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Baseball Trainers Near Me

1 On 1 & Group Hitting Lessons For Baseball And Softball Fresno-Clovis, CA | Best Private Online Batting Instruction & Analysis 2022 | Training For Youth And Adult [VIDEO]

Are you looking for 1 on 1 or small private group hitting lessons for baseball and softball players in the Fresno and Clovis, CA areas?  Or are you looking for the best private online batting instruction and swing analysis in 2022?  We do training for both adults and youth.  This 20-min part-1 video webinar will give you a little taste of what we’re about…

Increase Consistent Power In 2-Weeks: Baseball Trainers Webinar Part-1…

 

 

 

For those interested:

  • Here’s a link to sign up for our online hitting lesson program called The Feedback Lab,
  • Please text me at: 559-709-5808 (Joey) if you’re in Fresno, Clovis, or general California area to setup private 1 on 1 instruction or small private group lessons.
  • CLICK HERE for a link to Our Story and testimonials.

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.

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Here’s are the three parts:

  1. [YOU ARE HERE] Baseball Trainers Near Me? Part-1,
  2. Perfect Baseball Swing Webinar? Part-2, and
  3. Part-3 COMING SOON!!

The following is the transcript to the baseball trainers near me webinar… (about 18-minutes reading time)

Joey Myers  00:06

Get cozied up to technology over the years, because of the online thing, it is what it is.

Joey Myers  00:14

Let me let these people in. Welcome everybody that are coming in here. Some are coming in by phone.

Joey Myers  00:25

We have a lot of information today, I’m going to try and get through it really quickly, within 30 minutes. It will be good information.

Joey Myers  00:32

If you have any questions, I know, I have a lot of questions, a lot of great questions that Neil relayed over to me, from many of you. There’s a lot of them, like I said, 40-50, something like that.Baseball Trainers Near Me

Joey Myers  00:42

I’m going to do my best to really get through those quickly. Obviously, I’m not going to be able to go through them in depth, but if you have any questions after this, feel free to reach out and email me at Joey, J-O-E-Y, like Joey from friends, at hitting performance lab dot com, and I’ll have that at the end of this too. You don’t have to worry about downloading it into your brain. If you have any baseball trainers near me webinar questions, please, and I will answer them, have them ready.

 

Baseball Trainers Near Me – Our Story

Joey Myers  01:08

I think we’re adding them here. As they as they come in, we will add them. Today, we’re going to be going over something, about 2012, towards the end of 2012, is when my son, who’s now going to be turning eight in three days.

Joey Myers  01:28

When he was born, and the wife was doing the midnight, every two hours, three-hour milk feedings. I had a book called Anatomy Trains by Thomas Myers, same last name. I’m sure on the family tree, we are related in some way, but I don’t know him like I would know my brother or my uncle or anything like that.

Joey Myers  01:50

Thomas Myers’ book Anatomy Trains was something that really changed everything, how I teach hitting, and how I’m going to teach hitting, and you will hopefully get to see a little bit of that in this baseball trainers near me presentation. So again, welcome.

Joey Myers  02:04

Thank you again, Neil, for putting this thing on and keeping you already to go. Hopefully, we can get a lot of information in and if you got to go, we’re going to record this, don’t worry, we will get that out. I’ll get the recording out to Neil and he can get it out to you guys, so let’s get going.

Joey Myers  02:19

This is the baseball trainers near me seminar, teleseminar, whatever you want to call it, how to teach 100-pound hitters who consistently drive the ball 300 feet. This was something that I didn’t just cook up and create a product and go. This came to me with the results that my hitters were getting, and hitters were soon to be, what other coaches were learning, and were applying with their hitters.

Joey Myers  02:44

Brought to you by Hitting Performance Lab, that’s my website. You got Neil over at MaxBP. One of my favorite quotes is by Ralph Waldo Emerson, you might know that gentlemen,

“As to the methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles is sure to have trouble”.

Joey Myers  03:15

Now this is an important quote, because it distinguishes between methods and principles, principles are rules. Think about playing Monopoly, you got to know the rules of the game before you can play the game. The principles to hitting can come in the form of bio-mechanics, physics, engineering, those are the principles that we tend to stick with.

Joey Myers  03:42

What we’re going to be talking about today, case studies, why legs fail, and spinal engine succeeds in the power equation, discover the springy fascist secret, how to turn the spine into a safe ball crushing machine. We were talking about this with Neil, I talked to him yesterday on the phone, he was having some back pain with his baseball golf swing, and we’ll see if we can get to that in this, but I really want to focus on more of the power side, but we want to make sure the swing is safe, we will talk about that.

Joey Myers  04:17

Before we get there, let’s add some more people in here, probably have Neil do this. That’s right. Thank you for joining everybody. All right.

Joey Myers  04:35

The first question usually when you go to a wedding is how do you know the bride? How do you know the groom? So, how do I know MaxBP? Well, it first started with the Sandlot Slugger, and then MaxBP acquired Sandlot Slugger, and that’s where we connected, and I connected with Neil. That’s probably been, I don’t know, Neil can probably say on this five, seven years ago, maybe, that this happened. Is that about right, Neil?

Neil McConnell  04:58

Yes, that sounds right. We’ve been around about 11 years; Sandlot Slugger ran probably about 14 years ago. Somewhere in that mix.

Joey Myers  05:08

I know them because we started the starting lineup store dot com, where I started it back 2010. I was grouping a lot of the hitting aids that really love to work with my hitters that are proven, whether it’s through science or just data, and MaxBP, Sandlot Slugger at the time, the MaxBP is one of those hitting aids, I call them the best hitting aids in the world, on the planet. That’s how I know Neil and MaxBP.

Joey Myers  05:38

I played four years division one baseball at Fresno State from 2003, I just want to give just a little bit, I’m going to probably rush through this because I know most year, just cut to the chase. I think some of you that don’t know me, would be good to just take a gloss… Over 15 plus years in the corrective exercise industry, and those are some of the alphabet soup that I have certification wise.

Joey Myers  06:02

What’s funny is in college, I was a criminology major and I really fell in love with kinesiology. I wish if I did it over again, that’s what I would have done, but I’m mostly self-taught. I used to train people, I wrote a 2018 Amazon bestselling book, Catapult Loading System, that’s the title of this baseball trainers near me webinar.

Joey Myers  06:24

How to teach 100-pound hitters, how to consistently drive the ball 300 feet, and that started me on this journey that this stuff really works, because you really start to get in with a lot of other coaches reteaching the same information, and you really get to see this stuff.

Joey Myers  06:42

It’s not just me and my hitters, or my magic, but other coaches are able to do the same thing. I’ll have a cool little bonus for you guys, free bonus that you can grab this book at no cost on Amazon. At the end of this baseball trainers near me webinar, we’ll talk about that.

Joey Myers  06:58

We’ll get a couple more of these, about almost 30,000 online courses, lessons and books product sold online, over 333 blog posts at Hitting Performance Lab dot com, giving away over 8500 copies of Amazon best selling book…

Joey Myers  07:19

We applied human movement principles that are validated by science to hitting the ball. Like I mentioned, I played four years of division one baseball at Fresno State. I didn’t play pro ball, I didn’t play major league ball, but I played probably more than 95 and 98% of the baseball population.

Joey Myers  07:34

I don’t say that to brag, I say that most of the teaching that I teach has nothing to do with how I was taught. I do use some of that stuff. I do use some of the cues and different things like that in certain circumstances, but most of my stuff, if not all of it, is validated by science.Baseball Trainers Near Me

Joey Myers  07:53

The other thing, that we talked about is, I’m working on a new book that’s going to be published, we are working on January- February of 2021. It’s called “Swing Smarter: Science-Based Hitting Training, Built to Understand How, Why and the Reasoning Behind it”.

Joey Myers  08:09

Those are all things that we stand for and set us apart from a lot of the others that you’ve probably read, heard, watched out there, purchased their products, watched their YouTube videos.

 

Case Studies

Joey Myers  08:19

Let’s get started, case studies, so the only reason I got, I’m not here to brag, and I could give you a hundred other ones, but I want to give you an example since Neil talked about that there’s a huge smattering of different people on this call. There are parents that are just coaching their kids, there are team coaches that are coaching a group of kids from 14 to probably 30 plus in high school, professional and there are instructors out there like myself, there are probably academy owners out there.

Joey Myers  08:27

I just want to put it up front on the people that we help and how these human movement principles that are validated by science can help anybody.

Joey Myers  09:04

At 14, a 130 pound hitter that was driving the ball 385 feet and by the way that was with a hickory wood bat. That wasn’t the hot metals that everybody says, “oh they always try and explain these case studies away”.  This particular hitter, I think it’s Texas Tech, he got a full ride to Texas Tech, Hudson White is his name. I do have a blog post on him that is featured on my blog, but he’s one of them.

Joey Myers  09:31

Sixty-seven-pound hitter at the time, soaking wet. I think that 67 pounds, he had eaten a Costco chocolate muffin, that I think after he went to the doctor to get that measurement or something like that, he might have even been easy, 65 pounds before eating that muffin, but he was hitting the ball 180 plus feet and this is consistent.

Joey Myers  09:50

I always tell my hitters that I’m just the compass and the flashlight in the dark, you have to walk the path, I don’t have to walk the path for you, I’ve done that on my own. I’ve walked the path plenty of times, but now it’s the hitters that have to do that. They are 90% of this. I’m just the 10% that gives them the right direction to go.

Joey Myers  09:50

She put a lot of hard work in that summer, and she gained 10 miles an hour and ball exit speed, hitting a softball. We have an indie baseball player, he was pretty much out, he came to me, and in one hour, we increased, obviously baseball, plus 10 miles per hour and ball exit speed.

Joey Myers  09:50

This isn’t just a one flash in the pan time, 90-pound hitter driving the ball 300 feet. D-1 college fast-pitch softball player, she was a Fresno State in a summer, now with softball because the balls bigger, many you know in softball obviously, in baseball you should know bigger softball, heavier, more mass, and to gain 10 miles an hour in one summer in two and a half months is a big deal. That’s what she did, a lot of hard work.

Joey Myers  10:52

Now those things when they gain that much, the reason why, is because the principles we’re going to talk about today, the consistently power principles, and they were almost nonexistent in their swing. If you have a hitter who is nonexistent, you’re going to see these big gains using principles seen in this baseball trainers near me webinar.

Joey Myers  11:07

If you see hitters that have maybe a couple of these or one of these, you’re not going to see that kind of a gain, just because they’re not starting from zero. I want you to understand that this isn’t the norm. It’s not the norm when somebody started from zero but it’s pretty close. It’s between six and 10 miles an hour ball exit speed when they’re starting from zero, it’s what I tend to see.

Joey Myers  11:28

55-year-old slow-pitch softball optometrist online lesson, and he’s working with me and doing pretty well. I don’t have any gains on that side of it, but it’s interesting and 71-year-old senior league baseball player, I worked with him this week, he came up, he read my book, he said, “It makes sense, I love what you wrote. A lot of the other books I’ve read are hard to understand”. He’s an attorney, by the way. Attorneys usually are really into that jargon.

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.

Right Course For You? Take Quiz Now

Joey Myers  11:55

He picked it up, he said “I love it”, it kind of come up. He’s from Ojai, in California, he drove about three and a half hours. For two days, we worked, and we increased his ball exit speed by nine miles an hour in one hour.

Joey Myers  12:09

The first day we really hit a couple of these principles hard the first day, and he gained nine miles an hour, plus, he had a little bit of back pain when we first started, and we got rid of it in his swing.

Joey Myers  12:20

Again, that’s something maybe we’ll talk about if you guys want me to. I’ve worked with major leaguers, whether it’s in person or they bought my courses and we’ve talked online through some of this stuff, professional hitters I’ve worked with in person, college, Juco, high school, junior high school, little league and senior league.

Joey Myers  12:38

This goes across the board, it doesn’t matter what level they’re at, these principles work, whether they are male or female, they work, it doesn’t matter. Human to human is basically what it works for.  And you’ll learn these principles in this baseball trainers near me webinar.

Joey Myers  12:49

If you want to get a lot of the testimonials, and that’s just probably, I think it’s 50 to 100 of them on my website, I have more, I just had been lazy to get them up, but if you go to hittingperformancelab.com, if you scroll all the way down into the footer, you’ll see the about page and you can click that, read a little bit about me, and then scroll down and there’s a ton of testimonials there. You can go check out more of those.

 

Why Legs Fail and Spinal Engine Succeeds in the Power equation

Joey Myers  13:11

Enough of that, let’s start to transition in this baseball trainers near me webinar… why the legs fail, and spinal engine succeeds in the power equation. Learning principles from water polo, maybe those of you out there have had kids that played water polo or have hitters that have played water polo. I have cousins and hitters that also did it, and the idea came to me, I ran an experiment where I wanted to have my pelvis facing forward, I was using a knob tracker, like a Zepp on my on my knob for those of you who blast motion, same thing, swing tracker.

Joey Myers  13:44

I was facing my hips forward, but I was just turning my upper body to be able to hit the ball. The experiment didn’t really turn out really well, but I tried to do it because my mobility in my spine or my shoulders and my pelvis weren’t allowing me to actually do the experiment like I should.

Joey Myers  14:02

We had the backspin tee guys, I’m really good friends with them since I met them. They did an experiment where they were jumping up and hitting a ball off the tee and dropping off of a chair hitting a ball before they hit the ground. They were doing a couple different experiments like that, and what they found was when their feet weren’t on the ground, and they were just using their shoulders in their thoracic spine, the middle of their spine, that their base when they had their feet on the ground ball exit speed…

Joey Myers  14:27

They had single-A ball players, they had indies or rookie ball, they had golfers that are hitting the ball 300 plus yards or 400 yards now and they had an eight-year professional pitcher who hits pretty well too. They were doing the experiment and they found that about 90 miles an hour was their normal control when their feet were on the ground, but when they were jumping up hitting or when they were falling and hitting, and doing their other things trying to take the lower half of the equation that their ball exit speeds were about 70 to 80% of what their control was, which was interesting.

Joey Myers  15:06

They were about 60 to 70 miles an hour versus the 90 with their feet on the ground. It got me thinking, and then somebody said, “well, that’s not a good experiment”, because you know, if you really wanted to do this, you had to hang from a harness, where your feet were hanging in, and then you hit it like that, like, well, who’s going to do that? Unless you’ve got access to a harness, like that, maybe at a farm.

Joey Myers  15:25

I was thinking, what athletes do throw or hit, from that kind of a position? I did a blog post, and it was titled “Is rotating back hip through the ball necessary for power?” Think about this baseball trainers near me webinar thought experiment.

Joey Myers  15:43

I don’t know if anybody has actually done this. I probably have to do this next summer, but think about that the fastest water polo throw, if you googled it, what do you think of that speed of that water polo ball. As you can see, the size of that ball is like a volleyball, Croatian Olympic water polo, male athlete, 60 miles an hour.

Joey Myers  16:15

As you can see floating in water, they’re not going down to the bottom and pushing up, they’re floating in water, so the lower half is minimal to almost zero friction with the lower half, so you’re not able to use a lower half like you are when you are standing on land, 60 miles an hour.

Joey Myers  16:31

Think about the pitcher, who is going down the mound, they got gravity, they got access to everything. Fastest pitcher, let’s just round it up to 100 miles an hour, so 100 miles an hour, on flat ground, falling down a mound is the fastest pitch.

Joey Myers  16:51

I know 102, 103, we can argue but say 100 easy numbers, so that water polo throw is throwing a big ball, that’s going to have an effect. Now, what happens if we put in that Croatian, male Olympic water polo player athlete, we put a baseball in his hand and have them floating in water and have them throw that baseball as hard as you can?

Joey Myers  17:13

What do you think that speed is going to be? It’s going to be a lot faster than 60 miles an hour, I can tell you. Is it going to be, instead of 60, is he going to throw at 70? Is he going to throw 80 miles an hour? Let’s be conservative and just say 70 miles an hour.

Joey Myers  17:27

You’re telling me in water, the fastest water polo thrower throws a baseball 70 miles an hour, while on land, the fastest pitcher throws 100 miles an hour. Easy numbers, 70% we can say, maybe conclude, that without ground reaction forces, that 70% of that velocity is coming from the pelvis, spine, and shoulder combination.

Joey Myers  17:56

Without ground reaction forces, we are very minimal when we’re in the pool. I say the spinal engines is responsible for about 70 to 80% of the power equation, and the lower half the legs and ground reaction forces are responsible for the other 20 to 30%. That’s what I say. Keep that in mind as we talk through this baseball trainers near me webinar and the spinal engine system.

Baseball Trainers Near Me Webinar

Betts, Arenado, & Trout. Showing ‘dem numbers!

Joey Myers  18:20

Do you recognize some of these hitters? Some of them have changed unis, or one of them at least, Mookie Betts, he’s on the Dodgers now. Nolan Arenado is in the middle, Mike Trout.

Joey Myers  18:29

Notice the pinstripe on the side of their leg and how it connects into the belt. Notice the positioning of where that is. Pelvis is already starting to open; all these hitters are at toe touch or pretty close to toe touch. Notice the numbers on their back. Now the righties, because the camera in the major leagues isn’t straight on center-field because you get to see the pitcher and the hitter, it’s slightly off center towards left.

Joey Myers  18:56

Your righties, you’re going to see probably more numbers than you would see lefties doing the same degree of rotation. This started off as showing numbers, it’s what we called it, and we will talk in a little bit how we’ve refined it to creating neck pressure but notice these in this baseball trainers near me webinar.

Joey Myers  19:12

Swing experiments results with the big three. The first of the big three is showing numbers. When I used a Zepp back in the day, now Zepp is turned in blast motions taken over and swing tracker. When I did about two- three experiments showing numbers, we found that out of 100 swings not showing numbers and 100 swing showing numbers, that bat speed was increased on average by four to six miles an hour, that’s bat speed.

Joey Myers  19:40

Bat speed is the close cousin to the ball exit speed. They are not the same, but they’re like first cousins. Without bat speed, ball exit speed probably is not going to be there. We got to be able to swing the bat somewhat hard to get the ball coming off the bat as fast. There are three others…

To be continued in Part-2 to this baseball trainers near me webinar…

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.

Right Course For You? Take Quiz Now
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Private Baseball Lessons Near Me

Private Baseball Lessons Near Me Video Interview

Private Baseball Lessons Near Me: “I saw 6000 guys; I didn’t see anybody who could hit a curveball. It’s like, how are we not hitting a curveball?”

 

 

Private Baseball Lessons Near Me

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:

  • Give me your sales pitch on you guys’ Academy, what you guys do, where you’re located, etc.
  • How long has it been since you started following me Bill?
  • Do you guys do different experiments and stuff like that? Do you show those kids a part of your learning process?
  • What’s your advice on the biggest mistake you see some of these hitting academies making in the beginning?
  • How are you guys applying Perry Husband’s stuff?
  • What hitting strategies are you talking about to your guys? And how are you practicing them?
  • Why ‘keep hands inside’ the curveball is a myth…
  • Bill and Joey on the state of youth baseball and softball: ‘free play’
  • Where can people find you Bill?

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!

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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.

 

Give me your sales pitch on you guys’ Academy, what you guys do, where you’re located, etc. for those looking for private baseball lessons near me?

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?

 

How long has it been since you started following me Bill?

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?

 

Do you guys do different experiments and stuff like that? Do you show those kids a part of your learning process when doing private baseball lessons near me?

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?

 

What’s your advice on the biggest mistake you see some of these hitting academies making in the beginning?

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?

 

How are you guys applying Perry Husband’s stuff?

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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What hitting strategies are you talking about to your guys?  And how are you practicing them?

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.

 

Why ‘keep hands inside’ the curveball is a myth…

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.

 

Bill and Joey on the state of youth baseball and softball: ‘free play’

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?

 

Where can people find you Bill?

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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