Growing Talent With a Hands Off Approach
We all want to acquire talent but most believe it’s driven by our DNA. After reading Daniel Coyle’s book, THE TALENT CODE. I believe differently. I believe to acquire skill and talent, you must first understand how to grow, myelin. Once we understand this, we can start to dive into what produces the most success on the baseball field. Specifically in the batter’s box. With MLB’s statcast, we can create an environment that is conducive to learning what creates that success.
Myelin is a fatty white substance that surrounds the axon of some nerve cells, forming an electrically insulating layer. It is essential for the proper functioning of the nervous system. It is an outgrowth of a type of glial cell. The production of the myelin sheath is called myelination or myelinogenesis.
Each time we practice a skill, a new layer of myelin is added to our neurones, helping us to retain and improve new knowledge and skills. It means that deep practice is crucial to our development. Matt Bromley explains.
More importantly, each time we practice something — be it a mental or physical skill — our nerve fibres are coated in a layer of insulation called myelin which acts in much the same way as the rubber insulation that coats a copper wire or that horrible yellow stuff in my loft: it makes the electrical impulses stronger and faster by preventing the signals from leaking.
Each time we practice a skill, a new layer of myelin is added to the neurone like the lagging on a boiler. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates our nerve fibres and, therefore, the faster our movements and thoughts become.
With that said, how do we apply that to baseball learning? It’s based off the learning method of, “chunking.” To me, chunking means, taking small parts of our movements and applying deep practice to those patterns. For example, if we are working on creating more of a “lift” to our swing… Today MLB’s Statcast has provided invaluable information regarding what ball flight produces the highest averages, homeruns, doubles, etc.. So we can set up an environment that promotes a “right and wrong” external focus. A quick drill you can do at home: If you have a net, I recommend you to buy a laser pointer and a protractor. If you can a pocket radar is also a great tool to track exit velocity (http://pocketradar.com/). To know more about why, keep reading… Set the laser and protractor at about 25 degrees and watch where the laser hits on the net, then set an indicator at that point to let your athlete know: Anything above this line is right anything below, for the purpose of our training is wrong. This can help them effectively organize their bodies to achieve their goal, without you or me telling them what to do, how to stand or hold the bat.
For the statistics and the why: let’s say, you were to hit a ball at an exit speed of 79 MPH and a launch angle (the degrees of which the ball comes off the bat) was 12°. Your batting average would be, based on a sample size from MLB.COM would be: .456avg at those same numbers you would have produced 0 HRs. While that would be exceptional at the youth and high school levels, my gut tells me this is not what college recruiters or MLB scouts would be looking for.
Meanwhile, the success of a ball struck at a more intermediate angle is extremely sensitive to its exit velocity. For instance, at a launch angle of about 25 degrees,3 run values can vary sharply depending on how fast the ball leaves the bat. Low exit velocities tend to result in short-hoppers to the infielders, which are easy outs. But as batters hit the ball slightly harder, those liners get progressively stronger, eventually sailing over infielders’ heads for bloop singles. Then the run value drops again, as those line drives begin to travel within reach of the outfielders. At a certain point, though, run value skyrockets again as hard-hit balls become doubles and, eventually, home runs.
It is safe to assume that while at the youth levels, you are certainly weaker than any MLB player, it does show us how to attack our training. To me, the answer is consistency of our training (baseball) and the consistency of our strength training (weights) to be able to develop these skills. The stronger we get and the better our swing plane becomes, the more success we seem to have. To provide an atmosphere that can help, I have mentioned a drill above that can help promote a pattern that can achieve these numbers. Look to focus on EXTERNAL focus factors.
Knowing this, we can “chunk” our movements to affectively produce proper launch angles. To take it one step further, “chunking” means, small movements within the while pattern. So, we have been talking about launch angle, I would say to: stand at the tee and not stride or move our hands, I would simply say, “get in an athletic, strong position, have your hands pre-loaded (like you are ready to throw a punch) and swing” This puts the athlete in a constraint to help “chunk” the movement we are looking to develop in this case, the pattern of our upper body and arms to achieve higher launch angles.
