T.W.I.T.

[ArmWhip]

I came across this article while looking at baseball websites and it took me down a rabbit hole for several days. I've spent several hours looking at internal cues vs external cues and how they relate to learning physical skills. There is a lot of scientific research on this but I never saw anything about it in coaching. What I read reminded of something in my golf game. I had a handicap that hovered around #2 for several decades, then I started coaching my daughter's and that was it for my golf game. When I wanted to draw or cut a shot I thought about the path of the club head and the angle of the face at contact. I didn't try to do anything with my body or hands. I was aware of my body but I let it do it's thing.

I think that this is going to change how I coach and give instruction. I'm going to try it anyway.

Welcome To TWITs Anonymous | Florida Baseball Ranch

Welcome to TWITs anonymous. My name is Randy Sullivan, and I am a recovering TWIT coach. For years my coaching style involved a traditional style that has come to be popularly known as TWIT Coaching.

floridabaseballranch.com

In short he is talking about using external cues not internal ones. Here is a summary of some of the research on this topic,

Verbal Cueing Research

Coaching Instructions and Cues for enhancing Sprint Performance (Open access) Authors: Benz, Adam, Winkelman, Nick; Porter, Jared; Nimphius, Sophia Verbal

www.drivelinebaseball.com

 

[Westwind]

I think you are on to something important here. I think some really good coaches know this works and utilize it without realizing it.

 

[uncdrew]

Yeah, I was a competitive golfer with a low handicap as well. A draw (or fade) for me was simply rotating the club in my grip slightly, moving the ball a tiny bit up or back in my stance, and they swinging the same as always. It was very simple to do once it clicked in my brain.

 

[HighStrung]

I guess it's something I had never noticed, but after reading this I can say that I've seen this work. With DD over the past two years of learning to pitch, I've been through a variety of cues to try and get the results I wanted out of her. Several different ways of saying the same thing to get a single result, some worked better than others. As I sit here going over the cue's we currently use (for example keeping her drive foot straighter), it's the external cues that get the better result. I use to remind her to move over her toe instead of turning that foot, which resulted in very limited positive response. We later moved to driving the ball of her drive foot thru the pitchers plate as she drives her hips towards home plate. Not a whole lot of difference, but with reference to external cues, she's kept much straighter. The same goes for more than a couple different things we've worked on, and I never made the correlation.

 

[ArmWhip]

I guess it's something I had never noticed, but after reading this I can say that I've seen this work. With DD over the past two years of learning to pitch, I've been through a variety of cues to try and get the results I wanted out of her. Several different ways of saying the same thing to get a single result, some worked better than others. As I sit here going over the cue's we currently use (for example keeping her drive foot straighter), it's the external cues that get the better result. I use to remind her to move over her toe instead of turning that foot, which resulted in very limited positive response. We later moved to driving the ball of her drive foot thru the pitchers plate as she drives her hips towards home plate. Not a whole lot of difference, but with reference to external cues, she's kept much straighter. The same goes for more than a couple different things we've worked on, and I never made the correlation.

I have a pitcher who doesn't drive off the rubber very strongly. I have tried giving her internal verbal cues to engage her quad, glute, hammy and calf, sometimes individually sometimes in combination, it hasn't worked. I'm going to try some external cues like 'push the rubber away' or 'get as far off the rubber as you can'. I'm interested to see if this helps the issue.

 

[uncdrew]

Interesting read. There's obviously a big distinction in an internal cue and an external, but I never really separated the two and most certainly didn't know one worked better than the other.

I'll try to keep this in mind too.

 

[Sandrahd]

I think to an extent this depends on the kid, but I haven’t read the research. I will say that when we were trying to teach my younger DD how to throw a changeup, I finally interjected and said, “Throw the ball slow and make sure it is low.” That was all it took for her to get on the right track.


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[HighStrung]

I have a pitcher who doesn't drive off the rubber very strongly. I have tried giving her internal verbal cues to engage her quad, glute, hammy and calf, sometimes individually sometimes in combination, it hasn't worked. I'm going to try some external cues like 'push the rubber away' or 'get as far off the rubber as you can'. I'm interested to see if this helps the issue.

Have her pitch normally, mark landing point of stride foot. Mark a line 4" in front of this. Then do "Drive leg only long jumps", focus on the feeling in ball of drive foot. With only being able to use one leg, she'll have to shift her weight forward and drive out (rather than just kinda stepping forward). I had DD lift her drive heal slightly as her weight started forward to make sure she feels the weight and push on only the front (ball) of her drive foot against the rubber. Then have her try to reach 4" line while pitching (focus on feeling in ball of drive foot). If she reaches the line, move to 6", etc.

The single leg long jump will also strengthen that leg, needs to be worked on at home. PC also had DD do one leg squats to help as well.

Didn't mean to derail thread, just wanted to mention something that helped DD who also use to push off weakly. Though, this also may go along with the point of this thread about physical cue's/physical inputs vs. verbal only.

 

[Rolling Hard]

So throw the barrel is better than hands to the ball? And push off the ground is better than load your glute?

 

[ArmWhip]

So throw the barrel is better than hands to the ball? And push off the ground is better than load your glute?

Apparently. What I get from the research is that with external cues the body is left to find the best way to achieve the goal., With internal cues the mind is telling the body what to do. One interesting thing is that electromyography shows that with external cues there is less muscle activation than with internal cues. At first I thought this can't be good. But when I looked into it a little further I found that less muscle activation meant that the movement was more efficient. Basically the body knows specifically which muscles needed to be activated to accomplish the action/goal, the mind is does not have that kind of fine motor control. It's going to take some creativity to find the right external cues.