Welcome back to finding the edge podcast.
I'm Robert Fry with Garrett boehm and today we have an
awesome podcast for you guys. We ended up recording this one
about a month ago and I've been, super busy with school, but I'm
really excited to finally, get to share with you guys this
episode. We had a really great
conversation and I wanted to give you guys a little bit of
context before we dive in and where we discussed two articles,
one of one of which was written by myself, which was titled, And
what is the highest form of technique, which was based off
of a quote, by Bruce Lee, where he said the highest technique is
to have no technique. My technique is the result of
your Technique. My movement is the result of
your movement. And so in it, I kind of Explore
More of the ideas behind his quote and how his quote fits
very well with motor learning ideas such as ecological
Dynamics. And so we kind of explore that
more in a general sport sense. I wrote it for All sports not
just baseball and so that's why we wanted to talk about it
today. Or I wanted to talk about it
today with Robert and the other article that our conversation
centered around was the physics of batting practice.
Yeah, so the physics of batting practice articles written by
David Kagan and big fan of his work.
He is the one that came up with the physics of pitch effects
behind basically measuring from Ball release to plate and
basically creating those 3D pitch + that you may see on
baseball Savant or Brooks baseball, even where it shows
you from ball release all the way to hand, and it allowed me
to create kind of those 3D pitch visualization.
So I've done with flight scope data.
So also lastly, There may or may not be a SpongeBob reference for
you, so stay tuned for that and I can't wait for you all to
listen to this podcast. All right.
Well do I want to do updates on how things have been going at?
A Quincy and I can give a little update on what we've been doing
here at MSU. Yeah.
And let's let's hear MSU first. I feel like I always start the
ball. So we're gonna we're gonna throw
you a change up this time. Fair enough.
I mean we've just been an individual work for Past couple
of weeks or since the start of school, we've gotten to hit
outside a little bit more this week, which was really nice.
I really liked some of the stuff we were doing, and having some
external targets or external focus of attention, work.
And having, guys, for example, do like a Sac fly around where
we had some buckets out in the Outfield, And and be like, hey,
hit a Fly ball, either to the bucket or beyond the bucket.
So basically, as are hitting coach would say, Sac fly likes,
or extended. So I really like that.
I thought guys, really like that.
It's always great when you're able to get out on the field and
hit to see ball flight and see where things are going.
And then we also had our Outfield group shaking some fly
balls, for one of the other hitting groups so that they
could get some live reads. So yeah, that's kind of what
we've been doing there. How about yourself Robert?
Yeah that actually sounds really cool.
I'd be interested to see kind of kind of that stuff and put some
good old data analysis on that. But yeah, we We've been
fortunate to be outside for hitting for most of the time
last week was a rough week because there's a lot of rain
here. So I think that three straight
days of being indoors and yeah, that kind of limits are our
training in some way. So, like you, you know, we had
like you not using the sac fly buckets per se, but we had a
Target mind and I show you a photo of it.
But essentially we have like, Three three plates, three kind
of like modified Turtles on our field.
And each pitching machine is its own unique characteristics.
So one of them is a right-handed break momentum.
So left-handed breaking ball and the center ones kind of like a
high spin fastball and each one we have like a certain plan to
it and it would vary by day and sometimes we might do A kind of
like a Switcheroo round where we'll just say, all right, time
to switch it up. And we'll say, all right, this,
this part of the cage, does this, this part does this, this
part does this, we kind of go through something like
situational hitting or just focus, having a, you know,
different different type of focus to our training and then
yeah, same thing as you guys, We'll work, it's really good
because we're getting a, we're getting a ton of video in and I
mean it's it's great because you know, the biggest the biggest
thing for feedback for our guys especially is being able to see
themselves on video and understanding, okay.
Here's what I'm doing with with my swing and thankfully we have,
you know, we have guys that are very receptive to that and they
Be able to say, okay, you know, based on this video, this is
what I'm doing and our, and are willing to make adjustments on
their own without, you know, a great amount of coaching.
Mmm. Yeah.
One of the other things that we've been doing to is mixing in
the stroma and drill or Cueto. And that's something that I've
really liked to help guys become more adjustable with their
timing. And just to give you guys
different looks and I make things a little bit more
challenging and I think that segues nicely into some of the
articles that we wanted to talk about one, being an old one that
I believe. one of the Driveline hitting trainers posted on the
physics of batting practice and kind of how they were talking
about implementing more pitching machines into practice, you kind
of want to touch on some of the things that you kind of pulled
out of that article. Yeah so it definitely allowed me
so since you know we at Quincy used last motion we can we get
metrics like that space so prominent kind of like a
analytical perspective that allows me to from that article
allows me to kind of think creatively in terms of, okay,
from this fishing machine that we have set at this with the bat
speed. So that this, you know, what's
what's that exit velocity on, you know, said batted ball or,
you know, we could Also, do kind of like what's that?
What's that time The Hitting Zone as mentioned in the article
to from those numbers that we do have.
So I think that that that was the biggest thing that I gleaned
from, it was being able to possibly calculate those metrics
because yeah, the radar system that we do use, it would
obviously wouldn't do very well when there's you know, three
balls being hit on almost sound simultaneously.
So, So we have to get creative with kind of getting metrics and
obtaining those yeah I know that was some of the stuff that was
covered in the physics of batting practice.
They were talking about how if you take that speed, have
somebody having the bat speed of 75 miles per hour.
And the pitch speed was say, for example, 60 miles an hour that
could lead to an Exit velocity of 10 2.
And then if the pitching machine is ramped up at 90, that could
lead to an exit via low of 108, and then there were talking
about well, how much time is there from ball release to home?
And traditional BP is going to be about point, 45 seconds,
whereas a pitching machine, 55 feet would be a point for two
seconds. I believe that's still the
pitching. Machine was throwing 90 and then
the traditional BP was at 40 feet, throwing 60 miles an hour
and then to what you were mentioning Robert about time in
The Hitting Zone, traditional BP was .019 seconds.
Whereas the pitching machine was point one, three seconds.
And I thought it was interesting.
About how okay. Yes, the pitching machine is
going to be more difficult because there's going to be less
time in The Hitting Zone. Also us time to home But I think
the other thing that makes it more difficult is that there's
no pre pitch information. So from a timing standpoint, it
becomes may be a little bit harder to time or there's a
little bit less variability in terms of how you can vary your
timing mechanism. And I think that's why when you
look at the research on say, for example, Crickets Pat's batsman
Hitting off of a pitching machine versus alive batter.
I think they also recreated this in a Japanese study hitters tend
to have smaller moves that are different than when they had
actually hit off of a real picture.
So I think that might account for why the increased
difficulty. Uh-huh.
Yeah. And so the other thing that
popped in my head Head was, you know, when an object is in
motion stays in motion. So, obviously with a BP or an
live picture, like, you know, their arm is in motion, they're
throwing a baseball, where as you're using the pitching
machine, you flash the ball, your arm slows down, may even
stop, and then you feed the machine and still, there's that
time. Where, you know, technically
there may be that small amount of time where nothing, maybe in
motion. So, yeah, it's A big thing for
timing in terms of that because again, when we as baseball
players want to, you know, understand timing or swing, a
baseball bat, it's more or less based off the motion of the
picture. Whereas, you know, in Pigeon
with the pigeon machine, you may not get a full object in motion
sequence. Yeah.
And the other thing too, that, I think that we talked a little
bit about with Kyle Lindley. Was the gays behavior isn't
similar either? And I know that Kyle has talked
about this on Twitter as well. The fact that the eyes will
start on the body and then they'll make a cicada or they'll
shift from the body to release Point.
Whereas, if we're just using a pitching machine, there is no
incentive for a hitter to shift their eyes from one spot to
another to pick up the ball. They're just going to park their
gaze right on the pitching machine, where the ball comes
out. And I think, that's where if
it's about having an athlete trying to connect to the
information within the problem and then being able to pick up
on Like what that information tells them about how the ball is
going to move. So for example, today, we were
using our spindle machine and it was really erratic and one of
the players made a comment about like just how uncomfortable and
hard, it was and just how it's just different from.
A like a game setting and I think kind of what he was
getting at too. Is that you know unintentionally
was the fact that when you're actually facing a live picture,
you kind of get a little bit of information as far as did he
yank that ball you know and have a little bit of a heads-up that
the ball might actually run in on you because the ball out of
this pinball machine was on both sides of the plate and it wasn't
really Consistent, but we'll get into that in my opinion.
I thought that was a more realistic look but given that
it's a pitching machine and the hand just goes up and it puts it
down. There's no other information to
give you any small indication of a, this ball might be going
inside or this ball might be going outside up or down.
And so I think that's one of the other limitations of using a
pitching machine. Is that the athlete doesn't
become better at picking up that pre pitch movement, and how it
how it can affect the pitch flight and the pitch location.
Yeah. And another thing that we also
use. So, with our pitching machines,
we have timing shoots. And what essentially they are,
is basically like this elongated pipe, where you'll feed the ball
into this pipe, and it kind of rolls.
So, the reason why that we use that is again, it, cut it kind
of simulates a ball, a ball in motion or in this case, a
picture in motion. So, that's a big thing that,
that we used to kind of simulate that.
Because, again, you like, Hard to say, hey, don't use a
pitching machine because of, you know, the benefits of it to a
coaching staff to you know players like to get wraps now
but again as you mentioned you know, connecting to the
information. Are we really getting the proper
reps that we should be getting is what we should be asking in
this scenario, right? And that's that's one of the
things too. When I was reading this article,
A previous one came to mind that was written in the New York
Times last year. And it was really interesting,
the last line of the article because it was talking about.
The article name was a novel idea in a Majors.
How Using batting practice to get better and part of what they
talked about was using pitching machines.
But the last line of the article I think is the best from Yankees
outfielder, Mike Hockman. You're going to have to correct
me Robert on this expression, it Stockman Okay, Yankees
outfielder, Mike tockman and to kind of quote this a little bit,
he he used to pinch it quite a bit and he really wanted to make
sure that his eyes were ready for game speed and and he would
he would use the pitching machine and crank it up and and
use that to try to get his eyes used to that.
And I think there's some benefit to that for sure.
You know. But he said, there's really no
substitute for a human standing 6 feet or sorry.
There's really no substitute for human standing 60 feet, 6 inches
away, and throwing as hard as they can at you.
And, and I think he's right on that, like a pitching machine
can't simulate the emotion. And another person has, and I
think this ties into an article that I put together for
emergence and the Bruce Equal that I kind of centered the
article around, which was the highest technique is to have no
technique. My technique is the result of
your Technique. My movement is a result of your
movement and what we're talking about. what tockman I pronounce
that, right tockman was saying is There's no substitute for a
human trying to throw as hard as they can from 60 feet 6 inches
away. I mean you know you hear all
these pictures like grunting and all this sort of stuff and
there's like a motion, you know, like we you know you're facing
Max Scherzer. You know, the amount of emotion
that's coming from him. Like that's going to shape your
movement response. I mean, we can see how Hitting
off a pitching machine and the anxiety that creates in our
players is going to shape how they move.
Similarly, a person's emotion and their intent and being able
to read that intent is going to shape how an athlete is going to
move. And we want in my mind.
You want to also have athletes be able to interact with that
and learn how to coordinate their movement in response to
that. Yes.
And so the way I kind of look at it is you kind of think think to
yourself this way. So in terms of, you know, as you
mention Bruce Lee, with the great quote of the best
technique is to have no technique.
Mmm, I feel like we should be able to stress this, not only
to, you know, people in baseball but just life in general where
You know, you can't really we in the baseball world.
And you mentioned this in your article, we are so kind of
focused in on mastering, you know, this Mastery of gotta have
the perfect mechanics. We got to have this, you know,
the perfect swing with the perfect mechanics but we have to
understand that really that there is not a perfect way of
doing things. The more now the more reps you
do, have something it helps but that should mean.
Okay, I'm working to Perfection, we have this perfect thing.
It's just I'm getting better at not being as terrible as kind of
a way I'm putting in. Well, I think we also want to
Think of it in terms of each time we approach a problem.
We're in a different state of being, right?
So because we're a complex adaptive system and we're
Dynamic and our system is very Dynamic.
Every time we approach a problem, we're going to be in a
slightly different state. And so, therefore, the way that
we're going to go about solving that problem isn't going to
necessarily be the same, and there might be some slight.
Deviation in the problem. And so really it's more about.
Are we getting better at solving problems and I think to
sometimes we can actually do things perfectly like when we
think about some of the amazing feats of athleticism that we've
seen athletes perform during competition, those are like
perfectly executed plays. and basically, the way that I see it
now from ecological perspective, is everything came together in
that moment for them to execute and like things just kind of
fell into place I know Brian pazos talked about this a little
bit in terms of you know, when he would play, you know, getting
his eyes underneath the ball when he was building a grounder
and then picking up the eyes of The first baseman and it just
seemed like the ball would just naturally be online and end up
right there. And for me, I have the examples
of there were times where if I got when I would get it would
get feeds at second base to turn a double play.
It's almost just like the ball and my body, just put itself in
the right position to make that play.
And so in a way when you become Attuned to the information in
the problem and your body begins to couple itself to to that
information. It essentially puts itself in
the right position to execute the play in.
You can actually achieve that Perfection, so to speak for a
moment, but it becomes the question of how do you repeat
that? And it's not so much about
burning it into muscle memory as it is about to use a quote from
Bernstein it becomes about the process of solving the problem
again and again. Correct.
Yeah, and that's that's essentially what I was working
towards alluding to was, you know, you get better at problem.
Solving doesn't mean you are, you know, the best at it.
But if you are challenged with that problem, you know you're in
a better scenario than say the previous time you faced that
similar problem. Yeah, there are some times where
you're going to just absolutely Well, it and other times it's
just going to be good enough, you know?
And that's all right. Exactly.
So there's there's this, there's this threshold again like as, as
you kind of mention. Like, we're so obsessed with
having these great mechanics. But sometimes, you know, certain
certain movements may work in that scenario, certain movements
may not work in various scenarios.
It's all about kind of Determining.
Okay. Well, you know what?
What information do I have right now?
And how can I best proceed with the information that is
presented to me? Right, like, how can I find a
way to get it done? You know, a lot of pitching
coaches and pitchers have talked about how do you, how do you
pitch on days where you don't have the best stuff, right?
Where your body just isn't highly attuned and calibrated
kind of like we talked about last week and it happens to be
slightly uncalibrated in a little unate UND.
How do you how do you take it? Take your body when you're
you're in. Music Dynamics are not at their
peak level and still find a way to get your body Rhea, tuned and
calibrated to something that doesn't feel Supernatural to
you, and still find a way to solve that problem.
And that's, that's where I think.
When we lean too heavily on executing perfect mechanics.
And I know we talked about this last week when we're talking
about Keith David's, is talk about the swimmers or the divers
rather and then hitting the diving board.
You know, if if we focus too heavily on perfect Technique, we
met hamstring guy's ability to solve problems because Simon
sinek, give this great Ted Talk and use this example of if you
have a goal from if you're given the goal of having to get from
one side of the room to the other.
And if you just tell somebody, hey, I just want you to get from
one side of the room to the other.
No problem. But if you put the constraint on
them, of what you have to do it, perfect.
Meaning, in this case, you have to walk a straight line.
Well, if you start walking, and then someone slides, an object
in front of you, what are you going to do?
Stop because you're not really sure how to solve that problem
because you've been commanded, you have to go in a straight
line but Simon said it goes on to say, but if I just told you
you had to go from point A to point B, I slide a chair in
front of you or something like that.
You're just going to go around it.
No big deal. And so, To me, that's analogous
to putting the constraint of you have to be perfect in your
Technique has to be perfect. It just over constraints the
system and it doesn't it actually trains out of them,
their ability to problem-solve, Right.
And so this is a perfect lead-in to my good old scenario that
we're presenting. Here is from the great show.
SpongeBob SquarePants, can't believe I'm talking about
SpongeBob on a podcast but here we go.
It's the episode where SpongeBob and Patrick blow bubbles and
they give lessons Okay. Squidward, tries to blow
bubbles, he can't. So he gets lessons from
SpongeBob and Sponge, Bob Gibson, this whole hullabaloo of
information and he's like, you have to use the technique and so
the technique goes as follows spin around twice.
Stop doubletake three times. One, two, three, and then it
goes to like a pelvic thrust and then a bunch of random movements
and then you blow a perfect. but again, this is kind of, you
know, putting in that process where it's so much focused on.
You have have these perfect movements, these specific set of
movements to create this perfect technique to blow that bubble.
Whereas the one-time Squidward did blow a bubble.
All he did was just scream into the bubble blower and little
bubble. Right?
The moral of the story of this is, you don't necessarily need
to have the perfect technique to do the job, and your Technique
is not necessarily going to be the same as somebody else's
technique. Correct, because it's bodies are
different for everybody. And to, because our bodies
change like day-to-day, our technique could be slightly
different. And we need to, I think we need
to train athletes, to figure out, how to work around some of
their limitations. I mean, that's the best athletes
are that are the ones that, you know, when they get dinged up a
little bit, they're still able to go out and perform at a high
level. I mean, it's said quite often
the best athletes are the best compensators and that's not to
say that we don't want to help athletes be more efficient, and
learn how to be more efficient with their moves and to move in
ways that are going to be less injury-prone, but it does mean
that if we do train, the tissues in the body to be able to
express both strength stability, Mobility, And speed, and Power,
in various positions, we should allow the body to be able to.
Not always have to put load through the same tissues and
joints all the time in the same way.
And I actually think that that makes a more robust athlete And
so that's why for me, I look at it as an athlete that has more
movement options is an athlete that is also less injury-prone.
So I think that's where I know some coaches.
The whole reason that they're really, it's really important to
them. That guy's really strive to do
things. The most biomechanically optimal
way is because in their mind, it's all about. and, I get that
and I think there's there's some Credence to that but I also
think that athletes should not only train that but should also
trained to be able to work on the edges of that as well, and
to be strong there and to be capable there.
So that when they find themselves in that position in a
game, they also their body is prepared and ready to handle
that. Correct.
And that brings me to an example that I've felt within the that I
played with a guy who, Was a Purdue commit as a pitcher.
He was you know, low low 80s high or low high 80s, low 90s
his senior year but he was so over Coach that He there.
The focus was okay, you're only going to pitch every five days,
Etc, you have to, you know, and every pitch he would through on,
you know, side days. It was very, very examined in
the sense that You know, if he doesn't, if he didn't do the
specific movement than yet, you have to do that pitch again, to
get that specific movement and like you mentioned being more
flexible in movement types. Allows for Less injury.
Well, guess what this, this guy, the same guy had a lot of
injury-prone. This to him.
You had arm problems, he had like problems and you know it
was it was a tough situation but thankfully it was able to make
it as a as a bat but Again, it just leads to this scenario of
like you don't have to have one way of solving that problem.
And we of course we talked about it last week where it's, you
know, where we were talking about, okay?
How many ways can you get the answer?
5 of 2, plus 3 m? Or no of 4 plus 1 etcetera?
Yeah, absolutely. Trying to think what other
things that we want might want to talk to talk about on this.
I think. Oh, the other thing that came up
in the New York Times article that I thought was really good.
And this Harkens back to our conversation with Rob gray was
Jeff Albert's in the New York Times.
Article talks about how you know, if we are succeeding. you
know, in batting practice like if we hit every single ball, You
know, how how game like is that, like, how many times in a game?
Do we actually hit every ball that we swing at, you know, and
then also to like how many strikes do we see in a game?
Versus how many strikes do we throw in batting practice?
And, you know, usually coaches are and players to are really
annoyed when The coach isn't throwing all cookies to them in
in practice, but when you actually think about it and the
article mentions pitcher is usually 50 to 60% strikes in a
game. So, you know, one of the things
that is big today is decision-making.
Well in some regards. You know how often our players
actually really having to have to perceive where the ball is
relative to their ability, to hit it and ball and strike.
And so that's where you know I get it when it comes to a
machine standpoint that it can pump more strikes and be more
consistent. But is that really what we
actually want to expose our hitters to You know, if we want
to make it more game-like, then maybe we need to have a more
realistic, all strike percentage and practice.
Yeah. And so do we really want those
guys that are up there throwing darts, in the strike zone, or do
we want someone who is, I want to say radek, but at least
understands not every pitch that I should throw should be a
strike. well into I pulled this from I believe the sport cortex
book, I might have gotten the words backwards on that but you
know when it comes to coordinating your movement and
being more accurate You're more accurate when you get when
you're allowed to move and have things flow from one thing to
the next. So, essentially, this is why I
believe that for the most part hitter should have a little bit
more movement in flow to their swing.
Instead of having like everything be like, really short
and quick is it doesn't allow for guys to have more Rhythm and
timing in their swing and it's harder for them to coordinate
their Are different degrees of freedom because you know, like
you were talking about before Robert of like an object in
motion likes to stay in motion and an object at rest, likes to
stay at rest. I mean, that's that's kind of
the same principle that's that's going on here.
And so, yeah, this comes out of the performance cortex book and
I think when we allow hitters to, you know, with for just
grooving, fastball after fastball on the strike zone, you
know, right down the middle guys.
Just get in a rhythm and it's just really easy for them but it
doesn't work like that in the game.
Like you don't get to, you know, take five swings in a row on
fastballs down the middle. I mean very rarely you might get
to In a row, but five in a row, you know, with without any
context of account. I mean that's that's where I
think having for me. I think it is more beneficial to
have a live arm and to be okay with the live arm trying to hit
spots and missing spots every now and then and creating a
scenario where a hitter has to deal with broken.
A little bit and having to learn how to essentially, you know,
deal with that sort of pressure and to be able to be calm and to
collect themselves into focus and to be ready to hit that
pitch. I mean, because that's what we
want to see. Is our guys to be ready for the
fastball, for example, you know, why is it that guys, on the
first pitch end up taking the best pitch of the at-bat?
It's because they're not trained to Come in and square a ball up
on the first swing there, they've been training.
If you're just grooving it all the time to you know get get
things synced up on Pitch three or four or five of your BP
round. And so that's why to me, I think
it's super, I think coaches should be more okay, with their
BP, throwers quote unquote. Actually, being a little bit
more around the zone and not always being in the zone.
Right. And so that leads into the
precision versus accuracy argument.
Do you want to be precise with you want to be accurate?
And in this case you more or less want to be accurate, you
don't want to start the same spot at the same time.
We're not this is not a game of darts, where you throw the dart
at the same spot. Throw hit the bullseye.
So I think it's better in this scenario to be accurate because
again You're not in the game like environment.
You're not going to get the same pitch in the same spot, multiple
times in a single at-bat, maybe even in in a game as well.
So I think it's better to have those baby throwers, move around
the Zone a bit and even out of the zone.
And it shouldn't be a scenario of, you know, the headers being
flustered because they BP throwers out of the Zone where
oh I can't hit that. Well that's good.
You shouldn't hit that because it is out of the zone. yeah, and
one of the other things that the New York Times article batting
practice kind of talks about, in terms of, I think, what Jeff
Albert's was trying to get his players to understand is that,
you know, Practice should be more challenging and I think a
lot of kids because of this idea of perfect practice makes
permanent. You know, we're perfect.
And this chasing the ideal of the more we execute it right in
practice under and in some ways making it easier for them to do
that. Leads to it showing up more on
game time. And more often than not.
We don't see that occurring. Really, it becomes more about
the kids egos feeling good. And it does about trying to
teach the athlete to be a competitor.
I think coaches, love athletes that are hungry for a challenge
and our competitors. But the question is, is does
their practice environment actually Foster. that type of
athlete like are we bringing up athletes in an environment that
encourages, that type of Behavior, or does it more
reinforce that the environment needs to be perfect?
And I need to have lots of success in order to feel good
about myself rather than trying to challenge yourself.
And I know we, when we were talking with Rob gray, we I made
the mention of Like if you think about skateboarders, they may
they fail all the time and trying to learn new tricks.
And why wouldn't Why shouldn't our hitters have that same
mentality of wanting to hit more difficult, pitches and trying to
solve different problems with their bat and seeing things more
as a challenge? When it comes to hitting like I
think if we can find create an environment that Fosters that
mindset and that mentality, I think that for me, personally,
that that's the ideal environment and those are the
type of players you want. And I also think that that's
back that falls back on us as coaches as to whether or not we
have been creating environments that Foster that type of
Mentality. Correct.
And so this brings up to a point that Caleb Abney has made in the
past where, you know, we want to have kind of that variability
training in terms of, you know, just being around those own
being in different parts of the zone for BP.
So that allows then each individual player to better
understand a, how to solve more problems and Maybe maybe,
there's maybe there's a spot outside of the strike zone where
their body just moves really well.
And, you know, it has a good connection to the information.
with a certain pitch type, but in a given, you know, training
environment, where you're just getting either machines or BP in
the same spot, you wouldn't know that unless you use that
variability training, Right? And that's where I think from a
game setting standpoint and collecting data, you know, maybe
having a A player or coach sitting in the stands.
Charting at a ball location. Might help reveal that a little
bit more because I think it's really hard in the cage to tell
whether or not that would have been a successful at bat like
some home runs and doubles our balls that are hit off the top
of the cage like relatively early in the cage.
So relatively close to the hitter, But to kind of jump back
to what I was saying earlier about creating and fostering an
environment that has more of a competitive mindset or challenge
acceptance mindset. I think that's how we help,
athletes better deal with failure.
We have to I think in order to create training environments
that where they're going to fail more, we also have to prepare
them for that because I think Currently the environments that
athletes are most used to. Right now are ones where they
are expected to succeed a lot, right?
Like coaches, talk about and preach consistency and I think
that's where The pressure for them to be more, consistent
means that they are apprehensive about failing.
And so if we want guys to view hard things as challenging then
we have to Help them understand the value of failure, and that's
part of learning and shifting their view on how they view that
experience. Correct.
And so that leads me to the thing that I use.
It's not for not hitting, but one day in practice, I was
running a reaction drill for third, baseman.
And for those that don't know, essentially the third baseman
has his face, he turns backwards and has his face towards the
Outfield. And when I say, go he turns
around, you know, just figures out where the balls at and goes
to get it. But what I did, This scenario
was in the past they were ask them.
Hey, you know, how does this work?
You just say ready, go? You feed the ball machine and it
to him but then I added variability by either doing a
quick ready. Go or ready, long, pause, go
ready, go, you know all these different types and there were
like this was challenging but it was so much fun.
They're like this is a Super fun thing and like they were, they
were struggling with some ground balls, but they were like
honestly like, that's, that's how it should go.
Because again, you're not gonna when we talk about the fact that
you're not going to get a great read on every bad ball, I'm in
defensive side. So why not mess with timing in
this sense? Stealing a ground ball that
helps them in the future because again, you're not going to be
completely attune to the information defensively either.
You're not going to be you know your body's not going to move
the same every day you step out on the field and feel the ground
ball. So being able to have a variable
amount of information or a variable training, environment
allows that Adaptability say, okay, well now I can solve more
problems, right. And I think that, you know, our
goal is to help athletes become two, more become more attuned,
to the information and to become more sensitive, to the relevant
information in the environment. And so, that's why, I think it's
super important to try to provide as much game like
information within the problem that they're needing to solve so
that they can become more. Or or so that they can become
better able or better at picking up that information and better
at being able to utilize that information given any state that
their system is currently in. You know, the example that
you're using though about guys having fun.
And we've talked about this many times on the podcast before is
if you're creating competition and creating an athlete that has
a mindset of wanting a Challenge, you know, the example
that you gave of, you know, got you giving them a challenging
drill and guys actually liking it, you know, like they're
wanting to get back in there and hey, give me another one, you
know, like they're having fun and, and because the season is
can be quite long and a bit of a grind, it needs to their needs
to be fun like, you want. We want to keep guys passion for
the game, strong. And I having having Our mindset
change and shift to more of a competitive Challenger type of a
mindset. I think just keeps it, keeps it
more interesting and actually helps them grow way more in
terms of skill acquisition, right?
And yeah that's glad you brought that up to in terms of you know,
wanting to take another because yeah for each Each time these
guys, you know, mr. Ground ball, or maybe misread a
ground ball like please give me another, I want another.
And so obviously for that second time around I would give them a
different read. So instead of, you know, let's
say the first time I was just like ready, pause for one psycho
I would say ready pause for 4 seconds ago and, you know, based
on the drill. As soon as I say, go, they turn
around and so the ball could be 100 feet away.
The Could be 50 feet away that ball could be 30 feet away when
they turn around. So it's a good environment to
allow these guys that one get better to understand that.
There are a lot of different quote-unquote, scenarios to say
a problem and three that you don't have to solve that problem
the same way with another problem, or you don't have to
solve that same individual problem.
One way. Totally, are you bouncing
something in the background? I was not 0 because there was
like dumping, it might have been more.
Your Might Have Been Me rocking my chair.
Okay. Because you were, you were
Spitting Fire. And then there is, there's like
bumping in the background. Yeah.
That might have been me hitting the chair to the wall.
Fair enough. Well, do you if you want to give
it another, go on that. We can.
Can try to edit that back. Otherwise I mean I can try to
give it another go, but I don't think it'll be the same as what
I just said, course. Yeah, no, I mean the right.
And that's like context, you know, is I'll try not to be as
excited about it. No, I mean, but that's the
thing, right? Passion is awesome like, you
know. Anyways, so to kind of wrap up
here. again, like I think the takeaway here is that we want
guys to explore their movements, to become problem solvers.
And so in practice, they should be exploring the landscape of
the problem or surfing the bandwidth of the problem and
discovering the edges of their ability and trying new things.
And that It's okay to fail. Like, how, how many different
ways can they solve this problem?
And, you know, in a way about like, trying to challenge
themselves and creating that, that sort of a mindset I think
would be the thing that I would want people to kind of walk away
from this conversation with, but yourself Robert.
Yeah, I'm with you on that and being able to Guess I understand
that, you know, one, it's okay to fail, but also at the same
time, fail better. I, I can't remember who said
that before, but fail better. And what I essentially mean by
that is allow yourself to be like, okay, I'm failing, but I'm
also learning while I'm doing it because, yeah, and my personal
experience. Anytime I, you know, let's say
when I'm writing code and it's incorrect.
That helps me, learn better that I've obviously failure is in my
case, a great learner or great creator of a learning
environment. It's a great teacher.
Yeah, there we go. I could not think of the word
teacher and I don't know why not happens but yeah totally like
and I think that's where we have to remind people that failure is
part of the learning process. You know, since we're getting
close to my son's bedtime, you know, nobody gets mad when you
know a little kid falls down trying to learn to walk.
You know, it's learning. That is the process of learning,
you know, ever since we were little we're going to make
mistakes or, you know, in the process of acquiring something
new and a new skill. Were you're going to fail and so
remembering that that's part of the process and to use a
Napoleon Hill quote, you know the seeds of success are are
found in Failure, so to speak a kind of butchered that quote,
but Yeah, I mean that's that's what I think guys need to
remember, is that the seeds of their successor are from or
found in moments of failure? So, you know, anyways, guys, if
you liked this episode and want to reach out to us, feel free to
hit us up on social media, Twitter, you can contact me at
gbo. I, um, 01 on Twitter and people
can find Robert Fry where On Twitter at Robert, try 40 and
not going to forget it. This time I have a YouTube
channel as well. Yeah.
So you guys should definitely hit up and follow Robert on
YouTube as well and if you want to see any of the kind of the
resources that we some of the resources that we've talked
about here on the podcast, we also have a Discord server that
has some talks and different articles in it as well.
You guys You should definitely check that out as well.
It's called the baseball coaches Clubhouse.
Find it on Discord. So appreciate you guys,
listening till next time.