Failure in Practice

     Baseball has always been a sport of failure, whether at the plate, pitching, or even in the field. Nobody in the history of baseball has been perfect, but coaches have some notion that practices should be perfect and easy for players. Players need to be challenged in practice to get ready to succeed in game situations but this strategy only works if they aren't criticized or afraid to fail in practice. One example would be the way hitting has been practiced for so long with easy drills off the tee, flips, or slow batting practice. These drills have some use but give players an easy success rate while in the game they are swinging and missing not barreling everything up and failing more often than succeeding at the plate. This is why there is a great use for challenging bp, or pitching machines that challenge hitters more at a game velocity speed. The speed they face should result in some swings and misses in practice because that is realistic for a game environment and it trains you to accept failure and adapt your approach to figure out your strengths once you reach game action. 

    From a pitching aspect, you also want to challenge yourself in a practice environment but shouldn't be yelled at by a coach if you struggle with command one day while working through some movement issues on the mound. Everything can be worked on in a pitching environment but not all simultaneously because changing that many things at once are impossible. Some days you might just let it eat and work on velocity while others might be mechanical or command-focused. Pitching coaches need to be able to give confidence to their players and not just get mad at them for every ball they throw when they are trying to work on improving something else. 

    The environment of not being afraid to fail needs to be set by the leadership at the top and passed down to everyone else. There is no worse feeling for an athlete than trying a challenging activity and failing and then being made fun of by others for not having success. This just ruins the whole environment that you're trying to foster because athletes will not be willing to try difficult things in the future. The environment needs to be encouraging and learning through failure and also giving the players the necessary skills needed to have success in the actual thing that matters which is the games that are played. The model that I feel has been used for years is creating a practice environment that only creates success for players so they feel good about themselves but this leads to failure in games that the athletes can't handle because they aren't used to failure in practice. Creating an environment that embraces and sees the need for failure at practice will only make athletes stronger in the long run over the course of a season that will be filled with ups and downs.