Make The Time

By Jonathan Massey –

If my dad said it to me once, he said it to me a hundred times, “Jonathan, if you don’t have the time to do it right the first time, when are you going to find the time to do it again?”.

A couple of weeks ago, these words came storming back to me. I was getting ready to take out the garbage when I came down to find this little surprise waiting for me.

I say the word “surprise” very loosely because, truthfully, the only person to blame was myself. I was the one who created what my wife liked to refer to as “box mountain.” I simply didn’t take the time to break the boxes down the first time and fold them so they could all fit in the garbage can. Since I didn’t do it the first time, guess what I had to do? I had to make the time to do it then before taking the garbage out to the curb.

Now, just like I wanted to rush through putting the boxes in the garbage can, a lot of players want to rush to get to the “cool” or “fun” stuff (this would be our velocity, command, or off-speed enhancement programs). Guess what… I want to get you guys there too!

Creating velocity is one of the most straightforward processes. All I have to do to get a young man to throw harder is stand behind him with a radar gun and let him throw the ball as hard as he can. Now, there will be ups and downs during this process, but overall, I’d say this would work between eighty and ninety percent of the time. 

So, what’s the problem? The problem is that by rushing to get to the cool stuff, we have put the young man at an unnecessary risk of getting hurt. Let’s say a young man’s arm after a typical outing is a three on a scale where zero is no discomfort, and ten is excruciating. Three, while slightly higher than what we like to see, isn’t going to be incredibly debilitating. Now, give that same young man five to eight miles per hour, and what will happen to his arm discomfort? Odds are very high that the discomfort increases significantly, and maybe even to the point that he gets hurt. 

This is what we like to call “putting the cart in front of the horse.” Every player who steps on campus here at the Texas Baseball Ranch® starts by going through our assessment process no matter what. Yes, we use that to create their hyper-personalized plan, but we also use that assessment to see if a young man is ready to handle a velocity enhancement program. 

I know many of you players, especially the juniors and seniors who are behind their peer group in velocity, are thinking, “I need to throw harder yesterday, but I don’t have the time to work on my arm health.” I return to what my dad told me many years ago, “If you don’t have the time to do it right the first time, when are you going to find the time to do it again?”. 

If you need to gain a few ticks of velocity this offseason, let’s not put the cart in front of the horse. It might take a few extra weeks or months to get your arm feeling good, but that’ll lay the foundation for you to carry that velocity into your season. Do it right the first time so that you don’t have to do it again in the future!  

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