Too Old to Learn?

A potential candidate for our Instructor Certification Program called recently to learn more about us. This person is a real veteran of the game. The explanation for the call: “We are never too old to learn, are we”?”

We have some amazing people in our organization and our research is ongoing to find better ways to help kids succeed. Is it always the veterans who have the best ideas? Not at all. Young minds are often curious, unjaded, and looking for new ideas. At our recent Annual Instructors Convention, we brought together Certified Instructors from around the nation and shared dozens of great ideas for three days. I felt that this year’s best idea came from one of the youngest members of our group, who explained an educational technique that breaks down many learning barriers, allowing students to make progress much faster. We are seeing beautiful results thanks to Alex MacLean of Pennsylvania.
A few weeks ago one of my North Carolina students showed me a technique she discovered that enabled her to fly off the mound like never before. The kid is a high school sophomore. We presented the technique to our Certified Instructors and within a couple of days experiments were taking place across the country to develop various ways to use it to help kids in different stages of the learning process and with differing body types.
Just a couple of weeks ago I complimented a new student on something she was doing naturally. We began to study the movement in order to help others replicate it. She was shocked, saying that former pitching instructors did not understand it and tried to get it out of her motion. From a strength and agility standpoint it was powerful and efficient, but it confused some people because it was different. Sadly, this happens a lot.
Why do so many pitchers plateau? Because some of the people in charge of teaching them stopped learning 15 years ago, long before the amazing advances that taught people how to better use the body to create strength, explosiveness, and speed which have revolutionized every sport in America, but are rejected in many pitching circles. Pitchers plateau because they do the same thing in the same way every practice, they are never encouraged to feel things, and few people could even explain what they should be feeling. Too often her creativity is stifled by someone who “did it this way and this is the only way that works”. If we had that type of thinking in the rest of our society, we would still be using whale oil lamps so we could see to make nightly trips to the outhouse.
Too old to learn? If I find myself no longer excited about a lesson, or no longer excited about things I may learn from a student, that is the day I need to find a new career.