By Jonathan Massey –
This past summer was my 12th summer either training or coaching at the Texas Baseball Ranch®. Or as Coach Wolforth likes to say, “the longest 30 years of [his] life”. Now it never fails that kids leave the Ranch excited about the progress they’ve made, and have a full brain steam headed into the fall.
But then the real-world hits, and hits like a ton of bricks. No longer are you protected by the Ranch bubble where the endless distractions can’t reach you. Now the distractions are knocking on your door, and you are going to have to deal with them. Because whether you trained at the Ranch or not, the progress you’ve made this summer will only last so long if you don’t continue to work at it. Hitting 95 in July is awesome, but it doesn’t help your team win in the spring unless you continue to work throughout the fall. So, here’s my advice as a player who been where you are for over a decade.
Schedule Your Throwing Time
Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, then you are planning for failure.” If throwing is a priority then you must schedule it into your daily plan.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said I’ll get my throwing in after I finish this project/activity. Then like clockwork life happens, a friend came over, the project took longer than expected, or something of the sort, and it caused me to either shorten my intended throwing or not allow me to do it at all.
It was my sophomore year in college when I finally figured if I just scheduled my throwing that A) I was far more likely to get my work in and B) it gave me the freedom to get my other stuff done around my throwing plan.
Do what you have to do, so that you can do what you want to do
This one is fairly self-explanatory and goes along with the first one. I could use many different examples for this one, but I’ll use one we can all relate to… school work.
I often joke with people that in college I majored in eligibility, but by the same token I never let school take away from my baseball career. Which meant if I had a big project, I couldn’t wait till the last minute to get it done. I would estimate how much time it would take and then spread that time out over a week to ten days, as to make sure that I had both adequate amount of time to finish the project and be able to get my throwing in every day.
Also, you can be the most talented kid in the world, but if you have a 1.5 GPA you’re not getting into that big Division 1 school. And I promise you if you are lucky enough to have an opportunity to get drafted, those organizations will find any reason to get you at discount. And if you don’t have the grades to get into the school you’re committed to/signed at, you could be leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.
You can’t have it all
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there aren’t enough hours in the day to have it all. It’s just too difficult to be exceptional at everything. So you are going to have to decide on the few things that you want to be exceptional at.
For me, I wanted to be an exceptional baseball player, an exceptional student, and an exceptional brother/son. So there are a lot of things that I had to give up in order to be exceptional at those few things.
Decide which things you want to be exceptional at, and spend the vast majority of your time on those few things.
I hope everyone had a productive summer, I know the members of our Summer Program did. But just a reminder the season is still 6 months away.
The real work has only just begun.
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Our 2017 & 2018 Fall/Winter Boot Camp dates have been released including our Youth & Alumni camps. You can learn more about them by going to www.TexasBaseballRanch.com/events.
Space is limited and they will fill up quickly so don’t delay.
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