What Is a Private Baseball Lesson, Really?
These days you'll find 1000's of professional coaches telling you the way they do it is the right way. Here's ours.
We have a different philosophy at MADE. We feel that the only "right" way is to show up every day and get after it. The "right" way is to cultivate a work ethic through your love of the game and your drive to get better.
This is completely relative to the age, maturity level, desire, and psychology of the given player. Regardless of what level your player is at, private baseball training will most definitely make an impact.
We do need to always keep things in perspective. When we have parents showing up with their seven-year-old talking about swing mechanics and signing them up for ten lessons before we even meet, that is just not the best approach.
A Few Things to Understand About Baseball for Youth Players
- Youth players probably don't care about improving their game as much as the parents or even the coaches.
- Baseball is fun, but it's also really hard no matter what level you are.
- Coaching baseball and understanding the ins and outs of the game takes a lot of time and experience — not only playing the game, but experience working with multiple levels and ages of players.
- This game is about repetition and refinement. It's not about finding a coach with a magic bullet for a swing or the perfect piece of advice.
- Baseball is a portal to mentorship and positive habit-forming through sport for youth. This must always be remembered.
- Finally, if your player is going to make it, it's going to happen by you staying out of their way and letting them drive the boat. If you're always scheduling lessons for them without their input, the lessons will be devalued on all sides.
The Lessons Should Be the Kid's Idea
The child should be asking for the lessons. Once they've expressed that they want to get lessons, you must incorporate some form of making them earn the lessons and helping them understand how valuable they are.
Mentorship is the wordthat should be focused on most when it comes to the player/coach relationship in youth sports training. As coaches, we do have solutions for mechanical issues — but we must know how to articulate those solutions to the player relative to where they are in their path, and how they'll actually receive that communication.
Talking to Parents About This
If a parent is weighing whether to add a second or third coach, this is the piece to point them to first.