Video Highlights from Bridge the Gap 2020: Part 2

Check our Part 1 of our video highlights.

Fred Corral: “A Command Plan for all Levels of Success”

Phase 1 of Pitching with your Head and Heart

Clip Highlights:

• Fred goes another step further on the cliche of aim small miss small with his pitchers by placing a golf ball as a focal point.
• By mapping out a reference point around the golf ball, it will show how much the pitcher missed by. 
• Fred used a Trackman system to calculated exactly how much each pitch missed by in relationship to the golf ball. 
• The average MLB miss from the intended target is 16 inches. 

The Arm Side Advantage 

Clip Highlights:

• Don’t think of home plate as a pentagon. View it as a circle. When you rethink how the pitch needs to enter the circle, you give yourself the freedom to throw from different angles.
• When you start on the arm side part of the rubber, everything you throw starts behind the batter. 
• Your goal should be to create uncomfortable at-bats. An easy way to accomplish this is to throw from uncomfortable angles. Why gives hitters something they can see easily?

The Benefit of Pitch Separation 

Clip Highlights:

• An example of a plus fastball/change up split from one of Fred’s pitchers.
• Hitters can recognize movement, but they cannot perceive speed. Greater separation between our pitches makes it much more difficult to adjust to them.
• Great pitchers make everything look the same coming out of the hand.
• Hitting is timing. Pitching is disrupting timing. 

MLB Executive Panel: Donnie Ecker, Josh Boyd, Bobby Basham, Brian DeLunas & Don Wakamatsu 

Communicating Tech to your Players

Clip Highlights:

• The most important thing as an Upper Management, Coach, Strength Coach, Trainer, etc.. is to get to know the players you are working with. 
• You can have all the technology in the world, but it does you no good or the player any good if that technology does not get translated in the way the player will understand it. 
• Adapt and evolve 
• As a coach, you are only as good as how well you deliver your information to the player.

The role the rib cage plays in bat path

Clip Highlights:

• Some players do not want to look at any video or data. You need strategies to work with these players.
• Being able to move well through the zone is crucial as a hitter. A big limiting factor for this is rib cage awareness and control. 
• Advanced players don’t need granular answers. They need sensations they can achieve and problems they can puzzle together. 
• What is the gap between what they feel and what’s real? 

Creating buy in

Clip Highlights:

• What’s going to keep me in the big leagues?
• What’s going to get me paid in the big leagues?
• How well can you connect with a player to accomplish the two questions from above?

A different take on timing

Clip Highlights:

• Hitters are not on offense. They are on defense. Pitchers have a variety of plays in their playbook that are designed to get you out. How are you preparing for this?
• How are you disrupting timing in your training?
• Do your players have multiple solutions to be “on time” in games?
• The more efficient you are, the more time you have to get your best swing off

If you were an owner, what is the first thing you would do?

Clip Highlights:

• Find a core group of guys that fit your core group values
• Keep those guys together for the long run
• What type of culture do you want to design? 
• Players need consistency to develop trust. You need trust to get the most out of them.

Ken Crenshaw: “Core Training in Baseball Athletes”

Fundamentals Win

Clip Highlights:

• What are the fundamentals behind the movement we’re trying to create? 
• Is the athlete compensating somewhere? If so, where is it stemming from?
• Fundamentals are often overlooked when evaluating complex movements. They are, however, the lowest hanging fruit in any kind of coaching intervention

Rib Positioning

Clip Highlights:

• Core stability issues create a ton of movement issues.  
• Monitoring rib cage positioning gives us a ton of information about compensation patterns.
• A specific example of an athlete Ken worked with that struggled with rib cage flair during an overhead shoulder movement. 

Correcting Length Tension Relationships

Clip Highlights:

• Most of the time, breathing exercises can correct tension imbalances in the body.
• Poor poor activation can be a culprit for lower back pain. Simple breathing exercises can help a ton with this. 
• Breathing exercises are often taken for granted. They are, however, one of the best remedies for performing without pain. When we can move pain free, we can start to move efficiently.