Being a Coach.

Today, I went to lunch and then went to the park to play baseball with a couple younger friends of mine from church. Both of them had not played baseball in a while. I got the opportunity to try and coach them a little bit. Neither of them were bad as they claimed, but there were small fundamentals that needed tweaking. It was cool to notice the problem and help them with it.
One of them would swing to high so I had him swing about 8 inches lower than what he had been swinging when we started. He was able to hit the ball about 6/10 times instead of what was 2 or 3/10 before. He also would try to throw the ball as fast as possible when pitching. I tried to get him to try to locate the pitch more instead of trying to throw it by people. Once he did this, he was able to hit his spots. We will work on the velocity and location combo next time ;)

The other would pitch and not look at the plate, but rather off to the side. Once I had him looking at the plate, he was able to get his pitches where he wanted them. Also, when he played the outfield, he would always take a couple steps in when the ball was hit, and missed a lot of balls because they were going over his head. I told him the fundamental rule of always taking a step back first, and he was much better afterwards.

Then came the real test. As some girls practicing for soccer were jogging...one looked over to check it out. I didn't have to SAY anything here. Instead, I shook my finger from the outfield where I was playing. No words were needed, because they already knew what to do (or in this case, what NOT to do) Just as I pointed out what they were doing wrong with how they pitched,hit, or played the field, they fixed the problem. I did not change the actual swing, arm motion, or first step, rather told them how to do it, and they executed.

When these girls walked past, I hinted at what was needed, but they executed on that and quickly changed what they were doing that was wrong.

Ah, coaching is SO much fun, and I'm not talking baseball (but that coaching was cool to).