THIS WEEK'S REP
The Ten Vote Round
First ten reps. Held or drifted. Score out of ten.
THE LEAD-OFF
Walk into any cage this month and watch one hitter work through a bucket.
Swing. Grab a ball. Swing. Say something to the kid in the next cage. Swing. Check the phone on the bench. Swing. Fifty balls in about six minutes.
Now stop that hitter halfway through and ask one question. What was that last swing for?
You will get a look. Then you will get "hitting."
That is not a lazy player. Most of the time it is the hardest worker in the building, the one who stays for the extra bucket. The effort is real. The swings just do not have a job.
Pitchers do it in flat ground. Infielders do it on the fortieth ground ball. The offseason is where it gets worst, because there is no game on Saturday to tell you the truth.
The card for this one is at the bottom, or grab it now: Print the Ten Vote Card
One question, and a number is a full answer: out of your last hundred practice reps, how many had a job? Hit reply.
THE DEEP DIVE
Every rep trains two things.
The first is the skill. The swing, the pitch, the feet. That is the part everybody counts.
The second is what your attention was doing while the skill happened. Nobody counts that one, and it gets trained just as hard. If your body swings while your head is on your phone, you just practiced swinging with your head somewhere else. Do that enough and you get very good at it.
Then a game shows up and asks for the opposite. Full attention, one pitch, people watching. Pressure does not hand you a new version of yourself. It shows the trained one, with every gap you left in it.
I call this voting. Every rep is a vote for the kind of player you are becoming. A sloppy rep votes for sloppy. A rep with a job votes for the player who shows up all the way when it matters.
SLOPPY TEE SWINGS A DAY
10
SLOPPY VOTES A MONTH
300+
The math is not kind. Ten sloppy tee swings a day is more than three hundred sloppy votes a month. You will not notice a single one of them. You will notice all of them in April.
The fix is not more swings. It is a rep with four parts.
Focus. Name one specific thing before the rep. "I am working on staying through the ball." Not "I want to swing better."
Execute. Take the rep with only that in your head.
Extract. Name one honest thing you noticed.
Apply. Use it on the very next rep.
That loop takes a few seconds between swings. Practice does not get longer, because you can take fewer swings. Ten reps with a job teach you more than a bucket without one.
You do not have to hold it all session. Nobody does that for a hundred swings on day one. Start with ten.
THIS WEEK'S REP
THE TEN VOTE ROUND
One session before Sunday. About five minutes, inside the work you were already doing.
1. Write your focus before you pick up a bat or a ball. One sentence that starts with "I am working on." It has to name a body part or a target. "Staying through the ball." "Finishing over my front knee." "First step before the hop."
2. Make your first ten reps after warm up the round. Not the last ten. You are freshest early, and the round sets the tone for the bucket.
3. Run the loop on each one. Say the focus. Take the rep. Step back and say what you noticed in five words or fewer. Use it on the next one. One full breath between reps, every time.
4. Mark the vote. Held if your attention stayed on the focus from start to finish. Drifted if it left. Grade the attention, never the result. A swing and miss can be a held. A line drive can be a drifted.
5. Write your score out of ten. Count the helds. Next session, beat it by one. When you hit eight, stretch the round to fifteen.
Run the round straight from this email. Tap the card to print it.
After the round, hit the rest of the bucket however you want.
No cage this week? Ten dry swings in the garage or ten throws against a wall count the same.
Parents, skip "how did you hit." Ask "what was your ten about?" and "what was your score?"
Coaches, make the first ten reps of one drill the round, and have players say the focus to a partner before each rep.
FREE PRINTABLE
The Ten Vote Card has the focus line, ten rows for what you noticed, the held or drifted boxes, and three score boxes so you can watch the number move.
ONE ASK
The round is one job for one practice. Big League Brain gives you six weeks of them. Its six week plan hands you one skill a week with an "at practice" job and an "at games" job for each, plus a tracker with a box to check after every game. $19.99.
THE QUESTION
One question. Out of your last hundred practice reps, how many had a job? Reply with just the number. A guess counts, and I read every one.
Can't Hear Excuses.
Dr. Skip
P.S. Coaches, The Coaches' Offseason Series starts next Tuesday, October 27. Eight Tuesdays through March 9, 8:30 to 9:15 PM ET, free for high school and college baseball and softball staffs. Every session gives you one mental skill to install at your next practice, with the drill and the words to use. Everyone who registers gets the replay and the install card.