Discover how to get baseball and softball players recognizing pitches and seeing the ball better with the V-Flex Sports hitting system. Check out this training drills 2022 review…
Training pitch tracking baseball and softball developing a sense of the strike zone, to have a pitch detection or recognition system if you will, can be a challenge. You may not know how to teach it, cue it, or drill it.
We discuss the BEST baseball, fast-pitch softball, and slow-pitch softball batting timing drills. Revealed are our favorite youth beginner rhythm hitting drills and swing tips. We’re based out of Fresno, California.
Take a guess at one of the biggest hitting frustrations is, according to my readers? Timing! Probably not a shocker because your hitters probably struggle with this as well. Mine do, especially at the start of the season.
This batting timing drills for hitting a baseball and softball video guide will also have information useful to anybody facing the challenge of fixing a hitter with a late swing, getting a kid to swing earlier or sooner, and when to start front foot swing timing.
I always tell my hitters, the most effective mechanics in the world don’t mean a thing, if a hitter CANNOT get “on-time”. In a survey, my readers asked if I use any batting timing drills with my hitters – that work?
Funny, because…
Last week, I was on a call with one of my online lesson dads from Southern California. He said the difference in his son hitting the ball harder, with more consistency, has been because of how we cue one of the batting timing drills I’m about to share with you.
SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:
Improve your hitting strategy dramatically by applying human movement principles.
Learn not only how and what to train but also the science behind the methods.
Before we get started…
I want you to note that the following two batting timing drills are validated by empirical studies in the science of successful learning. They follow the Principle of Variance (CLICK HERE for a post that explains that).
In this post, I want to share the:
Watch this Carlos Pena video on how a hitter’s reaction time changes with pitch location…
Basically, a “float” is a slight pause before falling forward. Make sure you’re cuing “load slow and early”. This is what helped my SoCal hitter from above. CLICK HERE for this post referencing how Jose Bautista turned his swing around with the same cue.
We want the hitter to pick the stride foot up and shift their weight back. Which means the back knee will have to track over the back toe – and not inside. How far the back knee tracks depends on whether the hitters has a:
The higher the leg kick, the more the back knee tends to track over the ankle. The knee shifts inside the toe during the fall. And this should be a natural move. It’s difficult for hitters to get “on-time” by just picking up the stride foot and falling forward.
And this is what would happen if the hitter focused solely on keeping the back knee inside the toe pre-stride foot lift. Don’t believe me? Check out this rant post I did on this.
If you still don’t believe me, then do an experiment with the drill, and have your hitters note the difference in their quality of contact and control swinging the bat. This also requires a strengthening of the leg abductors and adductors. Here’s the movement prescription to do that…
Side Band Walks (http://gohpl.com/1G1FlS5)
Do once daily. Increase band resistance if necessary. Also, the above video demonstrates a semi-leg kick for the drill, this is necessary. The hitter can use any stride tip with the ‘float’. CLICK HERE for a post on different stride types. When to lift the stride foot to start the “float”, will get fleshed out in the next batting timing drill…
In the past, part of my timing training, was to tell my hitters to lift their stride foot at a specified point in the pitcher’s delivery.
Which is okay.
But now, my batting timing drills put more emphasis on trial-by-fire. Let me put my hitter through an environment where they have to learn to calibrate their own timing. I’m trying to melt them down mentally. And they’re trying to keep me from melting them down.
In a game, the same thing happens. To help hitters transfer grooved cage swings into games, we have to train with “random” versus “massed” practice. It has to do with the process of “Read, Plan, Do”.
In other words, this batting timing drill “takes care of business”, in a natural way.
Please post any other batting timing drills – like these – that are working for your hitters in the “Leave a Reply” section below (or share your testing on the drills I included)…
Discover how to stop dropping the hands in baseball and softball batting. Learn our best fix a looping, late swing, and keep hands up hitting drill in 2023.
Let me ask you a hitting softball drills question:
“Does your hitter (or hitters) swing and miss, foul back, or pop-up on pitches up in the zone abnormally often?”
The hitting softball drills video above may have the fix. One of the pro hitters I work with was told by his team’s hitting coach that he must be able to “catch-up” to pitches elevated in the zone. And I agree. Weak spots, or holes in the hitting zone, can and will be used by pitchers as a weapon. I tell my hitters to turn a pitcher’s weapon against them.
The challenge I find watching slow motion swing video, with some hitters, is there hands drop (towards the waist) at stride landing 2-4 frames from the back armpit line. Less than two frames and I generally don’t fix. The rule of thumb for my hitters is the hands MUST end up – height-wise – around the back armpit. Slightly above, in-line, or below is okay. Think about a boxer delivering a knockout punch. Watch the “line” Mike Tyson creates right before he delivers a knockout punch (uppercuts excluded)…
If a hitter’s hands end up too low, then they’ll consistently swing and miss, foul back, or popup pitches elevated in the strike zone. Learn how to turn a pitcher’s weapon against them with these hitting softball drills.
Click Here for another example of RNT in the stepping in the bucket drill.
If you don’t have them already, then here’s equipment you’ll need for this type of hitting softball drills:
Tribe 11pc Resistance Band Set
– with Door Anchor, Handles, Ankle Straps – Stackable Up To 80lbs – For Resistance Training, Physical Therapy, Home Workouts, or the…
Please try this out and let me know how it works for your hitters in the Comments section below… (Thanks in advance!)
Should parents, coaches, and instructors be teaching the ‘launch angle’ swing to youth baseball and softball players in 2022? You’ll learn simple drill cues to fix bat path issues, bat drag, and what is an optimal launch angle?
Typical baseball swing trainer BEWARE!
I agree with ‘swing down’. Let that sink in for a bit. Some are pissed I just said that. But those who’ve followed me for some time are nodding their head in confirmation because when you know, you know.
Christian Yelich and Barry Bonds swing comparison. Photo courtesy: Jomboy Media YouTube channel
Because guess what? It depends. ‘Swing down’ shouldn’t be used as a baseball swing trainer blanket teach. The above Christian Yelich video says baseball swing trainer Barry Bonds taught him a drill that changed his career…
I have two things for you…
Thank you Grandpa Mike for sharing the baseball swing trainer video. You know who you are. Enjoy!
SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:
Improve your hitting strategy dramatically by applying human movement principles.
Learn not only how and what to train but also the science behind the methods.
———-
In Chapter-2, we’ll look at what an old school swing feels like and the pros and cons. We’ll be discussing:
Now, some of you out there have seen the video of Alex Rodriguez demonstrating how he swung down. Maybe you saw the preseason interview of Mike Trout discussing how he gets on top of the ball.
Or how about Albert Pujols on the MLB Network revealed he swings knob down to the ball?
‘Swing down’. ‘Getting on top of the ball’. ‘Knob to the ball’. ‘Keep barrel above hands’ is another one. Nowadays, these are some of THE most despised baseball swing trainer hitting coaching cues on the market. I was one of them. “Was”. About 2-3 years ago. Now I have a different perspective and approach. These cues DO work. But it depends on the case. And if reading or hearing those words made your blood boil…you can change too, believe me. Here’s how…
First, let’s clear up and define “swinging down”. Well yeah, the hands do go down to the ball. And depending on how high or low the ball is, the hands will go down more or less. This is true. But coaches HATE these cues for a different reason. Here’s the thing… if you watch players like A-Rod, Mike Trout, and Albert Pujols physically demonstrate what swinging down means to them, you see them using a chopping motion. Yes. The barrel and hands travel down to the ball. But not ‘hands drop’. That’s different, and is a swing flaw we MUST fix. In the high level swing, we see the barrel go down before coming up.
Here’s my beef with ‘swinging down’…
When swinging down is translated by the baseball swing trainer into a NEGATIVE attack angle. Meaning the barrel is going down towards the impact point. Is not coming up. And this is what hitting greats like Alex Rodriguez, Mike Trout, and Albert Pujols are demonstrating in interviews. And where the confusion starts. If you watch their actual swing on film, slow motion swing, what you’re going to see is a POSITIVE attack angle. Meaning, barrel elevating up to incoming ball descending down. Yes, even in Fastpitch Softball (more about this in Chapter-7). Barrel coming up to impact, positive. Barrel going down to impact, negative. We clear?
So if what these great hitters are saying and demonstrating isn’t what they’re actually doing, then what’s REALLY going on?
Well, here’s the thing … it’s the mysterious case of real versus feel. What’s really happening on video doesn’t square with what the high level hitter feels they’re doing. Two completely opposite things. Take Mike Trout. Let’s look at his real (9-year career average batted ball numbers before start of 2020 season):
Significantly below average ground-ball rate. Check. Slightly above average fly-ball rate. Check. Slightly above average line drive rate. Check. And well above average home-run to fly-ball ration. Checkmate! This proves his performance – the real – doesn’t jive with his feel of ‘getting on top of the ball’. I want you to go to YouTube, search “Mike Trout slow motion swing”, and watch…
His barrels goes down, then comes up to the ball. Up. Positive barrel attack angle. Not down. Not on top. Not a negative attack angle.
Before the baseball swing trainer gets upset I’m telling Mike Trout, “You know ‘nothin’!” Here’s the beautiful crazy of this whole thing. Coaches, understand this … the body is always one or two steps behind the brain. Thinking happens fast. There’s zero friction with thoughts. Nothing. It just goes, goes, goes, goes, goes. No heavy bones, muscle, organs, and fascia required to move before a thought can fire off!
The secret to unlocking the real v. feel mystery can be revealed through a psychology term called paradoxical intention…
We have to understand what Mike Trout is REALLY saying. Bring context to the numbers. Remember Chapter-1? Trout will say, “I’ll take 10 swings off the tee or during batting practice to feel like I’m getting on top of the ball”. You see, his natural tendency is to uppercut. An extreme uppercut because he uses a significant shoulder tilt to effectively feast on balls down in the zone. And this works well with pitchers targeting down in the zone, and away.
Although, this is different than the slight uppercut Ted Williams talked about in his book The Science Of Hitting
. Williams talked about barrel meeting the plane of the pitch. Trout’s natural tendency runs counter to this. And what he tells himself, remember the body is one or two steps behind the brain, is to do the exact opposite of what his natural tendency is. He tells himself to get on top of the ball. And what’s the result? The barrel ends up somewhere in the middle of extreme uppercut and negative attack angle downswing. That’s what he’s trying to get for his real… to get to the middle.
The true old school baseball swing trainer hitting tragedy…
Some say hitters like Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Pujols, and Trout are – or were – fantastic at doing, but not very good at translating what they did into teaching. Take Barry Bonds. Who was the Florida Marlins hitting coach in 2016. Then they let him go. Former Marlins President David Samson said this,
“Bonds was worst hitting coach of my career.”
So why wasn’t Barry Bonds able to translate the way he hit to his prized pupils like Giancarlo Stanton? Bonds is the career Major League home run leader after all. Some say he can do, but he doesn’t know how he does what he did. I disagree these hitters aren’t good at teaching. Again it’s a translation issue.
Dr. Victor Frankl, Psychologist and survivor of four Nazi death camps, in his book Man’s Search For Meaning
, calls this “paradoxical intention”. Hitters like Trout and Bonds use extreme physical cues to establish a consistent slight upward swing plane. This strategy is a “trick” played on the body, which is a step or two behind. Paradoxical intention. Take any hitter with an extreme uppercut, tell them to chop down (negative Attack Angle “feel” cue), and their barrel path ends up in a slight uppercut. Just like Ted Williams said – like magic! Feel cues are fantastic for making simple swing adjustments.
If you’re coaching youth hitters, let’s get into that world for a moment…
A lot, and I mean A LOT of youth players ages 7 to 12 years old uppercut. Extreme uppercuts. Casting. Loooong swings. They don’t need to be taught this! This is typical, before they’ve built enough strength in their bodies. In their core. In the dynamic nature of the spinal engine. They tend to cast the barrel out. Meaning, the barrel casts away from the body, leaving the back shoulder too early. This causes a long swing. Thanks to gravitational forces, centripetal and centrifugal forces*. As they swing, they end up underneath the ball. On inside pitches, they end up getting jammed a lot. And swing under a lot of pitches up in the zone. A LOT.
(*Centripetal Force is a center “seeking” force. Like twirling a rock on a string. The rock exerts force back to the two fingers holding the string. Centrifugal Force is a center “fleeing” force. Letting go of the twirling rock on a swing, causes the rock to shoot off in a tangent direction away from the original circle.)
There are other factors causing an extreme uppercut, like hands drop or constant deep barrel dumping. But with youth hitters, the rules of Physics are bigger offenders. Here’s the good news … swing an overloaded bat. Overloaded bats help young hitters build strength to do that. Regardless of mechanics. More on that protocol later in the book.
Those are the pros of an old school feel mechanics. Now, let’s look at the cons…
These are what the baseball swing trainer “metrics people” will typically bring up. You’re so out of touch. No numbers to support your gut feelings? What does that mean? How can I trust your “gut”? Because you played or coached 20 years in the Big Leagues? That’s not good enough!! What’s measurable is manageable. If you can’t use numbers to support your gut, then I’m not listening. This is a common conversation you’ve probably seen, heard, or participated in.
The old school coaching cues we just discussed in the pros to old school swing section can also be included in that gut conversation. It’s bad if the old school cues are used as a default. In a one size fits all way. For example, Johnny’s coach sees Pujols demonstrate a chopping down swing on MLB Network’s Diamond Demos. That coach goes to Johnny’s 10 year old team practice on Monday evening, and tells every one of his hitters to swing like Pujols does. Chop, chop, chop. And he tells them with the conviction, vigor, and energy of a Sunday Pastor, that they can hit like Pujols. How can you argue with Senor Alberto? From his lips to coach’s ears out of coaches mouth to kids’ ears. If Albert Pujols said it and it worked for him, then we MUST take the message literally! He is Prince Albert for jimminies sake!
Here’s the problem with that. Remember when I mentioned the translation issue? By feeding the ‘swing down’ or ‘chop down’ mantras as a default hitting strategy to every 10 year old on your team, I’m sorry to say it, but you will lose. Let me illustrate with a thought experiment…
Apply the “one-third rule” to your team. In this example, assume a third of your hitters pop the ball up a majority of the time. Another third of hitters hit line drives a majority of the time. And the remaining third are majority ground-ball hitters. So, what if you tell the whole team to swing down or get on top of the ball? A blanket statement to all. Default old school baseball swing trainer hitting cue. What do you think is going to happen?
Based on what was discussed with Dr. Victor Frankl’s paradoxical intention – remember extreme uppercut, tell them to ‘get on top’, and they end up in the middle? Slight uppercut. Inline with incoming pitch. Here’s what will happen to our team if we tell all to chop down … a third of the team that used to pop the ball up a majority of the time, will hit more line drives. Those middle third hitting line drives a majority of the time, are going to hit more ground-balls. And the ground-ball a majority of the time group, are going to hit even more worm burner ground-balls. So how did the thought experiment turn out with a blanket statement old school hitting cue?
The only group on the team that benefits are the beginning fly ball hitters. The ones hitting fly-balls a majority of the time. Those are the only ones you’ll see a significant difference, for the better. Look ground-balls are great. Especially hard ones when the defense can’t play catch. But what happens when they can play catch? When would your team come across a team that can play catch? That’s right! In all-stars. In playoff and championship games. Not good if you just converted line drive hitters into ground-ball hitters. And ground-ballers into hitting more worm burners. Read our infamous Ground-ball Rant post.
Now, let’s cook up a different scenario. A more simple yet elegant solution. Instead of giving a blanket statement, a blanket swing down, chop down to the whole team. But instead, I let the line drive hitters do their thing. Just keep doing what you’re doing. I took the fly ball hitter and told them to swing down, chop down. And I instructed the ground-ballers to hit the ball in the air. Like pop the ball up instruction. How do you think that baseball swing trainer thought experiment would go?
If I did that…now my pop-fliers AND ground-ballers are both hitting more line drives. Remember Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning
paradoxical intention? Overall, my whole team is hitting more line drives. Now my line drivers aren’t lonely. They have more competition to deal with. Competition makes everyone better. Hungrier. Especially when they’re experiencing success. Does that make sense?
The cons of an old school swing are when we apply a blanket statement shared by one of the best hitters on the planet. Don’t do that. Bad coach. You DO NOT pass go, and you DO NOT collect $200.
One swing fits all cues are a bad. And you wouldn’t know this without data to measure and optimize. Gut feelings and hunches are like throwing darts in the dark. It’s like shooting an arrow and calling whatever you hit – after the fact. It’s guessing. If you aren’t collecting numbers using a PocketRadar
, Rhapsodo
, HitTrax, BlastMotion
, or SwingTracker
, then you’re flying blind. You aren’t going to know. And those hunches will just be hunches.
Same goes for blindly following what a Hall of Famer or future Hall of Famer says or said about hitting. Become a scientist. Test, test, test. Blindly following a leader without question, will make you nothing more than a sheep. Question, question, question. Even question me and EVERYTHING in this book.
So far in Chapter-2, we talked about:
We talked about how what’s real and what’s feel are two totally different things. The scenery can be very confusing. The waters choppy. How does a coach cut through the clutter and calm the waters? The simple truth to make hitting easier – it’s not easy, but we can make it easier – is called paradoxical intention. Doing the exact opposite of what just happened to get the middle. Extreme swing up? Tell them to swing down – hit a chopper. Extreme swing down? Tell them to swing up – hit a pop-fly. There’s more to it of course, and we’ll get into it more later. Let’s move on to…
This DOES NOT cause that, and that DOES NOT cause this. Question: Coincidentally, if I wear a green shirt and it rains, then is it reasonable to think I can make it rain by wearing a green shirt? This is the exact dilemma many instructors find themselves in with what they teach.
Some teach ONLY using data. Some teach ONLY using old school hitting cues. Some claim to base their teachings on millions of hours watching ONLY the best hitters. Some validate Science with their hitting theories (proudly saying their system can’t be found in Science!!). And others validate their hitting philosophy with Science, which is what we do. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Can we use a mix? And if so, how do we know if we’re on the right track?
Are you throwing dynamite in the air and expecting rain?
I want to share a true story from the book Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History
by K
Right before the Great Depression hit the Oklahoma panhandle, rain was plentiful. This caused Doctors and Lawyers to quit their practices and join the ranks of farmers to buy land and plant crops that were being subsidized by the US government. In other words, the gold-in-them-hills was harvesting and selling wheat and other bumper crops of the era.
Millions of acres of 6-foot high beautiful Buffalo blue grass were plowed under to make room for crops. Fast forward to the beginning of the Great Depression, the rain dried up, and so did the crops. Unbeknownst to the “new” farmers who moved to the area, typically rain was sparse in the location, and by coincidence, they had just experienced a rare wet 5-10 year period.
Now there’s NO rain. And you know the 6-foot high beautiful Buffalo blue grass they cut down? Well, it used to hold the soil down despite seasonal 60 to 70 mile-per-hour wind gusts. So NO rain coming. NO crops growing. Super high winds are eroding dry barren soil and tossing it up in the air. Grazing cattle have nothing to eat but tumbleweeds brought over by Russians (people often sprinkled salt to eat them as well). The livestock soon get sick and die. The drought is fatal for the majority who stay, others move west. This is where we get John Steinbeck’s book “Dust Bowl”.
Stick with me, because here comes the lesson…
The farmers who stayed behind were so desperate for rain, they hired self proclaimed rain experts to “create” rain, literally out of thin air. The belief at the time was that an explosion in the air could bring clouds, and with clouds, rain would fall from the sky. In plenty. So what did these self proclaimed rain experts do? What any self proclaimed rain expert would do!! They sold the idea that if they lit a stick of dynamite, timed the throw just right, they could get a perfectly timed explosion that would bring rain-a-plenty.
…And as luck would find it, the “racket” seemed to work a couple times. This only fed the foolishness we all see now – hindsight is 20/20. Yes, this wasn’t a proud time in American history. You have to understand, people back then were DESPERATE. Their hope blinded them to the MANY times throwing dynamite in the air didn’t work. People lost limbs, fingers, etc. from timing the throw wrong. Head scratcher I know.
When it comes to baseball swing trainer, we have to be careful of the causation-correlation relationship. Is studying video and teaching only what the “best” hitters are doing enough? I would argue it is not. How do you know what you’re looking at, if you don’t know what you’re looking for? We see Pujols demonstrating a negative attack angle swing on MLB Network. But then we see him NOT do that in real-time. We bring that same Pujols gold nugget to Johnny’s team, blanket teach it, and the end result looks nothing like what we see Pujols do during competition. This DOES NOT cause that, and that DOES NOT cause this.
I’m going to reveal a secret about why coaches are terrible at the causation-correlation relationship. Like shooting a random arrow and calling whatever is hit. Here’s a quote summing it up from Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America
:
“There are three important things to know about human beings in order to understand why we do the things we do. [1] Humans use pattern recognition to understand their world. [2] Humans are very bad at pattern recognition. [3] And they don’t know it.”
So how do we escape this seemingly inescapable prison of baseball swing trainer misdiagnosis? After reading thus far, you know it. Be less subjective and more objective. KeyDifferences.com says this about subjective versus objective:
“Subjective means something which does not show the clear picture or it is just a person’s outlook or expression of opinion. A subjective statement relies on assumptions, beliefs, opinions and influenced by emotions and personal feelings. An objective statement is based on facts and observations.”
Use the Scientific Method. Develop a hitting Question…make a predictive Hypothesis…do the Research…collect the Data…form a Conclusion. Swing experimentation. We apply human movement principles validated by REAL Science to hitting a ball. Scientific principles pulled from:
How do we figure out if this DOES cause that? Or if that DOES cause this? Not by wearing a green shirt! To know what you’re looking at, you have to know what you’re looking for. DO NOT validate Science through your hitting philosophy. DO validate your hitting philosophy through Science. Set a higher standard for your hitters. It’s okay – watch your millions of hours of video…employ those expensive measuring gadgets…and flaunt those old school hitting cues.
But above ALL of that … understand what the rules to human movements are FIRST. Once you know that, all other domino’s fall where they’re supposed to. In conclusion of Chapter-2, we looked at what an old school swing feels like and the pros and cons. We discussed:
In Chapter-3, we’ll answer the question of what leads to hitting more predictable line drives and less strikeouts. Where we’ll dive into:
Onward…
———-
Where to find the best youth batting gloves for baseball and softball in 2022, Amazon! T-ball batting gloves…gloves made by Nike, Marucci, Franklin, and Under Amour. You’ll find cool batting glove colors like red and smaller sizes like XS.
For those interested in how youth batting gloves are made, then check out this How Products Are Made article.
I often get asked by my parents and players which batting gloves to get. There are many questions that make up a good batting glove, such as:
As of this writing, here are the TOP-10 youth bee-gees on Amazon according to average star ratings, youth sizes, and number of reviews…
(Please note: clicking any images above will connect to Amazon.com. These ARE affiliate links. If you don’t want to click on the links, then that’s okay. Just copy glove titles and paste into Amazon directly)
Aside from this top-10 batting gloves post, here’s a complimentary Hitting Performance Lab post you might like, titled: “Baseball Training Equipment: Where The Best Is And Where To Get It”
Learn how to get more baseball or softball swing power using a lower body stride and weight distribution for the legs in this beginner case study.
…We discuss the #1 way to hitting for consistent power by analyzing one of my younger hitters Braden:
It’s so fun to see young men – like Braden – begin to build in human movement principals like Un-Weighting and notice an instant jolt in force at contact. I ask all my students, if you wanted to live, would you rather get hit by a train going thirty miles-per-hour, or a motorcycle going sixty?
Of course the motorcycle! You see, the motorcycle swing is very handsy, fast like a bike but no weight. The train swing uses heavy mass and the slower rotational speed of the torso to pack a wallop at impact. Forward movement and Un-Weighting are only the beginning…
SCIENCE-BASED TRAINING:
Improve your hitting strategy dramatically by applying human movement principles.
Learn not only how and what to train but also the science behind the methods.
I’m working with Braden on throwing his body mass at the ball. Much like a projectile missile. This helps to make the bat feel lighter to the hitter. And be able to turn harder with less muscle involvement. The swing is a transfer of energy. We’re taking the potential energy contained in the hitter’s body, and getting it moving to transfer into the barrel. Then effectively shift this moving energy into the incoming baseball.
This video I put together demonstrates the power of the Un-Weighting Principal:
Braden is coming along nicely with his footwork – with the exception of making sure his lower half is mostly open at the Fight Position (landing). We’ll be getting him to tap into the natural springy effect of his torso. I call it the Catapult Loading System. How the swing is loaded is a difficult concept for most to understand because their focus is on the wrong things:
If you have any questions on this, then please post them below…
Here’s what Bryan Eisenberg, Walter Beede, and I discuss in the above committing to college baseball interview:
This is also an episode of the Swing Smarter Hitting Training Podcast. One of my favorite committing to college baseball gold nugget quote from Walter…
Walter Beede: “I would say the first lesson that I learned is if we have to push, then we’re probably not going to get the results that we’re hoping.
Mental standpoint, meaning if your son is pulling you, instead of you pushing your son, much more advantageous position to be in, especially for the student athlete. I think it’s about structure routine and accountability. Meaning my oldest son was really scattered, not so much from, as a multi-sport athlete, but just, really didn’t have that defined schedule of, okay, I’m going to lift here, work out here.
I’m going to do this routine here with regards to throwing or hitting or what, whereas my youngest son was driven. A lot of that had to do with him being around the college routine and watching how student athletes conducted themselves in a non-team environment, meaning off to the sidelines, how they will bring up [committing to college baseball], et cetera.
I would say the red line in the sand, between the young man that ultimately gets to the college level and the young man that kind of gives up the game at the high school level, truly is about the passion component. My oldest son loves the game but wasn’t passionate about the game.”
CLICK HERE to download the committing to college baseball interview transcription in PDF format. And if you’re interested in learning more about getting “committed” and want to support Bryan and Walter’s fantastic cause, then CLICK HERE to grab the book on Amazon. And by the way, all the student athlete life hack tips and tricks that Bryan and Walter reveal in the book apply to fastpitch softball as well.
ENJOY!
BREAKING NEWS:
Grab two chapters of our NEW Amazon book FREE...
"Swing Smarter: Science Based Hitting Training Built To Understand How, Why, & Reasoning Behind It"
If you’re searching for “private baseball lessons near me” in central Pennsylvania, then please reach out to Coach Bill Masullo.
In this private baseball lessons near me video, we interview a good friend of mine Coach Bill Masullo out of Pennsylvania. His company is of the Ultimate Edge at GoodSports. In this private baseball lessons near me interview we chat about:
Very interesting sit down with Coach Bill, to give you a little taste, here’s a quote from him about his research this past summer…
“I saw 450 teams play, and of those 6000 players, 50 are phenomenal, and I didn’t see a bad player. I’m being honest, I didn’t see a bad player. But I saw like 5950 guys, that all looked alike… I saw 6000 guys; I didn’t see anybody who could hit a curveball. It’s like, how are we not hitting a curveball?”
CLICK HERE for the full pdf transcript of the above private baseball lessons near me video, or continue on to read below…
ENJOY!
BREAKING NEWS:
Grab two chapters of our NEW Amazon book FREE...
"Swing Smarter: Science Based Hitting Training Built To Understand How, Why, & Reasoning Behind It"
Joey Myers 00:06
Hello, and welcome to the swing smarter monthly newsletter. This is your host Joey Myers from hittingperformancelab.com and I have the honor to have a guest on, who I’ve been on his stuff quite a bit, Mr. Coach Bill Masullo.
Joey Myers 00:20
Welcome to the show first, Bill.
Bill Masullo 00:22
Oh, thank you, Joey. Thank you for having me here. I love it.
Joey Myers 00:27
One of the big reasons why I want Coach Bill on is Bill runs an academy, a decent size Academy, it’s been around for a while, I’m going to have him go into that just give you the little details, in case you’re in his general area over there in the Pennsylvania’s.
Joey Myers 00:42
I wanted to have Bill on because I wanted to go in, and I know I have some Academy owners that follow me. I know there’s some out there may be just starting or wanting to start their own hitting Academy or baseball softball Academy.
Joey Myers 00:54
I think Bill’s private baseball lessons near me knowledge of this, and his school of hard knocks knowledge will be invaluable in this. So first, I want to start off, Bill, I want you to just give me your sales pitch on you guys’ Academy, what you guys do, where you guys are located, and kind of go from there.
Bill Masullo 01:11
Sure, I run a facility. It’s known as Good Sports and we are located in Central Pennsylvania. If you can picture Pennsylvania as a somewhat of a square looking type of state, little rectangular and you stick your finger right in the middle of that, that’s where you would find us and we’re just a little bit north of Penn State University. Most people have heard of that.
Bill Masullo 01:38
I began in a very roundabout way. I’m a little bit of an outsider when it comes to this whole baseball thing. I coached hockey for 25 years-26 years in all honesty. I was too small of a guy to play baseball, so nobody wants a light hitting second baseman.
Bill Masullo 02:05
What I noticed along the way was, I’m very much a contrarian by nature, so I noticed a lot of information that I didn’t think was good information or correct information and then when it was acted upon by the player, the player sort of got a little bit of grief.
Bill Masullo 02:27
I just always sort of thought, hey, I can do that a little bit better with a little bit of a different outcome. We’ve been successful in that regards. Everything we do is either small group, or one on one. I don’t promote travel teams or such. We just train, that is what we do. It’s a little bit different in that regard.
Joey Myers 02:53
I love that. How long has it been since you started following me or any of the other ones that we’ll talk about in this call?
Bill Masullo 03:01
Joey, I’m trying to even figure out how I got there. Well, I’m going to say it’s been at least 10 years. I’m going right back to the very first book that you put out. I think what attracted me to you and I get attracted to these types.
Bill Masullo 03:28
Guys that are out there saying, speaking, what no one else was talking about. You’ve always heard me say, with you, it was always well, let me prove it. Let me go grab some baseballs and let’s set something up formally, and let’s look at it. Let’s see if that’s true or not.
Bill Masullo 03:50
I thought, wow, if a guy is going to get that deep into it, that’s the guy that I want to understand, and you went to movement. I just thought, you know what, that’s a piece of the puzzle that everyone wants to neglect and not knowingly, but it’s just sort of like, Oh, so and that’s it. I know that’s how I got to you. I don’t know when that was.
Joey Myers 04:16
I think that’s interesting and that was when I first did it. When it comes to private baseball lessons near me, I didn’t want to come from a background where I wanted to push my Fresno State background. If you go on my about page I do mention that but I don’t say listen to me because I went to Fresno State, because I know there’s going to be somebody else saying, well, I played for the Blue Jays for 10 years.
Joey Myers 04:38
I trump your four years playing division one college baseball and then for that person, well, I made three All Star game appearances. It’s this shouting match that whoever can shout the loudest whoever got to the top, in that sense, we should be all listening to Bonds and Aaron.
Joey Myers 04:59
Although I do agree with a lot of what they say I think it gets misconstrued, but this idea of going out and prove it. I think what you’re saying is that a lot of the instructors out there, gurus, whatever you want to call them, the guys at the top of the food chain, I guess, and the gals, that it is a dogma, they’ve created a system that is so much of a dogma that they can’t save face and go opposite of what they said.
Joey Myers 05:27
I think early on, when I did the swing experiments, I said, hey, I’m stumbling on this new stuff. Let’s challenge it and let’s do a little swing experiment and say, okay, let’s see what happens if we do this, and then the opposite of this, and then see how the numbers roll out. And I think people who search “private baseball lessons near me” can appreciate that approach.
Joey Myers 05:43
Like you said, I always tell people find out do it on your own. Don’t take my word for it. I don’t want to be the bottleneck. Go do it on your own. Do you guys do different experiments and stuff like that? Do you show those kids like a part of your learning process?
Bill Masullo 05:57
Absolutely. Obviously, sprinkled with a lot of self-deprecating humor.
Joey Myers 06:04
Yeah. That’s what I like about you.
Bill Masullo 06:08
I don’t ever want to take myself seriously. I jokingly tell my kids this all the time, you certainly don’t want to hit the way I hit. Let’s try to get to the information. I want my kids to experiment quite a bit.
Bill Masullo 06:29
I would say probably the biggest fight I have, is just knocking the kids over the head, a little bit gently, but the idea of logging, doing experiments on our own. We’re always trying to that idea of being comfortable with being uncomfortable. I would say I have learned far more from those kids than they have ever learned from me.
Joey Myers 07:01
I love that, and speaking from an academy owners’ point of view, and I know, like you said, you’re not really into the travel ball teams, it’s more of the development side, which I love.
Joey Myers 07:10
I think that is must be a private baseball lessons near me staple in any kind of hitting Academy, it can’t be just about taking the parents money, not saying they all do this, but taking the parents money just to have a travel team to go out and play and things like that there must be a foundation to that.
Joey Myers 07:24
If I’m paying as a parent $200 a month or $300 a month or 400 or whatever. I mean, I’ve heard some crazy amounts, my kids better be getting something other than just exposure, right? There are a lot of travel teams out there.
Joey Myers 07:38
What would be your advice for other hitting academies, it could be a one just getting off the ground or thinking about getting off the ground? Or maybe one that’s been going for maybe a year or two? What’s your biggest advice for marketing to the private baseball lessons near me crowd?
Joey Myers 07:51
Or how about this? What’s your advice on the biggest mistake you see some of these hitting academies making in the beginning, like top two or one biggest mistake?
In the summer, “I saw 450 teams play, and of those 6000 players, 50 are phenomenal, and I didn’t see a bad player. I’m being honest, I didn’t see a bad player. But I saw like 5950 guys, that all looked alike… I saw 6000 guys; I didn’t see anybody could hit a curveball. It’s like, how are we not hitting a curveball?”
Bill Masullo 08:05
At the end of the day, I want to create a relationship with my player. I want them to understand that I’m invested, and with what they want to do, to help them improve.
Bill Masullo 08:23
For me, logging, just everything is a little bit slower. Some days that is, does that mean then that we can just go do a classroom day where we want to discuss a little bit more before we go put it into operation? Yeah, we do that. But I want them to see the breadcrumbs that they’ve laid down as they continue to improve to develop their skill.
Bill Masullo 08:50
For us, I just look and go, we need to understand how to play baseball. What does that mean? To be prepared to do these travel things, that is a huge undertaking. I have done that this summer, I have traveled extensively to watch some high caliber players.
Bill Masullo 09:12
At the end of the day, I am going to say if I saw 450 teams play, and of those 6000 players, 50 are phenomenal, and I didn’t see a bad player. I’m being honest, I didn’t see a bad player. But I saw like 5950 guys, that all looked alike.
Bill Masullo 09:37
I tell my guys every day be uncommon, and I want them to be aggressive, to stay away from passive attitudes. I want them to be aggressive, make mistakes and being earnest, learn from them. That’s why I’m there to help guide them to say hey, it’s okay that we fell here today. Just keep at it.
Joey Myers 09:57
I love that, especially if 2020 has taught us anything, almost the biggest skills that we can instill in our baseball and softball players are two things. They both start with the same letter. I know you love this; you appreciate that is courage and critical thinking.
Joey Myers 10:14
It sounds like that’s what you’re saying courage and critical thinking.
Bill Masullo 10:19
Yes, every day, because one of my weaknesses, I don’t know how to think well, and I’m being honest. I see it but then because I am aware of that weakness, that’s why I seek guys like you out.
Bill Masullo 10:39
Okay, you got to do the lifting, because I’m not smart enough to understand that. But it’s funny when that begins to happen, because then I get like lightbulb moments on a regular basis. Okay, now I get it. Then the movement begins, and something else happens, and it’s right.
Bill Masullo 11:00
Right now, I took for granted that we’re discussing, as we get into the fall here. Again, I saw 6000 guys, I didn’t see anybody could hit a curveball. It’s like, how are we not hitting a curveball?
Bill Masullo 11:21
I took for granted that they did the things that I did. When we’re talking visual, visual data, just actual visual data collections, I find out that they’re into narrow a box, they have no idea of how the balls moving in space and time, the control of the space in front of them.
Bill Masullo 11:46
Now I must step back and that’s what we are doing right now, planning on in the next couple of weeks to undergo that as a major educational component, and that will be your visual planning.
Joey Myers 12:05
We have a very co-friend in Perry Husband, and you talk about seeking people out smarter than you. Talk a little bit about that, a lot of what you’re talking about is in that Perry sphere, right? How are you guys applying that when it comes to private baseball lessons near me?
Bill Masullo 12:22
I want to talk about like visual planning, I will say this and I’m pretty sure I got this from Perry and so Perry is effective velocity HittingIsAGuess.com for those of you, look him up.
Joey Myers 12:34
Dot com
Bill Masullo 12:35
Yep. He has some theories, I believe very valid theories, tested theories. It’s the hallmark of how I instruct, but when I began to use what I would call right now, I use the phrase “right now” his heart, whatever, it’s a pneumonic that Perry uses when stating, do only one thing, understand location, understand shape, understand the velocity of the pitch.
Bill Masullo 13:14
Now what I’m seeing is, when this gets combined with the idea of the visual, what is the shape that I’m looking for, you know, how should that look? What is it actually? Now it’s almost instantly guys are coming back with information.
Bill Masullo 13:32
I’ve had kids that have never given me one good sentence of good feedback. Now they go a little bit wider, and they’re saying, oh, well, I can see where that fastball is coming all the time. Plus, you tip off your curveball. I say tip off my curveball. They said yeah, you lean forward on your curve.
Bill Masullo 13:55
These are kids that are good hitters but have always had that trouble. That’s the thing that I’ve seen, and I deal a lot with 18-17-16, all the way down to 10-year-olds, that’s the bulk of who we’re working and yet they know curveballs come in, and yet, they still can’t hit it.
Bill Masullo 14:16
That’s what I saw a lot of and such, so now when I take those components, there’s visual components with their background that they have and what EV is, suddenly that’s like the brick and mortar.
Bill Masullo 14:31
There are no cracks right now, and I know that there are, I just don’t know what they are yet. Now we go back and now we test again, a la Joey Myers, a la hitting performance lab.
Joey Myers 14:44
That’s super interesting. It seems like every year there’s some sort of you talk about the aha moment and in our system, and it used to be in the mechanic side of things. There’s this aha moment and we start working on it with some new stuff and doing that swing experimentation. The private baseball lessons near me crowd will love this!
Joey Myers 15:00
We finally evolve it to a point where it’s like this is solid. It’s consistent with the success my hitters are getting. This last year, it was almost like it wasn’t the physical, mechanical aha moment, we call them hitting strategies.
Joey Myers 15:16
We have six of them, and what it is, is I teach my hitters that there’s three dimensions to hitting, there’s the vertical component, so the pitch can go up or down in the zone, there’s the horizontal component, which is the depth of the pitch, right inside, middle, and away.
Joey Myers 15:31
There’s the Perry Husband EV dimension, which is the timing or the speed of the pitcher, the shape like you’re talking about, and people out there don’t know what the shape, what Bill’s talking about is the shape of the pitch, the shape the pitch is taking, or we could argue the shape that it’s coming out of the hand, or where the arm slot is, and all that kind of stuff.
Joey Myers 15:51
There’s two out of I think we have about six, I just added a two-strike approach. It has nothing to do with physical adjustments, like we’re not choking up, we’re not going wide with our feet. The whole other things that coaches teach and I’ve taught to, but I don’t really do that.
Joey Myers 16:08
We always say that if you’re going to use a two-strike swing, if you’re going to make those physical adjustments that you must practice out in the cage, you can’t just practice your normal swing, and then in the game, oh two strike adjustment and then go straight to that because you’re not practicing it.
Joey Myers 16:20
The top two that we use that do strike is what we just added recently. But the first one is adjusting verticals, we call them verticals, not launch angles, because you know, coaches love that word launch angle, some of them, say, adjusting to like what Perry says hit it back, we call it hitting back through the two, but he says hitting it back through that little donut that he has that marker at 10 to 15 degrees.
Joey Myers 16:44
You’re making your adjustments above and below. If he had a ground ball, trying to hit a fly ball next time, if he had a fly ball trying to hit a ground ball next time, trying to get it to go right back through, right, so that’s number one.
Joey Myers 16:54
Number two is our middle away, middle up, or middle away, middle in, middle down approach where we’re adjusting our barrel path to middle away, middle down, which is very similar, but it’s different than middle and middle up.
Joey Myers 17:08
Those two alone, I tell my hitters, I said, I was a .250 career hitter in college. Those two alone have nothing to do with mechanics. But those two alone, those two hitting strategies, I would have hit 100 points higher, for sure, in my career, I would hit .350 at Fresno State. This helps to win over the private baseball lessons near me crowd.
Joey Myers 17:26
You’re talking about these hitting strategies? What are some things you guys do to practice that?
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Bill Masullo 17:32
Number one, I look at younger kids a little bit different than I look at my 12-year-olds a little bit older, so there’s a different way that we would approach them. First thing I want them to do is just be able to hit it hard and hit it far.
Bill Masullo 17:52
I really don’t get locked into a whole lot of mechanical work. There’s always time towards that. The very first thing that we’ll do is we’ll set targets so that we can get feedback. It’s the one thing in baseball that I think is lacking, is the understanding of how I obtain feedback.
Bill Masullo 18:24
Every kid that has a bucket, coach has a bucket everywhere and the coach goes crazy at some point when everybody’s shooting basketball. One day I was watching that, and it sort of struck me as like, and yet here they are playing this random game, with their buddy as they’re trying to put balls back in the bucket, it was like, that’s the feedback that I want you to understand.
Bill Masullo 18:50
Now we have very distinct targets. So that if I were to ask them, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to hit? If you’re going to hit that target with the ball off the barrel of your bat? What does it look like?
Bill Masullo 19:05
Again, this goes back to Perry and I would say the use of imagination. Understanding what type of swing gives you that, it’s amazing what the brain will do, and it just brings them to that.
Bill Masullo 19:17
We’re always getting feedback based on what their intended goal was. When it’s used over and over, it’s easy to see when they’re using their pneumonic, when they’re using hit hard or right now, and when they’re not.
Bill Masullo 19:39
To me, the fallacy is the foul ball that’s straight back, and everybody says, oh, you’re right on it, and that is the furthest thing from the truth, and we’ll measure that out for that ball to go directly back.
Bill Masullo 19:54
That means I’m like probably on my back hip and maybe a little underneath it. I’m thinking that my hands were on hands show. I’m like, a foot 18 inches out in front of me.
Bill Masullo 20:08
Well, when I do that, and I show them that, and I just marked that with baseball, it’s anywhere from 33 to 36 inches off. That is a bundle of distance in speed. They’re not close.
Bill Masullo 20:23
What I need for them to understand is some of the stuff they’ve heard all along isn’t true. For baseball players, they want to make small incremental adjustments.
Bill Masullo 20:35
I always tell them when I was telling the story, when I was younger, my dad would come home from work, and I would beat him home 10 minutes from school, and I always had my eight-track cassette player on, so I don’t want to date myself.
Joey Myers 20:53
I had one, too.
Bill Masullo 20:55
I have it at eight, my dad would come back to the bedroom. He’d say, hey, can you turn that down? I take it to seven, and he’d come back about 10 minutes later and turn it down before and say I thought I asked you to turn that down?
Bill Masullo 21:08
I said, well, I did well, not enough. That’s what I think. Getting the kids to understand how big are the adjustments? We talked about this, you and I and Perry we talked about this, like when that barrel enters to when that barrel exits, it’s typically six miles an hour of velocity, that the barrel stays in the strike zone, and before it enters and out.
Bill Masullo 21:32
If that pitcher can beat that, plus or minus faster or slower from pitch to pitch 5-6-7 mile an hour, we’re going to struggle all day long at the plate. That’s what I think overall, that’s number one, especially with my older guys that I try to get them to understand.
Bill Masullo 21:50
Then and only then, because when I become efficient, if I change one thing, I change everything. Now the efficiency starts to work for me. That’s probably number one for us, it’s just getting on time.
Bill Masullo 21:55
What I would tell a beginning instructor or only a year in, get your kids a quick win. The biggest way I can tell you is off the fingertips, right? As they’re hitting it now, hit hard, hit now, whatever two positive strong words that they are to a target.
Joey Myers 22:33
When you say right now, for those that don’t know Perry stuff, what Bill saying is, like you said out of their fingertips, the hitter set starts to swing right and then now is that contact.
Joey Myers 22:44
They’re visual, or they’re mouthing, saying that word right now. They’ll set a measurement of that third dimension of the pitch.
Bill Masullo 22:56
Yes, and I want my guys to dance a lot. They joke about it, we laugh about it, yet at the end of the day, there’s rhythm, there’s tempo that occurs, and it’s part of what I want them to take in.
Bill Masullo 23:12
I think maybe currently, I think that’s been lost to a degree, not because it was intended, or it’s stupid idea or whatever. It’s just that I think the lack of free play is no longer there, where kids would get together for five-six hours every day, with no adults around and then being allowed to experiment and to try different things.
Bill Masullo 23:40
None of that happens, or at least it doesn’t happen to the degree it used to for a lot of societal reasons. I think, a little bit of what happens, everything’s organized and a lot of instruction is just maybe ill-advised words.
Joey Myers 23:59
Mechanized, internal, too machine-like. This can sometimes turn off the private baseball lessons near me searching crowd.
Bill Masullo 24:05
When the concept of hitting a curve, I’ll go back to that concept of hitting a curve is look for the rotation. Well, I think, though, all those answers were Oh, you know, I sort of noticed that, oh, yeah, let’s look for rotation.
Bill Masullo 24:24
Now we’re so focused in tight on trying to see what the ball is, we have no context of where the ball is in space and time. A whole bunch of things go on there but that’s just an idea of it for me.
Joey Myers 24:38
You said that’s one of the cues that I remember getting thrown around for the curveball, hitting it and then the other thing was staying inside it and keep your hands inside the curveball and there were just things that once it dawned on me that there is a different barrel path middle in versus middle away.
Joey Myers 24:44
It dawned on me that staying inside it wasn’t very effective at the curveball that was coming say righty- righty that was coming out of the hitter and then breaking into the middle of the plate.
Joey Myers 25:03
Like if you stood in set that stayed inside that thing, if you hit it, it’s not going to be hit very hard. If you watch the trout and the guys that just smash these things, you’ll see that barrel instead of dumping in the zone early, you’ll see it carry high a little bit longer and we’ll dump in later.
Joey Myers 25:19
What they’re doing and Bonds was probably one of the best at this, many out there. Remember watching Bonds hitting bombs into the bay, at fastballs that were up almost seemed like it was going to hit his elbow guard, or his arm guard, big old giant, bionic thing he had on, and he was able to get to it at 95 up and in.
Joey Myers 25:38
Same thing with the curveballs, lefty curveballs coming at him, and he just spun right on him. It’s not so much the rotation of Bonds’ body as more of where his barrel path was to that curveball.
Joey Myers 25:50
Like you said, that’s one of our strategies too, that’s the third strategy we have, we have the adjusting verticals, adjusting horizontals, and then curveballs. We hunt specific curveballs and zones and like you said, the younger the player, a little different approach.
Joey Myers 26:04
You don’t want to get too detailed, and those pitchers aren’t as good with their command and things like that. But when they get into 12-year-old, that sixth grade year, those pitchers start getting pretty good. They have a pretty good handle of that 46-foot distance there, or 50 feet, whatever pony leaves and stuff like that.
Joey Myers 26:21
They start to get a little bit more command until that mound backs up a little bit, then you see like about a year or two where they struggle, but that curveball approach, I completely agree with you, because what’s funny is I have one of my hitters right now who it’s going to be so unfair because he’s got one more year at Little League.
Joey Myers 26:37
He’s somewhat of a big kid. He’s a taller kid, but he’s come a long way in a year, he’s worked his butt off. Now we got his mechanics, took about six to eight months during this 2020 year, got his mechanics to a good spot to where everything’s effective.
Joey Myers 26:55
We’re still working on stuff from time to time, but we really got to focus on the strategies.
Joey Myers 27:00
Ideally, in Little League what happens is pitchers will try and get you out with the fastball, and they might move in and out. Most of the time, it’s away and down and stuff like that. But the faster pitchers will come in, and if you can’t hit it, they keep throwing it.
Joey Myers 27:12
This hitter smashes it, and because we’ve equipped them with the curveball approach, the next logical step for these pitchers is to go curveball, right? Because they’re used to, like you said, 6000 players, 400-500 teams, you’re watching, and you’re seeing a struggle with the curveball, because all they got to do is throw it, it doesn’t matter where the curveball is at in the league.
Joey Myers 27:33
It’s effective because hitters that have never seen it before or they don’t have a good approach like you’re talking about, they swing and miss, swing, and miss.
Joey Myers 27:39
Well, what happens when that pitcher sees a hitter who has a curveball approach? Then you start smashing the curveball. It’s like, the coaches, the players, they don’t know what to do.
Bill Masullo 27:50
Yeah, it’s called intentional.
Joey Myers 27:56
They start throwing around the zone hoping he’s going to go outside the zone.
Bill Masullo 28:00
Yes, absolutely. That’s what I think that’s the aspect that’s been lost a little bit with the lack of free play. To reintroduce some of these concepts, and am I the guy for that? Not to demonstrate it.
Joey Myers 28:21
Unless you’re hitting a hockey puck.
Bill Masullo 28:22
Yes, that’s right.
Bill Masullo 28:26
Even then, I’m not the guy to demonstrate. But that’s just as important too, Joey, is that it’s modeled correctly. I just remember playing as a kid and you took your favorite team, and you knew how every kid on that team hit.
Bill Masullo 28:47
You hit left hand and you hit right hand and you look like Willie Stargell on this one and it was Roberto on that one, and Dave Cash on this one, and yet, it’s almost Oh, the Ripken boy.
Bill Masullo 29:04
I’m thinking Cal, thinking Edgar Martinez, they might have had 15 or 20 different stances in a year and yet, we’re telling guys, you know, oh, you can’t ever change. And it’s like, yeah, you need to change so there’s an evolving that has to happen.
Bill Masullo 29:27
When you begin to, and when you begin to know what the pitcher is going to do before he does, and it’s still not easy to hit, but boy, it becomes a little easier. That’s when you have guys that people are looking at going wow, that guy knows what he’s doing.
Joey Myers 29:45
We say hitting isn’t easy, but we can make it easier.
Bill Masullo 29:49
Yes, that’s true.
Joey Myers 29:52
Before I let you go here because I’m respectful of your time. You say the free play and it’s funny you say that because we went a little independent with my son’s baseball team this year, we went away from the league because I felt they didn’t handle the whole 2020 thing very well.
Joey Myers 30:07
I took our team, we had about eight or nine that decided to stay with us. We added about four or five, so we had about 14-15 hitters.
Joey Myers 30:16
What we did when the season was done, and we got a few games, we played ourselves more than we played a little bit more sandlot than anything. But I told the parents it’s probably what was going to happen, just because you had teams still in leagues, and it was going to be hard to put games together and all that kind of stuff.
Joey Myers 30:30
To tell the truth, we weren’t ready for tournament play. We had some guys that are, they were rough around the edges, but what we elected to do is even when the season was done, we just ramped down how many practices we had during the week, we went from three, down to two and then down to one during the summer.
Joey Myers 30:45
What I did during the summer, was we switched our practices to the morning, so it was cooler because it gets super-hot here.
Joey Myers 30:51
What we did was we did some street wiffleball we just introduced, and we played games like we had, the other team would be fielding and we’d have to throw to the base like normal baseball, so we get to learn some rules there that we couldn’t accomplish in a smaller area, right, because we’re just playing between two gutters.
Joey Myers 31:08
On the other side, and then we got the plate on the sidewalk, and then we got our little painted bases out, orange bases out and stuff. We did some two-strike innings, we would do a normal inning where they had their 0-0.
Joey Myers 31:08
We had an 0-2 inning where they had to swing because I think they were getting a little bit too passive. We did two strike and then at the end, the last that we were supposed to have on this week, but I cancelled it because our school start next week.
Joey Myers 31:37
We started to Home Run Derby the last probably three or four weeks. We just had them out. We carved them into two teams, we set up our thing, just things that you and I did as kids growing up just in the streets playing ball, that free play. A great play for those private baseball lessons near me folks.
Bill Masullo 31:51
It’s so important because they’re good. For me, they’re getting so much feedback that’s not coming from an authoritative figurehead or however they’re perceiving it.
Bill Masullo 32:09
Joey, I’ll throw this out there as well. Typically, most of the issues that I really see with my kids, and the not through and through, but I’d say overwhelming majority come from kids who are trying to perform for their parents, they come from kids who they are trying their love for them into their success at the plate.
Joey Myers 32:40
That breaks my heart.
Bill Masullo 32:46
Sometimes that becomes a process where we’re just a lot of times, I’ll have to rip kids all the way back down the ground, we’ll go backwards before we go forward. Once we go forward, and they’ve got a good feeling and a good understanding, and they’re playing the game, because it’s their game in my game. They’re far better off for it.
Joey Myers 33:07
I love that. That’s great private baseball lessons near me advice. That’s great for coaches, instructors, Academy owners to look out for, and especially Academy owners, because they have so many kids in their system. That’s the thing, right?
Joey Myers 33:17
Coaches generally have a team or two that they’re coaching. They’re depending on what level they’re at. It could be 15 kids, could be 30 kids, right? But you got the academy owners that can have hundreds of kids.
Joey Myers 33:28
They’re in a position where they can affect a lot of kids and parents searching “private baseball lessons near me”, it’s good for them to know that. Thank you for sharing that. All right, Bill, where can people find you? If they want to get more information? Where can they find you?
Bill Masullo 33:41
Oh, I would just say go over to the Facebook. If you have it, if you believe in it. It’s TUE good sports. I don’t know anything about the websites or anything like that. I don’t do that. But if you get over there to it stands for the ultimate edge, it’s TUE good sports.
Bill Masullo 34:00
There’s also better ballplayer. That’s where we typically do some of our virtual stuff.
Joey Myers 34:10
Any kind of private baseball lessons near me new things on the horizon for you that you’re putting together any kind of virtual summits?
Bill Masullo 34:16
I have one coming up here at the end of August, and it’s on crushing the curve. So that’s a good topic on the top of my head there.
Bill Masullo 34:28
That is foremost on what we’re doing. We’re prepping for the fall here as we get into it. That’s the biggest item on the list.
Joey Myers 34:40
Very cool. All right, Bill. Well, thanks for your time here today for all the private baseball lessons near me crowd, and we’ll have to do a take two at some point.
Bill Masullo 34:46
Absolutely. Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. Hope I didn’t put too many people to sleep. God bless you. Thank you.
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In this baseball hitting lessons near me interview with Ray Camacho from Fat On Fat Academy, we go over… (about 34-minutes reading time – PRO TIP: use “gear” on YouTube video settings to “speed watch” to 2X, so you can watch in half the time!!)
Click short link for transcribed baseball hitting lessons near me interview in pdf format: http://gohpl.com/rayctranscription
Here’s the full transcription of the interview…ENJOY!
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Joey Myers 00:06
Hello, and welcome to the Swing Smarter Monthly Newsletter. This is your host, Joey Myers and on the call here with me, I’m honored to have Mr. Ray Camacho. He is of a nonprofit called Fat on Fat, or fat off the bat on fat on the ball. And we had a nice, interesting baseball hitting lessons near me conversation recently and there’s some cool little nuggets here.
Joey Myers 00:29
First, I want to welcome you to the show, Ray.
Ray Camacho 00:32
Thanks for having me.
Joey Myers 00:35
We’re going to dig into some stuff, I think the 30 minutes goes quick. I’m sure there’s going to be plenty, plenty to talk about in future stuff. But first question I want to ask you, tell me a little bit about your baseball hitting lessons near me nonprofit, where you guys are and what it’s about.
Ray Camacho 00:51
I started off a Fat-on-Fat Baseball Academy. But then recently, I started doing softball, so I changed the name to Fat-on-Fat Academy. The name came about when I was growing up, my dad was trying to think of something nice and easy for me to remember and something that rhymed.
Ray Camacho 01:07
He was like, son, fat of the bat, fat of the ball. That concept is something I grew up chasing my whole life, because I was just trying to square the ball up with fat on fat and is just a catchy phrase that everybody would use.
Ray Camacho 01:21
My dad would just be quiet and simple with it, fat on fat, son, watch the ball fat on fat. I had that concept, and as I grew up, I thought it was kind of cheesy, honestly a little bit. I felt embarrassed a little bit to talk about it to some of the guys, and then I started coaching and they started really liking it, like the young guys started liking it and said, What’s fat on fat coach? They wanted more stuff.
Ray Camacho 01:44
I ended up needing an outlet for myself because I was coaching a baseball hitting lessons near me organization. I was working at another organization; I was doing things for everybody else. I needed my own passion in my own lane.
Ray Camacho 01:57
What ended up happening was, I created my own college team, and I needed a name. My dad was like, you got to go fat on fat. I was like, Dad, these college guys are going to laugh me, everybody’s going to talk mess, they’re going to clown me.
Ray Camacho 02:12
I still felt like I was a college guy as well as trying to coach and I just didn’t believe in it. I shared it with a partner. I shared it with a couple of people my idea. They kind of was like, dude, that’s awesome. I love that name. I shared it with the Commissioner of the CCBL League that was playing in the summer. He was like, that is the best name ever.
Ray Camacho 02:35
He coached me when I was in high school, in college. He was like, I love it. You need to go with the name. When I got that feedback, as cheesy as it may feel for me, because it’s something my dad gave me, and sometimes he says, Son, you think your dad’s cheesy or corny, but everybody loved my dad, everybody thought my dad was funny, but of course, as a son you think he’s lame.
Ray Camacho 02:58
I’m going to run with it. I wanted to turn a negative into a positive because fat is a negative word. We think it’s a negative word, I feel like I have enough energy to turn it into a positive word. I’m from San Antonio, Texas, my company is based out of San Antonio, Texas.
Ray Camacho 03:17
I’ve lived in San Antonio, Texas my whole life. I love San Antonio, everything I do is for the city. Everything I do is for the kids in the city. We have an obesity problem here, and so when I started doing fat on fat, I was 50 pounds heavier at the time. I had a lot of backlash, a lot of people talking, Oh, your company’s fat on fat, because you’re fat, bro.
Ray Camacho 03:40
I was going through a lot of personal things. They said some uglier stuff too. I always tell these guys, my biggest teaching to the kids is, if you’re going to be good, you’re going to have to be ready to accept what comes with being good. Because there’s going to be snakes in the grass, there’s going to be your own teammates trying to go against you, there’s going to be a whole bunch of negativity that being the dude in titles.
Ray Camacho 04:03
If you’re not ready to accept that, then you can’t be the dude because you’ll fall short, as a lot of mental stuff. I just really wanted to be a forefront in this for fitness, for obesity in San Antonio, I wanted to bring awareness.
Ray Camacho 04:20
Five years ago, when I started it, I really didn’t have a lane. I didn’t know what I was going to do until I really started doing my first video of showing my training.
Ray Camacho 04:29
Five years ago, I was nothing compared to who I am now. I look at those old videos and I look at myself like you’re a chump. How can you let that kid get away with that movement? How can you let him do that? It makes me angry in the sense at myself that I couldn’t figure out my philosophy and my lane faster because I could have helped so many more kids.
Ray Camacho 04:51
That passion drives me today to not let anybody have bad movements when they come into the RPO which stands for Real Players Only. I have fat on fat baseball hitting lessons near me Academy and it stands for real players only.
Ray Camacho 05:03
Real players know who real players are. Real recognizes real. You can’t fake being real. Because once you step on that line, between those lines, you know who you are. I just love everything that baseball and softball brings to the table. I always talk about it. I’m going to do this till the day I die.
Joey Myers 05:21
I love it. That’s what really came out and struck me in our initial baseball hitting lessons near me conversation was the fact that you’re training baseball and softball players. But it’s not to be baseball and softball players, it’s to be better in life, right?
Joey Myers 05:34
You’re teaching life through baseball and softball, and that’s what I really love. The other thing is, and we can get into that a little bit, but I really wanted to jump into the baseball hitting lessons near me training side of things. Strength conditioning, and I asked you a question. I said, who are your top two follows for strength conditioning? Who do you say, who was your first one?
Ray Camacho 05:53
Paul Chek.
Joey Myers 05:54
Those out there, Paul Chek is no joke, go out and check out the Chek Institute. What brought you to Paul Chek? How do you feel Paul Chek has helped your hitters, the baseball hitting lessons near me information that has helped your hitters?
Ray Camacho 06:09
I got introduced to Paul Chek. Just going down a worm hole of different trainers and instructors, I’m sure you went down the same path because we’re men and we’re baseball players.
Ray Camacho 06:21
Everybody’s trying to be the biggest, fastest, strongest, and it’s all about information. Well, how much information can you input in your head? How much can you process and how much can you actually apply?
Ray Camacho 06:30
I feel Paul Chek has indirectly mentoring me every day, I listen to his podcast, it feels like he’s speaking directly towards me. I got introduced to Elliott Hulse, a long time ago, and his stronger version of himself.
Ray Camacho 06:46
I’ve really followed his transformation. We all have our transformation as men. I was into the bodybuilding scene and all that stuff, try to be the biggest, strongest dude. That was a toxic mentality for a baseball player, because I ended up messing my body up senior year, I may say mess up, but I had the best year of my senior year ever, and I set records and stuff like that, but I’m saying, I always wanted to be the best.
Ray Camacho 07:12
I’m always going to critique myself if I mess up. I will always put myself down if I do mess up because I’m just honest. I messed up a lot of my mobility aspects by just bodybuilding and doing a lot of hypertrophy training, and not focusing on strength and speed.
Ray Camacho 07:28
I got two tenths of a second slower on my 60 time. I was running a six-eight and so I run a seven-one because I wanted to drop bombs. I didn’t realize I didn’t have a mentor. I didn’t have anyone in my ear saying, you got to stay fast. If you lose your speed, you are nothing.
Ray Camacho 07:44
They have big six foot three guys that mash. You’re not that guy. You must be a fast infielder like you’ve always been, and I lost sight of that. I lost my chance to get drafted when it came down to it because of the speed and I never got officially said that. But I know deep down in my heart that’s what it was, you know, because nothing else held me back.
Ray Camacho 08:02
I’m still a dude, I’m 36 I still can play, still hit bombs, hit a bomb Sunday, and that was the first time I ever did that. I can tell you the training works because I’m doing everything I teach and preach myself at 36. If my mobility helps me, it’s going to help a 10-year-old.
Ray Camacho 08:19
If my strength conditioning helps me it’s going to help a 13–14-year-old. I try to empower these guys to really do that. Elliott Hulse came from a strongman competition. He was big and swoll.
Ray Camacho 08:33
I used to love listening to his rants because he always spoke intelligent. I always wanted to be a meathead, but an intelligent meathead. A best of both worlds. I can go in and out of bodybuilding, powerlifting, I can go talk to a physics major, a teacher.
Ray Camacho 08:50
I can talk to anybody, I can walk in any circle, because I love that I have the social awareness to be to be flowing in those circles and talk to anybody because if anybody can teach me anything, like you’re worth something to me, because I love knowledge and wisdom.
Ray Camacho 09:05
It’s one of the biggest things that Paul Chek put me on in his book. It was maybe like six months ago, I wrote down my goal was to have knowledge and wisdom and to be able to apply it to my sport, and just keep learning every day and growing.
Ray Camacho 09:20
Honestly, that’s what’s really happening every day because I tell parents my baseball hitting lessons near me training may switch up from next week to the next week, because my training like we talked about, it’s ever evolving.
Ray Camacho 09:30
It’s ever evolving with me because one kid teaches me how to do something for another kid. It’s all the same mechanics, if he has bad ankles, this guy has bad ankles. If I see it, we’re going to do ankle mobility stuff.
Ray Camacho 09:42
If he can’t go up on his tippy toes because his feet are weak, we’re going to work on feet for 20-30 minutes because that matters. Not getting in the cage, not warming up and just swinging, we must change the culture.
Ray Camacho 09:54
These kids just want to get in there and move and their bodies not primed up and not ready to rock and roll. They don’t understand the mechanics of a movement. I get kids as young as four and as old as 22. I’m teaching them all the same things.
Ray Camacho 10:07
I talk to them all the same way. I know those little kids, they’re going to be dudes when they grow up, and the girls are going to be studs, because the girls, they listen the best obviously.
Joey Myers 10:16
They do.
Ray Camacho 10:18
That’s been awesome with me. I never thought in a million years, I’d be doing softball, they’ve really accepted me, and local coaches have liked what I’ve done with hitters and I’ve had kids that shouldn’t hit home runs that are hitting home runs.
Ray Camacho 10:34
I don’t take any baseball hitting lessons near me credit for it because it’s hard work and they are doing all the work. I’m just showing them the way. The biggest thing is I want to give direction because if kids and parents don’t know direction, they don’t know where to go.
Ray Camacho 10:46
They think anything they do is good. No, the right stuff is good. The right way is good, the most functional, the strongest way to be a healthy individual is the right way.
Ray Camacho 10:57
Elliott Hulse is the one responsible for putting me on Paul Chek. Listen to Elliott Hulse in his podcast, I started finding my direction because Elliott Hulse is big into masculinity and building men up and keeping men strong.
Ray Camacho 11:12
I’ve been blessed with a facility like this, because a man took a chance on me and he believed in me, and he said, I wanted to give you the opportunity to pay it forward. I’ve been very blessed to have a gym and two cages and my own little place to call home in the RPO.
Ray Camacho 11:31
Now that I’m kind of getting a little baseball hitting lessons near me momentum and things are going well, now I’m giving back because everything I do is going back to the kids. I have a lane now. I keep creating new logos and new things. I have fat on fat and fit on fit.
Ray Camacho 11:45
Actually, two days ago, I’m working on another logo flat on flat, because I have flat feet. I have probably like 20-30 kids that have flat feet. The first time I heard I had flat feet, the doctor was like, he’s going to have hard time with the ankle, he started saying all these negative things.
Ray Camacho 12:01
I had two or three ways to think about it. I was like, you know what, I don’t feel anything he’s saying. My ankles hurt a little bit, but I warm them up, I’m good to go. All those exercises he prescribed, I did them every day. I did them every day because I’ve always wanted to be the best at everything.
Ray Camacho 12:17
I was a football player at the time, I was the quarterback, I knew my feet needed to eat. I just worked out hard to grow my legs and my whole life I’ve had huge legs.
Ray Camacho 12:27
People have always talked about my legs, and I’ve always had my pants tighten up, always been a leadoff batter, I’ve always showed that physical strength that people can just see looking at my legs, and could tell that he might be good, he might be able to run a little bit.
Ray Camacho 12:42
I’ve taken pride with that, but that was instilled by my dad instilling those morals and those ethics. He really put a lot of good groundwork in myself, it’s kind of hard to go against some of those things sometimes.
Ray Camacho 12:55
It’s one of the reasons why I have a big heart. I just love hearing people’s stories; I’ve always been a good listener. When I hear an intelligent man speak, you shut up. That was like the number one rule my dad always said, you’re going to hang out with adults, you’re going to hang around grown men, shut up until they ask and talk to you if you’re a little boy.
Ray Camacho 13:15
Or if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you just listen. Listening taught me a lot of things. It’s right there in front of you if you listen in and aware of stuff.
Joey Myers 13:23
I love that man. I learn more about you the more we talk and that listening part as an advice, you have to know when you’re a teacher, you got to know when your student, and sometimes you got two teachers talking to each other. But sometimes even in that conversation, one teacher might know more than the other teacher.
Joey Myers 13:43
The teacher that doesn’t have quite the knowledge needs to, like you said shut up and listen, and not try and fight the other guy when they don’t have all the baseball hitting lessons near me information. It’s this kind of liquid relationship that happens between student and pupil, or pupil and teacher.
Joey Myers 14:01
I got on your Facebook page, there’s a cool quote, I’m thinking retweet. We’re not on Twitter. Here’s the quote, “It’s extremely tough as a parent to watch our kids struggle fail and be rejected. But if we don’t let them experience it, while they’re young, they’ll have no idea how to handle it when life shows up later down the road. Our job is to love them and teach them how to work through it.” Talk about that a little bit.
Ray Camacho 14:35
I told you this a little bit about last time what I do in the sessions, it’s because a lot of times, parents are hovering over and watching you move and work and talk. They’re watching everything and I’m very analytical myself, I may not see it.
Ray Camacho 14:49
I wear sunglasses all the time because I don’t want people to know where my eyes are going. It’s a coaching thing as well, but I understand the physical appearance, as you’re a coach and you’re sitting there like this, you look like you’re doing something.
Ray Camacho 15:03
If you’re staring at a kid, and he knows he’s messing up, he’s going to feel that energy. I’ve always done that. When I first started out, I was nervous about what people thought about what I was saying, I’m like, they think I’m messing their kid up.
Ray Camacho 15:16
Or maybe they’re not emotionally woke like me, or maybe they don’t understand some of the things. I got nervous speaking, but then I started realizing the kid is only going to be as good as the parents.
Ray Camacho 15:31
What I started doing was I just start sharing stories. As I continue to talk to other kids, and opening and motivate them, I always share my baseball hitting lessons near me life stories, because my life stories teach me a lot about things. I know the way I am because of my dad.
Ray Camacho 15:45
One of the best things my dad ever did, he coached me till I was 12, but he always let me play. He never over coached me; I don’t think I ever heard my dad yell at me on the field. He never told me to go warm up, he never told me to do anything, as soon as we got on the car, he already knew.
Ray Camacho 16:01
We were talking about that stuff of what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do and how you’re going to show up, how you’re going to look, who you are. He laid the platform for me when I was a little kid. This is what I do now, I just took it 100 million times more, because I went farther than him.
Ray Camacho 16:19
At age 12, he was always telling me that you’re better than ever I was, and he was my hero, my idol. As I started realizing interaction with parents, that parents are sabotages, as well. My big thing is, I need to make them understand whether you need to peel back or whether you need to be involved more.
Ray Camacho 16:39
My thing that I tell every parent is, especially the dads, because sometimes the dads have egos. Sometimes the softball dads are the worse. That’s their little girl, and I’m teaching their little girl. They get all huffy puffy, sometimes, but I just show them love and break them down and show them what I’m trying to teach.
Ray Camacho 16:59
My thing is, I teach the parents. I always tell the parents; your kid is only going to be as good as you. If you reiterate what I’m saying, and you back me up, because I’m always going to back you up, I am never going to say, I’m never going to disrespect you, your kid, I’m going to only help your relationship out.
Ray Camacho 17:17
We are a team, and it’s all about your kid. Obviously, parents love their kids. They’re going to understand that yes, you’re right. We’re not working against each other. Because if we do, now, the kid doesn’t know what the heck to do.
Ray Camacho 17:29
Now he’s always going to follow the parents’ lead. If I can have the parent buy in to baseball hitting lessons near me, I know it’s only a matter of time that kid buys them because now the kids are accepting. I always tell the story when I was 12, my dad sat me down and said, look, I’ve taught you everything I know, you’re better than me, I don’t know how to get you to that next level anymore, you must be looking for something else now, and learn from other people.
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Ray Camacho 17:54
I can honestly tell you, I didn’t learn from any other adults. No, all my coaches, maybe like one little rinky dink thing, but it was very generic. I like to pride myself in not being just like a scratch a surface guy. I get deep.
Ray Camacho 18:11
I always say breaking it down to the single digit. Like you got a million, I’m going to break it down all the way to the simplest form to get you to understand that if you don’t understand we’re going to keep doing it. I keep talking, I’m going to do some physical with you, because I need you to understand. I have simple goals when I get in the cage.
Ray Camacho 18:30
My dad released in me, and him being a big man and saying he can’t take me anymore, helped me take ownership on myself, because my dad had a bad back and he was in a bed for like a year. He was never supposed to ever walk again. He blew some disk and stuff like that.
Ray Camacho 18:48
I remember him being in a bed in the living room, just lying there all the time. And he showed me how to fold towels. He showed me how to do stuff. I was so literal, he would show me how to fold towels laying down in his bed, and I would lay down on the ground and fold towels.
Ray Camacho 19:05
I understood that kids mimic movements. I always prided myself in being healthy and in shape and showing kids and not just sitting on a bucket and getting up and working out and challenging the kids. I work out with the kids sometimes, I run with the kids sometimes.
Ray Camacho 19:21
I have a senior that’s coming to work out with me on Sundays, and I’m not charging them. It’s we’re working out together because I want to show them how it’s supposed to be done and how I work. I put my head down, I don’t see nothing, I just go to work. This is what I’m doing. I’m serious about it still because I want to be the best.
Ray Camacho 19:40
I’m playing in a World Series in Arizona for men’s and senior baseball league. I got stuff to prove. I haven’t played in a long time. I just want to give one last hurrah. I love learning so as I’m in this journey as well, I’m continuing to learn and I feel like if I’m learning, I’m growing and I’m going to pass it on to the kids. As I enhance my threshold in my knowledge, I’m bringing everybody with me.
Joey Myers 20:06
I love that. The idea that these kids nowadays, and I’ve heard this from multiple coaches, this isn’t just me, and I’ve not just heard it from you, but that players are soft. I think when you have these athletes in multiple sports, whether it’s soccer and football and whatnot, is people don’t realize when they get into baseball and softball, you and I could get into probably baseball hitting lessons near me arguments with other sports people about this, but I think hitting a baseball and softball consistently hard is the hardest thing to do in any sport.
Joey Myers 20:42
I went into basketball for three years, and Michael Jordan was playing in the mid-90s, because I love Michael Jordan. I never played organized basketball, I did soccer, organize it in baseball, and I did martial arts for three years. But I did basketball just with some buddies on my street and did that. It was hard, but it took me I don’t know, six months, eight months, so I could finally figure out where I needed to shoot and things like that. They come into this sport and expect to hit .800 and .900.
Ray Camacho 21:13
It’s very disrespectful, honestly.
Joey Myers 21:17
It is and to have that kind of baseball hitting lessons near me mentality coming into our sport and thinking things are just going to be easy. I even have parents that it’s pitching versus hitting, what’s harder, and I always say that hitting is harder.
Joey Myers 21:30
I have a buddy that teaches pitching, he’s the guy I send my hitters to go learn pitching. Hitting is harder than pitching, I pitched all the way through my sophomore year in high school until I went full time outfield and hitting.
Joey Myers 21:46
The thing was, is I knew where I was going to throw the ball, what kind of pitch I was going to throw and in what location and speed. I knew all that beforehand, right? Whether it went there or not. Who knows? But hitting I don’t know any of that stuff and when they say well, there’s a mind game that the pitcher must play against a hitter. Well, doesn’t the hitter have to play mind game against a pitcher?
Ray Camacho 22:06
That’s what I teach, bro. That’s what I teach. I don’t film it because I don’t want to share it with people, but my feel work, my live at bats, that’s what the high school guys come for, because I did it better than anybody.
Ray Camacho 22:20
When I hit that homerun on Sunday, this guy was a nobody, and I’m not disrespecting him. But I know he was a nobody, he wasn’t throwing hard, just throwing like 70-75. I know who I am. Full count, he goes like this, to show me that curveball.
Ray Camacho 22:33
Right away, just to who I am. I never really paid attention to those things because I just saw the ball hit the ball at time. But I saw that, and I remember thinking curveball, and then as soon as it released, I saw that bad ass backspin and then I just crapped on it.
Ray Camacho 22:49
I was like you think you’re going to trick me with like JV tricks. Because for one you don’t throw hard, I’m not scared of you. Two, I know that if I sit back, you’re not going to blow anything by me.
Ray Camacho 23:01
I try to teach kids out because I do the same thing on the pitching. I wouldn’t call myself a pitcher, but I could pitch. I pitched a little bit in college, I pitched in high school, but they couldn’t take me out of shortstop because we didn’t have a shortstop.
Ray Camacho 23:12
When I pitch, they had the ball at shortstop. It’s frustrating because I used to be that guy making errors. Now somebody else is making errors for me. I call myself a competitor. I know how to play the game. I was never good paper guys.
Ray Camacho 23:27
One of the reasons why I feel like I didn’t get drafted. But you put me in a game I do all the right things I get on base; I steal the base. I read the ball. I see the pitcher.
Ray Camacho 23:36
I always liked hitting off big, big, tall pitchers because they always thought that they’re better than me because it’s physical. My dad was talking about it yesterday, and I can hear the anger in his voice how I got shortchanged from my size.
Ray Camacho 23:48
He goes I must tell everybody, I put you against anybody. I put you against anybody. I remember sophomore year in high school, we were placed in Austin Buoy, and they had three dudes and we played them three games, we had three dudes, they’re all six foot plus, doing upper 80s lower 90s.
Ray Camacho 24:05
The first game I went for five off that guy’s a leadoff guy. Because they didn’t respect me, you’re trying to drive till mid upper 80s fastball is by me, I’m a fastball hitting son of a gun. I’m jumping on that. I just beat you, beat you, beat you guess what, next at bat curveball I sit on it. You can’t throw it because you’re trying to throw it, you’re already spinning on the ground.
Ray Camacho 24:23
I had an elimination process at age 10. I tell people I manifested and prayed to God for all these things that I had each night not knowing that I was doing this stuff. I taught myself how to keep two hands on the bat, there’s no tricks or gimmicks. Simply every night, told myself you hit the ball very good every time but you’re breaking apart.
Ray Camacho 24:44
Let’s just swing with two hands, see what happens. I would tell myself every night until it started happening. Of course, I practice it and I try to apply it and put it in my head. My feel work was immaculate. Anytime I took a pitch, I always took it correctly. I was always on time. If I wasn’t, that’s a negative one in energy. So, I get out, I do two feel work.
Ray Camacho 25:05
I go one, two, or whatever I felt like I needed to do to get back in the box and get that back. I never understood it, but I was always going in the box plus one, or plus two, especially if I won that pitch. That means you didn’t buckle me; your curveball isn’t crap. I stare at it and I look back at you. I go yes, you got to throw me a fastball, let’s go.
Ray Camacho 25:24
I’m ready to rock and roll. I was always ready to hit. I got my batting stance from Chipper Jones; he was my favorite player. His dad was out of Stetson University and he created the toe tap.
Ray Camacho 25:36
The toe tap to me is the most timing the most adjustable swing that I’ve ever had. I’ve dabbled in other things, I listened to other guys, and they’ve all ruined to me, and they took my time in a way my weight shift.
Ray Camacho 25:48
The biggest thing when it comes to pitching and hitting, they’re both rotational movements, you both must read energy. I literally move just like the pitcher when I hit. That’s why I’m superior in timing. I always tell pitchers this when you’re throwing, if you throw hard, or if you got gas, you’re trying to throw it down their throats every time most time unless you have a different mentality of maybe just don’t strike, you can’t throw strike.
Ray Camacho 26:14
When I got up there, I’m throwing my heart and soul every pitch because we’re competing. And I can do that, I always prided myself in being a 90% and 95, on everything I can do.
Ray Camacho 26:25
Now, I would never say 100, who can be 100 all the time. But I would say A plus student on the field. As far as I could, I could run as hard as I could because I had control. When I move to load back, that guy’s doing the same weight shift as I’m doing.
Ray Camacho 26:40
Of course, I have my strong legs and everything else they go with the timing, but I try to tell guys this because I show them right away from soft toss to the front toss to live, if you do not have a weight shift, you have no timing, and they don’t understand it. Someone along the way, told them not to move. My biggest thing is, this is how you tell if you have a good instructor a good coach or not.
Ray Camacho 27:02
If your coach limits your movement, if you’re Aaron Judge, you can limit movements. He’s Aaron judge, and he’s hella strong and badass. If you’re a JV guy that hasn’t gone on varsity yet, and if you’re weak, you limit movements, you’re not good, you’re not going do anything to the ball, because it’s strength and rhythm.
Ray Camacho 27:23
When a coach is telling you to get your foot down early, when coaches tell you to go to a two-strike approach, they’re taking your rhythm out, they’re taking your weight shift out, they’re not even teaching it properly. Or if they tell you to go oppo, and the guy throws you an inside pitch, you’re screwed.
Ray Camacho 27:38
Those are sabotage advice, and I talk about it openly. I don’t even care if the high school coaches hate me, because I care about the kid. If you tell him this, now he shut down and now he’s dumbed down. Now he cannot focus on practice and go as hard as he can.
Ray Camacho 27:57
I try to enhance everybody with balance and rhythm. That is it. It’s your balance and rhythm. It’s only a matter of time, and how do we know that? We watched your takes, because whether you like it or not, there’s a pitching coach who didn’t hit. I’m confident about this. A pitching coach who didn’t hit watching your feel work like a dumb pitcher, notice that like a pitcher.
Ray Camacho 28:20
I’m a hitter, a pitcher, a first baseman, a catcher, a right fielder, a third baseman, I’m everything. I’ve done everything. I think from those perspectives, but I think more like a pitcher and a catcher and a shortstop when I see hitters, and I’m like, am I scared of this guy? Or what am I seeing?
Ray Camacho 28:34
I can go to any high school game right now and call pitches and tell you exactly what’s going to happen? Because the coach is on level one, they’re on level one, until you start beating them or start sitting on pitches understanding that, then they’ll switch up, they’ll switch it up just like the game, right?
Ray Camacho 28:48
That’s what I do with the high school guys, because I don’t use a glove when I throw BP so I’ll hold curveball like this. I’ll hold it. I want to see if they’re smart enough to look at my hand. If not, then I just keep breaking them off. Keep breaking them off. Then when I start seeing sit on it. I’m like, hey, what are you doing? They’re like, Oh, I see it in your hand coach. Awesome.
Ray Camacho 29:08
Now I can manipulate you because now I hold it like that. Then I’ll throw a fastball because my fastball curveball. I know how to compete. If you’re guessing you’re not ever going to beat me. I can do 30 minutes of fastball and curveball round with guys, I’m talking about varsity guys, and just beat them because they’re trying to guess.
Ray Camacho 29:30
I say you don’t guess if you guess I will blow a fastball by you because I’m reading your energy. I’m reading your movements, just like any coach would right now. The younger kids, I tell the dads and the moms, whoever’s helping them, whether you like it or not the kid is competing against an adult.
Ray Camacho 29:47
There’s a coach watching what he does, if he steps out, he’s going like this to the pitcher. Now the pitcher throws strikes. Now your kid doesn’t have a chance because he’s not understanding how he’s moving. He’s not understanding what he’s presenting to the whole baseball community when he’s doing that.
Ray Camacho 30:02
I’m trying to really get the guys to do field work. That means I really must control my sessions. If a kid takes a bad swing, if he takes two in a row, I have to stop and tell him to get out of the box and do feel work. Then I watch his feel work.
Ray Camacho 30:17
If his feel work is bad, then I got to stand up and go back over there and talk to him about it. Because the feel work matters what you’re going to do in the box. Sometimes they’re too immature to understand it. I got to keep talking about it and keep talking about it. My biggest thing is making them aware. My big varsity guys like to dive in.
Ray Camacho 30:35
I have this big thing of reading that energy and going back and forth, stop angles of feet, hips and shoulders, we’re not manipulating those right now, especially if you don’t need to understand how to hit. The balanced approach is just staying square.
Ray Camacho 30:49
Now that’s outside, you close up, go to right center field, and it’s down the middle or if you want to pull it you go left centerfield. Shoulders and hips. That’s it. That’s how the elite hit with our back hip.
Ray Camacho 31:03
I literally show the guys and then I go in there. If they don’t believe me, I show them how to hit where you want me to hit it, boom, I hit their left center, we want to hit right side, and boom, this is how we do it.
Ray Camacho 31:11
I’ve always had back control, my dad just showed me off with a five-year-old. I would just mechanically sound. That’s it. I was connected, the term connected, right. I try to show those guys how to be properly connected with their core, their breathing their chin.
Ray Camacho 31:26
Your head doesn’t matter if your feet suck, because the little kids, if their back foot never rotates properly, you don’t exist. Because you cut off all the power, you cut off that right eye or your left eye whatever way you’re swinging, and you don’t rotate properly. That’s the biggest thing.
Ray Camacho 31:42
Now if the back foot sucks the front foot is usually the culprit because the front side leaves the backside more ground up. That’s something that I figured out, but I don’t know if it’s out there already, but I don’t try to worry about everybody else. I know what I’m doing here, and how I speak. I try to make them understand that your head doesn’t matter. Your hands don’t matter if your feet are bad.
Joey Myers 32:03
I love it. Well, hey, I want to be respectful of your time a lot. A lot of great advice there. I love that, Ray. Glad that we did this. I’m sure we can do some part twos. Before we go, where can people find you, talk about the social media platforms. I know you got a website, but it looks like it’s a little under construction right now.
Ray Camacho 32:25
I’m big on social media. I got Snapchat, it’s RayCam4, just the number four. My Instagram is raycam4oe. I have fat on fat baseball on Instagram, fit on fit fitness on Instagram. I also have fit on fit fitness on Facebook as well.
Ray Camacho 32:45
I’m on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all the big social media sites I have, fit on fit fitness, fat on fat baseball and my own personal page account. I just try to give information out to as many people as possible. I do a lot of free work because I feel like this stuff is so hard. That if you can do it, awesome. It’s no secret. There’s no secret. I’m an open book. I’ll tell anybody anything. People reach out to me all the time in DMs and messages and I love my job.
Joey Myers 33:16
I love it. What are the one or two that you’re on most?
Ray Camacho 33:21
I would say Facebook and Instagram. I’m actually on tik tok as well, Ray Camp4oe
Joey Myers 33:27
I was going to say that was in there.
Ray Camacho 33:31
I did a video. Like two days ago and I’ve gotten like 100 followers on tik tok recently. I’m really surprised because I see a lot of baseball coaches getting roasted on TikTok. These kids are unrelentless.
Ray Camacho 33:47
I was telling a friend; I’ve been ready for a little kid to come talk smack to me. I can just get them, but it hasn’t happened. The only thing I can think of is I’m doing it right. They understand what I’m saying. I had a kid reached out to me say Hey, where’s part two? Hey, it’s one fan, right? I posted two. I was like, Alright, here we go two and three, because I’m willing to teach anybody who wants to learn because we’re all learning.
Joey Myers 34:13
Cool, dude. Thank you so much for your time again. Like I said, we’ll be in touch. I’ll get you all your stuff. We’ll kind of go from there and maybe do a part two, part three in the future.
Ray Camacho 34:24
Awesome, man. Thanks.
Joey Myers 34:25
Thanks for your baseball hitting lessons near me time, brother. Keep up the good work there.
Ray Camacho 34:28
You too, man.
Joey Myers 34:29
Alright, see you.
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In this softball hitting lessons interview with Amanda Smith of WhiteZoneCoaching.com, titled: “When It Comes to Guys, The Performance Determines Their Happiness. When It Comes to Girls, The Happiness Determines the Performance”, we go over:
Click short link for transcribed interview in pdf format: http://gohpl.com/amandasmithtranscription
The following is the transcription of the above video…
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"Swing Smarter: Science Based Hitting Training Built To Understand How, Why, & Reasoning Behind It"
Joey Myers 00:06
Hello and welcome to Swing Smarter Monthly Newsletter. This is your host Joey Myers of hittingperformancelab.com and I have the honor and privilege today, this is our second softball hitting lessons call or second meeting with Amanda Smith of White Zone Coaching.
Joey Myers 00:19
I have a lot of cool stuff that we’re going to talk about today, I’m going to ask her, but first, I want to welcome you to the show, Amanda.
Amanda Smith 00:25
Hey, Joey, thanks for having me. I am so excited to be here and to talk with you and share a little bit about what I’m doing in my softball world.
Joey Myers 00:35
Very cool, and many of my softball hitting lessons readers out there will understand that we like to apply human movement principles that are validated by science to hitting the ball.
Joey Myers 00:45
We like to use physics and engineering and biomechanics and different things like that when we describe the swing, when we teach the swing, and we want to have a higher standard for our hitters, and they come to find out you are an aeronautical engineer.
Amanda Smith 01:01
Aerospace engineer. Yes.
Joey Myers 01:04
Let’s go in with the softball hitting lessons question, how has the engineering background helped you coach your pitchers? I’m sure you do all of them or just mostly hitters?
Amanda Smith 01:19
Pitchers, catchers, hitters, I also do throwing and fielding when people need it, want it. Generally, people aren’t going to be like, I need a throwing coach, or I need a fielding coach. They want hitting coaches and pitching coaches and catching coaches. I do all those things.
Amanda Smith 01:35
When it comes to my engineering background with physics, I love physics. I’m such a physics dork. I try to keep it as very simple as possible so that my nine-year-olds can understand what I’m saying to them.
Amanda Smith 01:53
When I bust out with 90 degree angles, they’re like, Huh? I have to bring myself back down to Okay, like the corner in your house, that’s a 90-degree angle. What they’re getting from me in lessons is usually a physics education, a math education, they’re getting some biology education, I’m talking about anatomy phys with them and kinesthetics. I’m a nerd like that, they just got a deal.
Joey Myers 02:23
I love that. I was working with one of my one on one hitters, who’s a sophomore in high school and we do three days a week one on one. We were talking the other day, and we talked about like what you said, we do the physics thing, engineering, but we also might talk a little politics and I talked a little of religion, we might talk all kinds.
Joey Myers 02:43
I said, hey, you’re getting an education in this one hour, then he just talks about this experience with school, this last 2020 has been absolutely horrendous, he hasn’t learned anything.
Joey Myers 02:53
He’s one of those 4.0-3.6 type students, and he just said it was really rough. Not hard but just rough like it’s too easy, almost. I said, hey, maybe I should get you a degree at the end of this thing instead of going into your junior year in high school. We go over a lot.
Amanda Smith 03:13
Yes, ultimately, we’re teaching them life lessons, right? We’re helping them discover who they want to be and maybe even what career they want to go into. I know a lot of the parents that send their kids to me, they’re engineers, so their kids are already exposed to that softball hitting lessons environment.
Amanda Smith 03:32
It’s crazy to notice that most of the people that come to me have that kind of background. I love it, but the same time, I find it really interesting from a business perspective, Oh, I’m targeting engineers.
Joey Myers 03:46
It’s almost a blessing and a curse because from the start, I’ve always had that in my business to target the science side of things. You do attract the engineers, you attract the MDs, you attract the PTs, the physical therapists, you attract these, and it’s a great crowd, and they get it, right?
Joey Myers 04:04
It’s a small grouping of the overall market. The blessing is, it’s a great crowd and they are very educated, they understand the whole how everything works, but it’s a curse, because it is such a small area.
Joey Myers 04:20
Like you said, taking the 90-degree angle and saying the corner of your house that’s 90 degrees, being able to take it down so that the nine year old can understand but also the parents can understand it.
Amanda Smith 04:30
Yes, and the parents, they’re sitting in the background, just nodding their heads, like I love what she’s teaching my kid. As parents, they generally can’t reach their kid on the level that a private coach can reach their kid and they want to, they desperately want to, I’m a parent, I get it.
Amanda Smith 04:52
To have the kid hear it from more than one avenue now. That’s what the parents absolutely love. I have something I like to bring to the table for the parents and be like, you know, I bet your parents have said this to you before.
Joey Myers 05:11
I always say that you could be Babe Ruth, or you could be Sierra Romero, but they’re not going to listen to you and when I’m talking to parents, it don’t matter who you are in the stratosphere of high level softball hitting lessons, but there’s just your dad or your mom.
Amanda Smith 05:30
From the kids’ perspective, you got to listen to them about everything. When it comes to softball or baseball, do you want to listen to them about that too? Your parents pick your battles.
Joey Myers 05:41
Exactly. Delegate when you need to
Amanda Smith 05:43
Yes, exactly.
Joey Myers 05:44
I had a question for white zone coaching, where did you get white zone coaching from? When did you come up with that?
Amanda Smith 05:51
The white zone is that ultimate level that athletes want to get to. If you’ve seen the movie For Love of The Game, with Kevin Costner, where he clears the mechanism, everything around him goes white, except for the umpire, the catcher, and the hitter, and that home plate, that’s the white zone.
Amanda Smith 06:13
That’s ultimately what I want to take all my athletes to, is that level of understanding of getting into that flow state so that their physical talents can just take over and go on autopilot and they can think about all of the mental things that the game has. That’s why I’m a white zone coach.
Joey Myers 06:30
Very cool. Going into that a little bit on the mental side of the softball hitting lessons game, what do you find the top two issues that players are dealing with in today’s game that have to do with the mental side?
Amanda Smith 06:43
Perfectionism, number one. I’ve got so many kids coming to me that are like, Okay, I must do everything perfect. I got to get 10 out of 10. How overwhelming is that for anybody? Let’s take the pressure cap off that kid.
Amanda Smith 06:59
The other one is confidence. They come in, and they’re like, well, I don’t have it. No, you do have it, you just have to remind yourself that you have it and letting them know, here’s where the confidence lies, and here’s how to get back to it yourself.
Amanda Smith 07:15
I can pump you up all I want but if you don’t know how to pump yourself up, you’re just going to have to keep coming back to me and that’s a do loop I don’t want to be in.
Joey Myers 07:25
Right. On the perfection side, I’ve had recently a few or a couple hitters who are in that mode and one I’m thinking about is an eight-year-old, dad works for NASA. The son has a black belt already at eight years old in taekwondo.
Joey Myers 07:47
I thought this was going to be slam dunk case. Physically, the kids obviously proven. He’s very disciplined in what he’s doing, but this is another sport, hitting is a completely different monster. How do you deal with perfection? He’s a perfectionist, I haven’t dealt with too many of those, but they come along, and I have one right now. So how do you deal with it?
Amanda Smith 08:11
I have a lot of them. It was a thing that I had to work on. Girls are perfectionist. I see it constantly because it was the thing that I had to work on. The way that I help them is I teach them, and I have a video on this, if you sign up for my email list, you get this video.
Amanda Smith 08:34
It’s called seven out of 10. In practice, we put everything into buckets of 10 and then seven is the baseline. If they get seven out of 10, in that group of 10, that’s when they get to analyze it, they don’t get to analyze it every single movement, or every single at bat or every single hit.
Amanda Smith 08:54
They only get to analyze it after the 10 and if they got seven, they did good. If they did better than seven, they did great. If they did less than seven, then they have something to learn. That language right there at the end where we’re learning instead of, I’m bad, that’s the switch that they need to make and that helps with confidence too.
Amanda Smith 09:15
Those two kinds go hand in hand. But giving them that baseline and helping them understand this is your baseline seven out of 10, they take the pressure off themselves automatically.
Amanda Smith 09:27
Now all I have to do with my kids, seven out of 10 if they start to nitpick every single pitch or every single hit, and they go oh yeah, that’s right. Then bam, I get them into that mode of I’m going to analyze the group instead of every single movement. Once I get to that point, I’m not analyzing it was bad. I’m analyzing Okay, what can I do better? What can I learn from this?
Joey Myers 09:52
I love that. Of course, at the end, all those softball hitting lessons links and all that stuff we’ll put that out there because I want to help just like you want to help. Another example, the same hitter I was talking about, the sophomore in high school, we always go over these kinds of scenarios and things like that.
Joey Myers 10:18
This is a different hitter, lefty. He’s one of my seniors in high school and he kind of had a little bit of a rough day yesterday. Usually we do well, but he was having a hard time with controlling his top hand.
Joey Myers 10:35
He was just like; I don’t know what the heck’s going on and he was visibly frustrated. He’s usually the surfer kid, I call him shades because he walks in and he has the Aviator shades on.
Amanda Smith 10:49
Aviators
Joey Myers 10:50
I call him shades. He’s usually the kickback kid, surfer dude, and whatnot. He was a little out of his element it seemed like and we did something a little tougher. We call it chaos rounds, where what we do is we do a six-swing round, and he’ll take two swings at one plate, we have two plates, set about five feet apart, or three to five feet apart.
Joey Myers 11:12
He’ll switch plates every swing and at each plate he’s doing something different. It’s a different strategy. It could be we’re going to control, we call verticals or launch angles, we don’t call them launch angles, because a lot of coaches don’t like that term.
Joey Myers 11:25
One plate, maybe he’s controlling his verticals and another plate, we’re doing middle in, middle away type stuff. So, he’s working middle in, middle way. Another one, we might be just doing straight up curveballs. He switches in what he’s doing.
Joey Myers 11:38
We mix and rearrange. It’s not all the same the whole time. It’s very mentally draining. It put some pressure on him. I think he blew a gasket but what I said was get back to the mental side. At least for him a gasket.
Amanda Smith 11:57
Was it pressure relief, or was it like pressure explosion? Like if I think of a pressure cooker?
Joey Myers 12:04
I think it was a pressure explosion. He knew what he needed to do to fix it. He just wasn’t doing it. When we were talking about it, at the end, I was telling him about frustration, I said, frustration is good. It’s a good thing. As long as it doesn’t make you depressed, right? Know what you need to do to fix it and then you do what you need to do to do that.
Joey Myers 12:27
He goes, this is how I operate. He goes, I get super frustrated. And then the next day I go out and I think it’s fixed. It sounds like he goes like mentally he goes through it and then can work it out. Is that something?
Amanda Smith 12:42
Girls don’t do that
Joey Myers 12:45
What’s the girls do in that scenario?
Amanda Smith 12:49
This is where boys and girls differ a lot, I feel like. When it comes to guys, the performance determines their happiness. When it comes to girls, the happiness determines the performance.
Joey Myers 13:03
Okay, I got it.
Amanda Smith 13:07
If girls are off when they walk through the door, and I can see it right away, like, okay, we got another session, we got to switch up that attitude quick are the whole session it goes to pot.
Amanda Smith 13:24
This is where girls are different. The more pressure you put on a girl the worse their attitude gets, and the worse their performance becomes. Whereas guys, they like the pressure to kick them out of it. I find that so fascinating, right?
Amanda Smith 13:40
This is why I coach girls. For the girls, it really goes back to that perfectionism pressure bottle. If we go into a chaos scenario, like you’re explaining, and I’ve never used that technique on a girl, I want to try it and see what happens honestly.
Joey Myers 14:01
They must be in the right softball hitting lessons mindset before they come into it.
Amanda Smith 14:04
They have to, they absolutely have to and that’s number one for me has put them in the right mental frame so that they can have success and then carry that success into the next success and then it snowballs.
Amanda Smith 14:16
Parents love that because they’ll come back to me and they’ll be like, what did you do because she went into the next game and she did phenomenal and like I just gave her a little confidence boost and gave her some tools to boost herself to
Amanda Smith 14:34
I feel like if I were to lay the pressure on a girl she’d crumble, she’d start to cry.
Amanda Smith 14:45
I welcome that at my sessions because you’re not allowed to get emotional in a game, right? You can get emotional after a big win or you can get emotional after a great strikeout that ended a really tough inning.
Amanda Smith 14:59
There are certain times when you can get emotional, but like getting emotional at private lessons happens a lot. I welcome it because we must have the ability to express those emotions no matter what. Again, this is where girls and boys kind of differ.
Joey Myers 15:15
That’s cool. Mine is about 95% guys, I have a few softball hitting lessons girls, I have a few that are in college that I’ve worked with. I’ve noticed the girls, when I give them something to work on mechanically, they’re good, I can probably lay on three or four of them, three or four different mechanics, and they’ll get the first one, they’ll get the second one, I might give you another one.
Joey Myers 15:43
I keep going up until that point, you start to see that flip of Okay, now this is a little bit too much. But the girls, for whatever reason, I feel like most of the girls I’ve worked with, they’re able to handle more of those things versus the guys, we tend to stay in the two to three things range, and they don’t get frustrated, you don’t see their eyes. I’ve had a few guys that you see the tears start to well up. I have a couple of them who are emotional.
Amanda Smith 16:14
Let it rip, Coach. Let it rip.
Joey Myers 16:15
Yeah, then they start getting sloppy. I must pull back because they’re getting sloppy. I mean, they don’t care emotionally that they’re getting sloppy, like the girls would care emotionally that they are sloppy, and they take offense to it, like you said, the perfection side.
Joey Myers 16:29
But the guys they get sloppy, and so I can’t allow him to get sloppy. So, I must scale it back to girls. The girls they handle it. Like they can handle 2-3-4 different things in one session.
Joey Myers 16:41
It’s almost like I played this game of see how far I can go with the girl. Then once I start seeing the emotion, I start dialing it back with the guys, I pretty much know how much they can handle and it’s not an emotional thing, it’s a sloppy thing.
Amanda Smith 16:54
It’s a practice, honestly, I feel like I must be able to turn that dial up to. You can do it with guys, you can give them more and more and more as long as you know where their edges at.
Amanda Smith 17:09
With girls, they’re more latent to let you know where their edges at. Keep that in mind, we know how to bottle things up. It’s crazy how much we do that.
Amanda Smith 17:25
With girls, it goes back to the whole multitasking brain. I feel like moms are masters at multitasking and dads are like I can only do one thing. Some dads are amazing at multitasking, don’t get me wrong, you hand that down to your kids, they innately become great at having multiple things thrown at them and then being able to handle it.
Amanda Smith 17:55
I love pushing that edge. Because with my kids with my girls, what I notice is I can give them three things. Then the next session, I’m going to like to take those three things and add one more thing on top of it and maybe a third. Well, a fifth thing, technically, but a second thing on top of that and see how far I can carry it.
Amanda Smith 18:18
Some of these girls, I can give them 10 different. What do we call these tasks on 10 different things to work on in a session and they can handle it. And it’s like, Okay, I got to scale you back now.
Joey Myers 18:35
It’s crazy because you could cover the whole softball hitting lessons gamut. There’s always something to work on. But I mean at some point, we kind of must start circling back to some of the other things.
Joey Myers 18:47
I always tell my hitters it’s like, at the circus in the old days, they had to put the sword down and they get the plate and they start spinning on it, then they set up another sword and start spinning the plate, and then they have to copy the first plate and keep it spinning, it’s like keeping these plates spinning and I feel like the girls do a better job of that than the guys do.
Amanda Smith 19:06
Multitaskers. Look at their parents. That’s really the indicator.
Joey Myers 19:11
Yes. I saw a video of you doing a mental Monday talk which is really cool. I saw one on your Facebook, Mindset Mondays yes, and we can discuss the book. What was that book?
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Amanda Smith 19:26
The Surfer’s Code. I love that book.
Joey Myers 19:29
Yeah. You’ll pick a chapter and then you’ll use that as the content of the video. That one that I watched it was the one where you get smashed by a wave and it’s a question of Okay, I can hang it up and be done and not go through that again, or I can go back out.
Joey Myers 19:47
Talk a little bit about that and how that applies to like your softball hitting lessons girls, how you can apply that in school.
Amanda Smith 19:54
I live in Denver. Let’s preface there. I’m in a landlocked state. Everywhere I go I like to surf if there’s surfable water. I also surf but I’m a snow surfer. That means snowboarders for those of you who don’t know.
Amanda Smith 20:09
What I love in the surfing world, there’s rules that they live by as surfers. This surfer has been in the game for a long time. He wrote the book and shared it with the rest of the world.
Amanda Smith 20:27
Not every surfer was thrilled about that. That’s kind of their inner code. That’s why this book is called the Surfer’s Code.
Amanda Smith 20:39
I love their principles, and this principle that you’re talking about, I will go back out, if I have a bad game, if I have a bad surf, if I have a bad wave, I’m still going to go out again.
Amanda Smith 20:56
For softball, for baseball, the way that applies is, hey, you had a bad at bat, you get another opportunity, you get another try. That’s that whole taking the pressure off thing to, you had a bad game, you still get another try, you’re going to have another game, right?
Amanda Smith 21:13
When your career ends, that mentality starts to shift, right? Like your seniors in high school, or your seniors in college, their mentality is slightly different when it comes to their next wave, or their next opportunity to go out because it might not happen.
Amanda Smith 21:29
I can remember my last college game, every second of that last college game. The number of tears that flowed out of my face after that game, because I knew I didn’t have another wave, there wasn’t another opportunity, and then there was, and that was the thing.
Amanda Smith 21:48
After college ended, I had the opportunity to play NPF, I had the opportunity to play international ball. I got an offer to work at NASA on the Orion program, so I didn’t take it, but there could have been another wave to take.
Amanda Smith 22:08
Just remember, you’ve always got another opportunity, another try coming up no matter what. Yeah, even if you think it’s your last game for you seniors, you still have another opportunity, there’s going to be another wave to get out there and ride.
Joey Myers 22:26
I love that and especially with the 2020 COVID stuff and how hard it’s been for athletes. I’ve had some athletes that I work with, we work through things, we have to be very critical thinking about how you’re not able to play, how can we get you out there? How can we work on getting you in front of your seniors in high school or college coaches?
Joey Myers 22:52
Like you said, got to get back out there. It might be in a different way, it may not be in the same direction, but it’s going to be somewhat unconventional from what you’ve thought.
Joey Myers 23:03
One of the softball hitting lessons things, as an example, that I talked to a few of my seniors that graduated, they graduated I think in 2020 spring and then you have the seniors coming through now, 2021.
Amanda Smith 23:16
They’re experiencing it, too.
Joey Myers 23:17
Yes. One of the things we talked about was how do you contact a coach, college coach and if you’re going to send a video, how do you send a video, and one of the coolest things I read, it was in negotiating book, negotiate as if your life depended on it.
Joey Myers 23:36
I think it was it was Chris Voss. I don’t know if you’ve read that one before, good, reads well. He has great stories. Negotiating as If Your Life Depended On It, I think is what it’s called.
Joey Myers 23:51
He talked about with his own son who was playing football and back in the day, trying to contact coaches, and one of the things was instead of shooting video, and just trying to hit all the points, all the checklist, and send it out to all these coaches, why not go to the coaches first and ask them what do you use?
Joey Myers 24:12
What kind of evaluation do you use when you recruit players? Because it’s going to be different, some coaches in baseball, like college coaches love the launch angle game, they love that terminology, another one will not like the launch angle game.
Joey Myers 24:28
If you send a video of you hitting the all these doubles and dingers all over the yard, those coaches that don’t like that launch angle game and they’re more of the batter sacrifice, they’re more of the what the low level and drive, hit hard on the ground, and you want to go to that college, either it’s not going to be a fit for you or you need to make a different video.
Joey Myers 24:47
I thought that was great advice, you’re going to have to go back out, but it might look in a different direction. Any kind of experience you’ve had with that with your players?
Amanda Smith 25:00
Yes, with the 2020 and the 2021 kids, it’s not just the seniors. That’s the other thing that I keep reminding myself, to watch the level of depression that happened with these players, because their life is school and sport.
Amanda Smith 25:22
When one of those was taken away, and the other one, they’re like, I like it, but I kind of have to do it. Whereas the other one I get to do it. It was tough to watch them mentally crumble. If you’ve played a sport, and that sport ended for you, you’ve experienced that so you can totally relate.
Amanda Smith 25:51
Helping my 2022s, my 2021s figure out how to do this, the new way, how to get in front of coaches. I just had one who, for spring break, she went out and checked out a bunch of schools, and I told her, you’ve got to email the coaches and let them know that you’re coming, send them your skills, video, do all the things.
Amanda Smith 26:19
She got out there to watch them play and one of the coaches, the head coach of the school that she was really interested in, came over to her and her parents and said, what are you doing here?
Joey Myers 26:31
What?
Amanda Smith 26:32
I came to watch the game. They’re like, we don’t have an audience for our games. We don’t have fans watching our games, you need to leave. Automatically this kid’s like, well, this isn’t the school for me, obviously.
Amanda Smith 26:48
It’s an isolated incident. The coaches are getting used to this scenario, too. They just started playing games. This is something that’s out of their comfort zone as well. A head coach coming out to fans and telling them that they got to go, that’s unheard of.
Amanda Smith 27:04
The head coach doesn’t do that, but in this scenario, that’s what happened. I was like, this is one of those softball hitting lessons opportunities to think from a different angle. Think of how uncomfortable that had to have been for that coach. Think of how uncomfortable it must be to tell all the kids’ parents, you can’t come and watch your kid play. You can watch her on YouTube.
Amanda Smith 27:27
To play without a crowd. That’s a first for a bunch of college kids. There are so many weird scenarios that we’re dealing with right now, and you just roll with it. But keep your mind open and don’t get single minded on Oh, that coach was mean, I don’t like that coach at all.
Amanda Smith 27:44
Don’t cross them off your list, have another conversation with that coach and be like, hey, you were the one who said to me, we had to go, and you weren’t very nice about it. Is there any reason why you had to be so mean?
Amanda Smith 28:01
It’s another opportunity to talk to the coach at least. You might find in that second conversation, that that’s not the coach for you, but you brought up culture, when it came to those coaches who don’t like the language that you use, or they want hitters that hit a certain way versus another way.
Amanda Smith 28:20
Players need to really dig into the schools and understand the culture of the team, the culture of the coaches. I didn’t do it right and I learned the hard way. I literally just had a Facebook post in my Facebook group about this, where there was a player who got her nursing degree from Minnesota, and she got it in four years.
Amanda Smith 28:48
She was one of those kids who graduated last year and got the option to come back and play a fifth year because of COVID and she did, she opted to not dive into her nursing career and instead play her senior year or her second senior year, because she knew that that season was fleeting, that season of her life was fleeting, the sport is fleeting.
Amanda Smith 29:12
She’s not planning on going on NPF or the Olympics or any higher level, what is it athletics unlimited? When I was in school, I was trying to pull off that mechanical and aerospace engineering degree which is a tough degree by itself, but now add sports on top of it.
Amanda Smith 29:32
I learned right away like D1 top 25 school; you’re spending 52 hours a week doing softball. I ended up going D2 after two and a half years at D1 for many reasons, but one of the reasons was because I was struggling badly to pull off both and the coaches were giving me a hard time about it.
Amanda Smith 29:56
They were picking on me because I had to go and do work with my classmates that interfered with some of my practices, and they hated that. That goes back to the culture.
Amanda Smith 30:10
Parents who are in the thick of it, it’s hard to see the teams, it’s hard to talk to the coaches right now. Do your best to figure out what the culture is, talk to the players, you can as athletes talk to the players, you can’t necessarily talk to the coaches. That’ll give you a really good idea of what that program is about and how the coaches support the athlete as well as the student.
Joey Myers 30:39
I’d love to just end on this and ask you where softball hitting lessons people can find you, but before we get there, it’s advice I think that the young ones don’t quite grasp. You and I have been through it, or telling them to do your homework basically, to talk to the players in the teams that you want to go play for in college.
Joey Myers 31:02
They will just answer whatever, I know there’s enough pros, it’ll be fine if whatever. What we’re trying to tell you out there to do your homework, spend the time. I know that for the guys, it’s the testosterone brain that tends to make us lazy. It’s a strong hormone, but it’s also a lazy hormone.
Joey Myers 31:23
I know the girls are a little bit more on top of it but go out and definitely do your homework because you don’t want to land in a place and have to keep switching. It’s just like moving. The best part of moving is when it’s over. Moving your house and all that kind of stuff, it’s the same thing.
Joey Myers 31:39
You don’t want to be jumping schools all over the place because oh, I screwed up. I pick the wrong line, let me go to this one, and you didn’t do the same process, repeat the same process, and you make another mistake. Anyway, great advice.
Joey Myers 31:51
Amanda, where can people find you? I know you mentioned an opt in page to get that video, so go ahead and mention that.
Amanda Smith 32:03
Whitezonecoaching.com is my softball hitting lessons website, you can get the freebie at the bottom of the homepage. That’s the seven out of 10-perfectionism busting video. It explains how to implement it as an athlete or how to implement it as a coach.
Amanda Smith 32:19
You can also find me at fastpitch softball skills and drills by white zone coaching Facebook group, that group is growing like crazy. That’s where I’m sharing a lot of softball skills and drills. White Zone Coaching on Facebook.
Amanda Smith 32:32
I’ve got a lot of baseball people showing up in the group now, too. That’s where you can find me on the interwebs. I also have a YouTube channel, that’s white zone coaching.
Joey Myers 32:50
Yes, Instagram, TikTok
Amanda Smith 32:53
No TikTok. I am not a TikTok-er. I have Pinterest.
Joey Myers 33:02
Are you on Pinterest?
Amanda Smith 33:02
Of course, I am on Pinterest, I’m a pinning queen. I have an Amazon list for softball parent and players. I mean, I’m on the internet.
Joey Myers 33:16
Very cool. Well, thank you, Miss Amanda Smith, I appreciate the call. What we’ll do is we’ll probably have multiple part two and stuff, I’d love to come back and go a little bit deeper into some other things.
Joey Myers 33:30
Your story is very interesting, and I love the origin stories because it explains where you’re at now. It gives a little bit more flavor to the type of coaching that you teach and the purpose behind why you teach what you teach. So keep up the good work out there.
Amanda Smith 33:47
The whole white zone thing. That’s why I teach what I teach.
Joey Myers 33:51
Exactly. Thank you so much and I’ll get you all the goods. Oh, we’ll do like a little Dropbox thing and I’ll send all that stuff to you, and you can do with it however you want. We’ll keep connected.
Amanda Smith 34:05
Awesome. I am excited to keep connected. We’ve got a lot in common, sir.
Joey Myers 34:10
Very much so. Well, have a good weekend.
Amanda Smith 34:14
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