Is anyone else aggravated by how many players walk on, off, and around the baseball field? To me it’s like nails on a chalkboard. Every summer I usually help out at a couple camps that have kids between about 8 and 15 years old. One of the toughest things to teach the campers early on is simply to move faster. Whether it is on and off the field, one drill location to another, one field to another, or even a simple water break, I find myself constantly telling them to move faster. If there is one phrase that I probably have written the most on this website it is “as you get older the game gets faster.” If you can no longer keep up with the pace of the game at your current level, your baseball career is over. It is as simple as that.
Moving fast on, off, and around the field takes no talent. Just discipline.
Humans are creatures of habit. They are also going to search for the quickest way to do something that involves the least amount of effort. I am reminded of this every time I tell my children to clean their rooms.
It is obvious to me that the campers I mostly deal with have not been trained how to move around the field at the proper pace that the game requires. I’m not certain but I think it is because their coaches have not demanded it as much as they should have. That’s why the camp coaches spend so much of our time reminding the campers to MOVE FASTER! You jog, you run, but you never walk from point A to point B when you are a player on or near a baseball field. The most frustrating thing is when they look at you like you have three heads. Clearly they have never heard this before.
As coaches, you must set this tone on day one. “We don’t waste time here. Most people walk. We are not ‘most people.’ ’Most people’ are average. We don’t want average. We want to be the best. The best get more things done in a shorter amount of time. That means we move faster.”
There is no walking in baseball.
Tomorrow’s post: How to be still – The baseball knee