should NOT be doing if you want to develop high level arms. I will go over items 1-11 in this part of the blog along with the presentation from our physical therapist. 

1. Get to a Balance Point

 

A “balance point” refers to when the pitcher lifts his lead leg and gets to a position of zero lateral movement before continuing his motion down the mound. This is a very common teaching point when first learning how to develop the lower half in young pitchers. When talking about balance points, I always come back to a question from Wayne Mazzoni – pitching coach at Sacred Heart University: “If you had someone kneeling five feet in front of you, what would your delivery look like if you wanted to punch them in the face?” When kids show you what their best punch looks like, you’ll notice none of them come to a “balance point.” 

 

Teaching a balance point does not make any sense when developing pitchers simply because no one gets to a balance point. When we look at several big league arms, we notice none of them get to a position where they can hold their center of mass over the rubber if you stopped their delivery after leg lift. As Mazzoni says, we want to get away from the rubber. As the lead leg comes up, the athlete’s center of mass should begin to shift down the slope of the mound. This is not a rushed move down the mound – it’s a controlled gathering of energy. Every athlete is a hair different in regards to how they do this, but none of them create power by getting to balance. 

 

 


Nolan Ryan, Gerrit Cole, Trevor Bauer, and Corey Kluber all getting away from the rubber using a controlled gathering of energy (videos from @pitchingninja). 

Ben Brewster of Tread Athletics wrote a very good article about this and the advantages of getting away from a balance point. He describes a better move down the mound as “the drift” – the initial forward move that occurs during leg lift. He explains the benefits of it saying:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The drift is a “free” movement that hardly costs any energy , and allows you to save that available hip/knee        
extension and hip abduction until the majority of it can be directed laterally into the ground (once the center of mass has actually shifted away from the rubber).

“I liken this to standing directly next to someone and trying to knock them over with your hip, to standing 6-8 inches away from them and trying to knock them over with your hip – the increase in efficiency and force is substantial, so saving up your rear leg until all of that force can be directed where you want it is probably more effective than muscling your way down the mound.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben has a few theories on why the balance point has become so prevalent. Like all bad information, it comes down to a misinterpretation of what guys may unconsciously do. Pitchers with athletic deliveries may not think about drifting down the mound. They just figured it out through trial and error without ever thinking about what actually happens at leg lift. This move is also tough to see from the rear camera angle on TV. From behind, it may appear that some of the best pitchers come to a balance point. It’s only until you see them from the side that you realize what’s actually going on.

His last point made a lot of sense to me: It’s easier to teach balance points. He explained saying:

“You can take a group of 12 year olds and work on an up-down-out lower half in a very systematic and repeatable way. Try to teach a 12 year old how to move dynamically through his leg lift – you’re going to have a hard time making much headway in all but the most athletic kids. Balance is easy – and to some extent, it might help create more repeatable mechanics in the majority of kids who are falling all over the place when they throw. But just because it lowers a 12 year old’s walk rate doesn’t mean it’s what the majority of the hardest throwers in the world do.”

Sapping an athlete’s ability to create linear momentum down the mound is an energy killer. Building a high velocity delivery cannot be accomplished by teaching static positions of balance. Pitchers should be trained to move like athletes – not robots.

 

Pitchers should be trained to move like athletes – not robots.

 

The best way to get athletes away from a balance point is to stop teaching it. Kids will naturally get away from a balance point if you allow them to move fast and throw hard. If you have kids who have more ingrained patterns, below are a few ideas that you can use to create a better sequence.

  • Starting on slanted surfaces (slope of the mound, slanted boards)
  • Walking windups
  • Shuffle throws off the mound 
    • While this one is less specific to the delivery, it helps athletes get a feel for accelerating their center of mass down the mound and can unlock some athleticism in the process

 2. Drop and Drive

Athletes need to be careful with the “drop and drive” style. Drop and drive refers to the athlete getting to a position of balance and then driving with their back leg towards the plate. If the athlete is working into his back leg but not going anywhere, he’s creating a cost-effective move that is difficult to execute. Instead of using linear momentum to create velocity, your arm is at the mercy of how much you can one-legged squat. The drive portion of the cue can also create a quad-dominant delivery – something we’ll talk about below.

 

3. Push off the Rubber                                                                                                                                                                      

4. Get a longer stride
 

 

 

Push off the rubber is a commonly used cue when coaches are teaching kids how to use their lower half to add more velocity. While it’s well intentioned, the average interpretation and application of the cue creates bad moves that inhibit an athlete’s ability to use their glutes and produce an efficient rotary sequence. When athletes are told to push off the rubber, you’re going to commonly see kids shift the weight in their back foot to their toe as they try to push off and create extension with their back leg. This creates what is called a quad-dominant move. Instead of staying into the heels and utilizing the glutes, the less-powerful quads are turned on to drive lower body movement (note – you want to keep the entire foot grounded, not just the heels). This gives athletes the illusion that they’re creating more power from the lower half by leaping down the mound, but instead they’re throwing off the rest of the sequence and not utilizing the strongest muscles in their body.

 

You can identify a quad dominant move by looking at the back knee and foot in the delivery. Guys with a quad dominant delivery will leak their rear knee out over their toe and the heel will come out of the ground prematurely. This can cause guys to start to step across their body and lose good direction to the plate (emphasis on good direction). Below are a couple of examples of quad dominant deliveries.

 


An example of a quad-dominant delivery. Notice the back heel comes out of the ground prematurely and the weight shifts to the back toe (Image Source).

 

A glute dominant move is created when an athlete’s butt sits behind their heels. The entire back foot stays connected to the ground for a long period of time. The back leg does not “triple-extend” the way you were to if you executed a vertical jump. The rear glute mirrors the slope of the mound (a Lantz Wheeler quote) and drives the center of mass forward to create a powerful rotary sequence. By letting the big guys do the work, athletes are able to create energy efficient positions required for a powerful delivery. The “tall and fall” style prevents athletes from doing this and can have a negative impact on velocity, arm health, and command.


Kenley Jansen showing a glute dominant move where his back foot stays connected to the ground (from @pitchingninja). 


A rear view of a glute dominant move where the butt sits behind the heels (Image Source). 


Two of the hardest throwers on the planet using glute dominant moves (from @pitchingninja).
 

Wes Johnson, pitching coach with the Minnesota Twins, explained the importance of a glute dominant move down the mound in a recent article saying:

“We know that hip speed is a function of velocity and command as well. Hip speed is generated through your glutes and we’re just trying to activate the glute medius. We’re trying to get the glute med to activate first instead of your quadricep because when a guy’s quadricep activates first, his hip speed goes down. So we’re just trying to activate the glute to get the hips to rotate faster to get command and-or velocity, whichever one.”

Randy Sullivan from the Florida Baseball Ranch elaborated on this idea in a blog article saying, “The quads are designed for one thing, extending the knee. As such, the quads are excellent for pushing and leaping forward, but they are not good at sitting, riding and rotating. That’s the job of the glutes.” 

 

Below are lower half transformations from Twins pitcher Kyle Gibson and White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito. You’ll notice both pitchers used to have quad-dominant deliveries and now are able to utilize their glutes much better. Gibson had a career year in 2018 after making these changes setting career-highs in ERA (3.62), IP (196.2), and K (179). After struggling in 2018, Giolito became one of the league’s hottest arms in 2019 making his first All-Star appearance and fanning 228 batters in 176.2 IP. 

 


Notice Gibson’s quad dominant move (left) causes him to step across his body and hurt his ability to attack guys to his glove side (video source)


Giolito’s new glute dominant delivery helped tighten up his arm action and helped propel him to an All-Star caliber season (from @pitchingninja).

 

Push off the rubber is a cue that can be used when coaches are trying to create a longer stride (why I broke down these two misconceptions together). Research has shown some high velocity throwers generate an exceptional stride length (see Chapman analysis) in relation to their height. As a result, coaches started to think that a longer stride equated to ball velocity. Kids started to sell out for stride length at the expense of a pushy, quad dominant move down the mound. Instead of looking at the actions and the moves that created a “bigger stride,” most coaches just jumped to the “reactions” of a powerful, efficient delivery. Big league pitchers don’t throw hard because they have bigger strides – they throw hard because of the sequence that creates a bigger stride.

Sullivan spoke about this relationship saying:

 

“Back in the early 2000’s it became very popular among pitching “experts” to say, “stride length should be at least 120% of body height. There was some merit to the observation. Many hard throwers do have front foot landing points farther away from the rubber than their softer throwing peers, but it has nothing to do with the length of their stride. They land further out because they ride their glutes longer, thereby creating greater and later (ground reaction force), giving them more velocity. That compelled me to coin this phrase: “The length of the stride is a product of the duration of the ride.”You stride longer by staying connected, keeping your inverted pyramid in the ground and defying gravity with your center of mass until your front foot finally hits the ground.”

 

Trying to get kids to push off the rubber and create a longer stride is more likely to create a quad-dominant move that throws off the rest of the rotary sequence. This creates a power leak and can have a negative impact on the upper half as well. The pieces of our delivery do not occur in isolation – we are interconnected head to toe when throwing a baseball. If our body can’t create sufficient energy through the lower half, it will seek to find it in other places. This is where poor movement patterns are created.  

Key takeaways are pretty simple: Don’t push off the rubber, don’t force a longer stride, and don’t “tall and fall.” Let your big muscles do the work for you – don’t work against them.

 5. Stride Straight

A lot of coaches at some point have done drill work where they’ve drawn a straight line out from the athlete’s back foot towards the catcher. The pitcher is then instructed to stride straight so they can land on that line. This is done to keep kids from throwing across their body or falling off to their glove side. Maintaining good direction throughout your delivery is important, but striding straight is not. Don’t believe me? See a couple of guys who don’t stride straight (smh) below. 


Some examples of big league All-Stars striding open and closed (from @pitchingninja).

 

Stepping straight is really a misinterpretation of having good direction to the plate. Direction refers to a pitcher’s ability to generate energy in an efficient sequence towards their target. Having poor direction would be a kid who generates momentum away from their target. An example would be a kid with a pushy/quad-dominant that causes them to step across their body – like Gibson from above (not saying stepping across is bad – just giving an example where it could be bad).

If we’re looking at stride direction, we need to first look at the movements that got them there in the first place. Stride direction is a reaction in the delivery. The movements that occur further up stream (ex: drifting down the mound, using the glutes) are going to dictate how the pitcher strides. Just looking at the stride and saying that someone strides too far open isn’t an effective way to reshape a delivery. It is an effective way to kids get domed up about where their foot lands while also trying to throw strikes and throw the ball hard. There is no freedom or athleticism in this. Instead of letting kids move fast and let it eat, they’re now consciously worried whether or not they’re landing in a straight line. If we want to develop high level moves, we need to let go of striding straight and see the bigger picture. Save the duct tape for problems that actually need it – not problems we create. 

Phoenix Rehab Presentation

We were very fortunate to have Monica Johnson, PT, DPT, come in and give a presentation on injury prevention in baseball athletes. She started by sharing some statistics and thoughts on injury rates in baseball today:

  • 46% of injured adolescents report being encouraged to play through arm pain
  • 36% increased risk of overuse injury in young athletes playing a single sport for more than 9 months out of the year
  • Overuse injuries are linked to factors including early sports specialization, skeletal immaturity, year-round playing in games, and lack of adherence to rehab protocol
  • Early detection of overuse injuries may be able to prevent further progression of the injury

She then illustrated the sad reality when it comes to youth sports training today:

I thought this was one of the most powerful points throughout the entire discussion. Instead of slow cooking young athletes and teaching them movement principles that will enhance their performance on the field, we jump right to the skill portion and spend most of our time there. In essence, we jump right to calculus when kids can’t even grasp basic algebra concepts. If we want to keep kids healthy on and on the playing field, we cannot invert this pyramid. We need to teach kids how to move before we teach them how to play their sport – and moving their thumbs on their sofas doesn’t count.

Before picking up a baseball, kids should be able to execute the five basic movement patterns: hinge, squat, push, pull, and an iso core movement (ex: plank). Because sports require athletes to produce and accept force on one leg, I would add a single leg variation (lunge) to the mix.  This is going to help teach kids basic core control and how to use the big muscles in their body. If your kid can’t hinge or squat without collapsing their knees over their toes, there’s a good chance they won’t be able to create a glute dominant pattern from the mound. If your kid can’t keep his scaps from dumping forward while executing a bodyweight push up, don’t be surprised if his elbow hurts while throwing. Mastering basic movement sets the foundation from which you can continue to build on. If you try to outsmart the system and do it backwards, it will catch up to you in time. 

 

If your kid can’t hinge or squat without collapsing their knees over their toes, there’s a good chance they won’t be able to create a glute dominant pattern from the mound.

 

For more information on how you can start to teach quality movement, see our previous blog posts on building a better warm up and my thoughts from my trip to Cressey Sports Performance. Monica would also be more than willing to help you guys out with anything movement related. She can be reached at mjohnson@phoenixrehab.com or 717.212.9229.

6. Read the watch

Reading the watch refers to when a pitcher shows the ball to second base at front foot strike. If you watch any film of big league guys, you’ll notice virtually no one does this. Instead, the ball is kept in a neutral wrist position. This means that the ball is facing towards third base as a right hander and the ball is facing towards first base as a left hander.


Keeping the ball in a neutral position, images from @pitchingninja and Texas Baseball Ranch

As to why you shouldn’t read the watch, Christian Wonders does a nice job breaking this down. I’ll link to the video here, but below is a quick summary of the points he makes.

  • Reading the watch keeps the hand in pronation (thumb down)
  • Keeping the ball in a neutral position keeps the hand in slight supination (thumb out) 
  • The shoulder does not want to get into a clean layback position when it is in pronation. Instead, the humeral head migrates forward and loses congruency in the ball/socket complex.

In its most simplest form, don’t teach kids something that’s not natural. Almost no one shows the ball to second base when they land. It’s not a coincidence, either. 

7. Throw over the top                                                                                                                                        

8. Get nice and long/don’t short arm it

 

Manipulating arm action is one of the most misunderstood concepts when it comes to pitching. Your average youth baseball player is going to hear a barrage of cues when they pick up a baseball that include “Don’t sidearm it, throw over the top!” or “Don’t short arm it, get nice and long!” These cues are usually intended to create “proper mechanics” so kids don’t get hurt when throwing. While they’re well intentioned, they don’t really describe what a lot of high level throwers do. If anything, they’re likely to do more harm than good. 

Part of the origination for these cues goes back to the bridge between feel and real. A lot of guys may feel they’re doing certain things when in reality they’re doing the exact opposite. To explain this, check out this clip of Pedro Martinez describing the importance of throwing over the top and compare it to what he actually did below.


Pedro “throwing over the top” (image source)

In reality, arm slot is a little more complex than just thinking “over the top.” A true over the top delivery where the ball is launched from the trajectory of an iron mike does not exist. Your arm slot is dictated by the position of your trunk in space as you rotate to deliver the ball. Your arm should create a perpendicular relationship in regards to the angle of your torso. To better explain this, see the images below.

Kershaw appears to “throw over the top” because he creates more lateral trunk tilt to his glove side. Sale appears to “side arm” the ball (smh) because his torso is more vertical at ball release. If you were to rotate these guys and get their trunks aligned, you would notice the arm slot is identical (the two lines on both pitchers create a perpendicular relationship). If your arm is not able to create this angle in relation to your torso, you are throwing outside of your natural arm slot. This is going to make you more likely to get hurt than not throwing over the top ever will. 

Along with this, coaches will try to force a nice and long arm action for pitchers. We have this misunderstanding in baseball where “short arming” (a more direct arm action) the ball is bad and we need to get long in order to throw harder and safer. If you look at some of the best pitchers in the game, you’ll realize that this doesn’t really make sense. If we have guys like Trevor Bauer, Joe Kelly, and Giolito running it into the upper 90s while “short arming” it, why the hell would we teach our kids to get long? 

I’m a firm believer that we cannot find an athlete’s unique arm slot or arm action solely through verbal cueing. No two pitchers have ever thrown the ball the same way before in the history of baseball. If we try to figure out an athlete’s own unique style through the use of cookie cutter cueing and drill work, we are more likely to create poor patterns that become very difficult to change when they get older. Our goal as coaches should be to create an environment where an athlete can figure out his own unique style. Teaching kids to “throw over the top” or “not side arm it” won’t help them discover this. 

Our arm action is going to take shape through Nikolai Bernstein’s principle of human movement: “The body will organize itself based on the end goal of the activity.” This is why some of the game’s most efficient arm actions come from shortstops and catchers. Players at these positions are forced to make strong throws from different angles (more relevant to shortstops) under considerable time constraints. Because their end goal required quick and fast throws, their arms took on shapes that allowed them to do this. When we’re on the mound, we don’t have these time constraints. Training a kid to just locate his pitches vs. throwing the piss out of the ball is going to create two completely different arm actions.I don’t know about you, but I’m betting on the guy trying to throw fuel. 


Trevor Bauer’s advice for what your young pitchers should be doing (from @baueroutage). 

If you’re a guy who’s trained your whole life as a pitcher and you feel like a robot when you toe the rubber, you’re better getting off of it and playing shortstop (see tweets above). This is something that Trevor Bauer and Derek Johnson, pitching coach for the Reds, have talked about a lot. Making throws across the diamond from shortstop is going to give you a pretty good feel for their natural arm slot and action. It’s going to unlock some athleticism, create efficient patterns, and get kids thinking externally as opposed to internally. Tucker Frawley, infield coach for the Twins, talked about how pitchers at Yale used to complain about losing a lot of athleticism pretty quickly when they got away from their infield position. If you think about it, their “arm care” program was the throws they made from the infield. When they lost touch with some of the things that probably really helped them out in high school, they started to fall off. If you’re trying to develop a young pitcher, the worst thing you can do is train them like a pitcher. As Bauer says best, get them to move fast, throw hard, and play shortstop. 

 

If you’re trying to develop a young pitcher, the worst thing you can do is train them like a pitcher.

 

Arm action changes are very difficult to make. If you see someone with an action that looks disconnected or out of sync, start with the lower half. Athletes will tend to find energy in the wrong places if they can’t create it with the big muscles in the lower half. As mentioned before, you can’t isolate the delivery and just look at one piece of it. Observe, see everything that is going on, and then find the things that seem out of sort. 

If you’ve checked this box and are still having some issues, below are some ideas you can use to try and create some better patterns:

  • Eliminating time 
    • Any drill that forces the athlete to speed up or get the ball out quicker. A stopwatch is a great tool for this for guys who muscle up and fail to sync up their whole body in the delivery. 
  • Weighted baseball catch play
  • Throwing the football
  • Connection balls
  • Indian clubs

When it comes to arm action, you can usually do more harm than good. Create the right environment and let the kids do the rest.


9. Get “Extension”

Randy Sullivan of the Florida Baseball Ranch did an awesome job breaking this one down in his ebook book Getting Extension is Fool’s Gold. Below are some of his thoughts on the origin of “getting extension” and why it is a huge velocity/arm health killer. 

The idea of teaching pitchers to get “extension” goes back to research in the late 1990s and early 2000s where some very smart coaches figured out the hardest throwers in the game tend to let go of the ball further out in front of their bodies. They calculated that every foot the ball is released closer to the hitter would equal to about 3 mph of perceived velocity. This gives hitters less time to react and can increase the effectiveness of your fastball without actually adding more velocity. Thus, getting “extension” was created as a way to release your pitches closer to the catcher so you could add more perceived velocity. Coaches designed drills like the towel drill where athletes are cued to extend and hit a target on their follow through. The basic idea behind this was right, but the application was horribly wrong. 

While we know that high level arms do release the ball closer to home plate, it is not because they’re reaching out to throw the ball closer to home plate. Instead, “extension” is merely the byproduct of an interconnected and efficient delivery. If everything up stream is sequenced correctly, what you’ll see at release is the throwing shoulder will be rotated slightly in front of the glove side shoulder. This is what Ron Wolforth of the Texas Baseball Ranch calls “late launch” and is what the experts deemed as “extension.” The athlete is not reaching out and creating what Randy calls a “linear deceleration pattern.” Instead, they are utilizing a properly sequenced delivery to release the ball further out in front towards the hitter.  

 

Creating a linear deceleration pattern through drills like the towel drill is a velocity and arm health killer.

 

Creating a linear deceleration pattern is a killer when it comes to velocity, command, and arm health. Sullivan explains that when an athlete creates a linear deceleration pattern through drills like the towel drill, the muscles of the posterior rotator cuff and shoulder disengage after ball release. When this happens, the biceps is left alone to eccentrically resist long axis distraction, humeral head elevation, and terminal elbow extension. In other words, your biceps muscle is working to prevent your arm from flying off your body. This is not a safe way to decelerate your arm as the forces trying to pull your shoulder off exceed 1X your bodyweight. Since your biceps tendon is attached to the labrum, this issue can place a beating on the labrum and eventually pull it right out of the socket. 

On top of this, encouraging a linear deceleration pattern can put your elbow at serious risk by preventing the pronator muscles in your forearm from turning on. By getting long and reaching to get extension, athletes are not able to go into shoulder internal rotation and pronation. When the athlete is stuck in supination, the pronator muscles in the forearm are unable to do their job and take the initial stress from the throw. We know that the stress from throwing a baseball (studies show 70-90 nM of stress on the medial elbow at shoulder external rotation) exceeds the stress that the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) can handle (about 35 nM). The forearm pronators play a huge role in the dissipation of this force as they are the first responders to protect the UCL. If this link in the chain becomes broken because of a linear deceleration pattern, the UCL can get overloaded and eventually fail. 

For those of you that followed along with all of that, the major takeaways are this:

  • Getting “extension” is the natural byproduct of an efficient delivery where the throwing shoulder rotates beyond the glove shoulder at ball release.
  • Trying to artificially create extension using the towel drill places the athlete at risk for developing a linear deceleration pattern.
  • A linear deceleration pattern causes the forearm pronator muscles and posterior shoulder to surrender to the biceps which rages eccentrically to keep your arm from flying off of its socket.
  • A healthy deceleration pattern is created when the hand pronates after release and the throwing shoulder internally rotates. This keeps the forearm pronators and posterior shoulder engaged so they can help dissipate force and let the body naturally unwind.
  • The best way to teach a good deceleration pattern is to not screw up kids in the first place.
  • Please don’t do towel drills. 

 

While much of this problem is created by human intervention, there are ways you can work and improve your deceleration pattern. Some examples include wrist weights (see more on these here), the Durathro training sock, and overload throwing implements. Kyle Boddy dives into this idea a little more in a Youtube video and an article on fangraphs from a few years ago.

10. Finish in a fielding position 

I originally had this linked with the extension part of the presentation, but I wanted to separate it for this article because I didn’t think I covered this enough in the discussion. Pitchers are commonly told to “not fall off” or “finish in a fielding position” after releasing the ball (god forbid you miss a ground ball back up the middle). Both of these cues are well intentioned, but they don’t make sense because 99 percent of big leaguers “fall off.” It isn’t by coincidence, either. 

The reason why most big leaguers level “fall off” is because they’re trying to throw the piss out of the ball. It’s a natural byproduct of the body accepting a large amount of force and dissipating it. To throw the ball, the shoulders are going to rotate forward with the throwing arm internally rotating at over 7,000 degrees per second. We also know the lead leg is working unilaterally to accept over 400 pounds of force simultaneously. As a result, your body is going to naturally unwind around your front hip and towards your glove side to accept and dissipate force as efficiently as possible. This causes a lot of guys to “fall off” – a perfectly normal thing to do if you’re trying to throw the ball hard. 

Greg Holland, Nathan Eovaldi, and Chris Davenski all run it up into the upper 90s without finishing in a “fielding position” (from @pitchingninja).

 

If we know that slamming on the brakes isn’t great for our cars, why would we want to slam on the brakes with our arm?

 

When we encourage pitchers to finish in a fielding position, we are cutting off their ability to naturally decelerate. Athletes are not able to completely rotate around their front hip and create late launch to help the arm safely unwind. Cutting off forward shoulder rotation encourages early launch where the athlete’s arm is brought to an abrupt stop after release. This results in significant banging and recoiling of the anterior shoulder and can create shoulder and elbow pain in throwers. If we know slamming on the brakes isn’t great for our cars, why would we want to slam on the brakes with our arm? Your body also isn’t going to produce a lot of force if it can’t safely and efficiently accept it. There’s no reason for your body to punch the gas if it doesn’t trust the brakes system. 

Does this mean that finishing in a fielding position is always bad? Absolutely not. There are guys who throw the ball very well that finish in more of a fielding position. However, this is unique to their own style. They more than likely did not have coaches who were constantly berating them for falling off the mound. They simply found the best way for them to produce and accept force. Forcing athletes into a pattern that does not fit their unique mold is called cookie cutter coaching. We know that cookie cutter programs do not work because no two athletes are ever the same. Teaching everyone the same way will mirror a bell curve: Some will get better, the majority will stay the same, and some will get worse. 

As a coach, the key takeaways should be pretty simple: “Falling off” is not a bad thing, it is a good thing. Your kids are finding ways to move fast, throw hard, and naturally decelerate their body. Each kid is going to have their own unique finish after they throw the ball. Be very careful when you start to tamper with how they finish after they throw. If you tamper with the body’s natural brake mechanism, you’re more likely to place athletes at risk for injury. 

Please stop telling kids to finish in a fielding position. You’re likely doing more harm than good.                                  


11. Death by Verbal Cueing 

 

The overuse of verbal cueing might be the greatest detriment you can use when trying to build pitchers that thrive in competitive environments. This is something I’ve talked about in the past on here and I still feel the same way about it. With all the mechanical stuff that we can screw up, the absolute worst thing we can do for kids is to dome them up with a million different cues in practice. If you think about some of the best performances you’ve ever had, most will agree that they were instinctual. We weren’t worried about where our hand was or whether we were using our legs enough. Instead, we trusted in our training and thought less. We were simply in the moment and competing with everything we had in the absence of thought. 

Research has shown the most effective focus of attention for game performance is a specific, external focus. An external focus refers to when we are focusing on something outside of our body in our environment. Examples of external cues include “throw it through the mitt,” “hit it over the center field wall,” and “try to separate the floor.” Unfortunately, most of the cueing used in coaching promotes an internal focus. An internal focus refers to when we are focused on something within our body. Examples of internal cues include “use your legs more,” “get your hands up,” and “don’t drop your elbow.” The broader the cue is, the more room there is for misinterpretation. 

 

Instead of keeping things simple and letting their athleticism take over under the lights, we jump in and complicate things through poor cueing.

 

If we are constantly thinking about what our body is doing in games, we are becoming our own worst enemy. We’re not trusting in our training and we’re not giving ourselves the freedom to compete one pitch at a time. Instead, we’re worried about the aesthetics of our delivery. We want every single move to be perfect even though we know there are going to be a multitude of factors that impact our delivery every single game (energy levels, field conditions, weather, nutrition/hydration, sleep, soreness, etc.). Instead of focusing on executing pitches and competing with what you have that day, we’re worried about whether we’re using our legs enough or whether we’re sidearming (smh) the ball or not. This is where we create kids that can’t get out of their own head. Instead of keeping things simple and letting their athleticism take over under the lights, we jump in and complicate things through poor cueing. 

The double-edged sword to internal cueing is that there is a time and place for it early on in the skill acquisition process. It is helpful to give kids a better feel for the difference between certain moves by creating an internal focus of attention (conscious incompetence). However, the focus must eventually progress to external (unconscious competence) as the athlete develops mastery over the skill. If they cannot execute the skill with a specific, external focus of attention, it will not play in a game environment. 

Derek Johnson likes to describe this process of building a skill using “over the rubber” and “over the plate.” When we are over the rubber, we’re working on developing a skill. This could be trying to create a better movement pattern, shape to a breaking pitch, or velocity. When we’re over the rubber, we’re not worried about executing pitches. We’re trying to create feel for something that’s going to eventually help us in a game environment. When we’re over the plate, we’re in a competitive, game-like mindset where the main focus is executing pitches. We’re not focused internally on our delivery – we’re focused externally on competing with what we have to send guys back to the dugout. 

 

If the focus is on executing pitches, you can’t cue guys to use their legs more. If the focus is on building a better movement pattern, you can’t worry about filling up the strike zone. We’re either over the rubber or over the plate – we can’t do both.

 

As coaches, we must not blur the line between over the rubber and over the plate. If Jonny is trying to create a better pattern with his lower half, the execution of his pitches is going to be slightly off. If you berate him for not filling up the zone while focused internally on his lower half, he’s going to abandon the new pattern and go to the old one that is more comfortable for him. Your sessions should not be a mix of over the rubber and over the plate. Create a goal for the day and coach it accordingly. If the focus is on executing pitches, you can’t cue guys to use their legs more. If the focus is on building a better movement pattern, you can’t worry about filling up the strike zone. We’re either over the rubber or over the plate – we can’t do both. 

When it comes to cueing, less is usually more. Yogi Berra said it best: “You can’t think and hit at the same time.” Pitching is no different. 

Part 2 of the article will go over items 12-24

What I Learned from the ABCA 2020

The 2020 ABCA Convention was held in Nashville, TN. Throughout the weekend, thousands of coaches gathered to learn, teach, and share ideas to prepare for the upcoming season. Below are some of my thoughts from the experience, reoccurring themes, ideas that resonated, and tips you can take home to your teams and players.

Themes 

Tech cannot replace the Teacher

The theme of balancing technology and teaching came up more than anything else this year at the ABCA. With the explosion of technology in baseball player development, we are starting to see the benefits of using tech tools – but also some of the pitfalls when it is mismanaged. More organizations today have access to a lot of the same information, but the difference maker is in what is collected, why it’s collected, and how it’s communicated to the athlete. Information is designed to increase your effectiveness as a coach by supplementing what you’re trying to teach. It should not be used to make yourself seem smarter. Application is key – not necessarily collection.

Bobby Tewksbary of Tewksbary Hitting explained how to navigate this problem by starting with what matters. Whether it’s hitting the ball harder, getting on plane earlier, or improving timing, you as a coach need to determine what is going to help that athlete become successful (works the same way with pitching). When you can establish what is important, you can start figuring out how you’re going to measure it. If it’s important, you can’t guess – you need to measure it. The process of collecting this information requires an implementation plan. You need to explain when and how information is going to be collected during training sessions. This involves getting a large enough sample size so you can get a feel for where that athlete is without any bias from small sample sizes. Bo Bichette’s father talked about how he feels kids need 5,000 at bats before they can start to figure out who they are as a hitter. If kids aren’t getting at bats in games, you need to find ways to get them at bats outside of their games.

Lastly, you need to have a plan for when and how you will retest athletes. This shows whether what you’re doing is working or not and ultimately keeps coaches accountable – numbers don’t lie. Some adjustments may be easier or tougher but you can’t determine if an athlete has mastered something if you don’t have the information to support it. Find what matters, learn how to measure it, create a plan for how you’re going to measure it, and retest to see if it’s working.

Building Better People

No matter who was speaking or what level they were representing, one theme seemed to shine through with everyone: Coaches are in the process of building better people. The amount of kids we will work with that will make it professionally is miniscule. Our best bet as a teacher and a mentor is to use baseball as a platform to teach life lessons that will help them beyond their playing days. What we can do for them as players is a bonus.

This begins with your ability to build relationships with your players. We as coaches spend a lot of time talking, teaching, and instructing, but some of the best moments we can spend with our athletes are when we don’t speak a word. In order for our athletes to trust us (we don’t have anything if we don’t have trust), we need to make sure they known their voice is heard. Get to know them outside the baseball field. Know the names of their parents, siblings, and their interests off the field. Know their story, why they play the game, and why they came to your school. This foundation gives us the ability to teach them, hold them accountable, and confront them when they aren’t doing what they said they would do. If you can’t love them on their worst day, you really don’t love them.  

The baseball part is the small picture. Building better men should be your ultimate goal as a coach.

“I wouldn’t change a thing”

Smart people learn from their mistakes, but wise people learn from the mistakes of others. Being 23 years old, one of the questions I asked a lot of coaches was, “If you were to do it all over again, what would you change?” Most, if not all, gave me the same resounding answer: “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

The experiences we go through as coaches shape who we become. The bad information we used to teach and the athletes we screw up are all a part of the process of becoming a better coach. There is no shame in looking back on what we’ve done before and realizing how differently we would do it today. The information gets better, we learn more from smarter people, and we learn from our experiences with kids. Those that continuously work to hone their craft will figure it out in time. If you aren’t transparent about where you’ve screwed up, you’re not confident in what you do.  

We all want to give athletes our very best. We’ll help many, screw up some, and make plenty of mistakes along the way, but our greatest failure will only be if we fail to evolve. The greatest coaches have the humility to show others how they’ve changed, but they also don’t regret the steps in the journey. Own your story – no one started this thing with all the answers.

Stay Centered

The best coaches are the ones that are able to navigate the emotions from the highs and the lows. They don’t let success get to their head or failure get to their heart. They keep their foot on the gas when things are going good because they know much work is to be done. They don’t demean their teams when they’re down and instead find ways to pick them up. This even keel demeanor is exactly what kids need to handle a sport deeply rooted in responding to adversity. If you can create that consistency at the top, kids will learn how to take it to their game. Anything that drags us away from the present moment is working against our ability to teach, play, or learn. Stay centered, quiet the drama, and don’t let the emotions of this game pull you off track.

Thoughts from Coaches  

Tim Corbin – Vanderbilt University

Every single year, the head coach of the reigning Division I national champions kicks off the event with a speech Friday morning. Tim Corbin’s Commodores captured the national championship last June defeating the Michigan Wolverines for his second championship in five years. Corbin’s work at Vanderbilt is arguably the greatest coaching job in college baseball history. The program he’s built is a large testament to the strong culture he has created – hence, the title of his speech Culture is…

Corbin started his speech describing a story about a young man he wanted to bring to his program early on in his coaching career at Vanderbilt. The young man’s coach actually was not interested in Vanderbilt at all (imagine saying that today in 2020), but the kid was very interested and ended up coming to the school. As a freshman, Corbin said you could tell the kid was uncomfortable early on. He didn’t talk much or engage with his teammates. In the fall of his freshman year, the kid had a really rough outing in a practice intersquad. When Corbin went to console him after practice, he couldn’t find him. The next time he saw him was the next morning in his office – eyes red and swollen from crying.

The young man proceeded to tell Corbin that he was going to quit the team, drop out of school, and start working. Sensing discouragement and fear, Corbin explained how he would be making the biggest mistake of his life and ended up persuading him to stay in school and on the team. That interaction was the last time Corbin has to convince David Price to stay in school. The rest is history.

As a coach, you’re in a position where you have the ability to mentor young kids and guide them through difficult decisions in their life. These conversations don’t usually end in both of you feeling good. They’re going to require you to confront the athlete, empathize with their situation, and give them what they need to hear – not what they want to hear. If you can give the kid consistency when everything else in his life seems inconsistent, you have the chance to get him back on track. Who knows – you might just save a big league career.

Culture has become a buzz word in sports today. When new coaches are hired, everyone talks about changing the culture or creating a better culture. It’s easy to talk about what the great cultures look like (hard work, no nonsense, etc.), but it’s really tough to create a sustainable one that aligns with your values. This isn’t done through reading books – it requires years of skin in the game. Patience from years of hard work helps give you wisdom and wisdom helps you see the simplicity of the game. The best cultures don’t do extraordinary things – they just do the ordinary things better than anyone else. As Corbin says best: “Do simple better.”

Culture is not static – it is dynamic and it’s constantly in motion. The things that you allow, encourage, and tolerate are being communicated through your words and actions every single day. As Corbin says, the best way to build your culture is to model it yourself. After you build it, the greatest compliment you can receive as a coach is when your players take the wheel and start to drive your culture. Your role is to facilitate an environment where you can empower players to make these kinds of decisions. Dictating an environment is a great way to build resentment towards the culture you’re trying to create.

On a final note, Corbin talked about how the journey of what you’re doing is greater than winning baseball games. Winning the final game of your season just isn’t practical. What you do as a coach can’t be just about winning the final game because your season is finite – it has an end. Building life lessons into your kids is infinite – it does not end the day your season ends. As coaches, we’re trying to play for the infinite game – not the finite game. Our kids are going to graduate our coaching at some point. What they take with them is what’s most important.

Be the teacher you would want your son or daughter to have 

Derek Johnson – The Pitcher/Hitter confrontation and Youth Development

Derek Johnson – Reds pitching coach – was masterful at the convention diving into the pitcher/hitter confrontation and youth development. He started off his segment by illuminating the reality of baseball: Every single pitch is a war between the hitter and the pitcher. There is a winner and loser on every pitch – there is no gray area. This battle of skill and will comes down to the game between the ears. It’s the belief that I’m better than you and this is my opportunity to show you. It’s having the courage to strike first knowing the opponent who makes the first move outnumbers their opponent 9-1. It’s the ability to take punches, quickly recover, and counter with punches. Winning this war comes down to Sun Tzu’s main principle from his book The Art of War: Know thyself, know thy enemy.

Developing an approach on the mound or in the box starts with understanding who you are. What are your best pitches/locations for a strike, swing and miss, and ground ball? What pitches and zones do you hit the best? When you can grasp the things that make you successful, it’s then important to turn your attention to the other side of the battle. What are the tendencies of your opponent? Where are they most vulnerable? How have they been attacked before in the past? What have the results been?

The psychology of this battle lies within the count. The count dictates which side has the advantage going into the next pitch. This advantage is highly predictive of who is more likely to win the battle. This advantage is also constantly fluctuating – differences in just one pitch can swing batting averages over .150 points. If you don’t know who you are, who you’re facing, and if you can’t be present pitch to pitch, your odds at coming out on top are slim to none. At the end of the day, deliveries and swings don’t win games – competitors who are ready to shove It up your ass do. Let your approach dictate your mechanics. If you want to play baseball at a high level, get really good at competing pitch to pitch.

At the youth level, Derek talked about his three big rocks when working with pitchers just starting out: Eyes, tempo, and rhythm. Eyes will dictate your direction, rhythm will sync the moving pieces together, and tempo will determine the speed and efficiency of the movement. Having a strong connection to the ground is also another place to start with young athletes. The easiest way to do this is to teach kids how to tie their shoes and how to feel all six cleats in the ground with their back foot. A lot of energy is lost when kids fail to understand how to utilize their hips and trunk throughout the delivery. Attacking this issue starts with creating a stable platform to move from.

When it comes to developing efficient moves, Derek sees a lot of value in getting kids off of the mound and playing positions that require strong throws within time constraints (i.e. shortstop, catcher). Your best arm action is the one that you’ll use when you’re making a play from shortstop. There’s no conscious thought about where my arm, hand, or foot is. All we’re focused on is catching and throwing out the runner. When our instincts and our subconscious take over, we’re given the freedom to develop authentic and efficient movement patterns.

This is something I talked about with Twins infield coach Tucker Frawley. When a lot of kids come to Yale and become pitcher only players after spending years as an infielder, many complain about losing a lot of athleticism pretty quickly. He’s seen several infielders who can hop on the mound and throw the ball pretty hard after years of learning how to sling balls across the diamond. While he’s only seen a small sample size, Frawley sees a lot of value in giving pitchers the freedom to continue to take ground balls and make throws from infield positions. Pitching a 5 ounce baseball 90-100 times a game out of the same delivery doesn’t match the movement variability of a shortstop making several types of plays. You want to give kids the opportunity early on to explore a wider spectrum of movement solutions so you can maximize their window to develop their most optimal movement patterns. You have to learn how to throw before you learn how to pitch.    

Derek finished his presentation on a great thought: “Most people know what to do and how to do it, but very few are willing to do it.” Discipline is the separator. If you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk, people will see right through you. Show up, shut your mouth, and do the work. You only have yourself to blame if you don’t.   

Buck Showalter – Perspective from a Life in Baseball

Considering the road that Buck Showalter has taken in baseball, this is one of the presentations I was really looking forward to. He started it off with arguably his best piece of advice from the presentation: “Design practices you would want to be a part of.” He described a situation where he was asked to help out someone he knew at a 15U baseball practice. Instead of setting the field up for a monotonous BP situation where players stand around and lose interest, Buck set up a field by asking kids where they wanted to play. He got a kid in the box, set a 0-2 count, and tried carving up kids with his best stuff. It didn’t even take 15 minutes before the kids were hooting, hollering, and having one of the best times they’ve ever had at practice. In the process, Buck was also able to create a game-like environment that was competitive, engaging, and realistic. After all, over half of our at-bats are going to get to two strikes.

On the scouting side, Buck placed a big emphasis on how kids interacted with their families when gauging if they would be a good fit for his ball club. He wanted to see if they treated their parents and siblings with respect or if they blew them off. He wanted to see if they were alert, present, and if their interactions were genuine. If a player couldn’t pass this test, he wasn’t interested in them.

On the field, Buck loved to watch guys off the ball. If there was a ball laced in the right center gap, he wanted to see if the left fielder was moving to the ball, if the pitcher was backing up third base, or if the first baseman was trailing the runner to second base. This helped give Buck a feel for a player’s alertness and understanding of situations. Not every ball is going to be hit your way in a game, but every single ball in play requires the defense to move as a unit. All nine have a role on every single batted ball. What you do when the ball isn’t hit your way reveals a lot about how you play the game.

On a final note, Buck explained the importance of a true heart. “Know who we want to be, how we want to do it, and stay true to it.”

Randy Sullivan and Eugene Bleeker – The Flaws of Intent Based Training

Randy Sullivan of the Florida Baseball Ranch gave a great presentation on his theory about dead arm. He started by explaining the dynamic systems theory and its importance in your training programs. In its most simplest form, dynamic systems theory states that everything affects everything within a system. Your body is constantly adapting and reorganizing based on the current state of the system and its interactions with the task and environment. Looking at just one or two variables would not account for the multitude of variables that can have an impact on the system. We like to look for cause and effect relationships because they’re easier to explain but our body is not this simple to navigate.

In a baseball context, saying a pitcher got hurt because of “bad mechanics” would be a small part of the equation – even if is true. To properly apply the dynamic systems theory, one would need to look at the pitcher’s injury history, training program, movement constraints, previous training history, his workload, recovery, nutrition, hydration, external factors potentially creating stress (i.e. breaking up with your girlfriend), sleep, mindset, field conditions, weather, warm up, and more. Jumping to one of these variables would be missing the bigger picture and would violate the dynamic systems theory – everything affects everything.

To understand movements as complex as throwing patterns, we need to look at the stable components of the system: Attractors. Attractors are created through the cocontractions of agaonist and antagonist muscles around joints to provide stability and optimize length tension relationships required for removing muscle slack. Removing muscle slack helps the system organize into positions where force can be produced and accepted (you can’t pull a sled with a rope attached until the rope is taught). Movement efficiency is not new – it’s how organisms have learned to adapt and evolve for survival. Our body craves to conserve energy by its biological nature. It’s why some of the best players in this game look effortless when they’re in competition. It’s not that they’re not trying – they’ve just found the easiest ways for them to produce and accept force.

This is something I talked about with Eugene Bleeker of 108 Performance. A lot of Bleeker’s training involves kids learning how to find their most optimal power output using the least amount of effort. Instead of trying to create a lot of tension early on in the sequence, Bleeker wants his athletes to create tension at the right moments in time. You have a small window in baseball to produce and accept force. If you can’t elicit the right amount of tension in these small windows of time, a lot of energy is subsequently lost.

To get a feel for the timing of this, Bleeker likes to cue his hitters to pretend to make contact with a 500 pound ball. This helps athletes create feel for bracing the trunk when energy is being transferred from the lower half through the midsection and eventually to the bat. This stable platform for the transfer of energy helps segments of the chain decelerate quickly and efficiently. Some of the best athletes in the world are able to decelerate (i.e. throwing on the brakes) much quicker than their counterparts. Hitters and pitchers must have a strong and well-timed set of brakes to prevent energy leakage throughout the movement. Inability to slow the movement down will prevent your body from reaching its top speed out of protection.   

Coming back to Sullivan, athletes can start to get themselves out of sequence when misguided intent becomes thrown into the equation. When athletes try to create a lot of effort through intent based training, athletes have the tendency to find energy in the wrong places. High intensity throwing places a larger stress on the system. We know added proper amounts of stress is required to create certain adaptations within a system, but we also know that the body is not interested in conservation of energy within situations where there is a one-off emergency. When the efficiency of a pattern breaks down, tissues start to take on stresses that they are not capable of handling. This causes the body to go into self-preservation mode and save your degrading tissues by placing a governor on your ability to produce power. This is where Randy believes the idea of “dead arm” can come from: Your body is responding to the accumulation of burning too many calories through inefficient movements. Our body will not let us burn calories indefinitely without consequence.

Throwing with higher levels of intent has its place within a training program, but it should not be used to the point where it begins to compromise the efficiency of the system. If it doesn’t look natural, don’t waste your time. Our body craves efficiency – don’t work against it using poorly managed intent training.

David Franco and Alan Jaeger – Mastering the Game Between the Ears

David Franco of the Seattle Mariners performance staff spoke at the youth clinic session about developing a practical plan to help kids learn the mental game. He began by explaining the further away you get from your playing career, the tougher it is to remember how hard this game once was. As a coach, it’s easy to get frustrated when our kids aren’t executing the way we think they should be. However, we’re not too far removed from those games where we smoked three balls right at the center fielder and only had an 0-3 to show for it. Take the scoreboard out of it and get kids to become really good at their process. The younger you can do this, the earlier you can build a robust foundation that will impact their careers as the game becomes much harder.  

This process comes down to developing simple, repeatable routines that help kids manage the 15 seconds between pitches. Every single pitch, kids should be able to learn from the last one, get control of their mind and body, create a specific plan for execution, and 100 percent commit to it. This process is used to help get the athlete external and into a state of mind where they are focused on competing with everything they have to win the next pitch. These routines should combine physical actions (stepping out, taking a breath) with mental cues (see ball/hit ball, next pitch) for ultimate effectiveness. Physical routines are of no use if they do not include mental components.

Routines help keep us grounded in competitive environments by giving us things we can do at any time and in any place. Unfortunately, kids don’t always stick to their routines and they can abandon them when they don’t trust in their training. When the results aren’t always there, most kids hit the panic button and lose sight of the process to achieve those results. Alan Jaeger of Jaeger Sports calls these distractions drama – the fans, scoreboard, weather, opponent, coaches, or anything else that you cannot control which is creating a distraction. Having a purposeful process helps eliminate these distractions and keep you focused on the task at hand. Failing to trust in your training or not having a plan/process is a great way to let these distractions get the best of you.

A really important question to ask your kids is what causes them to give away at-bats/pitches? What gets you out of the moment or keeps you from being the best version of yourself? Franco has had experience with minor league players who claimed they threw away a third of their at-bats because they didn’t trust in their process. A third of your at-bats could dictate the kind of season you and your team has. If you can create some awareness for moments that get you out of the present, you can start to recognize these feelings and eliminate moments where we get off track. Everyone knows what it feels like to lose control in these moments, but few have the ability to recognize what goes wrong, why, and how to get back to the present. Of all the skills you can teach kids, this is arguably the most important.

Alan dove deeper into the subject of the mental game by talking about the benefits of meditation for coaches and players. Alan has consulted with major league clubs, players, and some of the best colleges in the nation about the benefits of daily meditation practice. He firmly believes that players need to be able to control their breath, commit to their process, and block out the drama in competitive environments. Being able to meditate and deliberately slow things down is a great way to help block out the drama and connect with yourself on an intimate level.

As athletes and coaches, we’re constantly fighting to connect with our flow state. The flow state is a condition where humans find a balance between skill difficulty and arousal level. When you enter the flow state, you experience this calming sensation where you’re able to execute with precision in the absence of drama. This is what a lot of athletes describe when they’re in the midst of their best performances. There’s no conscious thought guiding them or any kind of distractions pulling them from the task at hand. It’s just them doing what they know how to do best in a relaxed state of mind.

Alan believes that the ability to connect with a flow state is always inside of us. We don’t just access it at certain moments – we always have the ability to find inner peace when everything around us may seem chaotic. This comes from practicing meditation on a consistent basis.

The one thing that Alan emphasizes a lot is you do not need to be a sports psychologist to teach athletes how to meditate. While it does take some practice, anyone can run their team through a guided meditation practice. See his youtube video for a 15 minute guided meditation practice that you can take home to your team. It’s not about creating the best practice possible – it’s doing it on a consistent basis.

On a final note, David Franco left on the quote: “Do everything on purpose with purpose.” Just showing up to practice does not mean you are going to get better. He proceeded to explain a story where Dee Gordon noticed some minor leaguers that were getting blown up on the slider machine. Instead of avoiding the possibility of looking bad, Dee hopped right in there and took the first slider as it missed towards his back foot. When the coach tried to adjust the machine, Dee wouldn’t let him because he knew that was a pitch he needed to work on laying off. In a round of 12 swings, Dee swung at three pitches and took nine. He walked out of the cage confident that he had successfully attacked a weakness he needed to work on.

When the best players in your organization are doing things like Dee Gordon did, you have a chance to build something pretty special.  

Jeremy Sheetinger – Becoming a Transformational Leader

Jeremy Sheetinger shared a moving story about his journey as a coach and in the ABCA explaining who he used to be as a coach, why he had to change, and how he does things differently now as the head coach of Georgia Gwinnett College. As host of the ABCA Calls from the Clubhouse for the past three years, Sheets had the opportunity to interview and talk to some of the best minds in baseball. Through this process, he began to realize how his coaching used to be transactional. He valued wins more than developing men, his record became part of his identity, and his ego blurred him from seeing the bigger picture as a teacher.

Today, Sheets understands that baseball is just a game – a lesson he got from Augie Garrido, the second-most winningest coach in college baseball history. Instead of coaching for himself, Sheets learned the importance of empowering his kids and giving them the courage to make decisions on their own. You are going to become the person who you’re supposed to become. As a coach and a teacher, you have an opportunity to help kids discover who they truly are. You won’t go far if you don’t know who you are.

When you start to figure out your identity, you need to say it, mean it, and show it. Alan Jaeger talked about the importance of authenticity – being who you are and acting within your values. Kids can see right through you when the talk doesn’t match the walk. If you want to start somewhere as a coach, understand who you are as a teacher, model it on a daily basis, and keep it real with your kids. They’ll learn how to do the same.

The next point Sheets brought up reminds me of a moment from last year’s Super Bowl. When Patriots head coach Bill Belichick was asked about what his some of his goals are to finish out his legacy as one of the greatest coaches of all time, he said, “Well, I’d like to have a good practice today.” Everyone wants to be great at the end of the tunnel, but few people realize that you need to be good over a consistent period of time before you achieve greatness. Belichick knew this more than anyone else. Instead of focusing on the end goal, he kept perspective to having a good practice that day. If you can do that day in and day out for a long time, you’ve got a chance to be great. Skipping steps on the ladder won’t get you to the top quicker.  

One of the values that forms the backbone for Sheets’ program is vulnerability. As a coach, Sheets is not afraid for his kids to see him at his worst. He’s transparent about where he’s been and why he thinks the way he does now. He’s able to create this using the exercise hero, hardship, and highlight. Every single member of the team stands front and center and explains someone who’s helped them get to this point, a moment in time they had to overcome, and something they’re proud of. This creates some tough conversations and can bring emotions out of players and coaches, but in the end it makes the group stronger as a whole by creating a mutual understanding. As humans, we’re quick to make judgements about people who we know very little about. Sharing your story helps people understand you on a level where they can respect you and see things from your perspective.

Through his experiences on and off the field, Sheets has come to describe the bond between all coaches using the word fraternity: The state or feeling of friendship and mutual support within a group. We are all in this thing together and we all add value to each other. For us to continue to push this great game forward, we need to be in a constant state of support. As Tim Corbin said best, “Grow your craft – not your title.” The day you think you have this thing figured out is the day you don’t.

Every time you talk in front of your team you’re selling tickets to your funeral. The bigger the crowd, the bigger the impact. 

Final Thought

Last year was my first experience at the ABCA. It was an incredible thing to be a part of, but it was also overwhelming. There were so many people I had never heard of and there was so much to learn that I did not know. Being alone as a 22 year old kid can be a humbling experience among 6,500 other coaches, but there was one interaction that really made me feel at home.

I was able to introduce myself to Alan Jaeger last year at the tail end of one of the hot stoves Saturday evening. It was a brief introduction and not much was said, but it was the way that Alan introduced himself that really made the difference. His words and his actions were genuine. You could tell he really cared about other people and he had this contagious energy that lifted your mood. When I saw how down to earth Alan was and what he meant to the baseball community, I knew I was in the right place.

As a coach, your words and your actions – big or small – have a profound impact on the people you come into contact with. Don’t ever think you’re too big to introduce yourself to someone that might just be getting started. They probably won’t remember what you say, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.

 

See you all in DC next year.