Hitting Mechanics and Falling Victim to Parkinson’s Law

Last night I was working with some athletes individually at a training facility. One of the guys I was scheduled to work with strolls in and says he’s just tired of not performing well. He has started the season with only a couple hits, and even those have been lightly hit nubbers that barely reach the outfield grass.

I had worked with this kid this past fall, quite a bit actually, and he was making some good progress during our sessions in understanding and applying his hitting mechanics. Soon his progress between sessions began to slow and so I asked him if he’d been working hard outside our practice times. His answer was that he was busy and couldn’t fit in some time to work on muscle memory. I told him that if he put the time in during the off-season he would enjoy the successes when it came time to play games in the fall. The problem was that it wasn’t urgent for him; games were months away!

Last night, standing in the cage with me he admitted that maybe he should have put some more work in. And he’s right, he should have. The lesson then as athletes is to find a way that we can motivate ourselves to do the work before we are evaluated on it. Works the same way in school as well. We tend to wait until the deadline to turn stuff in. Or think about when you decided to file your taxes this year…

Those who prepare themselves consistently and often will always outperform those in the long run who cut corners on their work habit.

If you are interested further in understanding why we all typically wait until “deadlines” to accomplish things, you may be interested in learning more about Parkinson’s Law.

Hey You!  Do you want to learn how to crush the ball?