Top 10 Ways Baseball Coaches Ruin Their Players

By Guest Author: Jake Bryan

Coaches are always looking for new ways to help their players become better, when the fact is that often times they're ignoring the ways they're actually ruining their players. Below are ten ways that Baseball Brains has seen coaches ruin players.

1. Use Negative Directives

This is one of the worst things a coach can do, luckily it's also one of the easiest to fix if a coach makes a dedicated effort to do so. This refers to a coach telling a player "Don't swing at the high pitch!" Another example would be "Whatever you do, just don't throw it down the middle." These are negative directives, and they should be avoided at all costs. Always remember to tell a player what you DO WANT him to do, not what you DON'T WANT him to do. When you tell him not to strike out, the thing that sticks in his head, every single time, are the words strike out. It introduces failure and diminishes the players confidence.

"Don't swing at a high pitch" becomes "Swing only at pitches that are in the strike zone". This simple change makes the directive to the player much more affirmative and positive, much more like what we're looking for. "Don't throw it down the middle of the plate" becomes "Focus on working the edges of the plate". Simple changes that will make a huge difference in the mind of your athletes. It's more positive, it sounds like success, it breeds a greater confidence, and it will result in what you want far more often than what you don't.

2. Change Their Swing

Many coaches just simply cannot resist the temptation to teach a whole team an entirely new way to swing the bat. Every hitter needs to hit the same way, and the coach has the perfect way. This is a very complex issue as hitting is a very complex mechanic, however this approach to coaching hitting is almost always wrong. Hitting should not be over coached no matter the age level of the players. Of course very young players need to learn how to swing effectively, and players throughout baseball need drills and reminders of the small fundamentals of good hitting. However, coaching a swing to the team as a whole and demanding conformity to a new style is wrong, and will often have terrible results.

It takes thousands of swings to change a swing from a player's natural form and mechanics to some "perfect" form. That's just a fact. Numerous studies have shown that it takes at least three thousand repetitions to break a physical habit. Even if a coach had time in a season to force thousands of swings from each hitter on his team, the whole season would be lost to an ever changing swing in search of a new style which was never fully achieved. Two batters rarely look identical to each other, and this is a good thing.

This doesn't mean that hitting mechanics and fundamentals can't be coached, it simply means that one size fits all hitting systems never work. They result in season long inconsistency, frequent slumps, a drop in confidence, and often times a player will end up worse at hitting than before he received the coaching. There simply isn't enough time in a traditional amateur season to change a team's swing, stick to the mental approach to hitting and largely allow the players' natural swing to remain.

3. Try To Change Mechanics During a Game

This happens all the time, and it'll ruin a player in the game. Most of the time this occurs with pitchers. A coach will notice that the pitcher isn't striding fully and he'll go to the mound to tell him to stride better. This is a dangerous practice. First of all, if a pitcher's mechanics have gone away from him, it almost always means he's fatigued and should probably come out of the game. The second thing this does, is it gets him out of his "focus zone" and causes him to focus on some specific physical action. He'll go into the next pitches thinking "stride more fully", and the result will be lackluster performance in most other mechanics while he strives to achieve the one he's concentrating on. It'll also cause his mind to be on his legs rather than his job. As coaches, this isn't even close to what we want the pitcher to be thinking about. It'll lower his confidence, cause the other mechanics of the motion to break down, and take his focus off of the hitter and the job he needs to do to get him out.

This goes for all players on the field, and hitters also. The important thing for a player to do during the game, is focus on the moment and perform the best he can in that moment. Know the situation, know his role, do everything he can right then and there to help the team win. A pitcher needs to be thinking "What's the best pitch to throw here" far more than "Stride further". One will help the team win and the other will ruin your player. Keep coaching the mental side of baseball during the game, if the players are performing their duties incorrectly, such as not striding far enough out, work on it in practice where it belongs.

4. Don't Respect Them

Coach's believe sometimes that respect should be given to them by their players unconditionally. This never happens in real life, and it doesn't happen on the baseball field. Respect is earned, and the best way to earn respect from your players is to show some for them. Understand they will make mistakes, reward them for hard work, give them opportunities to win and succeed in practice.

There's tons of ways to show your players that you respect them. Another great thing that coaches can do is to do some of the conditioning drills with them. Get out there and run with them, let them see that you know that what they're doing is difficult and that you're willing to try some of it with them. Let them earn things in practice, and call them over now and then when nobody is watching and tell them thanks. It's amazing what a little "Thank you for the effort, you're a good ballplayer and I really appreciate and respect your attitude out here", can do. That literally can be the difference between a good and bad season for some players, never underestimate a compliment.

5. Don't listen To Them

This goes along with the one above, but it happens enough and it's important enough to warrant its' own number. Coaches believe often times that if they allow their players to have influence on the team or if they are allowed to make suggestions, then he loses his power over them. This couldn't be further from the truth. Now, we're not advocating turning a whole practice over to the players, although doing that a few times a year never hurt either. The goal here is to make the players feel like they have an investment and some influence in their own development.

It doesn't take a whole lot for a player to feel like he has some responsibility and ownership, just a couple simple things now and then. Ask the player what he thinks he should work on, what he thinks his weaknesses are, let him do the drills that he wants to do for a practice. Let the players decide what team drills they should do for an entire practice. Don't get this wrong, players need discipline and they need structure, but allowing input now and then is a great thing. It'll cause the players to feel like they have some skin in the game, some power in their play, and it'll make you seem more humble and, dare we say, respectable to them.

6. Give Them Unrealistic Goals

This list is about ways to ruin players and this will certainly do it. The fastest way to ruin a player is to destroy his confidence, and one of the best ways to do that is to cause him to repeatedly fail. Coaches often times won't even notice that this is happening, unfortunately this is true with a lot of the mental game which is why we put lists like this together in the first place. Since goals should be hard, they will sometimes be failed. This is not a bad thing in itself. The problem is that when they're too hard, they are failed too often.

Baseball Brains believes very strongly that goal setting is an extremely valuable tool and we advocate the use of goals throughout every practice during the entire season. However, they must be done correctly, and monitored closely. That second part is very important, they must be monitored constantly to make sure players are not becoming frustrated by losing or failing too many times in practice. Don't be afraid to modify goals if they aren't quite working out like you thought they would. Hard enough to make succeeding meaningful, but achievable enough so that failure doesn't become the norm.

7. Expect Them To Do Things You Haven't Taught Them How To Do

Never assume that a player knows how to do something if you haven't taught him how to do it. Now it goes without saying (but we'll say it anyway) that most of your players should know how to throw and catch and perform the basic skills of baseball. This is referring more to things like cutoff procedure from the outfield, double play turning at second base, hips closed mechanics for hitting to the opposite field, and things like that. Things which are not overly complicated, but things that not all players will always know, and this applies to almost all age groups.

There will almost always be players, even if it's only a few, which don't know how to do something that you think they should know how to do. If a coach berates or disciplines or becomes angry with a player for not doing something that has never been taught to them, that player will become resentful and frustrated. It's one thing to do something wrong when you know you did it wrong, it's a whole different ballgame to be punished for not being taught something. Again, this goes to the psychology (there's that word again) of the player. It isn't necessarily something the coach will see, but the drop in morale and the frustration toward the coach will be very real, and very detrimental to the player's performance. If you haven't showed them how to do it, don't expect them to do it right.

8. Be a Bad Sportsman

The job of a coach is to keep his players focused and intensely concentrated on the moment they are performing in. One of the greatest ways to destroy that and ruin your player, is to start yelling at umpires and displaying a bad attitude toward the other team. Sometimes in MLB a manager will get thrown out for the sole purpose of firing up his team and increasing their passion for the game. Needless to say, some things don't translate from MLB to lower levels of baseball, and this is one of them. It should be a constant reminder that you're giving your players to be good sportsmen, to respect the game and thus respect the other players, coaches and umpires. Bad calls, bad attitudes on the other team, opposing coach's who are behaving badly, these are all distractions which can take away from your players' focus on their job. Your job to is to remove as many distractions as possible, not become one.

9. Abandon You Own Methods

For a player in any sport to effectively learn and become good at a system, he first has to 'buy-in'. Once the player does this, he believes in it and he's willing to dedicate himself to it. Too many things go into getting a player to 'buy-in' to a system to discuss them all here, but one of the best ways to get players to believe in your approach and dedicate themselves to it, is to do those things yourself. Players will start out wanting to believe, wanting to believe that you're right and that they should follow you. However, they won't do it without skepticism. They'll watch you, and they'll gauge your conviction for it. Why should they be passionate and faithful if the guy teaching it doesn't even believe in it?

Coaches often do this without even realizing it. They'll preach things in practice and then panic when something isn't working in the game and change their approach. They'll receive attitude or resistance from a player or two and change how they coach. This is different that changing 'what' you coach, that's just fine most the time to evolve the areas of baseball that you cover throughout the season. However, if you change 'how' you coach and cave on your principles, the players will not give you anywhere near the dedication and effort you're looking for. Pick the right approach, be firm in your principles, be flexible if you're wrong, and fully dedicate yourself to your system. Your players will do the same.

10. React Emotionally

A lot of this list is related, and this one can be put in to a bunch of the categories above. What we'll talk briefly about here though, is coaches who react out of frustration and anger and issue bold proclamations. We've seen it in coaches in all sports, baseball perhaps the most. A player will talk back or do something the coach hates, and the coach's anger will boil up and you'll hear "That's it! You're on the bench for the rest of the tournament!". Then a game or two later the player is back in the lineup because the coach never meant that, he never wanted the player to sit out the last four games just for mouthing off a little.

Reacting emotionally can take many forms, but most of the time it causes the coach to say things that he doesn't mean, he won't live up to, and he wishes he could take back. The result is a coach that looks immature, spineless, reactionary, and unapproachable. Whenever a coach acts this way, he diminishes his players' confidence in him, and causes them to take his ultimatums and decrees much less seriously. Obviously these are not desired outcomes, unless your goal is to ruin your team.

Jake Bryan is a lead author in the Baseball Brains training system. There are numerous resources available at the website, including the full training manual for the system, drills, links and videos, and a Baseball Brains blog.

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Youth Baseball Clinic - Baseball Tips on Hitting - The Most Common Hitting Problems at Any Level of Play!

Baseball Tips: Correcting the Most Common Hitting Problems at Any Level of Play!

By Guest Author: Larry Cicchiello

If you have what is referred to as a "quick hip," please forgive my bluntness but you will have no chance of being a successful baseball hitter. Only on an inside pitch, can you get away with opening the front hip a little bit early. A "quick hip" is when the front hip opens a fraction of a second early. It is a common hitting problem and a very serious one for many hitters at all levels of play. One of the most important baseball tips on hitting is to remember that the swing itself should force the front hip open. If the hip is a fraction of a second too quick, it forces your front side to open too early and this is a recipe for disaster for a baseball player at any level of play.

Three Major Problems Occur if You Have A Quick Hip:

1. You will not see the ball well. Your head will go along for the ride with your "quick hip" and you will be looking at the ball out of the corner of your eyes when the moment of truth arrives and you attempt to actually hit the ball.

2. Your power will be lost. You will be leaning toward third base if you are a right-handed hitter or toward first base if you are a left-handed hitter. That is not where the hitting is taking place. The hitting is taking place in front of you, not to the left or right of you.

3. Your plate coverage will be poor. The only pitch you'll be able to hit with any success at all is the inside pitch and low and away pitches will cause many baseball hitting problems for you.

I wonder how much young players who are struggling at the plate would improve considerably if they made this fairly simple adjustment at the plate.

Keeping the front hip and the entire front of your body closed is one of the most important baseball tips on hitting. How common is the baseball hitting problem of having a "quick hip"? You can check it out for yourself. When watching a game live in person or on TV at any level of play, observe the weaker hitters. (The ones who are batting .220, .230 or .240.) Keep an eye on their front hip. In almost all cases, it will be opening too early.

On the other side of the coin, you can also check out the better hitters. They will be keeping their front hip closed!

Larry is the successful author of several very user friendly eBooks and CD's covering 320 topics on playing or coaching excellent baseball. ANY player, coach or parent who wants to help their child will be fully equipped! Check out some FREE baseball tips on hitting and FREE baseball pitching tips at LarryBaseball.com.

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Youth Baseball Mental Training

Youth Baseball Coaching

By Guest Author: Miles A Noland

The game of baseball cannot begin without the action of one position.

In basketball there is a lot of focus on the point guard. In football there is a lot of focus on the quarterback.

These are important positions, but there is no position that is more important than a pitcher in baseball.

There is so much responsibility that involves a pitcher. From throwing different pitches, knowing the various hitters, fielding their position, pickoff moves, to controlling the running game, to dealing with adversity, mental focus, and dealing with fatigue, a pitcher has a lot to deal with. If one of these important parts of pitching is missing, you do not have a complete pitcher. Missing one of these components negatively affects all of the other components. Most pitchers are not advanced to be good in all of these areas, however, when you realize what areas a pitcher is weak in you can begin to attack it and improve. The mental game in pitching is so important, oftentimes more important than the physical part. Andy Pettitte, great guy who I hung out with in the Dominican

You must teach your pitchers to think one pitch at a time. It is very easy to think about the past or future, and this inhibits your ability to be best the possible in the present. Cues such as get to the top of the baseball, or take a deep breath and focus on executing the pitch, create movement at release are great for creating the right type of focus. Attempting to throw harder in times of struggle or getting mad at infielders or the umpire are typical things that make a pitchers struggle even worse. Teach your pitchers how to coach themselves and watch them develop right under your eyes.

P.S. One pitch at a time, one pitch at a time. Oftentimes a mound visit is very effective in calming a pitcher down. Tell him to step off the mound and focus on dominating the things he can control. What can he control?

1. His focus
2. Executing each pitch
3. Attacking the strike zone
4. Taking deep breaths
5. His body language
Things he can't control?

1. Where the ball is hit
2. What the umpire calls
3. If his fielders catch the ball
4. The mound conditions
5. Bad luck

Get your pitchers to focus on the controllables and they will deal with failure and adverse conditions much better.

Coach it up,

Miles

http://www.iybca.org/gift

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Teaching Youth Baseball

Teaching youth baseball is a rewarding experience for both parents and coaches alike. While parents have an obvious investment in the teaching of the fundamentals of the sport of baseball to their children, coaches, make a significant investment of their own in time, effort and emotion. From a personal perspective, one of the greatest rewards is indeveloping relationships with and positively affecting the lives of individual youth baseball players. The lessons of sports such as in baseball are positive and well documented. For coaches, there are also the internal rewards they get from seeing each player develop and from watching a youth baseball team improve as a group and learn to play together under their coaching tutelage.

Astute coaches improve the performance of the team as a whole by employing youth baseball drills to improve the individual performances of team players and there interactions together. There are three main categories in which youth baseball drills will have an immense effect on the performance levels of players.

• Youth Batting Drills – one of the most important of the youth baseball drills. The vast majority of youth baseball players have the most fun when they hit. The better they are able to hit, the more fun that they will have, and the greater their interest in the sport of baseball. Coaches and parents who teach baseball drills in batting must stress the importance of a well-balanced stance that is comfortable for the individual player, picking the ball up as it leaves the pitcher's hand, and keeping the body weight back until the pitch is delivered.

• Youth Fielding Drills – an integral part of teaching the defensive position. Of course, there are sets of baseball fielding drills that are unique to each of the nine fielding positions in the game of baseball. However, there are baseball drills common to all fielding positions. One of the key youth baseball drills in catching ground balls is to keep the fingers of the fielding glove on the ground for ground balls, and raising the glove to catch the ball on the bounce, instead of lowering the glove. Another one of the instructional keys to fielding is to catch the thrown or batted ball with the wrist in an upward position for balls at or above the waist, and to turn the wrist upside down to catch balls below the waist. There are many ways to take a single drill and apply it so the whole team can practice at once.

• Youth Throwing Drills – the most basic of all youth baseball drills, and many instructors feel that it is the most important fundamental of all. It is vital for parents to make sure that their children develop proper throwing techniques from the time they can throw a baseball, around the age of eight or so. The importance of throwing a baseball with proper grip can not be overestimated. Youth throwing drills must emphasize four important elements: Throw the ball by gripping it with the index finger and middle finger on the ball; point your shoulder opposite from your throwing hand in the direction of your target; step in the direction of your target when you release the ball; and follow through after you release the ball with your back leg so that both legs are parallel upon the completion of the throw.

You can find many youth baseball drills on the Internet covering hitting, fielding and throwing. Some drills are free and some require subscription or for you to order a DVD. Free baseball drills allow you greater flexibility in trying a variety and see what works best for you as the coach and your youth baseball team. Always remember that drills should be age appropriate. The right fielding drill for a 14 year-old boy will not suit and 8-year old and vice versa.

There are many baseball coaching resources and communities like Weplay available to help with any questions you might have. Don't underestimate the passion of the community around you. We are all here to help the kids.

Trevor Sumner

By Trevor Sumner who works for Weplay.com, a youth baseball community dedicated to providing parents, coaches and athletes the tools and information they need to celebrate the love of the game. Weplay has one of the most comprehensive baseball drill libraries in its active baseball community.

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/trevor-sumner/128940

Youth Baseball Clinic: Explosive Rotational Hitting for Beginners thru High School

Explosive Rotational Hitting for Beginners thru High School for more info buy "Beginners, thru Little League, Explosive Rotational Hitting dvd" $10.00 + sh www.sportstechnique.com Using the rotational power of the hips, exerpts from this 60 minute dvd, show 4 drills and help parents and athletes undertstand powerful hitting in easy to follow terms. For baseball and fastpitch

A Baseball Coach's Responsibility

A Baseball Coach's Responsibility

By Jim Bain

The headline " A Coach's Responsibility " is very ambiguous as it could, or should, compose a list of at least 200 items, which increases as his players' age and skill level increases. I'm going to exam 1 responsibility that very few coaches actually perform, but it's mainly due to unawareness, not shirking the duty.

I have always been a blue collar worker so I'm relying on my white collar friends to have given me the straight scoop on the procedure of getting raises.

The job performance evaluation an employee periodically endures is intended to give the person a non-bias and honest evaluation of how others perceive they perform their job. It should offer assessments of tasks the employee excels at, lacks achievement and suggestions to improve.

A coach has the responsibility, much as the employer, to have an honest face to face evaluation meeting with each player in order to let the player know how they are performing.

This evaluation process must not be entered into lightly as there are huge ramifications should a coach not do it right.

(1) The first decision is at what age do you begin these meetings? This is an individual decision as some may feel 10 years old is too early, when others coaching an elite travel team may think it's too late. Analyze your players' and their parents' maturity before implementing anything. You're intentions are to improve the players, not create a mass rebellion from thin skinned parents.

(2) When to do it? I suggest mid-season and then again at the end of the season. This will give you 3 benchmarks on which to evaluate the player, the beginning of the season, midway and final.

(3) Decide on a set goal you want to address and maintain that goal for every player. In other words, restrict the evaluation to baseball which only the player has control over. Suggest the player throw more, but don't get into the parents always bringing the player late to practices. The player has no control over the parents.

(4) Write down the comments and suggestions for each player. Unless you have a written guide it becomes too easy to wander off subject and that's not the goal. Also, keep these individual written guides in order to show any irate or inquisitive parent this was not a witch hunt and you weren't singling their kid out. Some coaches will give a copy of the evaluation to the player.

(5) Examples of a player's evaluation sheet.

Player One:

(a.) Great hustle... never gives up.
(b.) Need to work on improving bunting skills.
(c.) Good range to ball.
(d.) Get better lead off first base.

Player Two:

(a.) Excellent attitude... always trying to get better.
(b.) Very coach able... listens.
(c.) Could work on hitting the curveball.

Presentation is a key to these evaluations. Always let the player know how proud you are of him and his progress. They say Corrective criticism doesn't hurt, but it does.

"With your speed I need to get you a bigger leadoff at first so I can have you steal more."

"You cost us a game because your leadoff was too short."

Whole different approach.

I know coaches have their plates full and time is a premium asset, but consider this suggestion of holding evaluation meetings. They don't have to be long and they can be very enlightening for both the player and coach. You may learn the player refuses to get a good leadoff because his father told him he'd better never get picked off first base.

Jim Bain, former Minor league baseball player and member of "Baseball Coaches of America" shares his advice on baseball coaching baseball drills on his exciting info packed website: http://www.learn-youth-baseball-coaching.com

Be sure to check out his 2 books on Amazon, "The Pitch" and "Season of Pain". Great reading about baseball.

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How to Hit a Baseball

How to Hit a Baseball demonstrates the key elements of the proper swing. This is proper instruction for a baseball player, based on how hitting is actually done, not on folk wisdom.

Bob Caswell has worked as a hitting instructor for professional teams, college teams and leagues, and has coached amateurs at all levels. He's providing some great baseball hitting tips to help you succeed.