First lesson in youth lessons

March 1 rolls around and the face of my lessons changes significantly. As high school tryouts begin, the youth players begin rolling in. Although lesson progressions change little due to age (because its the same swing) my emphasis does change a bit. You see, most youth players (and many high schoolers even) lack proprioception and kinesthetic sense. What this means in terms of a lesson, is that I can see his swing is out of synch, he's laying the bat off, or his front side is blocking off back side. But this means little to a player who has never been taught how to separate body parts. Beginning players often lack coordination, balance and the body awareness to put together a complex move like the swing or the pitching delivery. This is because they have only thought of the swing as one "move" when in reality its a series of moves, flowing into each other in a kinetic chain that makes up a larger, continuous movement.

So, I often tell these players, in their first few lessons, that I'm going to teach them less about their swing and more about how they are going to use their bodies. The reason behind this is that I can't teach them the complex motor skills without them having enough kinesthetic sense to "feel" how the movement works. If you can't feel the difference between "right" and "wrong" then the players will always struggle to "get" the movement or ever be consistent in his mechanics. You have to train the brain and the body before you teach the task. This I learned over time, (about 1,500 hours in a cage a year certainly helps) and my lessons have been so much more effective in a shorter time, than they were when I first started doing this many years ago.