The Biggest Little Word In The English Language
In her enlightening book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck,identifies two vastly different approaches to life. She calls them "The Growth Mindset" and "The Fixed Mindset". I borrowed this table off the internet from Reid Wilson.
What kind of mindset are you?
Do you look at challenges, obstacles, and failures as roadblocks?
Or do you see them as interesting puzzles that will be fun and rewarding to solve?
I like to think I'm a growth mindset guy.
But if it...
This Is What It’s All About.
If being a baseball coach and instructor was only about teaching baseball, I wouldn't do it.
Recently, I was totally blind-sided by something I truly didn’t see coming.
Let me tell you the story of Danny Muniz.
Danny is a rising college sophomore from the Miami area. He’s a right-handed pitcher who upon graduation from high school was topping at a whopping 82 mph. Not willing to give up on his dream of playing college baseball, he accepted a scholarship to an NAIA school in...
The Dangers Of Training Corruption
More Is Just More:
Last weekend I flew to Houston to help Coach Ron Wolforth at The Texas Baseball Ranch with a 3 day Elite Pitchers Boot Camp. I am honored to be a member of the staff at a place where instructors and students are free to innovate and experiment to find better ways to learn and to teach throwing. They pay me to help them, but I would do it for free just to experience my favorite part of every camp – Julio’s Mexican Grill (Formerly Rico's Hacienda)!
The camps begin at...
Welcome to Pitching Coaches Anonymous
My name is Randy Sullivan.
I’m pitching coach.
And I am a confirmed talkaholic.
I’ve wasted too many coaching years telling kids how to do things, then telling them how to do them better. I have coached some amazing kids over the years and, thank goodness, many of them have survived, and even thrived, despite my “assistance”.
You see, in the past 5-7 years, I have come to learn that in the science of motor learning and human performance, the words get in the way. Very few...
Feed the Mistake!
I attended a Functional Movement Screen (FMS) Certification class yesterday.
I've been using the Functional Movement Screen as a part of my pitcher evaluations for about 3 years now, and I had studied it thoroughly via books and DVDs, but I had never been to a class.
We recently decided to start using the FMS in our physical therapy clinic as a template for rehab and for a new campaign we have planned called “Feel Better, Move Better. Before we launch the campaign, I'll need to train...
DJ Missile!!!!
Said goodbye to a new friend yesterday. Allow me to introduce you to DJ Mitchell.
He has been training at The ARMory for the last 4 weeks.....every day....at 7:00 am....
DJ is a 26 year old professional baseball player.
A right handed pitcher who played in the big leagues for the New York Yankees, he was named the Yankees 2011 minor league pitcher of the year and made his major league debut in June of 2012.
In July of that same year, he was traded for this guy.
Through a...
And They Call It a Woody: Station Wagons and the Danger of Looking Back
When I was 10 years old we were stationed at
Yokota Air Force Base near Tokyo, Japan.
We had 2 family vehicles.
One was a 1968 sky blue VW Bug that would become my
first vehicle when I got my drivers license 6 years later.
The other was a nondescript black 4-door sedan.
My father had purchased it off some guy he knew.
It had no distinguishing features. It wasn’t cool or sexy.
It was simply…a car. I called it plain car.
Having served 4 years in Japan, it was time for us to return
to the...
Myelination Nation–More on How Pitchers Learn
In the winter of 1988 I was a Lieutenant in the United States Air Force,
assigned to Francis E Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Here’s the number one thing I remember about Wyoming:
IT WAS COLD!
Very cold.
In fact I’m pretty sure there was snow on the ground 8 months out of the year
--paradise for a guy with and incurable baseball addiction.
In December, my little brother, Tim, came to visit.
He was 17, strong, athletic (all state soccer goalie,
national champion knee...
The Words Get In The Way-Pitchers Learn Through Feel
A few years ago I was seeing a 75 year-old physical therapy patient
with Parkinson's and early Alzheimer's.
We'll call him Bob.
I performed the visit in his home,
since he was completely bedridden and homebound.
According to his family he hadn't been able to stand,
walk, or talk for over a year.
Parkinson's causes an erosion of motor skills, and Alzheimer's
degrades cognitive abilities, so Bob had a bad combination.
As he lay in the hospital bed in his living room
I could tell he was a big...
