Failure is Part Of The Process
“If you’re hitting .700 every day in BP you’re doing it wrong”@JasonOchart
Make it tough- it’s supposed to be tough! pic.twitter.com/NXwmJ7MxMr
— Bill Miller, CSCS (@billmills) January 6, 2021
For too many years “batting practice” consisted of tee, flips, and some overhand BP. While these things are fine to do I wouldn’t exactly call them “practice”
What should be practice is what will make you successful in the game. Tee, flips, and coach bp can be a small part of the process but a larger segment of the process should be practicing tasks that are more representative to the challenge of the game.
Within that failure becomes a big part of the process. Dealing with that becomes a real challenge.
I get messages all the time during season “Hey Chad, here’s video of my swing. I’m really struggling, can you tell me what you see?”
Being polite, I watch the video. Then I ask “How much are you practicing against speeds and/or pitching that you see in a game?”
“Not much”
Start there, because going do the rabbit hole of “fixing your swing” will not lead to a good place.
Softball Should Be So Much Better
Provide as much low cost/free content as possible.
Too many are taking advantage of families of young players and the game is moving into the elitist category. Make a living? 👍. Charge outrageously inflated prices for a cookie cutter product (camps, gear, etc). 👎 2/6
— Dan Gratz (@DGratz13) January 6, 2021
Buy into movement first.
Forcing athletes to move their body in a way that it simply cannot do is the main ingredient in the recipe for chronic injuries. Injuries ➡️ burnout. We don’t like burnout. 4/6
— Dan Gratz (@DGratz13) January 6, 2021
Stop with the eyewash ‘conditioning’ drills.
Softball is a game of very precise coordination of complex moves leading to pinpoint accuracy. Rapid blocks, speed pitching, rapid swings, etc are not promoting precision. Separate conditioning from skill training. 6/6
— Dan Gratz (@DGratz13) January 6, 2021
There are some great softball minds out there. Dan is one of them. Sadly, an overwhelming amount of coaches are doing a disservice to the girls they are leading.
I’ve mainly bowed out of interacting in the softball world with the exception of my own daughter. It’s just not a hill I wanted to fight on. Cudos to those who are. Hopefully some day I can send my daughter to play for you.
Hitting is Hard and Answers Are Never Simple
Did he ‘pull off the ball’ or was he just at a later point in the swing because he was *10 milliseconds* too early? The fact that milliseconds and millimeters separate a bomb from a weak ground ball is wildly fascinating. 🧠👀 @ShakeyWaits https://t.co/73waBUxoq2
— Rachel Balkovec (@_rachelbalkovec) January 6, 2021
Rachel is poking fun at the guru crowd that seems has all the mechanical answers.
Hitting is complicated. Coordinated movement in a small timeframe that requires precision accuracy in a short amount of time. But yeah “pulling off” I’m sure is the answer. /sarcasm
Both Deven and Rachel are great development minds. They both do a great job of attacking hitting from a first principles view and combine the complexity of the skill to the complexity of training the skill.
I understand you might have bills to pay and doing lessons helps make ends meet for you, but do better. They only people you are hurting is the players, and they deserve better.
Other Things I Liked That You Guys Sent to Me
Eric Jagers Talks Pitching https://t.co/c0lQPqmgAv
— FanGraphs Baseball (@fangraphs) January 7, 2021
Stability and mobility roll together. Injuries present themselves as lack of mobility when it’s often the body searching for stability to compensate or eliminate pain. That search for stability comes at the expense of joints that require mobility.
— Zach Dechant (@ZachDechant) January 6, 2021
Train hard, recover hard.
A bit about my process with @whoop, @TheMarcPro, @jaegersports, @JigsawHealth, @lamobilitycoach and more. https://t.co/cAd3SJF6qz
— Play Ball Kid – Sammy Eisenberg (@PlayBallKidInc) January 6, 2021
💣 Episode #134 w/ @drivelinebases kicks off season 3!
“The dark ages… for 15, maybe 20 years… but it was just an overly obsessive focus on mechanics.”
– Origin of weighted balls
– The hole in pitching development
– Driveline: past, present, futurehttps://t.co/95DM4Uzmnc pic.twitter.com/biH58H6fz1— Gerry DeFilippo (@Challenger_ST) January 6, 2021
