She Who Adjusts, Wins!

At a recent event, we helped a pitcher make an adjustment to her form. The results were immediate. She was delighted and everyone around her was impressed with the jump in speed.
The next day, she was back to her old habits and one of my instructors was puzzled that she was so willing to allow things to regress.

It didn’t surprise me at all. She arrived out of shape, showed little curiosity, and gave as little effort as possible to the activities and drills. She was willing to step outside of her comfort zone for one day, but staying there would require effort and discipline. Lacking those qualities is the reason she was falling far short of her potential when she came to see us. We watched the other kids blow right past her.
Many people want to be great but few have the self-discipline. Having worked with so many pitchers, it is easy to watch a kid throw two warm-up pitches and know exactly what she will be able to do on the mound. When coaching in games, I would pass that information to my hitters. If a right-handed pitcher threw a great curve, I might tell my “righties” to go to the front of the box and squeeze the plate. That made the outside curve very “fat” and allowed us to hit it before it broke well. If she was throwing it “backdoor”, she would usually get nervous about hitting us and “hang” the pitch.
If a hitter was willing to listen, she could have success with this pitcher. However, on every team, there were a few hitters who wanted to remain in their old, comfortable place in the box. They would stand there and whiff because the ball moved out of their reach. Albert Einstein was credited with saying, the definition of insanity is: Doing the same thing over and over, in the same way, and expecting a different result.
All of us are resistant to things that are good for us. We don’t like to eat our vegetables. We exceed the speed limit. Recently I was working with one of the nation’s best pitchers and began to push her very hard. She wanted to know why I was so hard to please. I explained that she had the potential to be one of the best to ever play the game, but right now she is performing like one of the best in her conference. She needs to make a choice. She has enough talent to be the best in her conference without a lot of effort. But, if she wants to be one of the best to ever play, she will have to do the things that nobody else is willing to do.
In a generation where everything comes instantly, it is even more difficult to instill long-term vision and self-discipline. You can make travel arrangements on the way to the airport, download any song immediately, and social media can help someone become famous overnight. We can warm up a frosty car from a distance. With the click of a mouse someone will shop for us and deliver the ingredients for pre-planned meals to our home. We spend a fortune on technology that makes our environment adjust to our needs.
In a generation where everything happens right now and life adjusts to our needs, a lot of kids are going to be unhappy when they are forced to make adjustments. Getting outside their comfort zone is not the universe in which they were raised. If you are a coach, instructor, or parent, should this discourage you? Not at all. It presents so many opportunities for your kids.
Help them learn to do the things nobody else is willing to do and soon they will be able to do things nobody else is able to do. If the odds of becoming a D1 softball player are around 300-to-1, what can you do that 299 of your friends are unwilling to do, uninterested in doing, or don’t realize they should do? It is so easy to stand out from the crowd. The first step is to embrace the idea of doing things nobody else is willing to do, make yourself very uncomfortable, and identify adjustments that will take you from good to great.