A special THANK YOU to Taylor Gardner for this reaction time versus timing demonstration. Above is a quick 4-minute demo video coaches can use to teach their hitters the difference between reaction time and timing.
Can timing be taught?
Is the Pope Catholic?!
Of course it can…
Consider the following Tweet from Matt Pierce, who I highly respect in hitting circles…
2019 Want
For Coaches to stop mocking other coaches. For coaches to stop blasting guys bc of the level they coach. For coaches to stop using the word guru in describing a coach that they disagree with. For coaches to spread info without the need to attack others in their teach.— matt pierce (@tx_pierce) January 1, 2019
I love what Matt is saying here, and I agree with him 100%! I’ve wanted to address this for some time, but couldn’t figure out how to frame it without coaches thinking I’m delusional. However, I’m about to reveal this is a Mount Everest “ask” because:
At the end of this post, I will share 11 things I think cuts to the heart of the debate (HINT: it has to do with a case of “mistaken identity”)…
PLEASE NOTE: I’m no saint in this conversation, so let me get that out of the way. I’ve been called “unprofessional” in some of my responses on the Socials. I own that. I’m not a robot devoid of emotion. To my defense though, I do let people have their say, and seldom “hide” or delete Social media comments – no matter how ridiculous – because I feel coaches should see us with all bumps and bruises.
Now, let’s address Matt’s big asks:
It starts with the fact…
Here is one of my personal rules for posting on Social media: DO NOT respond to another hitting person’s Social media post, Tweet, etc. that I don’t agree with. And I see A LOT of garbage out there, believe me. But I don’t feel the need to tell them so…I keep my hands to myself. Imagine for a moment, you sell a hitting aid, book, or online course, and you get one the following dandy comments… (think about how you’d react)…
And here’s a YouTube comment on one of my videos…
If you can’t read the YouTube comment, then it’s because the image is too small…here you go (incorrect spelling and grammar intact)…
“This video is silly to me. First and most importantly, you do not teach any player especially a young player how to hit deep fly balls or “in the air with power. Why and the hell would you do that? Don’t pollute the internet with this garbage any longer. Btw, every hitter “gets shorter”. It is impossible to gain any ground and not drop. There is no strategic advantage in it nor should it be stressed in instruction. It’s a natural part of any swing and has nothing to do with power or hitting fly balls. Your messing up swings with shit.”
By the way, the above comments aren’t too bad, I have others 10X as bad. Look, I don’t mind healthy debate, but it MUST be respectful, and no respectful conversation can start with any one of the above comments. Sue me for coming off as “unprofessional” in responses. Good times is Taylor Gardner (Backspin Tee), Matt Lisle, and I snapshotting them on our phones, and laughing over drinks…true story.
So NO, we cannot control how others react or respond. Building the case of our “mistaken identity” solution is starting to take shape. Now, let’s address the fact…
As you were reading those dandy comments above, were you thinking, “I don’t think this person knows about the Hitting Performance Lab.” Therein lies the frustration.
To their defense, they’ve only seen ONE post or ad from us on the Socials. They…
I don’t take the comments personal anymore. They don’t understand how we’re:
).So yes,
…Coaches, we MUST understand this. Building the case of our “mistaken identity” solution is picking up speed. Now, let’s address the fact…
I talked to Dr. Tom Hanson about this recently. Consider the “Church of Baseball” or “Politics of Baseball”. The idea is that based on our life experiences, we stick close to our current “tribe” for fear of missing out, being ostracized, and/or being abandoned when seeking another tribe. Even if the “other” tribe provides a mountain of evidence to the contrary of our thinking.
I call it wearing hitting “beer goggles”. Refusing to take off the distorted glasses to seek real facts and actual truth. In 2013, I completely jumped out of the hitting industry, refused to read or watch anything hitting, and completely pivoted to researching Physics, Bio-mechanics, Engineering, Body Work, etc. I didn’t understand it at first, but kept reading and re-reading – eventually it started to sink in.
We’re seeing this “beer goggle” theory play out in the Politics right now. Most of you have seen ridiculous comments on your Facebook feed from others…past or current friends about Political issues. I’ve seen people on both sides “un-friend” each other because one believes one thing and the other believes the complete opposite. People are retreating to their tribe’s boxing corner, and staying there.
Look familiar? Because it’s happening to our hitting community. People become attached to certain hitting “gurus”, a word I know Matt said not to use. I had quite a few talks with a current professional hitter, who has had quite a few cups of coffee in the Big Leagues, saying many “gurus” are out there trying to reinvent the wheel. And what he means by that is, they’re teaching the same thing as everyone else but calling it something different and claiming ownership.
The reality is originating something new occurs with far less frequency than innovating something new. Give credit where credit is due coaches. If people took the time to research where ideas originated, then the number of “tribes” people stick to would shrink to one or two. And even with those, hitting agreement would probably reach 98%.
So yes,
We’re almost done building the case for our “mistaken identity” solution. Now, let’s look at the fact…
I won’t get into this here because I got into it here AND here. But I will say this, I’ve fallen into the Fixed Mindset trap. It’s like a cozy warm blanket, and much easier to misplace blame when we don’t know the answer. For example, how do you explain a kid by the name of Hudson White at 14-years-old blasting 11-dingers in a row at the National Power Showcase, averaging 395-feet in batted ball distance – when he’s only 5-foot, 7-inches, weighing 135-pounds?
“What bat did he use?” …a few may ask…metal minus-5…“See!!” they exclaim, “The bat is HOT!!” But what if I were to tell you eye-witness accounts have said that Hudson consistently hit balls 395-feet with an old Hickory wood bat? How do we explain something we may not understand?
These are FIXED Mindset coaching responses (from real people by the way!). Look, it’s okay to say you don’t know, and here’s an even better TIP…if one does not know something, then keep the “pie-hole” shut. The above bullet point comments take away from the hard work these hitters have and are putting into their swings. Shameful.
Instead acknowledge maybe your knowledge is limited and seek to understand, not to be understood. Ask “WHY”, not “Why Not”. Every day, ask: “Is there something I may be missing”. This is what Growth Mindset coaches do.
So yes,
Before getting to fixing the issue of “mistaken identity”, let’s review Matt’s big asks:
Before agreeing to his “asks”, I want to scribble in a few more…
Possible? Maybe, but it’s a TALL order. If those points cannot get checked off, then I claim my 1st Amendment right to call out Hitting “Guru” #57. Do we have a deal Matt!?
Now, to solve the case of mistaken identity…
For those who know how we operate at the Hitting Performance Lab, remember reading through those Facebook and YouTube comments in the beginning of this rant, and thinking they’re falsely associating and projecting a bad experience they may have had with another hitting “guru”? Here are my BIG “asks”:
I think a combination of Matt Pierce’s “asks” and my additional “asks” will turn this ship around. OR, we’ll get much of the same thing in 2019! Coaches, go forth and make awesomeness…
Georgia’s Jansen Kenty hits game tying dinger in LLWS this year. His hitting coach teaches Catapult Loading System principles.
2018 was fantastic, and these were the HOTTEST topics on our social media throughout the year, according to you – the Hitting Performance Lab tribe. Thank you ALL for the vote by: click, share, like, and comment – you guys rock! My personal favorites were numbers: 3 (for selfish reasons of course 😉, 6, & 7… have a Happy and Safe 2019, and ENJOY the following 2018 lesson learned links…
I want to share a story…
Right before the Great Depression hit the Oklahoma panhandle, rain was plentiful, causing 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.
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.
So 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 crops are growing now. Grazing cattle have nothing to eat but tumbleweeds brought over by the Russians (people often sprinkled salt to eat them as well). The livestock soon get sick and die. Wind is eroding dry soil and tossing it up in the air. The drought is fatal for the majority who stay, while other smarter – in hindsight – individuals move west. Enter the “Dust Bowl”.
The farmers who stayed behind were so desperate for rain, they hired so-called rain experts to “create” rain. The bro-science at the time went that an explosion in the air could bring clouds, and with clouds, rain would fall from the sky. So what did these so-called experts do? They sold the idea that if they lit a stick of dynamite and timed the throw just right, they could get the explosion that would bring water.
…And doggonit, it worked on the rare occasion, convincing everyone that this was a predictable-enough strategy for “creating” rain. I know this sounds like a stupid idea, but you have to understand, the people were DESPERATE for rain. However, nobody paid attention to the countless other times that followed, where it didn’t work and people lost limbs, fingers, etc. from timing the lit dynamite wrong.*
(*By the way, the above passage – in which I paraphrased – came from interviewed first hand accounts in the book Dust Bowl: An Illustrated History
. Fascinating stories of how a dust storm rolling in looked like a slow moving wet dog haired tornado turned on its side, miles high and wide. True story.)
So what deserves the label: “Bro-science Fixed Mindset garbage”?
Hitting “bro-science” is:
Urban dictionary defines “bro-science” as:
“Word of mouth knowledge passed off as fact, primarily among bodybuilders + weightlifters. Generally spouted most by guys who have used loads of steroids and are huge, have no idea what is happening to their bodies and then share that same cluelessness with others who make the false assumption that their experience means that they have knowledge.”
Furthermore, Bodybuilding.com defines “bro-science” as:
“Broscience is the predominant brand of reasoning in bodybuilding circles where the anecdotal reports of jacked dudes are considered more credible than scientific research.”
You can easily substitute “bodybuilders”, “weightlifters”, & “bodybuilding” in the above definitions with “baseball” and “softball” hitting coaches. It’s a Fixed Mindset. Believe it or not, I saw a comment on Twitter, with my own eyes, of a so-called hitting guru (I won’t mention him by name so as not to give him oxygen, but you would know him), claim what he teaches isn’t found in Science – Ha!! True story. He’s as fraudulent as those dynamite “rain men”.
Look, we have to be careful as coaches with the correlation equals causation link. Just because the dynamite might have worked on the rare occasion, doesn’t mean it will work bringing rain on a predictable basis.
REAL Science, the opposite of “bro-science”, is held to a higher standard. The Scientific Method, as a matter of fact. Sure, there’s Bad Science
out there, but we’re looking for testing, experimentation, and research showing that correlation and causation of specific inputs are more predictable, not less. Just like how success leaves clues, so does failure.
A Growth Mindset coach will zero be hyper-focused on this. Sure there are 100’s of ways to teach hitting, but if you had the choice to eat tomato soup with a spoon, fork, or knife, which tool would you use to be most effective?
Teaching hitters is the same.
By applying human movement principles validated by REAL Science to hitting a ball, you’ll be eating tomato soup with a spoon. NOT shooting an arrow randomly and calling whatever you hit. And definitely NOT strategically throwing dynamite in the air hoping and praying the explosion will make it rain.
The above video and following Chapter are from the Introduction to my 2017 Amazon best selling book: The Catapult Loading System: How To Teach 100-Pound Hitters To Consistently Drive The Ball 300-Feet
, which has amassed over 100 Amazon reviews with an average 4.3 out of 5-star ratings! Over 11,500 copies have been sold or downloaded. The Chapter topic? Growth v. Fixed Mindset coaches…enjoy!
“In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.” – Eric Hoffe
When it comes building consistently powerful hitters, this book will provide you with the mechanical pathway to get there. However, I think the most important aspect to coaching has to do with Mindset. Coaches can be split up into two categories:
…and which Mindset a coach falls into a majority of the time, can make or break a young athlete’s development. Don’t believe me? According to Dr. Carol Dweck, in her bestselling book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,
“In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort.”
Here are some things you hear FIXED Mindset coaches saying,
All of those are to the contrary of Dr. Dweck’s definition of a Growth Mindset coach:
“In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.”
These coaches find a way. They ask the right questions. They ask, “Why not?” They don’t rest on elite-level playing or decades of coaching experience. The objective of a Growth Mindset coach is to learn human movement principles first, or the “rules”. Then, design methods to stay within those lines. Predictably positive hitting results don’t work the other way around. You’ll learn more about this in CHAPTER 1.
I’ll let Billy Murray give Growth Mindset coaches a heads up in dealing with Fixed Mindset coaches:
“It’s hard to win an argument with a smart person, but it’s damn near impossible to win an argument with a stupid person.”
I’m not saying Fixed Mindset coaches are “stupid”. What I am saying, in my experience in dealing with them, is they let their ego and pride get in the way of helping hitters get consistently better. They make emotional arguments, NOT rational. Here’s more evidence from Henry Ford:
“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, then you’re right.”
One puts the forest before the trees (versus missing the forest for the trees), while the other is swatting a piñata with one eye blindfolded and both arms pinned behind their back! Trust me, I get it. We all want to be heard and validated as being knowledgeable in a subject, but seemingly high credibility in the wrong place is misleading for everyone involved.
Some go to extreme lengths to IMMEDIATELY make their presence known. Here are some Fixed Mindset saying tip-offs:
Don’t get me wrong, the last two points have their place and can be effective in learning and seeing successful movement patterns, BUT massive effort going in the wrong direction can be gross negligence. Besides, it takes A LOT of effort in the cages and hours of video analysis to stumble onto the right answers. The problem I have with this process is it takes too dang long! Especially for the new coach. Rest assured, I have a more elegant solution that will dramatically cut your learning curve in half! You’ll know what to look for, so you can SUPERCHARGE your time in the cages and when doing video analysis. You’ll read about this in CHAPTER 2.
Willful ignorance.
As you probably already know, coaches defend their hitting philosophy and theories to the death, even if human-movement principles validated by REAL science, reveal the opposite. Just like in Politics and Religion. I mentally play the “What if I strip them of…” game with Fixed Mindset coaches. WHAT IF this person NEVER…
…IF we stripped them of their primary credibility indicator(s), THEN I ask:
Don’t worry, we’ll get deeper into the Credibility Fallacy in CHAPTER 3, so you can navigate the red flags effectively. Look, Fixed Mindset coaches are stuck, and what I find is they regurgitate the same information they’ve been taught in the past without question. They may even say their hitting philosophy is a science, but it’s not. It’s a pseudo-science, or what I like to call a “because I said so ‘bro-science'”. Their copy and duct-taped together hitting philosophy reeks of uncertainty. It’s a paper tiger. A house built on sand. Their hitters deserve better information…and can be better. We’ll get more into that in CHAPTER 4. Consider one of my favorite quotes by Dan Farnsworth:
“Doing a thing and understanding a thing do not automatically qualify you to teach a thing.”
It’s so true! I can tell with 100% confidence that I have not:
So, why listen to me? Because of:
We’ll drill deeper into these points in the following CHAPTERS. What I think is VERY IMPORTANT to know, for those who never played ball past Little League or 12u softball, is that you too can be a hitting expert. Yes! You don’t need professional playing experience (or even college!). You can be new to coaching. You don’t have to clock in millions of hours of video analysis. You can even be new to instruction.
All you need is a passionate curiosity to learn and apply the human-movement principles that are validated by REAL science, NOT “bro-science”, to hitting a softball or baseball. I’m going to teach you how to conduct fool-proof swing experiments, so that you can use your findings to show people who won’t take you seriously. You’ll learn my swing experiment blueprint in CHAPTER 4. And I’m going to break it down for you, so don’t worry if you didn’t do well in science class.
CHAPTER 5 will take you through the science of springy fascia and spinal-engine-mechanics. This is the WHY behind the methods we discuss in the later chapters. You can skip this one, but please return to it later, so you have ammunition for Fixed Mindset coaches who won’t believe the predictably positive results your hitters are getting.
CHAPTERS 6 through 11 will take you through the practical methods my hitters are using to consistently triple, or at least double, their body-weight in batted ball distance.
Lastly, CHAPTER 12 will walk you through how to train these newly-learned hitting techniques. I believe the training is as important, if not more critical, than the mechanics you’ll be learning in this book. To give you an example of the value, I had a third-year pro-hitter drive up from San Diego (about a 7-hour drive, one way, without running into Los Angeles traffic), comment that he thought the training by itself was worth the trip! And he spent a small fortune in time and money to work through a whole weekend with me.
Here’s what you’re going to learn in the upcoming pages:
And to reiterate what’s new in the 2nd edition of this book:
There are four reasons…
Most “hitting stuff” we’ve learned is DEAD WRONG. It’s based off philosophy, theory, and “bro-science”, and with the technology available today, we can test the value of those hitting philosophies.
Nowadays, everyone seems to be Hitting Guru #57. How do we differentiate between an effective versus an ineffective approach? This is important because it’s not how PRO someone is, how many years of coaching they’ve accumulated, how many man-hours of video analysis they’ve done, or even how many hours of lessons they do in a given year. There are hitting academies out there teaching wonky information, working with literally thousands of hitters in a year, and one parent would be better off wiping their butt with the money. Don’t worry, we’ll help you navigate these waters. You can’t argue with REAL science and predictably positive results.
“Confusion” between mechanical causation equaling correlation. Can you put backspin on a ball by swinging down on it (i.e. negative barrel Attack Angle)? Yes, you can. But, will the hitter consistently get the ball in the air that way? No. Unless you’re playing slow pitch softball. In the case of hard-ball and fast-pitch softball, swinging down does not consistently put the ball in the air with authority, and IS NOT what the best are REALLY doing.
Big difference between what’s “real” and what’s “feel”. When Mike Trout says he works at ‘getting on top of the ball’, that doesn’t mean Johnny’s coach should go out and share with his team this method. In fact, Mike Trout says this to himself to protect his swing from HIS natural tendency to upper cut too much, like he says to ‘chicken wing’. The cues that MLB and professional hitters use are often lost in translation to the coach, and inevitably with the younger-end user. We can use these cues too, but it depends on specific hitting adjustments. You’ll discover what’s referred to in psychology as “Paradoxical Intention” in the Appendix Chapters. This will teach how to make educated hitting adjustments.
First, we WILL NOT be talking about:
Second, this is specifically about how to apply human movement ‘rules’ to hitting a moving ball, and not about hitting ‘philosophies’, ‘theories’, or ‘bro-science’ that DO NOT predictably work in LIVE case studies at scale.
Third, the information in this book is based on the success my personal hitters have had both online and locally, plus literally thousands of coaches who’ve duplicated the results, if not bettered them, by using this system.
Enough of what this book is promising, now let me be clear about what it’s not…
I addressed this previously, but it bares repeating…
Some of my 12u hitters and younger, weighing around 100-pounds, don’t start consistently driving the ball 300-feet right away. Some take 2.5 years to get to consistency, whereas before they do it “every once in awhile”. Other hitters, although rare, achieve this in less than 6-months. It depends on good old fashion effort, work ethic, and the athlete’s ‘learn-ability’.
I encourage my hitters to work hard on the things we go over, and to keep on trying even after hitting major obstacles. Most young hitters don’t do that. They just show up for a lesson or gather information and “get ready” to work…or they throw in the towel and quit at the first bump in the road. It took a lot of hard work for my hitters to start seeing favorable hitting outcomes. Interestingly, it was the work with my hitters that gave me the inspiration to write this book.
The bottom line is, I have no idea what your results may or may not be. And it’s not my place to try to predict that. Your success is up to you, as always.
In following, you’re going to discover why the coach who understands human movement principles, can successfully select his own hitting drills. But the coach who tries drills, ignoring principles, will have trouble optimizing hitters.
This week I want to share a question that Keith Soldra, one of my coaches, had for me in a recent survey. Keith is a private hitting instructor who teaches both baseball and softball hitters. Take it away Coach…
“How to get kids consistently on time in games. Most are consistent in a lesson/practice but are struggling to transition that to game ABs. I’ve used the two plate drill, a check swing drill, varying speeds in front toss, throwing live from different distances, the pitching machine, wiffle balls, etc…. I’ve even suggested having their eyes checked. LOL. Still in games they tend to get anxious and everything they’ve learned goes out the window. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Keep up the great work Coach!!!”
Fantastic feedback Coach. You’ve definitely been doing more about this than most, who don’t believe timing can be taught by the way! Let’s first breakdown how to transition practice swings into game ones…
Whenever there’s a hitting challenge that pops up, whether it’s mechanical or mental, I go to the principles.
PLEASE NOTE: principles are guidelines, then it’s important to channel your inner creativity to solve the problem. Not using principles is like the following statement:
“Using video analysis WITHOUT setting human movement priorities is like shooting an arrow randomly and calling whatever target you hit.”
I’m a private instructor too, and here are some thing that may be jamming the signal (that I hear from my own players and parents) you’re giving to your hitters because it sounds like you’re pulling the right strings:
Unfortunately the instructor cannot control any of these. We can influence, but not control. But let’s assume the opposite of the above points is true…
Here are 12 critical points I’d start with…
book, WHY we separate PROCESS from PERFORMANCE with hitters learning something new, takes time to change ineffective movement momentum into effective, and training 4-5 days per week, for AT LEAST 5-mins each day.Ultimately, my favorite sticky learning principle for timing is variance…also known as random training, training ugly, or chaos training. We use much of what Coach Keith has done:
I tell my hitters that hitting MUST be harder in the cage than it is on the field. Use that frustration experienced to grow using a combination of these elements. Get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Photo courtesy: TechGenMag.com
Coach Bill Masullo sent me an email this week tapping into his network of coaches to answer the following question (btw, I did a couple interviews with him here AND here)…
“I had a young coach ask me a question, regarding player commitment during the season…my question is how do you influence or address player motivation?“
The short answer? Priorities.
The following content draws from quotes in the book: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
, by Greg McKeown. I highly recommend reading or listening to it.
What is Essentialism?
“Is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, of those things almost effortless.”
Questions ARE POWERFUL.
So much so, that Tony Robbins highlighted their importance saying something to the effect of…“The quality of your life originates from the quality of questions you ask.”
I think coaches, instructors, parents, AND athletes lose a sense of their biggest priorities in life, and is the #1 reason I’ve decided to take the majority of my hitting business online, rather than run a brick-and-mortar facility.
Please note, below you’ll find the word “Question” in bold, so you can skip to them. Yes, I know the essence of some questions below seem similar, but sometimes the same question asked in a different way turns the light bulb “on”. Enjoy!
*This is a great strategy, and one I wanted to include here. It’s less philosophy, and more application. My wife and I do something similar with our kids using a “sticker” system. They earn stickers for doing certain things (productive age appropriate things), and can spend them on getting a toy (within financial reason) after earning 10 of them. This works fantastically well for motivating young humans…
As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” This was a man who understood priorities. Do you?
Know WHY, according to Baseball-Reference.com, strikeouts (41,207) edged out hits (41,018) in the Big Leagues in 2018? In my opinion, the above MLB Tonight Brian Kenny interview of Trevor Bauer has the answers.
Carlos Pena fouling a ball off in 2009. Photo by J. Meric/Getty Images
Could it be…
However, in my opinion, these are all symptoms to the direct cause. Yes, hitters are being taught that ground-balls are gross. And since the book and movie Moneyball
came out, Math revealed key metrics measuring how often:
…are better predictors to scoring runs. Here’s a shot across the bow for the hitting coaches…
Back to the Trevor Bauer Evolution of Metrics conversation above,
Perry Husband, of HittingIsAGuess.com, has been sharing Effective Velocity principles for almost 2 decades, and it’s finally getting people’s attention. WHY? Because more and more pitchers are starting to apply the timing disruption principles. Unlike golf, timing is a MAJOR factor in how consistently hard a hitter hits the ball. And it’s THIS factor of a hitter’s success that’s under MAJOR attack.
Do you think I’m exaggerating? Read on, because Perry, myself, and many others see the writing on the wall…remember when Wayne Gretzky so famously said, “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”
I speak to MANY MANY coaches, and a majority of them, are disgusted with the sheer number of offensive strikeouts over the last few years, so their solution is to teach a defensive “just get on base” swing. Are you kidding?! More pitchers are throwing 96-mph+ at the higher levels nowadays, they LOVE facing hitters being taught a defensive “just get on base” swing. And it’s not just at the highest levels, overall average velocities are going up across the board because of better training programs.
And by the way, it’s not about the higher pitching velocities per se, because we can train hitters to see faster speeds in the “lab”, making the increased game velocities “seem” slower. That’s only one-dimension to pitching, as Trevor Bauer puts it in the interview.
It’s what pitchers are being taught to do with added velocity, manipulating hitters’ reaction times. Don’t you see, the game is speeding up for hitters, and coaches are ill equipped to deal with the adjustment right now. They’re running east, chasing a sunset!
Rest assured, we’re going to make a better decision and train differently. Coaches, you’ve been WARNED. In this post, we’ll discuss:
Trevor Bauer interview with Brian Kenny of MLB Network. Photo courtesy: MLB Network
Here are my notes on Trevor Bauer’s scouting report on hitters…
Did you catch that last bullet point? There’s the Holy Grail of pitchers’ scouting reports right there. Other than that, a lot of REALLY good intel in almost 9-mins, so how do hitting coaches counter this gameplan? Take it from a hitter’s point of view, Carlos Pena, who studied under Perry Husband back in 2009, and in the following video, makes a good case to a promising counter-move…
How to Counter this Strategy…
Here are my notes on Carlos Pena’s scouting report on pitchers who use Effective Velocity…
Do you consider yourself openly honest and transparent? If so, then I need your help instructors!
One of the biggest questions I get from readers is:
“How do I find baseball or softball hitting instructors near me that teach what you teach at the Hitting Performance Lab?”
#1: I want you to know we have an online hitting lesson program called The Feedback Lab found here.
In some cases, I have go-to instructors like Josh Copeland in GA, Jim Ambrosius in Jersey, or Taylor Gardner in OK. But for most cases, I have no clue. So I’m putting together an Excel spreadsheet of coaches to be a solution to: “How do I find baseball or softball hitting instructors near me?”
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.
The list will be continually updated and trimmed. Just like eBay, buyers are protected from BAD sellers with the help of buyer feedback. That’s WHY it’s CRITICAL you provide us with that same kind of honest and transparent feedback on the “hitting instructors near me” coaches. For that, you can contact us here. OR, you can post your “review” below in the comments section. Also note, if there are no “hitting instructors near me” yet, then please feel free to look into our online hitting lesson program The Feedback Lab.
That being said, Click the “GET ACCESS NOW!” button below to access the spreadsheet…
My advice to filter the results is to hold down “control + F” to open the “Find” function on your PC, and type in the desired city or state, and press “enter”. For example, try typing “California” or “CA”. I’m not sure how to do that on a Mac, so please Google it.
If you’re openly honest and transparent, and support the human movement principles validated by REAL Science, then YOU WILL be rewarded with more local hitting lessons. You’re welcome 😉 That being said, if we get an email or public review in comments down below claiming “bait & switch”, then we reserve the right to remove you from the list. Instructors, please Click the “FILL OUT FORM” link below to fill out the form…
THANK YOU in advance!
In short, when it comes to a speedy recovery, ice IS NOT nice. And we’re not talking “immigration” here. Those cold little cube things you grind up and put in your Margaritas, yeah, that “ice”!
Contrary to what most think, ice causes a back-flow of waste in the lymphatic system (waste management), and actually STOPS recovery. That’s right! Ice stops recovery. How so? I know, I know, ice numbs the area and makes it feel better…temporarily. Just like Ibuprofen, but guess what? That’s even worse!! They’re examples of ineffective band-aids, not a definitive solution to the problem area.
MobilityWOD.com’s Dr. Kelly Starrett (on the right), interview MarcPro.com’s Gary Reinl about how “ice” is not nice.
If you’re looking for a speedy recovery, then listen up…
…we MUST look beyond supposed ice bath benefits because the key to a speedy recovery is muscle stimulation.
Gary Reinl (guy in the above video on the left) is being interviewed by San Francisco Crossfit Sports PT Dr. Kelly Starrett. For those Growth Mindset coaches out there, check out their fantastic books:
, by Gary Reinl, and
, by Dr. Kelly StarrettGary and his simple solution (not cheap by the way) to a speedy recovery jumped on my radar after I watched the above video quite a few years ago. We’ve all been drilled to use ice to help reduce inflammation. Even conditioning us to follow the R.I.C.E. method to recovery, whereas 75% of the equation is irrelevant, slows healing, and even STOPS it (hint: the “R”, “I”, & “E” letters in the acronym). The video above gets more into this.
Gary Reinl is to a faster recovery like David Weck is to improving systemic strength and power concentrating on Tensional Balance and Rotational Power.
But get this, “inflammation” IS part of a speedy recovery. According to Gary Reinl, there are three phases to healing:
And here’s the quote of the century…
“There can be inflammation without healing, but there CANNOT be healing without inflammation.”
Let that sink in for a moment…researching ice bath benefits isn’t the answer. So stop it! I ear marked some notes for you from the video above. Enjoy!
DISCLAIMER: I am an affiliate to both the Marc Pro and Marc Pro Plus. However, before becoming an affiliate, I promoted both to a countless number of clients – for years – when I was doing corrective fitness full time. They do carry a hefty price, but the benefits to a speedy recovery are well worth the investment. Also worth noting, each model has an affordable monthly payment plan…AND if you use my coupon code at the MarcPro.com website checkout: mpjoey5 (code stands for Marc Pro Joey 5% off)…you’ll get 5% OFF…
Okay, so here’s a video of how the Marc Pro muscle simulator works…
The Marc Pro uses the body’s natural healing process. Lymphatic pump system. Clearing congestion. Remember to use my speedy recovery coupon code: mpjoey5 at the MarcPro.com website checkout to get 5% OFF your Marc Pro model…
Here are some testimonial videos of some well known Marc Pro users…
The Marc Pro uses the body’s natural healing process. Lymphatic pump system. Clearing congestion. Remember to use my speedy recovery coupon code: mpjoey5 at the MarcPro.com website checkout to get 5% OFF your Marc Pro model…
One question I know I’ll get from coaches is, “Who is the Marc Pro for?”
And it’s a great question. Here’s who this speedy recovery product is best suited:
If you have any other questions, comments, or criticisms about the Marc Pro, then please leave them below. I’ll do my best to answer, but if it’s above my pay grade, then I’ll have Gary Reinl chime in…
Learn how to build more effective hitting groups, make more money, charge clients less, and have more time with your family. In this post, I’ll be addressing the following reader question…
Here’s what we’ll be talking about in this video:
Here’s what we talked about in this video:
This model isn’t perfect, so I would love to hear your advice on what’s worked for those who are already doing this (and what doesn’t), and welcome any questions or comments below the “Reply” section… (thanks in advance!!!)
