Welcome back to Finding the Edge podcast.
I'm Garrett Boyam, joined with Kyle Dupic.
So as the resident pitching guy, there's always a conversation
regarding velocity command trade-offs.
How do we train one? How do we train the other?
You sent interesting post on X to me the other day.
DM D You want to walk through the walk raid?
Why? Why was that interesting to you?
Why did you send it to me? I think the thing that stood out
to me the most because our season just ended and just
looking at like the struggle throughout the year and where
where just our, our team ended up, like our, the number of
walks that we gave up was significantly higher.
Yeah, we still had success this year, which which was great.
But I could see that this is like this is a place where we
could we could grow. And then also it's been a big,
it's something that's been thrown at people, you know, of
like, oh, you only develop, you know, Velo or stuff or whatever,
but like they can't throw strikes.
So yeah, OK, you have great velocity, you have great stuff,
but you can't locate it. And then, you know, you're not
making it up, like you're not, you're not playing as much or
guys aren't moving up levels because they don't command the
ball well enough. And so it becomes a question of,
you know, OK, now a guy might not have, you know, great
velocity, great stuff, but he has great command.
So do do organizations feel like they can take a guy with great
command and develop velocity and stuff?
Is that, is that where we're at now?
I don't know. But it still feels like the
thing that is getting most people noticed is Velo and
stuff. And then the command piece seems
like it's getting a little bit forgotten, but now it's starting
to come back. And at least from what I'm
seeing on social media, different people are starting to
talk more about command Driveline being one of them.
Like, how do you develop command?
And So what was interesting about this T tweet from Tango
Tiger? I'm sure every analytics person
on Twitter knows who this is. But anyways, he put out this
really interesting tweet about the walk rate at the MLB.
I'm assuming this is the MLB level that year to year there's
no correlation between between the walk rate or the, the
correlation is really low. So basically what that means is
that one year's walk rate does not predict the following year's
walk rate. So there's not really any
correlation between, you know, for example, the year that we
had this year, maybe we can chalk it up to just it being a
bad year. Like it's not a predictor for
how many guys we're going to walk next year, Which I think
that's kind of an encouraging thing of like if you have a, you
know, if these stats are correct, then you know, if you
have a bad year where you walk a ton of guys, is that necessarily
this might not be necessarily indicative of you having a high
walk rate next year. Now we have to qualify this,
this is on MLB data. This might not be for other
levels because you know, at the Major League level, you have you
have an abundance of talent. Like if you, if guys are
struggling with command, there's somebody else very easily at
hand that you can find to replace.
So that might be the reason, an explanation for that.
But the other thing that I thought was really, really
interesting too with this was that in season correlation or
sorry, in season walk rate is more highly correlated to the
next. Like, you know, your walk rate
in the first month, as it's showing here is highly
correlated to the next month, then to the next month, to the
next month. And so the direction I'm
interpreting here, extrapolating here, the direction that your
walk rate is going is more predictive of where it's going
to go next potentially. And as we look at this graph, I
think it'll be kind of interesting to see what we see
there. And then, then where I kind of
want to go with this is OK from an ecological perspective or
framework, can we understand, like how would we understand why
this is occurring and then what? And then is there anything that
we can do about it? So that's kind of where I was
thinking of starting our conversation today.
Yeah, right. May to June etcetera.
So couple month period each and and.
That's the one last one. July to October, See July,
August, October. Well, I guess that makes sense
because. October is last week.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Yep.
So it is and must teams near the end of you know, September
baseball etcetera as well. That's the that's the other one.
So walk through that one. What what's different that's
being communicated there that is the year to year.
Is that something different? I'm trying to understand it
right now. Walk rate in.
In season correlation. So this is still in season?
Yeah. But what I'm what I'm struggling
with is the percentages here walk rate in April, May or
March, April, sorry. And this is walk rate in May,
June and July and October, some kind of confused?
It looks, it looks to me like it's just a a different
graphical representation, right your X&Y axis?
Yeah, with the line being the correlation is 1 to 1 and so
it's how far off is, yes. But I guess that's why I'm guess
I'm a little. And they said it was point .8 in
the previous, so that would, you know, be close to that one to
one, but not not exactly. OK.
If maybe I'm understanding this correctly, this here at the
bottom is correlated. So like what's the correlation
between these two? Like what's the correlation
between March and April versus May, June, July, October?
I think that's what's being, you know, looked at so like for.
Example Early early to light. Yeah, like so July, October has
almost has a lower correlation to March, April maybe I don't
know like it's I'm not 100% sure because like what are these
percentages? So if my percentage is my walk
percentage in July, October is 7% and through the walk rate in
March, April is north of eight. It's got a low correlation.
I don't know. That's where I don't understand
what I'm looking at here. We need a we need, we need
Robert Fryer or somebody on this one, Robert Fryer.
Maybe we'll cut that part out. But anyways, well, it's.
It's I think the the two things that jump out right away are
because you're asking the question why?
Why is it not correlated year to year, but it is correlated
within the season And you're seeing it him saying that it's
essentially 0 and then .8. I mean that's, that's a from a
statistical standpoint that's huge.
So obviously part of it is, is unequivocally that guys are
pitching more, right? And they're in game like
environments, they're pitching in games more.
And so they're getting better at the very thing that they're
doing. And yet the other thing though
that you said earlier that can't be ignored and and there's
probably other reasons is if you're not very good at the
beginning of the year, they're just going to find somebody
else. And by the time kind of the year
goes on, we know that injuries happen less.
And so you're probably going to find your core guys that you're
going to more and more, whereas in early of the year, you're
probably going to you're potentially going to see teams
explore a little bit more, figure out who who's especially
because bullpens can be volatile.
What starters kind of particularly in the back end of
your rotation, essentially who's your core roster that you're
kind of running with for most of the year, give or take a a
handful of guys that you're sending up and down or get
injured in the middle of the year.
So those are at least two of the ideas that make sense to me,
both just the practical, you know, playing the game aspect,
but also the figuring out who your who your staff is and
running with the best guys that have shown that year,
particularly if there's not a correlation year to year, right?
Like if it's not like, well, last year it was really good,
but we don't know what that'll look like this year.
We kind of know that in the bigs, bullpens can be volatile.
So they kind of figure out who's having a good year and they just
run with them. You know, and the other thing
too, that we have to remember when we're looking at this is
it's an aggregate, right? So a lot of teams are gonna look
at, you know, a guy's history with walks, right?
You know, and so what's their walk percentage?
And it some of this comes back to the what I like about this is
it's not it's not too macro. OK.
So like he's got it broken down into three different sections of
the of the season and the first third versus the second third
and the last third. And what that, what this is
illustrating to me, and this makes sense even too like, and
some of this is just logic, but like it also fits with an
ecological approach. Is that right?
You're dynamic, you don't change, you're not static.
How you start is not how you finish.
And people have known this for a really long time.
And it's a question of like, OK, at what point how many data
points do I need before my, my, my data becomes, begins to
stabilize, right? And so like early in the year,
you know, might not be enough, you know, because there's all
these different factors, right? Getting re acclimated to playing
games. The weather is also different at
the beginning of the year versus the middle of the year and the
end of the year. And so you have all these
different factors that probably play into into the fact of like
why guys walk rates are so much higher at the beginning of the
year versus versus the middle of the year.
But what I think is interesting is that let's see, I I wanted to
look at, OK, we're, it was interesting.
Let's see. Yeah.
OK. So in 2019, the walk rate
actually was higher at the end of the year than the middle of
the year. The middle of the year was a
little bit better at times then. Yeah, yeah.
Then the, you know, you would assume that the best part of the
year is the end, but it doesn't appear like that.
It appears like the middle of the year is where you have your
peak. More often than not you have
your peak like lowest lock rate. That doesn't seem to be always
true, but it seems like sometimes the blue.
Line is pretty consistent the the earliest, that's always the
worst, Yeah. In fact, it's really hard to
find looking at the chart, a year other than what, 20?
21 it was the same between I mean, but that also makes sense
'cause you got 2020 right? So like that's a re acclimation
year. You're re acclimating to playing
like everything got thrown off there, I would say, you know,
and so I don't know, I think that's really, really
fascinating that it kind of goes either way.
And I, and the reason is, is that I think at the end of the
year, guys are starting to get fatigued, right?
Fatigue I think is, is 1 role for why guys will lose their
ability to command the baseball, right.
As your central nervous system becomes more fatigued, it no
longer can one, you're going to have less resources to work with
Two, your, the the resources or your, your system is going to
respond not as quickly. So therefore you can I guess
from an ecological perspective, your dexterity and your the from
a standpoint of like degeneracy, meaning the, the number of
possible configurations you have goes down, right?
So you have a loss of degrees of freedom, You have a loss of
degeneracy, meaning you have fewer movement solutions that
can work. Therefore, it would make sense
that you know, you're what's the other word that I used?
Not dexterity, whatever. But anyways, so like all that
would go down, meaning leading to like less command, your
ability to put the ball exactly where you want as frequently as
you want want to. And so I think yes, pitching,
I'm jumping too far ahead. But basically, you know, they're
I guess actually let's start with this.
OK, So that that's one problem, right is fatigue and so?
I don't know if you'd agree with this, just, you know, heard it
in passing when I was working through, when I adopted the arm
care platform several years ago, working through their resources.
Their claim was that, you know, a lot of people see like go
well, fatigue is set in when you see the radar gun go down.
And they said our experience and our data says that the first
thing that goes down is not the radar gun, but the person's
ability to command. I thought that was interesting.
That was different than what I had heard in the past.
No, I mean, it's 100% right, because right velocity is the
result of you being able to again, velocity going back to
the, the more, the, the more ways that you have, the more to
'cause you don't, there's not just one way to produce
velocity, right? You can be quick or you can
apply force over a longer period of time, you know, or you can
apply that force very quickly in a short window.
So you have all these different ways to mask, you know, you can
muscle up and throw it harder or you can be more relaxed, right?
So like there's all these different ways that you can
throw the ball harder. So you could probably mask a
velocity like drop for a while, like your fatigue, like your
system is fatigued, but you can mask the fact of like, you know,
I'm just going to muscle up here and, and give it, you know,
recruit more, more of my body to be able to throw, throw this
harder, right, and put more energy into it.
Whereas when this nervous system is fresher, it doesn't, it
doesn't need to do all that, right?
It can very efficiently with less effort, throw the ball
harder, right? And so central nervous system
fatigue and the rate like you could say power, right, the loss
of power, you know, the rate at which how fast you can contract
your muscles, probably it decreases.
Wave is going to decrease first, right.
So even right from an SNC principal standpoint, speed in
terms of just pure Sprint velocity probably will drop
first, maybe not Sprint velocity.
I, I actually think maybe like more, I like a tap test or
something like that might be more sensitive to that.
But your rate of force development is probably going to
drop 1st and that's more related to your central nervous system
fatiguing. And so that that would then make
sense that command may be more sensitive to that, but that's
more because I think guys aren't trained like it's much more,
it's a lot harder to will a pitch to be a strike than it is
to just grunt harder and throw it harder, you know, which is
true in general of like, you know, developing velocity versus
command. But I still think even if a
person is trained to locate, that's where I think you can use
these two as corollaries because sometimes I think those two
things would maybe actually map a little bit more.
But I think there's, you know, I don't know if there's another
way to like assess, you know, in game that a person is fatigued
necessarily. Sometimes you're just watching
them, you know, like do does it look like that was more effort?
You know, like that's where, you know, pro teams, right?
They have Hawkeye and these other things and they can start
to measure some of these things a little bit.
But but you know, I well, I heard a podcast that, you know,
shell remain, shell remain remain.
Thank you, nameless. And and like, I get what they
were saying here, right? But you know, there's like, well
we got somebody in our bio mechanics lab and we found that
they threw 98 plus all the time when their stride length was
105%, you know, of their body height.
But then what we saw was like during the game using all these
systems, the feedback they were getting is that it would go down
to the 90 fours and the 90 twos and what not and their velocity
would drop. And the conclusion from that
was, so therefore we just need to get the guy to always go 105%
disregarding. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Disregarding that, that, you know, I mean.
There's a reason for why it probably.
Yes, why yes, why was he changing the fatigue, etcetera,
like how he was interacting with the game, how he was interacting
with his own body, how you know, like and and I think that that's
something that we just don't so so even even with the tech that
we have, my sense is that a lot of people what they'll do is
like, oh, your your mechanics are are changing.
I go exactly. They have to.
That's the point. I know Rob Gray has talked about
it. I've struggled a little bit with
this and pitching been thinking about this lately.
What are the invariants and pitching?
Rob has thrown out the kinetic chain and a consistent release
point and the kinetic chain one makes sense to me, but I do
remember years ago it's actually I don't know if he still.
Works makes a little less sense. Depends what you mean by kinetic
chain. I think you have to define it.
Yeah, basically that, that the, the that you're working from the
ground up and that those things are going to stack to transfer
force. That was one of his invariants,
which you know, as a person who doesn't know enough about that,
that that makes enough intuitive sense.
I just remember, and this is more of a sidebar to get to the
second one, but I just do remember years ago sitting in a
conference with a guy, I don't know if he's still in the Braves
minor league organization, but he cited a paper that was
written in, I think it was like Japan.
And I could never find it in English.
But he said that there was something in the arm that.
Whether it was the shoulder elbow, I couldn't remember
exactly what it was, but that it went out of order in the kinetic
chain and I thought that was fascinating.
Setting that aside, the release .1 is one that I've struggled a
little bit with because the release point, you know, you've
heard people for years talk about having a consistent
release point. And, and yeah, I get it like
that helps, you know, where the ball is going more consistently.
And yet even just from an ecological standpoint, I've gone
yeah, but if you could throw multiple pitches out of multiple
slots, like that would be harder on the hitter.
So is that something that you can, is that actually an
invariant or is that something that we could train better to
get guys to throw from different slots?
Or does it actually have to be the same release point?
And of course you have not just release point in terms of where
your arm slot is, but release point in terms of vertical and
horizontal, you know, like it's a 3 dimensional space we're
talking about not just. So I will admit I don't know
necessarily what to think about that either.
Just thinking through like, I think it would be useful as a
pitcher to throw multiple pitches out of multiple out of
multiple slots, but is that practical?
Can you do that? Could we still train command and
have guys be good enough to do that?
The ecological side of me says, well, yeah, if we, if we create
a more adaptable, robust athlete has abundance of motor
solutions, then if that's how we're training them, then I
think they would be good at that.
In fact, I think they might be better at having a more quote UN
quote consistent arm slot if we allowed them to explore a little
bit instead of just saying, no, we have to have this one
consistent. But there are several studies
that, you know, look at these professional players and say
they all move differently to get to a more like it's the the
thing that varies the least is the released point.
And I can acknowledge that. And yet from my ecological side
of me, I'm going. But I wonder if we could push
that, You know, I wonder if we could train that differently.
And that's where I think, you know, if I'm being literal, yes,
the release point is the most consistent, but it also still
has variation in it. So for example, you could
probably, if you can manipulate your fingers and your hand and
your wrist, your pronation and the timing of that a little bit
that that also will manipulate where that ball ends up, even if
your hand right, is literally in the same spot that it was
before. But if your wrist orientation is
slightly different or how your fingers are and the pressure is
slightly different, it's going to have some effect on where
that pitch is going to end up. And so that's where, you know,
I, I think it is starting to get more out there of people
understanding that like we, we don't repeat our mechanics.
Like I'm hearing more and more coaches understand that.
And so I think that's really good.
But then it becomes back to of like, OK, how do we get
consistency of performance? And so, but, and so I want to
kind of transition to talking about, OK, what's the ecological
view of like command? And, and I the way that I am
thinking, I think about is like, we first have to understand the
problem. What is the problem that the
pitcher is trying to solve in order to have what we call
command? What I think we also have to
define that because right Driveline has talked about,
right, The average miss is what 12 to 17 inches.
It's probably not 17. It's probably 12 to 15 or
something like that. Because I remember I looked into
it because the plates like 17 inches and I forget what the,
the the diagonal is, you know, but so you, you have like a
decent miss pattern might. And so, OK, we can't
necessarily, we tend to miss on average about that amount.
But what I think is missed in this whole conversation is the
fact that people can actually throw the ball exactly where
they intend to throw the ball. Like, I think we forget that.
Like, yeah, of course, most often times we do miss, but you
can still actually throw the ball exactly where you're
intending to throw it. Like, you know, the whole thing
of even, you know, watching Ichiro, you know, knock over
bats and different stuff like that, right.
Like, OK, you know, oh, well, he missed 10 inches.
Well, then he ain't hitting that the bat that he's trying to
throw at, you know, like, so it's like I, I just don't buy
this whole thing that like, oh, it's so hard and it's just
random luck that you actually throw the ball to your intended
target. Like that to me is complete,
complete bullocks. Like I, I just, I, I just think
like there's just too much evidence like of people actually
hitting their spot, you know, so with with like, OK, yeah, maybe
I missed it by like 11 like millimetre, you know, is move
just to, you know, that's to me, it's that's close enough, right?
That 10 inch miss is like, that's pretty significant,
right? So that's where I want it.
Contextual, isn't it? Right.
Like there's so much. I I guess here's where where I'm
going with this too with from an ecological perspective.
All right, let's start with the ideal, OK, and then we can work
to like what the why the misses, right.
So to me, in order for if I'm taking, if I'm thinking about
this ecologically, OK, it is the intention of the athlete
attending to the right information connected to that
information. Their movement is coupled to
that and the whole thing self organizes around that connection
to that information. So for example, because we've
talked about this before of like perspective control.
So for me, this is where perspective control comes into
play for a pitcher is that as their body is moving in space
down the mound to deliver the ball to their target, their body
is picking up and proceeding information about how are they
doing to be able to do that right?
And so you, you're having the feedback from the optical flow,
you're having optical flow, you're having your kinesthetic
awareness of where your body is in space and then when your foot
hits the ground, right. So like that, that information,
plus, you know, you could say where your eyes and head are
relative to the target when you throw and then your, your sense
of feeling of where your hand is and the ball and all that sort
of stuff. And so, and then how all that
works towards the target and then once the ball is out of
your hand, you know, then it's it's pretty much said and done
at that point. But where what perspective
control, I think helps me or like how I think it it plays in
here is the body is self organizing, the closer.
So like, I really like this that like I want to say heuristic,
but like what's the word mantra? I guess you could say that South
Carolina or Coastal Carolina had one of the years that they went
to the College World Series will overskill, right?
So it wasn't about repeating your mechanics.
It was that you willed it. And so your body, right as we're
moving to it towards our target is going to make adjustments
based upon how how strong the intention is towards that.
The body's going to try to correct any like any of those
mistakes that are going on. Maybe you started a little bit
too fast down the mound. Maybe you didn't get in your hip
as much as you did before or maybe you start whatever it is.
You know, when your foot hit the ground it it inverted yes, it
inverted a little bit more because of how you hit the
ground. You know, you start to roll the
ankle this way a little bit, or maybe it everted whatever it is,
right, and threw, threw something off up the chain.
But you still are able to make an adjustment.
Maybe your arm slot, you know, your, your arm swing was a
little bit longer or whatever it is, but your, your body makes an
adjustment for that to get the ball and that pitch to that
spot, right. And so to me, that's that's
where perspective control kind of comes into play, is that the
system is actually able to in real time, as it's perceiving
the information, make slight adjustments to achieve the
outcome that it wants. And, and yes, there are certain
principles that make certain things more likely.
Like this has just been even my own experience of like learning
how to control my center of mass down the mound and like finding
a certain rhythm that like just made it feel like it was so much
easier to put the ball where I want.
But that comes back to, again, from an ecological perspective,
I'm having to learn how my body relates to the task in the task
environment, right. And so and how and, and so for
me, that's where an ecological approach changes how we're
thinking about this. It's no longer about just
mechanics, you know, repeating my mechanics or, or hitting
certain mechanical checkpoints or, well, you know, my pelvis or
whatever, or my foot. Like that dictates everything
else that's going to happen. And if you screw that up, then
it's going to screw up the outcome.
And that's why your outcomes are not very good.
And it's like, yeah, maybe a little bit.
But I do believe like from an ecological approach, I think
that intention and the fact that the the body self organizes and
optimizes around the how strong of an intention, whatever
intention is the strongest, it's going to organize itself around
that. So for example, what I mean by
intention there is that, OK, obviously every pitcher is
intending to throw to the target, but if they have fear,
right, all of a sudden they get a little nervous or like they,
they feel like, you know what, I, I, I feel like I need more
space here. Well, then that becomes more of
the priority. That priority is higher than the
priority or the intention to throw to the target.
And so then that might be why an athlete, you know, doesn't
actually execute what they're trying to execute, because the
system is actually trying to self organize around a different
priority. Wait, whenever I've heard
coaches I respect talk about command and, and you sort of
peel back the layers of what they really think will do it.
They wouldn't use this language, but they always say something
that relates to attention and intention.
And, and as you're talking, the thing that comes to mind for me
is, and, and you'll know this well as a hitting coach, when
I've had to throw batting practice, there will be times
when I miss and I'll miss two or three times in a row and I'll
realize that I wasn't really focused.
I was just throwing bag in practice to the guys.
And if I become incredibly focused on the task at times,
which is I need to hit this spot because, you know, I, I want to
move the ball around. So he learns to hit different
locations as he's preparing for this game.
But I also might and, and, and this is what you alluded to.
And this is what I'm sort of thinking in real time.
At times, I need to be, and I've seen this be completely
connected to the task, which is getting the hitter out,
connecting to their behavior, throwing a pitch that starts at
the front hip and then sinks back into the zone where I'll
use the behavior of the batter. And yet at other times, I
really, really, really need to just connect to the target.
I need to simplify and sort of have this funnel vision towards
that. But other times, as you
acknowledged, I remember at times pitching where I could
feel when the ball would come off my hands.
I knew right away if it was a good off my fingers, if it was a
good pitch or not. And so I would start to become
aware of, I'm sort of starting to talk about almost like
Newell's triangle, like how constraint shape behavior,
right? And so some of those are task
oriented that I'm more intending and, and paying attention to.
Sometimes it's now when I pitch and I haven't pitched in a long
time and I can start to feel my front hip and I have to be a
little bit more aware of how I adjust in order to land
differently because I can't keep landing.
I'm not in shape. I don't, I don't throw all the
time. Sometimes, you know, having to
be and maybe this one isn't as clean, but man, like when you're
in a different environment, I I'm reminded of Billy Chappell.
What's the movie with Kevin Costner for love of the game,
right? He has the he has the phrase
that he says clear the mechanism and everybody, the environment
essentially is not bothering him anymore.
He's not worried about the crowd, right?
He's not worried about pitching in Yankee Stadium.
There. He's just connected to the
batter of the umpire and his catcher.
And so for me, what that elucidates is that making an
athlete who doesn't figure out what exactly they need to pay
attention to all the time and intend all the time, and they
found the answer, but instead helping them be adaptable to be
very connected, as you talked about prospective control, that
there's all this information that they can interact with and
it might be different based on how they're feeling, where
they're pitching, what kind of hitters up, etcetera.
That's what it's making me think of is, is making a highly
attuned, adaptable athlete that they can pay attention to any
number of factors in order to adjust pitch to pitch if they're
making a mistake or repeat a pitch, find what's working that
day or what maybe worked a previous day.
That's what it's making me think.
It's not. Here's the answer.
But instead we need to train the athletes in in different ways
every day to go how can you command the ball better today
based on who you are today? And how will that change
tomorrow and the next day? I think there's an interesting
dynamic there between variability and I think I can't
remember if we talked about this in another podcast.
While I'm on that, that point of another podcast for those people
who are wondering about, you know, this, this random word
that we threw out that I threw out there of perspective
control. That's been mentioned a couple
of times. There's an episode that we
recorded with Andrew Wilson specifically where we go over
and cover that. So I'd recommend people who are
wondering about that to circle back and look for that episode
because I want to I don't want to spend a ton of time trying to
elucidate or expand expound upon that.
But when it comes to variability, right, I think this
is the the thing that a lot of times what even to what I see in
like pitching development, right, is like, OK, let's, let's
do different things all the time.
And I think the old school coaches kind of push, push
against that. They're they're worried about
that. And I, and I think in some ways
rightly so. But what we are saying is like,
or rather how I nuance it and how I think about is, OK,
there's a time to be focused on consistency of outcome and the
variability is going to go down there.
But like it's going to go down in terms of how I'm thinking
about my practice design. It's not going to go down in
actuality. Why?
Because the athlete is dynamic and the environment is dynamic,
generally speaking. And you're going to have these
subtle changes and sometimes we want to be intentional about,
you know, switching some things up and adding some variability
in there. But like more specifically along
the lines of, of scenarios that the athlete would find
themselves in the game, right? So they're different modes,
right? Like if I'm, if I'm going to, in
my mind at the beginning of practice, I'm going to have more
variability. That's going to be less
representative, that's going to be more out there, more
exploration, that's going to be more on the edges of, of what an
athlete's natural performance abilities are.
Let's take for example Marcus Stroman, right?
Most people have seen his warm up routine and how he'll throw
in different ways as he's playing catch.
But then as you get closer and closer to the game, the amount
of variability and the amount of exploration he's doing becomes
less and less. I think this hurt.
I don't remember because I'd never watched Nestor Cortez
pitch a ton, but I get the sense that he doesn't goof around as
much as he used to in terms of his delivery and in game,
whereas I don't know how much Strowman is still doing that
too. But I think that's where those
things were opening up degrees of freedom such that when he
comes back towards the middle and there's, there's still some
variability there, but it's not as it as extreme variability,
right? And so that's, and it comes back
more to that variability is being used to execute something.
So it's, it's, it's focused on the outcome, not just exploring
to understand, right? I think there's two, there's two
like often when I'm exploring, I'm exploring to understand
versus I am exploring to execute.
And then there's the third one of like now I'm just simply
focused on executing and the, and that previous experience
lends itself to an affordance basically to utilize something
that I, I picked up in my exploration.
Or it can be simply exploration can be simply helping us attune,
you know, become attuned and calibrated to our, to our
environment. So there's a, there's, there's
multiple levels to that. And so I wanted to say that all
that to say is that I think we also need to understand that you
can be ecologically driven and also have what seems like less
variability, but rather the focus shifts.
When your focus shifts to performance and the execution
side of things, the variability is naturally going to go down.
And that's how I if I'm going to talk to a traditional coach or a
traditional coach is going to be like, I don't like that.
You know what you're doing. It's two variable like whatever
and like is kind of Pooh poohing it.
I can still maintain some variability.
It's just going to look a little bit different, but it's going to
be more execution focused and that's going to pull, it's going
to kind of naturally pull the variability down when I, when I
focus more on execution. So that's what I wanted at least
throw in there as well. But I think there's a natural
progression and that's some something that I, I hope we've
kind of elucidated throughout this podcast, you know, on, on
like the episode of like serious play and how do we integrate
things back the one, the one episode on for Veiki, Like it
was kind of trying to thread this of like there's a process
by which we utilize exploration to help us in execution.
And, and this is that there's what is that the, there's the
post framework, the periodization of, you know,
skill work. And there's there's multiple out
there that that follow that exact line of thinking that
there is both a a daily exploration to performance as
well as a more long term, when are the periods of higher
exploration versus more performance area oriented and
everywhere in between. But it does seem foolish to,
again, from an ecological standpoint to sit in one right.
That's like for a college baseball, you know, to say,
well, the fall is like kind of about performance, but also
getting better because it's the fall.
I'm trying to compete for a spot, but get better.
Once I get to my winter time, I'm all exploration and then I
get to the spring and I'm all performance that that's not
going to work. Or at least you're not.
That's not optimized. I would say.
Like, I think you're leaving. You're leaving something on the
table, right? It's, it's just like lifting,
right? Like, oh, OK, I'm gonna, I'm not
gonna lift very much, you know, or hardly at all or not at all
in the fall. I'm gonna lift really hard in
the winter and then I'm not gonna lift at all in the spring
like this. Like, you know, and and I see
that on the offensive side, like, oh, OK, I'll use weighted
bats, you know, in the offseason, but I won't touch him
at all in season. It's like, well, then, you know,
people don't realize in this to to loop this back to to
pitching, like weighted, weighted anything is weight
training. It follows all the same
principles, including a. Regular oz fat and A5 oz ball
right? Right.
Yeah, I mean it all has. Weight to it.
Yeah, I mean, the only thing that doesn't have weight is air,
right? Like there's nothing, there's no
material that we've I don't know that we're gonna use that has no
weight to it or basically nothing.
So like I don't this whole thing of like, oh, like weighted
anything is bad. Makes no sense to me.
But anyways, it's just how, how much right and for the
individual. But anyways, so the principles
of of lifting, you have training residuals as well known in the
SNC world, right? And so when it comes to these
sort of things and the training residuals also apply to skill,
right? And there's probably not as much
research on on the training residuals when it comes to skill
work. And like, because really when
you look at the work of David's and Arahu, forgive me if I got
Arahu's name wrong, but there and I think so Michael's as
well. I can't remember.
But anyways, their paper on like what is exactly acquired in, in
skill acquisition or skill AC, they basically talk about like,
OK, ecological dynamics actually views, we don't view things as
skill acquisition, rather we view it as skill adaptation.
And that language maps very well onto S&C principles because we
view what we're doing in the weight room as creating
adaptations. The body is adapting to the
stress that we're putting it under.
And so the same principles are going to apply here to skill
that the system is going to adapt.
And now again, ecological dynamics, right, the body and
the human system is dynamic and it's going to change over time.
So like we have to understand that with all these sort of
things and what we're talking about, like what's your, to your
point of exploration, right? That we don't just explore at
one time of the season that needs to be worked in throughout
because it helps the sensitivity and the adaptation and the to,
to be able to like maintain, at least maintain, right?
Like so again, like the, when you go away from something, OK,
there's a, there's a residual and how long does that residual
hang around before it starts to decay and disappear, right.
And so like the more we explore and add some little levels of
exploration in there, it's going to maintain the, the potentially
either the attunement or the sensitivity, it's going to, you
potentially are going to be able to hold on to things longer.
And also, you know, there are other benefits of like
discovering, making new discoveries to maintain growth,
all that sort of stuff. Well, even sticking with your
SNC example, this'll, this'll be a little bit of a poor one, but
trying to connect to it like if you're on a three day a week
program, right? And those are your really heavy
lifting days where you're trying to create those adaptations.
In a sense, those are your performance days.
And of course we wouldn't call them that because, you know,
you're always in the weight room training for something.
But if we're just taking that because I, because I think the
SNC world is so good, because we intuitively understand that you
have to push yourself and create adaptations, not do the same
thing over and over, right? We intuitively know that, but
then we don't apply it to other places.
Well, how foolish would it be in a sport like baseball where
you're playing 3-4 times a week and then you're in between
practices, You know, can be a little bit harder, especially if
you're not a starting pitcher, where you're on a regular
regimen and you're just pitching every Friday or every Saturday
or whatever. And, and you have that space in
between, but you're a reliever or you're a position player,
whatever. How foolish would it be if we
were in the S&C world and we treated our, you know, our
performance days in the weight room like, well, I can't do too
much here, I'll try to get better in the weight room in
between those days. Well, of course, that
intuitively doesn't make sense. And so I think that's another
reason why exploration is so important is because you have to
like even on on our game days, right?
That might be your quote UN quote high day because you had
to be ready to perform that day. And so then you need to, to
figure out what that looks like. How do I continue to get better
during the year? If I didn't pitch that day?
Do I throw after the game or do I throw the next day?
The point is, is how can I continue to make those
adaptations instead of just knowing if I went into the
weight room every day and just kind of tried to, to hold serve,
I would eventually just keep getting I, I would get worse.
The same thing can happen during a season where if you're not
trying to continue to explore and make adaptations to become
more adaptable, to me, there isn't really a, a holding serve
in that You're either continuing to become more adaptable or
you're becoming less adaptable and you're and you're finding
yourself kind of in these ruts that are a little harder or
you're just getting worse, you know?
And to to go to kind of make a connection with another episode
that we did before on the Vervecki episode on integrating
things back in. One of the things that we talked
about was, you know, when it comes to machine learning
models, right, like often times if you feed it too many
variables, it'll overfit to to certain things.
And so like the, the way to overcome that is to add noise
into the system. You know, again, like the, the
overfitting is basically losing the forest through the trees.
Like you just get hyper focused on on one tree and like you miss
the whole forest. And so like what exploration
does it it, it provides a little bit of noise.
It provides a little bit of something different, something
unique. But that also The thing is, is
that you have to be intentional about introducing a little bit
of noise you because all of us, if we're doing exploration,
exploration, whatever, because this is the thing that I've seen
with athletic throws. Athletic throws are basically
just jump throws. That's all they are.
And you're like, there's not actually a lot of variability if
all you're ever doing is just jumping.
It's literally the same thing the whole time.
So it's really, is it really that athletic or are we just
calling a jump throw an athletic throw when really it's just one.
There's not, there's not a whole lot of exploration that's going
on there. And so that's where we all fall
into ruts essentially. Like our exploration can
actually become rote. And so you, that's where at some
level you do have to be a little bit intentional, but that's OK
that you know, for for certain periods of time, like it's, it's
a little, it's kind of familiar and comfortable.
Your exploration. Like in the episode that we did
on transfer of training, we talked about repetition is the
the ground or the soil in which spontaneity is birthed.
And so understanding that too, like this, these attractor
states that we naturally find ourselves drifting towards when
we do exploration can sometimes spawn or or cause unique things
to emerge, things that we've never done before.
So we have to understand like it's a both end and sometimes
you have to be intentional about it, but other times it's simply
just going in there, doing your exploration and kind of flowing.
And then eventually something will naturally an affordance
will naturally emerge from that. And so I think that's OK.
Like, I think because this is the thing that I struggle with
and the reason why I'm bringing this up and I'm kind of harping
on it is because so many of the people within the eco D space
talk about exploration as if I have to, I have to have to be
super creative and come up with something novel every single
time. And if I didn't come up with
something novel, it's it's a failure to adhere to the
principles and I'm doing something wrong.
And when I come back to like what was ecological dynamics for
me, it was freeing. And so for me, that causes a
level of stress. Thinking that I have to be
unique and come up with something super novel adds a
level of stress to this. And then that's why I think
people gravitate back towards a traditional approach and we'll.
We'll. We'll push away from an
ecological approach, whereas I don't think you need to go back
to the traditional approach, but rather understand how how these
things work together to actually allow for emergence, right?
That like these ecological concepts and how all this stuff
plays together. Well, I think, I think that it's
easy to hear the word exploration and to think like
really wide, like whatever you want.
And, and, and that can be actually very debilitating,
right? I'm, I'm sitting in trying to
pick my toothpaste and there's 120 different types.
Like I'm, I'm more likely to make the wrong decision than I
am the right one, right? And so I'm just going to select
the one that I've always gone with or that my parents or that
I grew up with, right? I'm just going to go with what's
easier because I face so much complexity and, and I've noticed
that. So, So I think one thing that
needs to be said there is that if if we're talking about I've
I've spoken about this like to a lot of different people, like if
we're talking about the traditional do the same thing
every day versus just a, you know, just Rob Gray said, like
variability is the lowest hanging fruit, right?
Just trying to do those things, but making them the them
variable, not really having any purpose to the variability, just
making it different. That's better for me.
But to me, what's what's best is purposeful variability,
variability that connects to who that athlete actually is and
what they need in that day. And that's really hard.
And that's where you have to be connected as a coach to what's
going on for them. And so I think I like, so when I
see my athletes, for example, playing catch and we are wanting
them to play athletic catch play, exploratory catch, play
every single day. What I noticed early on is
because the options were so wide, they didn't really know
what to do. And so they would just do one
thing a few times and then they go back to what's normal.
And so, so a couple times what I did is I would, I would tell
every guy, hey, when you get your catch partner, bring them
to me. You and your catch partner, I
have, you know, an activity for you today.
And in order to guide that exploration in a more meaningful
way, I said, hey, so Johnny is going to be the leader for the
first 3 or 4 throws. He's going to do some type of
throw. I don't care what it is,
whatever he wants. It can be a drill, athletic,
whatever he wants that he's ever done.
Once he does that, Jimmy then has to copy it, but make it
unique in some way. And, and the only direction I,
I, I gave them, as I said, what I want is I want to see you 2
play catch for three times in a row.
And I want to go, gosh, those all look similar, but man,
they're just, they're just kind of different.
Once person A has finished their three reps and the other
person's finished their three, now it goes to the other person.
And now you're going to make a different throw and, and you're
going to kind of build off of his.
And so I just want to continue for the whole catch all the way
out and all the way in. I just want you to use what
they're doing as your, as your guide.
And then I, I just wanted to, I want you to explore within that
and not seem to help the guys because now all of a sudden
they, they didn't have to go, oh, I can just explore.
It's like, Oh no, I'm just doing what he does.
I'm just doing it a little different.
Maybe I'll drop the arm angle or go off a 1 foot or back pedal
and do the thing he did. And I saw a lot better
exploration in that. And so obviously we're talking
about command here, but I think that exploration we, we, we
believe is, is very helpful to becoming attuned and sensitive
to different things going on. But I think also just those have
been small examples for me of how I've not even I can get
overwhelmed with variability exploration.
How can I constrain that just a little bit so that they're
they're trying to do things within a bandwidth instead of
feeling just totally overwhelmed, so to speak?
Yeah. And I have a couple of thoughts
on this one to to bring it back ecological for a second, what
you're describing there. And then this, this is, you
know, I hope to make it an episode in and of itself at some
point. But this concept of constraining
to afford, right, that's what you're doing there, right?
We're not, we're not in order to get so we're we're, I'm looking
for novelty, right? To, to get novelty, you need to
properly constrain it to, to afford that novelty to appear.
And then also too, if you want it to be functional, you also
need to constrain it such that it affords the possibility of
that. And it's not trying to force it
because I think that's where the big mistake on the constraint
side of things is. People think like, oh, I need to
create the proper constraints to force the outcome that I want,
but rather it's about facilitating and allowing it to
occur versus forcing it to occur.
I think that's a big difference there.
And like this whole notion of constrained to a four.
And so when we start talking about freedom, it's this odd
dichotomy of like, in order to have true freedom, you actually
need to have the proper constraints that eliminate
possibilities. And that's, that's that goes,
that flies in the face of our modern understanding of freedom,
because we think in order to be free and to explore and this and
that, like that means that we should have the ability to do
whatever we want whenever we want.
And that's not actually how we're getting our freedom and
creating athletic flowy athletes.
It's, it's, it's very and that's what I think makes it really
hard for a lot of people to understand in a grasp, we only
understand freedom in the most libertarian sense or like
authoritarian control. Those are the 2.
Like it's like the two extremes. And it's like actually as
coaches, we're, we're looking for something that's a little
bit more in the middle. The other thing when it comes to
your activity, like it sounded to me like you were describing
ad libbing. That's not what it's not exactly
the word that I was looking for. What's it called when when you
when you go to the comedy club, what are they doing there?
It's called. But I had the word earlier is.
It like, is it like whose line is it anyway?
That type of thing where they're they're giving them these.
Yes, 'cause there's a, there's a term for it because there's
guidance. Well, it's not even.
Yes, it it's. Or a topic or something.
Yeah, I said adlib already. What?
What the heck is it? You know, if you go to what's it
called? They're like comedy clubs where
the where the people like they just just freestyle.
It is, I think it is ad Lib. But anyways, so anyways, so
you're you're the big thing in is when you're when you're doing
these comedy sketches is you don't say no, right?
So when a person throws something out there, you, you
don't kind of shut it down or whatever, you take it and then
you, you kind of modify it a little bit, right?
And so like that to me is like those same principles is like,
you know, I was basically trying to coin a coin a new term for
for for that activity and, and what not.
Yeah. Well, and not not make it a
drill. Yes, for sure.
What what from an ecological standpoint let's you know,
'cause we've, we've talked about the post and defining command
just a little bit. We've we've.
Yeah, we really do get a whole lot to on like how to develop
command. Now the question is, do we want
to do you want to dine into that for the last, last bit here and
just yeah, just real. Quick like how would because for
me, if we go all the way back to the to the beginning, the the
question is and, and I think this is the best way to answer
it because there's probably a lot of good things out there
that people are saying regarding how do you get better at
command. It feels like what would be best
here is to say from an ecological standpoint, what
could we learn about how to best influence guys having better
command? Well, from the very beginning,
people are are worse at the beginning of the year all the
time and they get better towards the middle of the year.
So that seems to me to be screaming, representativeness,
screaming, trying to make your work that you're doing look,
feel and act more like the game. I think that's the the lowest
hanging fruit that and the thing I've always said is if your team
gets better during the season and that's its main area of
growth, right? Like its main area of growth,
like you see them kind of stagnant during most of the rest
of the year except for when you scrimmage and and play, then
you're probably a terrible practice designer, right?
Because because your practices aren't helping people get
better. And so I think the lowest
hanging fruit for me from an ecological standpoint, how to
improve command, get more batters in the box, try to make
it a little bit more real. What is the information that's
going to be that your pitchers are going to be connecting to in
the game and try to include that, even if it's just
clarifying intentions of not just trying to throw a pitch to
a location, but trying to throw a pitch in a way that a batter
would interact with in a certain way or having a batter there.
You know, we've cut off bats and, you know, having catchers.
And it's it's not to say that throwing the targets is evil.
We do it. It's not to say that some of
these other things that that you can do are bad.
But I think that's the lowest hanging fruit for me that I
would say right away is like, how can we make what we're doing
as pitchers more representative so that we're training in those
environments so we can see transfer instead of, oh, I'm
just getting better 'cause I'm pitching in more games now.
And I think that's the you have to ask the question of like, OK,
are we developing pitchers or are we just simply allowing the
game to develop them for us? And even too, when you do that,
they don't always like, yeah, maybe they get better, maybe the
game. Isn't always the best teacher
right 'cause the game? It's not that fast, right?
So like, obviously if you play the game a lot or you're gonna
get better, but again, it comes back to, you know, intention and
attention. And I think this is kind of the
thing too. Like I don't think this is where
I think, again, coming back to principles.
All right. So from an ecological
perspective, I think the base is looking at it from a constraint
and constraint LED approach, right.
So understanding you know, the the Organism, you know and the
the task and the environment and how all those are interacting.
And so when you, when you come back to that as your foundation
and trying to look at it through that lens and perspective, and
also trying to put yourself in, in the problem, like embed
yourself within the problem, you know, one, from the athletes
perspective, and then two, just from the problems perspective,
like what is going on within the problem?
Because, OK, it's one thing to put yourself in the athlete's
shoes, but then, OK, you're still missing something because
sometimes, often the athlete is missing something.
So you have to be able as the coach to be able to understand,
OK, what is it that they're missing?
So for me specifically, you know, we had, we had talked
about this before and to kind of loop this back in.
I think where we can help athletes is on the mental side
because I think that plays in has a huge, massive impact in
how the motor system organizes itself to execute a pitch and
how and it's going to affect how they are connecting with the the
task and the, and the pitch that they're trying to execute.
So for me, that's where like often times when I look at a lot
of pictures, when they're struggling, often times there's
a lot going on up here. Like self what?
Would you do because because again, from an ecological
standpoint, like most people are going to tell you, go read to
this, go listen to this mindset podcast, go read the mental
ABC's. Not that those things are wrong,
you know, not those things, you know, like becoming more aware.
It absolutely I can have a part in it, but it's it's
decontextualized from the environment.
You're not actually practicing any of those skills and
contests. So, So what would you do to help
somebody with the mental side that is in context?
So I'm going to because my intention right here is to help.
I, I want us to think ecologically.
So it's about the principle, right?
So let's take, let's take the idea of using a book.
The book becomes a constraint in some ways or a an affordance,
right? So it's it's constrained to
afford. It is a constraint that we can
use to afford a conversation, right?
Like it becomes a platform by which we can use to create a
conversation and some language around it.
But some of it just comes back to having a conversation with
the athlete, right? So like the way that I begin to
think about it as simply of like, OK, what's the problem I'm
trying to solve, right? Like I took this from Brian
Kane, right? When what's important right now,
right? And it comes back to, OK, what's
our goal? What is it that we're trying to
execute on? And so it becomes the question
of like, OK, from the mental side of it, where's your focus
mentally? Is it on how I'm going to make
an adjustment here? Do I have belief in the
execution? Am I fully present, fully
focused here? And then I work everything
towards that end, which is again, self organization.
It's, it's alive, it's adaptive. I'm having to connect with the
athlete and connect and try to sometimes too, right?
Like, you know, for for people in like just relationships, you
know, with spouses, you know, loved ones, etcetera, right.
If you want to have a good relationship, sometimes it's
simply realizing like, oh, the problem is emotional.
It's not logical. Like I need to get to the
emotional root of this issue and like hear an athlete out on
like, OK, what is this and whatever.
And then like directly speak to that and then slowly work
through it with them. And sometimes, like, you know
what the nice thing too that I found just in working with
athletes in my situation is like I'm an authority figure because
of the fact I also have the constraint of like playing time,
right? So like, it's not like, you
know, Joe Schmo that I'm talking to on the street or whatever,
like this, you know, yes, it's a voluntary interaction, but at
the same point, like I have a lot more to to pull on, you
know, and so I can kind of reiterate some things and like
lay it out in such a way to understand like, OK, if your
goal is you want to play more like you really got to face this
down, I can understand. Like I think that becomes then
you then you can develop strategies around that.
And sometimes sometimes, like good coaches know, like actually
you need to go far away from that.
You know, we need to not touch that at all.
And we need to just like distract you over here, right?
And so like, but that's, that's the thing of where I actually
think we neglect that and we just go to a mechanical thing of
like, oh, just get your arm up or just like your chin or
wherever it is your, you know, eyes.
Yeah, all these things are true and they're like they're a piece
and a component. But I think the the system will
self organize often times. And then when you want to go to
those mechanical things, they're going to work so much better
when the person is more connected and is in a better
headspace to fully connect with the, with the environment and
they're going to be better able to interact with the problem.
And so like that, I guess is for me where often times I want to
start with is just having a conversation with the athlete
and get a feel for it. Like sometimes, you know, you
you can simply ask because I, I don't know, everybody's
different and feel free to interrupt me here, but everybody
is different in the sense that like, I don't want to, you know,
this one time I was I was at a tryout and the coach goes, are
you nervous? I hadn't even thought about it.
And I was like, oh, I guess I should be nervous.
I wasn't nervous. I was like, oh, I get yeah,
yeah, I'm nervous. And I totally cratered the whole
thing. I was just like, when I look
back on that, it's like that, dude, what'd you just do there?
Like you're supposed to be helping me, but instead you just
basically like cratered it. So I think there's you.
We got to be careful. You know, sometimes when we, we,
we basically say some things sometimes, like there's a time
and a place to be like somebody asked like you OK.
And you're like, yeah, I'm totally fine.
I was like, yeah, but you, you kind of seem nervous, you know?
And like, so there, I think there's there's you can still
have that, but you have to, I wouldn't lead with it, you know,
so to speak. And I'd more try to search out
like, what is it? Let the like lead, have the
athlete lead that conversation, especially when you're dealing
with stuff like that. But yeah, so anyways.
I I would jump in and say the thing that I've had a success
with a modicum level of success and want to continue to expand
and explore. I, I'm a sucker for, for
categories, not necessarily, you know, because I'm very plan
oriented, but because I think sometimes just like the catch
activity that I designed, it helps guys kind of explore that
space and then sort of move on and explore another space and
another. So one thing that I've done with
a handful of guys, both at the high school and and now here at
the college level is trend. Athletics has like a mental
course and and I think it like it just screams attention and
intention, though they don't use those language, that language,
but what they do within it is they have this really cool part
where they talk about they give you these two opposites that you
might exist on a continuum. And so it would be things like
are you loose or are you aggressive?
You know, and some of them relate to how you interact
physically on the mound. Some of them relate to how they
would, they would say, you know, mentally on the mound or
psychologically or physiologically.
What's your preparation phase like prior?
Are you a guy who's more fun and engaged with the game?
Are you guy who's just leave me alone in the dugout?
So I think they do all of they they do a good job of explaining
all these different things. And so my initial track with our
guys is just to go, Hey, where do you think you fall on this
continuum? We start to identify those
things, and then we start to try to direct their intention and
attention to how they often most optimally perform.
But the thing that, like, secretly I've never told them is
I actually don't want them to stay there.
What I'd like is I'd like for them to learn to go, Hey,
generally speaking, yeah. Where do I fall?
And yet today, having that more aggressive mindset isn't
working. And so can I explore being a
little bit more loose and fluid and free and then can we start
to train that down the road? Can I have a day where yes, I
need my very strict regimen most of the time to get ready.
I got my 2 hour warm up before I'm a starter.
What happens when that changes? What happens when we have a rain
delay or something happens that just the bus is late or, or
we're going to play at the stadium that doesn't have the
space. You know, we play at your
conference tournament at a, at a place, it's like, hey, you can't
be on the field until this time. And it's really pretty grassy.
You can't do these things. You got to be over in this
locker room and there's less space.
It's like, OK, so like can we train that as well to be more
adaptable? So I really appreciate starting
points for our guys with, you know, mental stuff like that to
go. Where do you feel like you
operate where? And that often really empowers
the athlete to go, yeah, this is more of who I am.
And then once they figure out more of who they are, we can
start working on getting being more adaptable around those.
Whereas if I flipped it and I said, well, I just want you to
be adaptable. You don't need a routine.
It's like, well, we've got enough research that people
really like routines, you know? And so, so that that's how I'm
going to treat that. Like I said before, they're a
constraint that affords other things.
You know, like it how you know, we haven't talked about
attractor states, but you know, essentially that creates an
attractor state. How do you get into the zone?
You need a routine because you're so different every single
like you may come from like, it's the thing because I asked
actually, and this I was just getting into ecological dynamics
and I was with a lifting coach who like had guys that Olympic
lifting, you know, gone to competitions and done really
well. And I don't know all the levels.
I don't think it was necessarily for the Olympics, but you know,
all the like the high level competitions that you know, are
maybe not Olympic level, but are like, you know, that happened
around the Olympics or whatever. Maybe they they work into that.
But anyways, he had trained a lot of like high level Olympic
lifters and I was just like, there's not a lot of your
ability here, right? All you do is clean and, you
know, front squat, you know, like do all these like really
basic repetitive exercises. But yet we know because I, you
know, we even with Tyler, you know, I've talked with Tyler
about this, you know, like, you know, because he's competed in
some of these these events. It's like, yeah, the guys that
trained in front of a mirror the whole entire time, like you
could tell when they got to the competition because they'd start
to wobble and all this sort of stuff because now that
information isn't there. And like, you know, when I did a
little bit of martial arts, my dad was has been involved in
that. And he was talking about, OK,
when we train and you're doing, you know, preparing for to do
Qatar, you need to not always face the same direction because
when you get there, you might not be facing the same
direction. So I was, I basically, it was
asking this, this high level coach who was like, how do you
deal with those facts? Do you do you implement that,
that in training? Because I basically like
watching their training sessions.
Like doesn't look like they do any of that at all.
It's like, no, we just basically have a routine.
We use a routine to basically nullify a lot of those effects.
I was like, oh, so that, that for me, like got me to think
more like, it changed my understanding of like routines
and how a routine can actually make you more adaptable, which
is kind of like it's, it's, it's kind of counterintuitive and
it's a, it's a both end, right? If your routine is too complex
and it's not, it doesn't transfer well to different
environments, then it's probably not a good routine.
But if you've got a routine that can go with you across different
environments, you got a really good routine.
And so and that's, that's where I, I see like some levels of
transfer and like what you actually are trying to develop.
And when when like, you know, I I'll listen to like MLB Network
and I'm just my head, I'll just like want to shout at the screen
when everybody every single time looks like, yeah, you need to
have a routine and you need to develop your process.
It was just like, man, that's just making guys so rigid.
But they're the right too. Like that's the other thing that
I think is like really, really kind of interesting to me is
like, it's, I feel like they're wrong and right all at the same
time. And so that's where I, I think
it is about for, for those guys at that level is like finding
the right routine that's not too complex, but that cuts through
all the variability that gets you locked in, you know, that
gets you into that, that state. And so I find that to be really
fascinating and something that needs to be developed more.
There's something there that you're acknowledging in terms
of. It's ecological too though, like
that's. The thing it's like, well, I'm
just just some part of it. That's players who seem to have
that mental fortitude are often guys who have really trusted the
process and, and their confidence and their trusting
themselves who's like, yeah, I've done the work.
And and so there's certainly a part of that even again, trying
to land this plane on how do we help command?
I do think absolutely routines help because they can help focus
you in on on those things. Of course, not too rigid, having
some variability. I think, you know, like we said,
representativeness is important mental side, the attention
intentions important, you know, routines.
Is there anything else that you would throw out there that you
think would be useful from a command side as we wrap up?
Yeah, I wanted to at least touch on, and I think I brought up
before like Driveline, you know, their shift towards developing
command and they, I think we're always kind of near the
forefront of trying to apply ecological principles, whether
they always, you know, fully executed on it.
There's some base that they've always had.
And I think some of it even came from Paul Nyman, from my
understanding of, of, of listening to Paul Nyman talk and
even Kyle, I, I think acknowledging that they got the
whole notion of intention from, from Paul.
And So what you're seeing with like the, the command tracking,
right, is you're shifting, you're, you're focusing the
attention, right? So instead of the, the attention
being on velocity or how much my pitch is moving now, the focus
of attention is now on, OK, where am I throwing the ball?
And, and so it's, it's shifting that it, so it's shifting the
attention and intention, right. And so now the intent is to
throw the ball to where you, to the location that you want to.
And so it's changing the search base.
You know, they're searching in a different location for like a,
a, for, for a, a new motor solution.
And so I think that's what tracking like if we do, if we
use tracking correctly, it helps us.
It, it, it, it, it educates our attention and then it also
shapes our intention. And so, you know, I don't mind
tracking, but I do think sometimes, right, like we've
talked about the good hearts law, when the target becomes a
measure, you know, like it, it's, it ceases to be a good a
good measure. So like, I think that's, that's
where we got to be careful. But if we start, this is where
for me, like if we start understanding more like we go a
layer deeper. And that's what I think
ecological dynamics allows us to do is to go a layer deeper and,
and start to understand how these things interact so that we
can actually fully utilize these tools and these concepts towards
our end goal of better player performance.
And so now I also want to touch on a little bit too on the
attunement piece and the calibration piece, right?
So there's been some interesting things, right?
Like so we have the command balls, right?
Like, so now we, we manipulate the, the equipment a little bit
and why, right? It's to help explore because
again, going back to the, the idea of overfitting, right?
If we always using the same implement, you know, a baseball
and the same type of ball, some guys may not have much feel
because again, like you don't notice the, your clothing or you
don't notice your nose. Your nose is always in your
field of view, but you don't notice it because it's always
there, right? So it's kind of this thing of
like part of the reason why I think some guys don't have feel.
And this goes back to why exploration is important is it
allows the system to to pick up more information because now
things are changing enough that we can begin to discern, right?
So like the signal through the noise, the reason you need the
noise is so you can pick up the signal.
So that's where you know, using variable balls doesn't have to
be a specific type of command ball.
Like we've talked about this, you know, using utilizing
different brands of baseballs, right?
Like the difference like this is house how attuned professional
baseball players are, such as Justin Verlander, right?
Verlander can tell the difference between a Major
League ball and a minor league ball.
And he could probably also tell the difference between, you
know, the the the balls that are juiced and the balls that are
not right. Like that's how a tune those
guys are. And so in talking with, when I
was at Missouri State and talking with Jeremy Colonna, who
had, who had gotten, who had used the command balls with his
athletes at Avalo, he noticed that his guys that were that had
really good command, the command balls kind of messed them up.
And the guys that didn't have good command, it actually helped
them. And So what he helped me
understand is that or what I gleaned from it from an
ecological perspective, is that the guys who are, who have
command, who are really good at commanding the ball, they're
already attuned and calibrated. And when you, when you give them
different, a different implement, it throws that off.
It uncalibrates them that it changes their attunement because
then they start trying to attune to these other things and it,
and it kind of messes them up. Whereas the guys that are not
attuned it, it creates enough noise that they can get the
signal for, for the ball that they're using.
And so that's, that's another thing that I think plays into
command and developing command and something that we need to
think about as like, OK, when do we, do we use, you know,
variable balls with everybody or do we use them with specific
people? And so, you know, going off of
that anecdote that that Kelowna had given me, I tend to, I tend
to learn more now, like, Oh, I don't believe everybody needs to
use this, you know, type of a thing that, and, and rather I
would be more apt to like do more exploration with guys that
are struggling. And not that I wouldn't do,
would, wouldn't do exploration with guys that are like really
good, but I might, I might be more apt to listen to an athlete
who's already really good. I mean, like, Nah, I'm not
really that interested in that. Whereas a guy who's not that
good, I'm going to push him a little bit more.
Yeah, invite them to their own party.
Yep. Yeah, I agree.
That's good. Any, any, any any way to get us
down or we call it good on that? I think yeah, no, I think that's
good. I think that we you can go for a
long time on all the different tools and ideas of how to help
improve command. But I think the the common
thread that you were stringing there throughout is this
principle of what are they intending to do and what are
they paying attention to, You know, whether it's a a ball or a
target or, and we're tracking those things or trying to make
it more representative so that they're having to attune to that
information. I think that's maybe the main
take away for me here is anything that we're doing in
terms of command has to help them pay attention.
Even something as basic as coaches who are really stringent
on you always have to be thrown to a target.
What are they really saying? You always have to be paying
attention to where it's guffling, how you might make an
adjustment pitch to pitch, how you're adapting from pitch to
pitch based on different contacts.
So I think that's probably the most important thing, paying
attention, helping your guys pay attention to the right to the
right information. Awesome.
All right, well, until next time.