Does what you see really reflect what happens?

Can you trust what you see?

It’s human nature that when you see someone throwing strikes with acceptable velocity or someone pitching for a high-profile Team, you trust what you see, memorize his movements and, to reproduce his results, attempt to copy his movements.

You naturally think your eyes are capturing truthful images, but what you believe to be true is a clever estimate of what’s happening.

As with all predictions, what you think you see is never 100% correct. This leads to errors and, instead of you controlling your opponent, these errors lead to next-level hitters controlling you.

The gap in your thinking becomes more apparent when you struggle to resolve the mismatch between your lack of command to your perception of the way you want your motion to look.

It’s at this point you realize the details you thought you saw really aren’t as refined as you think. It’s the gaps between what you think you see and what happens that promote the misses your next-level opponents exploit.

Distractions are abundant.

Distractions to learning come in 2 forms.

1. You get distracted by seeing an obvious change in movement or
2. You get distracted by seeing a different reaction to the same movements.

Instead of understanding why the distractions happen and addressing the cause, you seek to change the distraction back to what’s comfortable for you.

When you know the cognitive mechanisms driving your motion, the magic happens at the glove.

You measure your motion by your ability to regularly deliver 2 pitches in a row into your target without your receiver’s mitt or, when you see an unacceptable outcome, you bring the next pitch back into your receiver’s target.

Your attention to one specific movement relaxes your focus on your total motion.

You can only process a limited amount of information at any one time, so when you get distracted by any single movement, you miss how this action impacts all your movements.

The interest in the results skews the way you think about the motion.

Instead of your motion producing your results, your results drive your motion. Your movements skew farther and farther away from your vision of “good”.

Your vision of what’s “good” is hijacked by the notion that velocity is more important than command.

Eventually, you get to the point where everyone around throws as hard as you. Unless you’re a Pitcher who commands his fastball, your climb up the baseball food chain depends upon you missing your target less often than the next guy.

Your stats are good; therefore, you’re pitching well.

When you think you understand your motion, you relax and become less aware of the otherwise suspicious things happening within your delivery. These flaws come back to bite you at the next level.

What really happens?

Unless you pay close attention to the reasons the Pitcher you choose to copy moves the way they do, you simply won’t see what happens.

Now that you know there are holes in your thought process, you get …

• Confused – what do you do next?
• Flustered – without know how, you try to do what someone asks you to do?
• Perplexed – the solution to your situation is beyond your understanding.

The most effective way to make sense out of what you see is a focus on the cognitive mechanisms driving your pitching motion.

The Pro Pitching Institute promotes next-level, fastball command.

The Pro Pitching Institute prioritizes the important aspects of your motion while ignoring the less relevant things.  In the end, by following the process outlined at the Pro Pitching Institute, you motion looks like the one you originally visualized, but, instead of using strikes or stats to measure your results, you use your ability to deliver every fastball directly into your Catcher’s target.

Tell a friend! Have a friend struggling with their fastball command? Make sure to tell them about the Pro Pitching Institute.

Skip Fast
Freelance Pitching Coach
E-Mail: skip@propitchinginstitute.com
Cell or Text: 856-281-2596

#ElitebyChoice

Copyright © 2019