5 Rules for Improving Your Skills
How I make adjustments quickly to pitch my best all season
Baseball is a game of failure. You are not going to succeed every time you take the field. But you can limit these failures if you are good at making adjustments. Otherwise your failures just start to pile up and create a snowball effect.
This has made me very good at analyzing my own game and creating strategic plans to make adjustments and get the results I want.
Let’s say I just pitched in a game, and I’m looking back on how the game went.
Maybe I didn’t have my best game. Or maybe I played well but I was still lacking in a certain area. If I want to actually improve and not make the same mistakes, I have to be able to make adjustments.
One thing I am very confident in is my ability to make adjustments, adapt, and grow. Even when I’m doing well, there is always something I’m working on. The day I stop trying to improve is the day I call it quits.
I’ve gotten very good at making adjustments on the fly by following a few specific rules I have for myself:
POSITIVE SELF TALK
WORK ON ONE THING AT A TIME
COMPARTMENTALIZE
GET FEEDBACK
KNOW WHEN TO LET GO
I’m now going to give you a 5-step self-improvement guide but in baseball terms. These strategies I use to be an elite baseball player can be applied to any other skill.
RULE #1: POSITIVE SELF TALK
Never EVER speak about yourself negatively. If you are constantly putting the idea that you are ‘bad’ at something or that something is ‘wrong,’ you will continuously reinforce that idea until it becomes truth.
But this raises the question, how can we be critical of ourselves in a way that motivates us to improve but does not put us down?
It’s all about framing.
Here’s an example for someone who is a pitcher like me:
Option 1: “I threw a lot of strikes today and pitched good, but I wasn’t throwing as hard as I should be.”
You mentioned what you did well in the beginning but followed it up with this major caveat. This belittles the major thing you accomplished just because one secondary goal wasn’t achieved. Yeah I did something really good but it doesn’t matter as much because this part wasn’t good.
Ending in a negative tone suggests to yourself and others that you’re not good enough or a failure. You are suggesting that something is ‘wrong.’
Option 2: “I wasn’t throwing as hard as normal today, but I threw a ton of strikes and pitched great.”
You acknowledge a potential shortcoming in the beginning, then recognize your success DESPITE that flaw. This creates an excitement and sense of urgency to address it, because you want to add to your current success.
Ending in a positive tone builds your confidence because you are telling yourself you are already good, and you can be every better. You think in a more aspirational way. ‘Imagine how good I could be if I work on this too!’
RULE #2: WORK ON ONE THING AT A TIME
There are several reasons why trying to work on everything at once is a terrible mistake:
You can’t apply enough focus to see meaningful change in anything
You get in your own head and mess yourself
You lose touch with what made you good in the first place
You won’t know what actually worked if you do see success
If you’re a pitcher like me, what I’m saying is don’t try to work on every aspect of your mechanics all at once. Pitchers fall into that trap all the time and it’s an ugly road to go down.
This doesn’t mean you can never try to make adjustments, just pick one at a time. If you’re not a baseball player like myself, this applies to any other skill as well.
If you’re an artist, you don’t try to learn every drawing/painting technique all at once. You focus on the lowest hanging fruit first, then move on to the next.
It’s like being in school and trying to study the whole textbook at once. You’re supposed to focus on one chapter at a time.
Do not underestimate the power of one small adjustment.
RULE #3: COMPARTMENTALIZE
Here’s a twist for you: you CAN work on different things at once, as long as they’re different domains.
Even though your classes in school focus on one chapter at a time, you can still take multiple classes at once. Break up your skill into different components.
In between games I limit myself to one adjustment for each component of my game. I’m still following Rule #2 because these areas of my game are separate from each other.
Here’s an example of what a pitcher might need to work on:
Throwing mechanics: My arm felt tense last week and my velocity was down. This week in my training I’m going to focus on letting the arm relax behind the body.
Pitching skill/command: I didn’t throw enough sliders for strikes last week. This week I’m going to find the starting point that helps me throw them in the strike zone more.
Mental: I felt rushed out on the mound. I’m going to use controlled breathing this week to slow the game down.
Now instead of someone like me accidentally overhauling my throwing mechanics, pitching ability, or mental game, I am just making a small tweak to each. These are easy to implement and do not disrupt what made me good in the first place.
These small independent adjustments combine into a massive improvement in my overall skillset and on-field performance.
Let’s say you wanted to get more physically fit. To do that you generally need good training, diet, and sleep/recovery.
Instead of obsessing over getting the best training routine, perfect diet, or optimal sleep schedule right away, just identify the lowest hanging fruit for these and make small improvements to each.
The result: small adjustments that compound into results that you notice quickly. These fixes were simple and you didn’t bite off more than you can chew, you stay motivated to continue to improve.
You get the idea.
RULE #4: GET FEEDBACK
If possible, try to focus on things where you can see some measurable improvement from your adjustments.
If I’m throwing a bullpen in between games, I want to see my adjustments allow me to throw more strikes, throw harder with less effort, etc.
Sometimes the feedback comes from your own eyes, sometimes it comes from some type of technology or other data source.
The point is to see the results of your work. You are simply showing yourself that what you are doing is working. This creates confidence within you that you do have the agency and power to improve your skillset rather quickly.
And if you don’t see ay results, that’s fine too. You now know that the thing you selected to work on is not the thing that is the difference maker for you. You can cross it off and move on to the next.
RULE #5: KNOW WHEN TO LET GO
There comes a point in competition, especially in sports, where you have to just turn your brain off and go COMPETE.
All your training, preparation, and adjustments, they matter until they don’t. Eventually you have to just trust that your process works and it will show on the field.
If you’re still thinking about it heading into game-time, that means you don’t trust yourself and your preparation. If you are following the previous four rules above, the issue is not your training or your prep, but what you think of it in relation to the game/competition.
You don’t WIN in training. Training is simply just to get yourself ready to compete. Should you strive to do as well in training as you can? Yes. But your results in training are not related to your performance on the field.
Training matters as much as you need it to.
You don’t win the Masters on the driving range.
-MT