Knowing a Good Practice Environment
Everyone knows what a bad environment feels like, but what does a good one look like?
“How you say something is just as important as what you say.”
I am sure it can be applied almost anywhere, but it can be applied very strongly to coaching and training. It means more to do your practice the right way, than to simply follow the directions and path that the major-leaguers and high level players follow.
Everyone remembers the class in school, the one with the teacher that no one liked because you would be mocked or looked down upon for incorrect answers by your peers. Or maybe it wasn’t your peers, maybe the teacher himself would mock you for your incorrect answers so you eventually just never answered aloud or asked questions.
Time goes on, every time you fail to raise your hand to ask a question due to fear of embarrassment you fall further and further behind. Eventually, the math problem that was one step is now eight, and you’re unsure of how to do four of them so you don’t have a prayer of a chance to answer them correctly on the test.
Thankfully, baseball doesn’t always expose people in that fashion, and hopefully most people are brought together by a sense of common interest, but the principle remains nonetheless. Over time, players fall further and further behind because they're not maximizing their capabilities during their training sessions.
If a player fails to ask how to do a drill correctly because he is scared of looking stupid, getting mocked or ridiculed, you have failed as a coach. It is your job to go above and beyond to ensure that every single player of yours feels free to ask for help whenever they need it.
Flipside:
Players, it doesn’t matter how you feel about getting mocked or ridiculed, it is in your best interest to fully understand exactly what you need to be doing. It is better to be laughed at and improve than it is to get worse and still be scared. Eventually, you'll ask enough questions and you’ll be completely immune to any pushback and people will most likely respect the fact that you will do whatever it takes to get better.
So, how do we fix this issue or ensure it never happens again? Simple- go out of your way to show how important full understanding is.
Some examples: make sure to have players recap what the drill is trying to accomplish or what the goals of your training session are. Having the answers come from your players assures you that 1- they are listening and paying attention and 2- they actually have a deeper understanding of the drill.
This next part should be the most straightforward, but sometimes can be difficult. If and when players don’t answer your questions correctly, kindly guide them to the right path.
While this specific occurrence can be by far the most frustrating, I promise you it is one of the most critical times to get everyone going on the right path and have them build trust in you that you are here for their betterment.
It's human nature to get frustrated and upset when you put your heart into something as important to you as a practice plan, and the people you put the work in for either weren’t paying close enough attention or the message didn’t stick as well as you wanted it to.
Outside of just having them engaged, giving them the proper information to buy into the practice plan is super important. The “because I said so” coaching mentality is not as successful as it once was, and the people who can pull it off are able to because their coaching resume stands for itself.
A simple understanding from the players perspective goes a long way, and having players that are fully bought in makes your job way easier. Imagine a practice full of fully bought in players that aren’t asking “why are we doing this” every 5 minutes.
Sure, there might be significantly more work on the front end, but after you have your set staples of a practice routine down that everyone understands you should be able to get significantly more work done during your practice time slot.
This leads me to my next major point:
Make sure they are allowed to fail, and that they are okay with failing forward.
Some of the best ways for players to learn and improve is through doing difficult and challenging drills. These drills are inherently going to require the players to fail, as anything that’s challenging would. Why would your players push themselves to the brink of failure if they aren’t comfortable failing? Why would they push themselves to their full limitation if they didn't think that the drill was beneficial?
All of the small things are starting to add up. *How* you do practice is becoming just as important as *what* you do at practice.
When players know that failing in drills won't negatively impact their playing time, they free themselves up to perform at their very best. The player who gets pulled after every strikeout, or the pitcher that gets told “you are done if you walk a guy” will never perform to their best because of the added performance anxiety. There are obviously going to be some exceptions to the rule, but they are exceptions for a reason.
This leads me to a story:
Last fall, I was sitting in the Milwaukee Brewers spring training stadium bullpen with a friend of mine and one of the pitching coaches in our organization. We were talking about how certain organizations would never sign a particular type of player, specifically the kind of pitcher that struggles to find the zone even if they have exceptional stuff.
My friend is a lefty who touches upper 90’s with multiple nasty offspeed pitches. He however struggled in college, walking almost 20 in less than 4 innings. For a walks per nine innings of about 50, not good.
“There are certain organizations that would never sign players like you guys,” he said and I'm paraphrasing this next part, because I don't know the exact wording, but the gist was this- “Guys, if you go out and walk the house tomorrow you’re still going to have a job, you didn't fool anyone when we signed you. We know you have strengths and weaknesses and we didn't expect everything to be fixed overnight.”
How do you think that approach works compared to the “Don't you dare walk anyone” approach that is taken by a lot of coaches.
Shockingly, it’s way better. The lefty has cut his walks down almost 85% and is throwing the best he’s thrown in years.
The game is stressful enough, no need to add any more.
Good Luck,
John