Recently a few players have reached out to me as we finished up our off-season training and asked about being nervous when they were at the plate or on the mound.  They were concerned that it wasn't normal  or that it somehow meant they didn't belong in that situation.  One of the players was also concerned because it was happening during training, not just in games.  Here is what I told them:

First, your nervous energy is COMPLETELY NORMAL!  Don't think that it is unusual at all.  I remember very vividly having those same feelings as a high school player.  After getting to college I would feel much the same way if I was struggling at the plate and I would get nervous about another strike out.  Because I knew I was fighting for playing time everyday, I started feeling nervous during BP as well.  I believe that this happens to everyone at some point if they play the game long enough.  There is no question that controlling these feelings can be challenging, so I will only give you three relatively simple things to try at the start:

1. Focus on a deep breath before getting into the batter's box or toeing the rubber.  Breathing is important because it can slow the heart rate and relax tense muscles, but it also get a play back to what is happening right now.  People don't spend time thinking about their last breath (in the past) or worrying about their next breath (in the future).  They focus on their current breath - in the present...and that is KEY for controlling nervous energy.

2. Have a cue word or very short phrase that gets your mind back to a simple part of your swing that you know helps your movement pattern.  "Back hip"..."Stay over the rubber"..."Explosive!"  These short phrases will get you focused on what you need to do to be successful rather than worrying about the outcome if you are not successful.

3. Reframe the feelings as positives.  The butterflies that some people get before games are actually a natural feeling as blood gets diverted to the working muscles and away from the digestive system as the body prepares for competition.  Reframe these feelings to be a great sign that your body is preparing for game time!

Off-season training or a practice situation is a GREAT place to try out some of these simple techniques and start to implement them as part of your hitting or pitching routine.

With the pre-season about to get started, players should be thinking more about the upcoming season.  This probably includes some goal setting, so here are 5 mistakes to avoid when setting your goals for this season.

Goal Setting Mistake #1 - Setting Only Baseball Goals
Players often set goals because it is a team exercise and that means that all of the goals focus on baseball. What about academics? What about family goals or goals for other relationships? As Michael Hyatt notes on one of his previous podcasts, all parts of our lives are interrelated and one area of our life will always effect the others. Think of the last time you couldn't go to practice because you had school work to catch up on or when your parents made you skip a game because report cards came out and they were less than impressed.
Before setting goals, try to clarify your priorities so you know what areas are most important in your life right now and set goals in all those areas.

Goal Setting Mistake #2 - Creating too Many Goals
Your list of goals should not be a bucket list of everything you want to accomplish in your baseball career. This can create confusion around what is really important and what your next step should be. I suggest 7 to 10 goals to address the major areas of your life, but any more and they will start competing for your attention and nothing will get done. In addition, it is best to focus on 2-3 goals during each part of the year. For your baseball goals, this will mean you will focus on 1-2 items during the early off-season. After achieving those goals move on to a new focus for the late off-season and have another focus (or two) for spring training, the summer season, and fall ball.

Goal Setting Mistake #3 - Goal is Not in Writing
Most people who set goals know that they should write their goals down, but it is amazing how many people skip right over this step. Writing your goals in black and white is critical because:
1. Goals need to be reviewed regularly and writing them out makes the review process easier.
2. Your goals should be in a highly visible place as a reminder of where you are going. Visible in your mind's eye doesn't count...they need to be visible to your eyes and this means they need to be on paper. 
3. Writing goals down makes them more real. Everyone has dreams that they think about and talk about, but when you write a dream down it starts to become a goal.
4. There is a process you go through when goals are written. This process requires additional thought and clarity as you take a dream and put it on paper. Your dream becomes more specific in written form, you think about how you will measure it, and the dream becomes a goal.
The bottom line is that if your goals are not written, you will never come back to them. 

Goal Setting Mistake #4 - Goal is Not Specific
Specificity in goal setting is critical for determining your action steps (see Mistake #9 in part 2 of this post). You need to know exactly what you want to achieve before you can determine how you are going to get there. 
"I want to be a better hitter". What part of your offensive game do you want to improve? Ability to make contact? Power? Hitting with 2-strikes? Hitting off-speed pitches? Plate discipline? Your action steps will be very different if you want to improve your power compared to a player that is trying to improve plate discipline.
"I want to lower my ERA". Think about what area of pitching will most impact the number of runs you give up. Does your change-up need to be better? Do you need to throw your breaking ball more consistently for strikes? Do you need to work on holding runners? There are dozens of areas that could reduce the number of runs you give up and increasing specificity will force you to think about the areas where you are strong and the areas that need work.

Goal Setting Mistake #5 - The Goal is not Measurable
You need to have a way of measuring your progress toward a goal as well as know when you have reached your goal. Be very careful of which metrics you choose for your baseball goals . I warn all of my players to give a lot of thought to how they will measure their goals and steer players away from setting goals based on batting average or opponents' average. There are far too many variables that are outside of a players control when determining batting average. A hitter might do everything right, hit the ball hard 4 times, and go 0-for-4 that day because he hit the ball right at a defender each at bat. It is best to measure a goal with a metric that a player as complete control over.  This concept led me to the development of the Quality AB Tracker which I encourage players to use as a metric in place of batting average.
Players should note that it is normal to feel some anxiety towards putting a metric on your goals.  Specificity and measurability can scare people because more detailed goals lead people to think they can't achieve them. In addition, when you have a way to measure your goals the goal setter and others will know when you have fallen short of your goal.  Ambiguity provides somewhat of a safety net for people's pride, but the goals are less concrete. Having a specific way to measure your goals will you allow you to see progress and provide you with motivation along the way.  It will also ensure that you know when you get to the finish line so you can pat yourself on the back and move on to your next goal.

​As much as we think we have all the answers, coaches need to realize that we don't always know. In fact, we may not know anything for absolute certain. With the rapid changes in technology this is even more true than it was 5 years ago and "cutting edge" teaching is changing more rapidly than ever. Coaches need to have a set of beliefs that they teach from, but they should save the absolutes for their team rules (such as...always ​respect the officials). In the end, each player will be so vastly different that it will be impossible for one coach to have all the answers for all of their players.
So if we have don't have the answers how do we teach? Maybe ​Isaac Asimov said it best:

We need to trust our players as partners in the learning process and work together to develop their knowledge and skill. As coaches we can provide them with enough information that they are able to develop a filter with which they can choose the best, most helpful information themselves. With this approach players will become their own best coach and we as coaches can then empower our players to take responsibility for their own development. They will develop a continual process of gathering information, assessing its utility in relation to their skill set and physical characteristics, and determining what works best for them.

​I do much of my teaching in an Academy environment where my players come from a variety of teams and go back to their club teams each spring. I am convinced that self-education is the best way for our players to learn, but I also believe that self-education is absolutely imperative when my players will learn different information from a variety of coaches through the season.  With self-education players realize that different information from different coaches is actually an advantage and simply provides more perspective on developing their skill set.  In addition, this approach ensures that one coach doesn't have to be right and one coach wrong. The player can take in all the information from both sources, engage in valuable conversation about developing that skill, and implement the most useful information gained from both coaches.  Engaging in conversation with coaches around skill development is a talent that players need to develop in order to be respectful of coaches and ensure that their coach knows they are listening and continuing to learning.  Alan Jaeger calls this "standing your ground" and does an excellent job describing this process on the ABCA Calls to the Clubhouse Podcast.  You can listen to that clip here (starting at 46:07).

One of the greatest things about baseball is the history of the game. It is everything that parents pass on to their children. Part of that history is the language of baseball - dingers and bloopers, uncle Charlie and the heater.
​Coaches have also developed their own language and the longer someone coaches, the more unique phrases they tend to have. This summer I took my family to a summer college game and we sat near the visitors bullpen. In the middle innings a relief pitcher and catcher made their way down to the bullpen. I over heard the pitcher say "coach said to go to the bullpen, but not to get hot...whatever that means!" Because he was unsure what he was supposed to be doing, and there was no bullpen coach, he just played a little bit of light catch. This highlighted two critical issues:
1. The coach used a term that was foreign to his pitcher.
​2. Even if the player understood the phrase it may have meant something different to the player than it did to the coach. Was he supposed to go to the bullpen and just play catch? Or was he supposed to get loose and start throwing off the mound but not get all the way to game speed? Or was he supposed to go to the bullpen and get his body loose but not throw at all? The answer would depend on your interpretation of "getting hot".

​Coaches typically use certain terms as a way of abbreviating their instructions. When instructions are shortened, however, important information is usually lost. Here is what you can do to make sure your instructions are not lost in translation:
1. Become more aware of the phrases you use
​List the phrases that you use most often and take the time to write them down.
​2. Write out a full explanation for each phrase
Detailing exactly what you mean by each phrase will help you provide additional information for your players when you use that phrase and will fill in the communication gaps.
​3. Take the time to define each of your phrases to your players
​During practice is a critical time to communicate with your players using more in depth instructions. You can use your most common coaching phrases, but you also have time to detail out exactly what each phrase means. Then, when you get into a game and communicate more in short-hand, your players will understand your expectations more completely.
4. Remember that your players can't read your mind
And you don't want them to have to guess what you are thinking. If you are asking yourself do I have to explain everything? The answer is YES.

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