Month: September 2017

Playing the Long Game | In order to go fast, you gotta go slow.

We live in a society where people want everything at the touch of a finger. They want success without the hard work. They want result after the first try. They want pleasure without the pain.

We want things fast and we want them now. We don’t have much patience for playing the “long game.”

When is the last time you deliberately did something today that you know will impact your life a year or two down the road? When is the last time you did something deliberately at the beginning of the off season that you know would make impacts during late August of the upcoming season?

A Mentor’s Vision

First and foremost, coaches are mentors. And one of the many jobs of being a mentor is having the vision for the player. The job of the player is to focus on the task at hand and to stay in the present moment – or “be where their feet are.”

Have you ever taken a walk and asked yourself what you’re willing to sacrifice to get to where you want to go? Have you ever asked yourself how long you’re willing to wait to reach your goal? Has it ever occurred to you that if you embrace the timing of your life, you will embrace the actionable steps needed to accomplish your dreams? Before any work can be done, perspective needs to be found before analysis can follow. If you haven’t read the story of how we do this, check it out here.

When I first sit down with a player, I never know what chapter of their life I’m walking in on.

Some of them are in the darkest place of their life and career and it requires me to be sensitive to their story, which helps me create a development plan to get them back on track and focused on their PURPOSE and WHY.

How Long Are You Willing to Wait?

In life, we hardly get what we want, when we want it. We catch ourselves pushing forward in hopes of creating it all on our own. The more experiences we try and create on our own, sheds light on an understanding that we are not in control of as many things as we once thought.

But a big part of playing the long game is being aware of where you’re at in the current moment and focusing on the present, knowing if you take care of the little things, they will eventually lead you to bigger and better things.

This, however, takes time.

This is a common discussion I have with players. The moment you get drafted is NOT the moment you have arrived. It’s the opportunity someone handed you to begin your journey.

If you view each step of your career (and life) as individual stepping stones, you appreciate how many blocks it takes to build your foundation for success.

For example, I like to break the season down into seven days. Essentially 7-day “seasons.” I share with players that every Monday is Opening Day and every Sunday is the last day in the “season.” It’s a lot easier to manage seven days at a time than it is to manage 26 weeks during a Major League Baseball season.

When Monday starts, you have a plan in place. This plan includes goals for the week with things such as: I want to hit as many fastballs as I can this week, I want to hit pitches only in my “margin for success,” I want to be on time for as many fastballs as I can. The goals vary from individual to individual.

And after the game ends on Sunday, we take a look back on the week and see how well we did in executing our goal(s).

We are not worried about how many hits we got.

We are not worried about how good our launch angle was.

We are not worried about what our on-base percentage was.

We want to know if we executed our goals.

The information and feedback we receive on Sunday will help us formulate our plan and approach for the next seven days.

And we simply rinse and repeat every Sunday evening.

This approach to playing the long-game requires patience. If you focus on seven days at a time, you will be amazed at how quickly the season goes by. At the end of the season, you will look back and be able to see the progress and trace the steps of your success with clarity and understanding.

[ Our program has been developed over years of working with players and coaches at the big league level, and I love sharing it with coaches and players to give them a chance to maximize their talent.  Drop me a message and I’d love to give you more. ]

At the end of the year, players comment that they not only achieved or even exceeded their goals they had at the beginning of the year, but they marvel at how they achieved them – by having a purposeful plan and approach every single day. Not once were they chasing numbers. They were managing things they could control on a daily basis.

Are you putting the cart before the horse? Are you putting your goals before your purpose? What happens when you don’t get what you want, when you want it? Are you willing to practice delayed gratification?

Just because it doesn’t happen the first time doesn’t mean you quit. Comfort comes from repetition.

Love,

KW

For more than a decade, Kevin Wilson has been one of the most respected hitting coaches in the game. He works behind the scenes as a private hitting consultant to some of the best hitters in Major League Baseball. In 2013, Kevin was the hitting coach for the USA Baseball 18U National Team. Team USA beat Japan for the Gold medal at the IBAF World Cup in Taichung, Taiwan.

He is the author of the Amazon #1 Best Sellers The #GoodBatting Book and Finding Clarity: A Mindful Look Into the Art of Hitting and co-hosts a popular podcast, KWB Radio, that showcases unique conversations with the pros. If you want Kevin to speak at your next event or if you want take advantage of his popular 2-day KWB Experience for players and coaches, contact Kevin today!

Follow Kevin on twitter @KWBaseball and visit his website KWBaseball.com

“How many of those fans who watched you play tonight went home and played back all of your at-bats?,” I asked him as he stared out beyond my head. “And how many of them lost sleep over you going 0-3?,” I pressed a little further.

He picked at his food for a moment and then lifted his head revealing his signature smirk, “Probably nobody.”

“Exactly. Nobody,” I replied. “Even if someone did go home and lost sleep over your at-bats, I feel bad for them because they value your career more than they value theirs.”

I could see the tension release from his shoulders as he shook his head. He was finally “buying” what I was “selling.”  

You would think the best in the world wouldn’t care what others thought. But it happens more than most people think. Most forget that the top players in the game are human beings too. They have the same fears and doubts that everyone else does.

The moment our minds drift to concerning ourselves with what other people think, we have given them permission to live in our space, in our minds.

We start living out other people’s dreams instead of living out our own.

By the end of our night, he understood that people weren’t paying as much attention to his career as he originally thought.

He had wasted valuable time and energy worrying about what a blogger thought of his game. He spent countless at-bats trying to play well enough to justify the signing bonus he received a few years earlier as the team’s number one draft pick. Through all of this, it became abundantly clear that he wasn’t failing. Because how can you fail when your worst day is better than most people’s best?

He was hitting .290 in A-ball.

People aren’t paying as much attention as you think they are, so stop giving them more time than they deserve.

So, who is paying attention to your career?

All Eyes On You

When you’re at the top of your game, you feel like everyone is watching every move you make. And in the big leagues cameras follow players around the ballpark every day, making this feeling ever more present and real.

Too many players are concerned with trying to play to their “potential.” The word alone brings about feelings of doubt and anxiety. The definition of potential is having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future. And potential typically originates from a scout’s evaluation or a fan’s opinion. Both of which are completely subjective.

There is nothing guaranteed when it comes to potential – or in life for that matter.

The future is widely unknown.  Working towards your potential takes your focus off being the best you can be today, and shifts it to what others think you can be in the future.

But Who’s Paying Attention?

Nobody.

If you think a minor league stadium full of 7,000 fans on a “Thirsty Thursday” are scrutinizing your every move, think again. Those people came for the entertainment, and on this particular Thursday night, perhaps for the $1 beer. They hopefully left the ballpark having enjoyed three hours with friends and family and I’m certain they even caught a few plays in between.

How about your friends back home who are busy living their lives as you’re staring out a bus window in the middle of the night? Do you think they were checking their MiLB app on their phone every 30 minutes to see if you got a base hit or not? Highly unlikely. They were too busy worrying about their own lives and focusing on what they are doing in the present moment.

So why do we assume that everyone else’s life revolves around ours?

Success and life are a singular game. Focus your efforts on what you need in order to live the life you’ve always wanted.

Love,

KW

For more than a decade, Kevin Wilson has been one of the most respected hitting coaches in the game. He works behind the scenes as a private hitting consultant to some of the best hitters in Major League Baseball. In 2013, Kevin was the hitting coach for the USA Baseball 18U National Team. Team USA beat Japan for the Gold medal at the IBAF World Cup in Taichung, Taiwan.

He is the author of the Amazon #1 Best Seller The #GoodBatting Book and co-hosts a popular podcast, KWB Radio, that showcases unique conversations with the pros. If you want Kevin to speak at your next event or if you want take advantage of his popular 2-day KWB Experience for players and coaches, contact Kevin today!

Follow Kevin on twitter @KWBaseball and visit his website KWBaseball.com

When I see most hitting instruction today, I see instructors teaching technique and players trying to apply that technique to their swing. The player feels mostly awkward at first and frustrated much of the time, and it is generally accepted as the only way to learn. And I’m here to argue that pushing a philosophy of frustration and complex jargon onto a player is not only wrong, it’s irresponsible.

But rest assure there is a greater understanding among many professional hitters in the game today that the mind should be relatively free from instruction while you are swing the bat – at least during the game itself.

Psychologists confirm that most of us learn more in our first five years than in all the rest of our lives. And children don’t have to try to learn; they simply do so. Until adults teach them otherwise, learning is so natural for children that they don’t even know it’s happening.

And they have fun doing it.

In my experience, there is a different and more natural approach to learning – awareness. Using awareness to focus the attention on what you are doing instead of telling you what you should be doing. If you haven’t read the conversation of HOW an MLB All-Star got back on track without ever talking about launch angles or exit veo, stop reading this article and check it out, here. This approach shows if you use awareness instruction, you can learn most hitting technique directly from experience without being taught.

Simply put, this is a more empowering way for the hitter to learn.

Has Something Gone Wrong with the Way We Learn?

Baseball is a tremendous platform from which we can teach life lessons. Which brings up some concerns I have for the institutional education that we receive here in the United States.

One of the biggest concerns I have seen in regards to players understanding how to learn is the reality that institutional education has overemphasized conceptual learning to such a degree that the value of, and the trust in, the natural process of learning directly from experience has been seriously undermined.

Think of the mind as an empty box that naturally gets filled with information. What conceptual learning is only concerned with is filling that box with concepts and theoretical information.

The word education comes from the Latin word educare, meaning to “lead out” and indicates that the potential intelligence sought already exists within us and needs to be drawn out. This drawing out by a coach, teacher or environment is the primary function of true education.

When teaching the physical skills of the swing, learning through direct experience should take priority over learning through formal instruction in concepts.

Learning From Experience

Experience itself is the primary teacher, and each individual must learn directly from their own personal experience. Another person’s experience, through teaching and instruction, can be helpful only if it doesn’t’ compromise a player’s all-important relationship with their own direct experience.

Which brings me back to awareness. Awareness is the primary faculty we have for knowing and learning from our experience. Where we focus our attention determines what we learn.

The biggest complaint I get from hitters today is their hitting coach does not take the time to get to know how they like to swing the bat. Coaches are notorious for developing their own jargon and assuming that everyone speaks their language.

Their language is filled with should’s and should not’s. They seem more like commands rather than suggestions. While the coach may think he is helping the player out, he doesn’t realize that most of the time, he is creating doubt within the player.

The doubt comes from the player feeling like he has to live up to the expectations of the coach – doing it his way. The player may understand completely what the coach is telling him, but his body doesn’t. Without muscle knowledge of the instruction, the player finds himself unable to meet his own or his teacher’s expectations, creating doubt.

It’s easier for coaches to see what’s wrong in a player’s swing, than to know which particular correction should be focused on in a given development process. Hence, you get an experience like this:

Less Is More

Over the years, I have been accused of being too simple, not giving enough information to the hitter, or a player feeling cheated because I’m not telling them what they should or shouldn’t be doing. Why? Because before working with me, most had been so accustomed to “power coaching” that they were cheated out of recognizing their own potential for learning.

I often say, “I can’t teach you anything, but I can make you think.” The method to my madness tends to put players in another frame of mind – one that engenders a mode of learning that is free of doubt, frustration and discouragement. It creates a natural state of learning which strengthens the player’s faith in his own capacity to learn from experience. My only role is to help him focus on the most relevant parts of his experience.

For example, you will frequently hear me tell a hitter in the cage that “I don’t care where the ball goes.” I overemphasize this because the hitter has been raised to be concerned about the result.

The over concern with results produces tension and loss of touch/feel, which makes achieving the goal more difficult. By taking his focus off the result and putting it on the purpose, feel and experience, I can help him naturally accomplish the very same results he’s wanted in the first place. Sounds crazy right?

Just another reminder that Hitting is simple. It’s just not that easy.

Create awareness in not only yourself but those around you. Allow the experience to be your best teacher. Most of our problems come from trying to correct problems and when we stop trying to correct them, they just fix themselves.

Love,
KW

For more than a decade, Kevin Wilson has been one of the most respected hitting coaches in the game. He works behind the scenes as a private hitting consultant to some of the best hitters in Major League Baseball. In 2013, Kevin was the hitting coach for the USA Baseball 18U National Team. Team USA beat Japan for the Gold medal at the IBAF World Cup in Taichung, Taiwan.

He is the author of the Amazon #1 Best Seller The #GoodBatting Book and co-hosts a popular podcast, KWB Radio, that showcases unique conversations with the pros. If you want Kevin to speak at your next event or if you want take advantage of his popular 2-day KWB Experience for players and coaches, contact Kevin today!

Follow Kevin on twitter @KWBaseball and visit his website KWBaseball.com

The key to success is not just being your best, but being the best version of yourself at that moment. If someone gave you the choice of being good, being better or being your best, what would you choose? Most people would choose being their best. And that’s a mistake nearly everybody in the world makes.

The reality is that you already outperformed things previously that you would have deemed “your best.” How many times have you said that you tried your best, but in reality when you looked inside yourself you knew that there was something that was better?

Focus not just on doing your best, but continually focus on doing better.

And that’s where continual improvements come from. Or as my good friend Joe Ferraro says on his podcast, “getting 1% Better every day.”

The road less traveled brings its fair share of opportunities to fail, to doubt ourselves, to say to yourself “damn this is messy, is it ever going to get better?” This is the moment when we realize we are going to need the help and support of those closest to us in order to accomplish our goals.

It Takes A Village

Early in our journey, we realize that we can’t do this alone. You’ve heard the phrase, “it takes a village” but do we truly understand the importance of the people we surround ourselves with? There is power in numbers, but it’s imperative that we surround ourselves with people who we can trust.

Think about your career as a bus. It’s not the big charter bus of today with WiFi, power outlets and HD televisions. It’s more like the little yellow school bus that only seats ten.

And you’re the driver of the bus.

At the beginning, the bus is clean and empty. Your vision is being played out through the large windshield in front of you. You will have the urge to take the bus out of park and start driving – even if you don’t have a clear plan in place of where you’re going. But you’ll look back in the rearview mirror, notice the empty seats and ask yourself – what kind of person do I want to occupy those seats?

One mistake most people make when embarking on their journey, is they start driving the bus without any of the seats filled, thinking they can just drive and pick up people along the way.

A big part of your vision requires PURPOSE and WHY, which leads you to a plan.

And a vision without a plan is just a dream.

So before you even start the engine, be thoughtful and deliberate about who you invite on the bus. Think of your bus as your house. You rarely invite someone into your house that you don’t trust. So as you think about who to invite, take careful consideration of the type of person you let into your life.

The easy part is finding people who can help you in many areas of your life’s journey. The hard part is finding out which seat you should put them in before driving away.

Quality Over Quantity

It’s not about how many people you can fit on the bus but the quality of those people. Each seat represents different areas of your life that you will need guidance and mentorship from.

For example, you may need help with your nutrition, so you bring someone on board who has experience in that area and place them in their assigned seat. You may need help spiritually, so you bring someone on board who can help you in that regard and place them in their assigned seat. You may need a private hitting coach to help you with your game, so you assign that person a seat. And so on and so forth.

You are in complete control over who you bring on the bus and which seat they are in.

Think about these seats as a ring of insulation around your career. Only the best are allowed on your bus because these are the people you will lean on the most to get you where you want to go. These seats are filled with people you trust, who you are close with, who you can be yourself around, who can give you honest feedback that comes from love and not just what you want to hear. They are with you through the good times and the bad and they are grateful to have a seat on your bus. They embrace the role they have been given by you.

Who are the people that will fill your seats?

Create your circle of trust today.

Love,

KW

For more than a decade, Kevin Wilson has been one of the most respected hitting coaches in the game. He works behind the scenes as a private hitting consultant to some of the best hitters in Major League Baseball. In 2013, Kevin was the hitting coach for the USA Baseball 18U National Team. Team USA beat Japan for the Gold medal at the IBAF World Cup in Taichung, Taiwan.

He is the author of the Amazon #1 Best Seller The #GoodBatting Book and co-hosts a popular podcast, KWB Radio, that showcases unique conversations with the pros. If you want Kevin to speak at your next event or if you want take advantage of his popular 2-day KWB Experience for players and coaches, contact Kevin today!

Follow Kevin on twitter @KWBaseball and visit his website KWBaseball.com