View Shopping Cart


Search:

Categories:

More Information:

  • Recent Posts

  • Tips and Aids

  • Archives

  • Sign up for our email list

    • Not Tips, but BIG Changes from The Coach  Comments (0)

    For those of you that have been subscribers to Tips From The Coach over the years, you may have noticed a change over the email newsletter since the beginning of the year. How could you not have noticed? Here are some of the changes that we’ve made:

    • First of all, the email now has been coming to you once a week, rather than twice.
    • Everything has been new, written fresh. No more older emails repeated in their entirety. (hope you’re reading them, because it’s not easy to inform and entertain – but you’re all worth it).
    • Now you’re getting more than just text-only emails. You’re getting rich emails with photos and sometimes videos (and yes, the video from last week, which is available here, now plays. Sorry about that. I put in all that work, and no one got to see it – until now).
    • And finally, the web site redesign that you might have gotten a glimpse of, if you were a little bit curious and followed some links in recent emails, is good enough to go live.

    Jeff in black RawlingsYep, someone else is now running the day-to-day operations of Tips From The Coach. It’s me, Jeff Noreman. What I bring to you is:

    • Graphic design experience for about 35 years (including a national award).
    • Photography experience for over 35 years.
    • Video production experience for a decade, with a focus on online presentation.
    • Web site design and hosting experience for about 15 years.
    • High school coaching experience.
    • Coaching experience with a nationally-ranked select team that has had several hundred college players come through our organization and dozens of draft picks over the years.
    • Owner of Ballplayers Academy, where we train ballplayers of all ages how to reach their potential. We train pitchers and hitter how to be most successful by training every aspect of their talent, personalizing everything for each athlete, and measuring almost everything (after all, how are you going to know if your instructor is worth your time and money if they aren’t responsible for an athlete’s performance? Most schools do this well through grades and report cards, but most athletic coaches truly suck at this).
    • Founder of Player Profile Pages, where we help baseball (and softball players) get the best opportunity to be recruited with college recruiting videos done with the athlete’s best interests in mind.
    • Editor of Baseball Player Magazine, a printed magazine and web site which covers the amateur baseball community (as of now, mostly in the New York area).
    • Contributor to other web sites as well (in my “spare time”, bwahahahaha…)
    • Speaker at coaches clinics around the country (just like Bruce).

    Screen Shot LambinCoach Bruce Lambin is NOT an easy act to follow. I hope you’ll give me the chance to prove myself to you. Please read my tips, watch my videos, and if you need any baseball instructional videos or supplies, please buy them from me. My family and I truly appreciate your patronage and support as a small business in the U.S.A.

    So here you are, at our NEW web site. We love feedback, and welcome suggestions on how to improve for you.

    I know when someone send out an announcement, like “It’s a Boy” it always means way more to them then it does to you. But I’m proud of what everything looks like. That won’t make the tips clear, effective, and valuable, but it will make it easier for you to get what we’re saying. But I plan to give you both great tips and a great design.

    On a personal note, Bruce Lambin is in the hospital. It was pretty touch and go for a while, lots of things going haywire at once, but he’s definitely on the mend. Following his favorite college team (sometimes by radio), the Ragin’ Cajuns, from his hospital bed. (His younger son Chase, graduated college from U of L). Anyway, Bruce is getting a little bit better each day, moving in the right direction.

    If you’ve gotten any positive advice and coaching from Tips From The Coach over the years, it would be a nice gesture to send “The Coach” a get well wish. (I know he’s going to kick my butt for writing this…but that’s what friends are for!) You can do that on Facebook, or send an email to a temporary account I’ve set up for this – getbetterbruce@tipsfromthecoach.com. I know he’d appreciate your good wishes as well as your thoughts and prayers.

    Bruce and I thank you for your support. Pass on our tips to everyone who may benefit.

    Thanks for being there for us. See you next week.


    Two most common batting mistakes (and the fix)  Comments (0)

    Cabrera01Hitting a round ball with a round bat is not easy. That’s why batters at every level sometimes struggle at the plate. If he’s in a slump, it seems that even when it appears he picks a good pitch and seem to make solid contact, the ball just doesn’t go anywhere. Chances are the batter is doing one or two things incorrectly. First, he may be “casting”, throwing his arms out far away from his body as he swings. And second, he may be rolling his wrists over too early.

    When a coach says “stay inside the ball,” they mean they want your hands to stay close to your body as you swing. Why? Because your swing takes longer when you cast or sweep your hands out away. and it’s almost impossible to hit an inside pitch when your bat is far from your body.

    And if you roll over your hands too early, you’ll be hitting too far on the top of the ball. All you’ll hit is ground balls.

    Now contrary to what many believe, everyone’s wrists roll over sometime their swing. And everyone casts their hands away from their body, but after contact it’s just called extension. You need to delay both of those until after contact so you don’t become a ground ball machine.

    Click on the video below to view a video of some awesome swings. Notice that after contact, they all cast/extend and roll over. But definitely after contact. These are some of the best hitters in Major League Baseball.

    pujols 03I’ve got a great way to help you get (or keep) your swing so you’ll be hitting laser shots. It features one of the finest training aids I’ve found, the Insider Bat.

    Get The Hitter’s Edge, the Insider Bat plus Tips From The Coach Hitting video for just $59.95 plus shipping. Or order the Insider Bat alone for $49.95 plus shipping. They’ll help you square up the ball and send it deep more often.

    The Insider Bat is made in the USA.

    What do you think? Please let us know on Facebook and Twitter
    Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/TipsFromTheCoach
    Twitter – https://twitter.com/TipsFromTheCoac

    Below is the link to a video which will show you the concepts I’ve brought up in this tip.


    “These Parents are Intolerable!”  Comments (0)

    MomPurpleHat2It’s the job of every parent to help their children get as far as possible in life. This is likely linked to the survival instinct of all species on the planet. Pretty powerful stuff.

    And it’s the job of the coach to do what he thinks is best for his entire team. What the parents want and what the coaches desire rarely overlap neatly.

    Volunteer coaches may not possess more knowledge of the game than some other parents. But they did volunteer their time, and were chosen by someone to guide a group of families through a season of baseball. Besides, they’re likely spending a lot more time and energy and money on this than you realize.

    Far too frequently, parents lose sight of the overriding goal of any team. The goal of any team In any sport is to win games. Some teams have secondary goals, such as making each player better through practice. Others just give that lip service. In any case, those are always secondary goals.

    Oh, No

    No one ever decide to put together a team with the primary goals of losing games, boring ballplayers and tormenting parents. During practices, every player should be given equal treatment. However in games, you can only choose nine ballplayers, and that should be the nine players that coach thinks give the team the best chance of winning that day.

    When your kid isn’t one of those starting nine, and isn’t playing much, you can’t help but feel somewhat disappointed. That’s understandable. But as adults, parents would best serve their children as examples of how to gracefully handle success, disappointment, and everything in between. That is WAY more important than Tommy’s stats as a youth baseball player.

    I’m sure you’ve been in the stands and heard parents shout things out. And I’m also sure you’ve heard stories like this, but this is my story…

    A Little League brawl like the one I witnessed

    A Little League brawl like the one I witnessed

    About a decade ago, one mid-summer evening I was sitting in a ballpark watching All Star teams of nine year olds from two neighboring towns play another. A ballplayer on one team had started the season like gangbusters, but as the season went on, he was having very little success at the plate. The coach, quite logically, was not using the kid very much in the second half of the season. He wasn’t buried on the bench, but he wasn’t starting many games, and playing only a few innings each day. His parents frequently and vocally expressed their discontent at the coaching staff while they were sitting in the stands watching the games.

    During the late innings of that game, the father of that 9-year old leaves the stands, shouting at the coach at the top of his lungs, “You’re ruining my son’s life! He’s so much better than this! Why did you bench him? You s&#k!” By this time, he had walked out of the stands, across the entire infield, and was standing just three feet from his son’s coach near the third base coaches box. Then he threw a haymaker at the coach, and a melee ensued. The other parents and the other coaches had to break this up. No, this was before everyone had video cameras in their iPhones, so no video exists of this event, but about a hundred people at that ball field will never forget that day. And now, you know about it as well.

    Could the ballplayer have broken out of his slump if he got every possible opportunity for additional at-bats? Very likely. But it’s not the coaches job to just break Matthew out of his slump. That’s just one small part of what the coach has to do. His job is to spend his limited volunteer time as efficiently as possible with all of the kids to give that team their best chance of winning. That is what he owes to all of his kids, all of the parents, even the opposition, and himself.

    I’ve been asked for advice on this situation many times. I tell parents to never depend on luck. Luck is not a plan. Teach your child to improve, and work with your child to improve their talents in baseball (just like everything else in life) so it would just be simply embarrassing for the coach to not use him. He has to fill nine spots on every game day. If your son is one of the four or five most talented ballplayers on his team, he will almost certainly play regularly. If he is, objectively, the eight or ninth or tenth or eleventh best player, he may not. The best lesson you can give is to outwork everyone, and to make your own success. Above all, parents would best serve their kids as examples of how to deal with any situation, especially adversity, because life is filled with it.

    It’s very, very difficult to be objective in a situation that involves competition, adversity and your child. Honestly, if the coach has four starting pitching jobs, it’s almost always a difficult decision for the coach to choose among several candidates for that last spot. And objectively if your son is competing for the fourth spot, then the dice may not roll your way.

    The outcome of today’s game, how many innings anyone pitched and how many at bats they got, even who hit the game-winning home run will be forgotten pretty quickly, far sooner than you might imagine. Parents, players, and coaches behaving badly are remembered for a long, long time. When a parent teaches sportsmanship, civility, how to deal with adversity and failure, as well as the value of restraint, and teaches your kids valuable life lessons.

    These traits will serve your son well as he matures into a contributing member of society, no matter what field he chooses.

    ++++++++

    Now, I’m asking YOU for help. Please send me stories where you were a coach or a parent, and you personally witnessed an event where parents or coaches did not behave well. I’ll even take videos. But these should be events where you personally attended. Just go to my Facebook page, like us, and post it there. No names, and no towns (you can mention the state or region). Thanks.

    http://www.facebook.com/TipsFromTheCoach

     


            Next Page »