It’s amazing how advanced player development has evolved over the past 5 years, or so. With the advancements in tech, and the emergence of experts and guru’s on every corner, it’s easy to see why.
Because I’m no idiot, I decided a couple of years ago to adapt these lessons into my daily teachings as a Father. Proudly, I’m finally starting to see the muscle memory kick in and nowadays, my kids can repeat these rules in their sleep.
Here’s an inside look at my parenting playbook.
Each morning before dropping my two kids off at elementary school, we recite the 8 Rules much like you would the Pledge of Allegiance. As they placed their little hands over their heart, we sound off in unison as if we were a singing quartet…
Lesson #1: Much like coaches teach pitchers to copy mechanics… Do your best to write your name the same exact way as the kid beside you.
Lesson #2: Don’t try to learn it on your own, ask the teacher for the answers. That’s their job, not yours.
Lesson #3: Don’t ask why, ask how! Besides, asking why may get you a defensive answer.
Lesson #4: Be sure to ask for more math drills than anyone else today. It’s not the number of correct answers you get right that counts, it’s the number of drills you do which matter most. Quantity always trumps quality!
Lesson #5: With each lesson today, be sure to look back to the teacher and ask… “How’d that answer look?’
Lesson #6: In math today, make sure you sit beside the smart kid and do your best to copy his answers. You don’t need to know how he arrived at the number, or why… you just need to know What. What the answer is, is all that matters.
Remember, today’s world is driven by data. You don’t need to learn what’s causing the data to the be the data, you just need to regurgitate a technical answer with elementary understanding.
Lesson #7: When starting or learning something new, always ask the teacher… “How long before I start to see results?”
And before I could even utter a single word of Lesson #8, Rex finishes my sentence.
“Hopefully we get a substitute teacher today who speaks way over our head and confuses the Hell out of us… they’re the smartest ones!”
“Rex! Tone down your language son and save the negative body language for the umpires this weekend. You’re going to need it!”
I love you guys!
Seriously, can you imagine how quickly Child Protective Services would break down our doors and take away our kids if we followed the methodology and teachings adopted from today’s world of baseball instruction?
I can’t help but wonder how we got to this point?
I’ve also pondered this question several times. My 4-year old daughter wears me out with asking why, why, why? Not once has she ever asked me how.
So, the question becomes…
At what point do kids stop asking why and begin asking how? The only answer I can come up with is…Maybe, after their first baseball lesson?
Seriously, people WTF is wrong with us? When are we going to wake up and see where we’re headed unless something changes. We both know the best lessons in Life are self-taught and Life’s most memorable moments are FELT. However, we throw that out the window when we drop our kids off at the nearest baseball field, or facility.
So, I’m challenging you to think differently and begin to question what’s really going on.
As parents, we would never teach any of these lessons to our kids…. But when it comes to baseball instruction, we not only abide by these rules.
We literally pay for someone to teach our kids these lessons!
Trust what you FEEL!
P.S: Be sure to follow me on Twitter!
Great article! Long story short I got my son 6 pitching lessons in the st. louis area and is helped him to some degree. but i found him thinking too much about the left elbow up, arm at 45 degrees and…. Again it helped somewhat. I noticed the kids at the school and in the better league he was playing in (it was a great league) all the kids had the same motion and delivery. I then noticed that in the MLB there was a great diversity of deliveries. My son had lower velocity and a great slider and a delivery coaches said couldn’t be picked up by hitters. His low velocity fastball that he could put where he wanted jammed many hitters. He went to a D2 single school camp uninvited as a sophomore and the head coach caught up with him and two others after the camp and asked him to come back to camp the next year. he liked him (somewhat) because his ball moved, his delivery couldn’t be picked up and he threw good strikes with every type of pitch in every quadrant. But I also understand the desire for velocity. A kid was pitching in an all star game my son was pitching in. This kid had a great live fastball (left handed and was tall and projectable). He was raw and walked the first three batters. coaches were yelling instructions on mechanics the whole time and I could tell he was thinking too much. After the three walks he just started to throw naturally and struck out the side. Actually his ball was moving better as well. It was a noticeable difference. He was able to feel his way back into the strike zone. Again, I’m a proponent of mechanics but not cookie cutter necessarily. My son decided not to pursue college ball (he had a few NAIA and D3 opportunities and never went back to that D2 camp) and is still glad he didn’t but I still would have taken him to your coaching in retrospect if I had known years ago. He hated the mechanical rules of the system he learned under and didn’t want to keep going and learning to be someone he wasn’t as a pitcher (he’s not a rebellious kid). I saw enough times how other kids became like the other kids and became bored with the process because their bodies were being trained but not their minds. sorry for the unedited rant!
Great stuff Kurt! Thanks for sharing
Love it love it love it you say it better than I can so I just sit there and rinse and repeat I send it out there to everybody in my contacts Snapchat Twitter keep it coming
Thx Wild Bill
Appreciate it Bill!