Saturday, October 16, 2010

Why Teaching Step-By-Step Mechanics is So Ineffective in Youth Baseball

Attended a pitching clinic for kids recently, and my ESTP son, who normally loves doing anything associated with baseball, came away very disappointed, and rightfully so.

The clinic itself was a good idea, designed to help kids transition from machine pitch to kid pitch. But the instructor started off by giving a strategy and motivational speech to a bunch of 7, 8, and 9 year olds, and they drifted off predictably. But where he really started to lose them was the 1-2-3-4 step-by-step approach to pitching very few of them were relating to.

Soon after he started with the 1 - arm back, 2 - extend arm, etc, one of the ENTP kids just left. The xSTPs stuck around, but were losing interest quick. The reason this method wasn't resonating was because so many of the kids who were good enough and motivated enough to show up at this optional event were Ps, as are a majority of Major Leaguers.

A couple of the xSTPs got very frustrated after being told to stop after "1", with their arms halfway in the air. It made no sense to them. And it wasn't just this pitching coach, I see the same thing with hitting, where coaches destroy kids' timing and create statues that are instructed to keep their elbows up, which then attracts their focus instead of keeping their eyes on the ball.

Bad mechanics have a tendency to self-correct with practice and by allowing the kids to make adjustments to poor results. Telling a sport dominated by Ps to follow step-by-step instructions makes as much sense as telling golfers to run up to the tee just like Happy Gilmore did.