An Athlete's Guide to Setting Proper Goals

memoir Hi everybody welcome into another edition of the lab Epstein hitting podcast episode 129. Thanks for being with us today making us a part of your day or your morning or your night, whatever. Apple Google Spotify. Thanks for joining us on the audio side and on YouTube. Bring in friend goals professionally, value it with successful business owner Jake Epstein. We're going to set in some goals

today Jim. I am too. We're just talking about hockey off of my care and we're all fired up ready to go ready to jump from hockey to talk about baseball and hitting and setting proper goals when it comes to your baseball or softball career. I'm very excited to talk about this. Today I have a personal little personal story about setting proper goals for myself in my

own life. Again, you peel back the onion little by little every week and you learn something new about your friend Jimbo, but we'll get that a little bit later on setting proper goals though. Looking forward to that because you can break it down in so many ways. You can part metalize how you set proper goals to actually succeed in reaching those goals. Yeah, I always like

to use the analogy of a step ladder. Right. We're taking steps to the prize to goal at the end. You can't just say, oh, I want to lose 50 pounds. Right. It's like, okay, I want to lose, you know, five pounds this month. And then, you know, by next month, I want to be down eight pounds. And so, you know, you build and build and build.

And if you follow through with your plan, you can achieve your goals regardless of what they are. Yeah, so we're going to talk the main theme today, setting proper goals. I do want to bring up with you the international signings. I think just occurred. And San Diego Padre signed Ethan Salas for $5.6 million. I'm watching film on him. I watched some film on him last night.

And he has some incredible footwork behind the plate. Incredible arm, really good accuracy. I like his swing, not in love with it, but I do like it. I like his bat leg. I like how he gets on plane, stays on plane with the pitch. I do want to ask you though, when you're doing work for the Brewers, and you're looking at these international prospects, what are

some of the things that you look for in these international hitters that may differ from amateur American born players? So international to amateur American born players, what are the key differences that you're looking at when you evaluate those type of players? Well, usually it's their age. A lot of times, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do it. I'll see players that are

14 years old, you know, in their 14 year, 14 and 15, sometimes even younger for the initial. So we'll take a look at 14 and then, you know, maybe revisit, you know, when they're 15, depending on, you know, are we still interested in this player or did they grow a lot? So a lot of times with the international guys, it's forecasting, you know, you're forecasting. Okay,

their body moves like this now without a lot of muscle on it yet. So what will happen when they get bigger and stronger? So the cool part about the international guys is they're using drop three is already at age 13 to 14. So I don't have to forecast. Okay, this kid's using a drop five and hitting bombs. And now all of a sudden, you know, we're

going to a heavier bad and then everything kind of breaks down. So plus a lot of them, they're not hitting ball super far because they're, you know, 140 pounds. So mechanically, you know, my job is a, you know, as risk assessment, you know, what needs to be done with these players mechanically to see them at the big leagues, not to see them in pro ball, but

to see them in the big leagues. That's the goal. How would they compare to a big league player of similar build and similar positioning, you know, similar size. So that's really what I'm doing. There's some players where it's like that's going to take a lot of work to get them where they need to be. And then other players, it's like that swing, not that person, necessarily.

But that's the goal. But that swing could play in the big leagues right now. And then you develop around that, right? You develop the other parts of the game. So the big difference that I see with, with international players of similar ages. And for talking 15 year olds, we'll just take around number before they sign. They typically have better upper body mechanics. They have to bring

that up. And I don't want to cut you off. I apologize, but that was going to be my next point. They have, they have, they're so upper body centric, but they have lightning fast hands. And a lot of times it's the opposite for American born amateur players. It's more lower body centric rather than upper body. And their hands aren't as quick. That comes along a little

bit later. But it's the flip side. It's the opposite right for international born prospects. Yeah, they're just, they just focus on different things. They're, they're hitting T's. They're hitting rocks. They're hitting, you know, they're not, you know, forced to, hey, load your back hip and fire and turn fast and keep your posture here. And, you know, get the weight here and it's like, okay, try to

hit a line drive right there. Try to hit a line drive back to the middle. Try to hit a line drive to right center. Try to hit a line drive to left center. So they're focused more. It's really funny that you say that is that their hands are very, very fast and quick. And yet they, you know, we had a question last week about launch quickness,

right, which is all about, you know, loading your, your, your back side. And then, you know, releasing that, getting the barrel to work very quickly. In the swings process where they're very late with their hands, if that makes sense. You know, they're kind of out in front, releasing the barrel. There was actually a really cool thing that. I don't think so. No, I don't care. But

I just hitting guy. So the hitting guy, you know, he posted some and some of the stuff's really good. Like he's a sharp guy. And. And so he posted something. It was like one of those sleeves that slide. It's down your bat to tell you when your barrel is essentially accelerating, right? Centrivial force is what's powering it. So he did two swings. One where he got

it to accelerate by his head. And then he took another swing where it accelerated out in front of his front foot. And if you look at the two swings, one was a barrel dump, which got the centrifugal force out to the edge of his barrel early to quote, you know, have launch quickness and get on plane early. And then the second one, that barrel was. And

then he was swinging down. So it was really cool to see because he was like essentially chopping, you know, probably swinging down at like five degrees, not not a terrible job. And then the other one was probably swinging up at like 20 degrees. And so it shows it showed to kind of where the barrel accelerates when you dump the barrel and focus on, you know, your

hands and snapping your top hand versus pulling your hands forward, which people would call a push Vladimir Guerrero does it. You know, he's pretty good. So you might want to just copy that hand pad. But regardless, it's like you have to figure out, you know, exactly exactly what works best for you in terms of, you know, where do you want to be. And then then you

bring in vision on top of that, right. So I've been testing a lot of my players on, you know, where are they focusing on the ball. Okay. So where's the depth perception with that said player. So for instance, my kid. She likes to see the ball deep like that's her vision. Like when we do the depth perception test, she kind of focuses behind the ball. So

the ball gets on her a little bit more. So I have to make sure that her barrels on playing a little deeper in the zone. That's just her. Do I want her to be on playing deeper in the zone. No, but that matches up with where her eyes are. Somebody that that sees the ball, you know, quicker or their depth perception focuses before an object. Those

players need to hit the ball further out in front. So their swing point has to apply to that. So, you know, it's kind of neat to see, but the moral of that story of what Tukes was doing was, you got to be somewhere in between those two. Okay. You want you want that barrel to be accelerating to the ball. What you don't want is that barrel

decelerating at the ball. And that's what at least that's what I got out of his little, you know, basic study was that the barrel was already done by the time contact was made. So if I can accelerate in golf. They talk about accelerating an inch past the ball. If I can do the same thing with baseball, if I can get my barrel to accelerate an inch

past the ball, then I'm accelerating through contact. I'm not accelerating before contact. All right. Follow us on social media at Jim Tara at Epstein hitting on both Twitter and Instagram for great explanations like that. Apparently, somebody let the dogs in. I was going to ask. So was that that's the that was the bigger dog. That was. Yes. That was the bigger. Dog being annoyed by the

smaller dog. Oh, I thought it was. Okay. I thought he was being annoyed by what you what we were talking about. That was that was my old 11 year old dog saying, Jake, just shut your trap. We're done. Hey, this week on cross functionality at at Cassie at coach underscore Cassie R. B on Instagram of Cassie rally, Botion, I talked about training with intention, right training,

kind of compartmentalizing. It's like the word of the show. Compart metalizing training, right? When you're training with intention, whether it's warm up, whether it's throwing will keep it from a hitting perspective. How do you train with intention? Kind of going along with today's topic to setting proper goals. But how do you train with intention. As it pertains to hitting. Yeah. It's having a routine. You're having

a routine that's customized to you. Some players need to focus more on extension. Some people some players need to focus on staying tighter with their turn. So if you have a player that is very tight through the ball, you know, they kind of use their body a lot and they don't use their hands, but they also don't cast or get long. Then that player were focused.

We're over focusing on extension extension extension. They're not going to jam themselves. So if they miss hit 10 balls, nine of those mishits are off the end of the bat versus getting jammed. Okay. So that person has their own goals of their warmups. Okay, you need to use a short bat. You need to do a lot of top hand drills. You need to do a lot

of extension drills. Not worrying about your lower body too much. And then if you have a player that gets really long with their lead arm, their first move is to pre extend and their back elbow is to come down. Well, that warm up is, hey, we got to keep the bat right next to the neck, right? Right on top of the shoulder. And you got to

feel like you're turning your hands, you know, in front of getting your hands in front of your body a little bit more to fix that move. So yes, having a plan for you as a player, not necessarily it, you know, if it's an amateur team of 13 players, you know, not everybody needs, needs the same deal. All right. So again, Cassie and I talked about training

with intention cross functionality, subscribe, Apple, Spotify, watch the show on YouTube as well. So I'll both strength Academy YouTube page. You can watch it. This show, the lab, Epstein hitting podcasts on YouTube as well. The lab, Epstein hitting podcast YouTube page. It's pretty simple. I was on YouTube this week, by the way. Yeah. And I saw a thumbnail of it. And Mike Piazza who we broke

his swing down. I don't know, however, episode he was episode 120. There's a gold edition would be broke his swing down. By the way, we're doing a mechanical breakdown next week, everybody. So get excited for that. We're doing Holy O'Rotter E. Yes. We did get a request to do Holy O'Rotter E. Yes. So we're going to be breaking his swing down next week. Mike Piazza though,

this, the thumbnail on the video was him at the point of contact. On playing with the pitch with perfect leverage. So any time a coach says, you know, and I still hear this. Even in 2023, I still hear this. Don't do what the pros are doing. Don't do it. The guys on TV are doing. You know, don't do this. Don't do that. Or you got to

do this or, or he's not really on playing with the picture. He's not really swinging this way. He's actually doing this. No, the pictures tell the story. I just wanted to throw that out there. They do. I saw it. I was like, I'm a, oh man, 12 or 13 year old kid on Twitter. And, you know, he's that's the problem right there. You can't be, you

can't be listening to 12 and 13 year olds on Twitter. No, I wasn't listening to him. It was somebody post like a coach posted. You know, okay, okay. This is the kid that we're, you know, we're working on. And he's whatever he's like, he's 110 pounds, right? And he's launching balls kind of off the top of the cage. And it was a tall cage. And so

they're like, oh, he's getting ready for the season. Blah, blah, blah. And this is a perfect launch. So this is a single for a game at 12, 12 years old, or something like that. And I'm thinking to myself, he's throwing front toss, the balls dropping 20 something degrees. Yeah. And this kid's launching him like 35 degrees. So he's hitting the bottom half swing and dumping his

barrel. And as soon as the pitch comes out at a decent velocity, I'm talking like. I don't know. 70 miles an hour, 65 miles an hour. And it's not front toss. Like the kids. You get dusted. And I just wanted to write, how about he just hits a few blind drives to the back of a cage. I was having a conversation yesterday with Eric Chavez. We

were trading some taxes. And just talking to the show by the way. What's that? He's a friend of the show. Let's just brought out. I mean, this is a, you know, a major league player for like 15 years. You know, he's been playing with the meds has been hitting the guy knows baseball. Yeah. We were talking about, you know, he's going to have fun. Sorry, but

he's going to have fun with this year's lineup. He's going to have fun. Yeah. And we're talking about just, you know, however, players different and what they need to work on and this and that. And we got to the point where it was like. There's so many minor leagueers now that can't put a ball in a tee and hit a line drive off the back of

the cage. And he's like, that is all I ever did off a tee. That's all he's like our big leagueers can do it. He's like, but the minor leagueers are so in fact, they're all with trying to get the ball in the air that they're trying to do that artificially off the tee. And then it trickles down like anything else, right? It trickles down to the

lower levels where kids are trying to draw every time I have a new student, right? Have a new student. I set them on the tee. And I say, I just want to see how you work. Put it on the tee, hit it. Nobody like just drives nice low back spin line drives to the back of a cage that you see like Nelson Cruz all day long,

right on on social media doing that. That's all he works on. They're hitting it to the top corner. And then they're top spinning it to the pole side. And then I go to front toss and boom here come now all of a sudden all of that is magnified and they start hitting it even higher and higher or lower and lower. So it's sad that we just

can't, you know, we we we just overdue things as a society when sometimes simple is easy and circling back. That's what the Latin players do. They simplify hitting at young ages. They're not just trying to get crazy. They're just trying to essentially hit a line drive through the back of the cage over and over and over and over again. And by doing that, you become like

a Vlad Guerrero Jr. Swing Plane. And then you grow into it. So he has a flat swing plane, very flat, but he can sit back and adjust that to swing up a little bit more. But if you have somebody who drops their barrel and swings up a lot, it is so difficult to get that player to flatten out and swing down. It's more than what they're

doing. It's always easier for me to take somebody that's too flat, zero degree attacking, a five degree attack, I go and get them to come up through it a little bit more. Okay. And if we if we don't, then it takes months and months and months to try to fix that. I was going to say I do wonder with the tea if the base when you're

training with a tea, I'm not a big tea guy. Because I don't I developed on my own bad habits. When I played and you know that, I mean with the tea. But I think the tea is. Worthy in that if you have a base for what you're trying to do with that tea and not just swinging off of it. Right. Willie Nilly. So for example, if

you're on a tea and you're trying to just hit a line drive right back up the middle and hit the back of the cage on a line line drive with backspin. You can tell. You don't need a machine to tell if it's backspin or topspin. If that's your base for training with a tea. Then I think you're on the right track. Then forget forget soft toss.

If you can hit 10 line drives and a row right back up the middle off a tea line drive with backspin. Then you can go to front toss and that's when you can start to progress. So I think that should be kind of the base when it comes to hitting off a tea. I don't know. Some people some people rely a lot on the tea. Like

there's some old school players out there. Jeff Fry comes to mind, for example. He talks about tea tea tea tea tea tea. Well, you can overdo it at times. But I think the base should be okay line drive right back up the middle hit the back of the cage. And the tea can be bad because a lot of times we're not hitting it a full cage

of a tea. We're hitting it to the side of a net. And we don't really know. Yeah, and that's where I think it doesn't really do any good for the hitter. I think it's a little harm than good. I think you have to hit off a tea the length of the cage. That's it. It's like doing suicides for half court. No, you don't embassable. You don't

do suicides in practice. Half court. You go full court at suicide. Right. It's the same thing with hitting off a tea. No, I agree. And the tea is a good warm up. But a tea doesn't need a friend. You know, and that's that's the I remember the amount of hours I would spend at what was the name of the high school. I was young. I think

it was Tribuko Hills High School when I lived in Southern California. I didn't go. I wasn't in high schools like 11 or 12. There's like Nick Punto and I and then there was a couple other guys Jason. You used to always come with us. And it was a tennis. But a lot of people play handball in it. It was a giant concrete outdoor. I don't even

know how to put it like wall. Think about a racquetball court. That was a little bit with it. It was all concrete. And all day long, we would just throw the ball against the wall and try to pick it. Like how fun is that? You remember playing wall balls again. It was wall ball. It was essentially a wall ball. And then if it hits the person,

you try to throw as hard as you can at their back. If you beat it to the wall or something like that, yeah. So it was like one of those things. But when I was bored, I would just go up there and I'd throw the ball off of it and try to pick it. And people don't do that anymore. So the good part about a tea

is you don't need anybody. Yeah, tea in a bucket of balls. Go do your own work. Yeah, you don't need dad. You don't need mom. You don't need friends. You can just get it down. But again, most people don't know how to do it. You know, if you're 10 years old and you're just rolling over balls off the tee, I took 100 swings today. That's not

a very good thing. And I see that a lot. Like just even the 12 year old team that I help coach, you know, a lot of them don't hit off the tee the right way. And so that's part of the training is I'm trying to get them to, if you're going to work, make sure you're working the right way. You know, I, I'm never going to

two points. I'm never going to let my kid hit a moving ball until he can hit or she can hit five line drives, depending on the age, five or 10 line drives back to the back of the cage. Yeah, you can't do that. You're not hitting a moving ball because you're not ready for it. And your mechanics are all off. You got to get the right

mindset. That's number one. Yeah. Number two, I don't know how you see. Here's the another conundrum that we run into. I've three things. Number two, I don't know how you use a tea on the field properly. You know what I'm saying? Like that. Yeah. It's more of a tee should be more of an indoor thing. But how do you progress when number three? I don't know.

How do you do that? How do you do that? I mean, I mean, I need to move on. How do you, how do you go using the tea outside properly and then moving on to actual live pitching? So you go from, I go from tea to front to us to live. But how do you know the T swings are good because you're on a field? Are

you like hitting at home plate on a field? Yes. Yeah, that's hard. Right. Yeah, you're going to hit a line. Try to hit second base. Okay. So try to hit second. We used to stand behind. Second base. This was in minor league ball, then pro ball. We would stand. I think it was on the dirt. Probably, no, probably, yeah, probably behind second base on the dirt.

And we would hit back into the shell into the BP, you know, turtle. Okay. So you stand behind second base behind second base and hit back towards the catcher. But are you on the grass? Are you on the back edge of the dirt? Back edge of the dirt. Okay. So it's 140 feet or something. I don't know. Something like that. And we would try to hit

like the rubber piece on the back. And the, you know, we, number one, you try to hit it in the shell. If you didn't hit it in the shell, then you probably hit it on the, in the backstop somewhere, right? Or the in the stands. So you would try to hit a low line drive, but it couldn't bounce. That would have topspin. So we used to,

we used to have backwards and try to hit it into the back of the batting practice cage, the turtle shell. Yeah. So that's one way to do it. If you're on the field at home plate, you're trying to essentially hit a ball. It's at the bag at second base in the air. Now if you're bigger and stronger, it can go further. Like I watch DJ Lamei,

you do it. Most people don't use a T out on a full field because then what do you do? You know, I'm going to try to launch it in the left center gap. Right. And that's cool. But, you know, how do we do that? Probably not going to backspin until you're going to have to drop and kind of lift it off of the T. Remember the,

when the ball is not moving, a perfect attack angle would be zero degrees, right? The ball sitting at zero degrees. So off a T, you have to have a much flatter swing than you would in a game to do a proper. So anyway, you want your launch angle to kind of match that. If you're starting to drop balls, you know, 2535 degrees off of a T,

then you're doing something artificial with your mechanics to get that ball in the air. If the ball is dropping 10 degrees from pitcher throwing to you and then you swing up 10 degrees and hit the bottom of the ball, it'll launch at 25 and then that's okay. All right. My third thing. No, no, no, we're going to cover every possible aspect of hitting today. I've great

explanations. I just want to get this out. I'm thinking of you and like a leather jacket, like in the outsiders, you know, that book, you know, movie the outsiders, like in Greece. You know, you're going down to the, we're going outside, we're going down to that's what I'm picturing kind of anyway, I think I told the story on this show before about the tennis courts. I

had outside of my neighborhood when I was a kid, my dad named it, named it the death, death dome or whatever, because we play hockey there, I play hockey there. We were the neighborhood kids and we would like check each other into the fence and then we would take the tennis net down and we, there were these big green cylinder tubes on either side where you

could pretty much, if you run into them, you're really going to get hurt. Nobody ran into them and luckily got hurt, but that's what it used to be like. Now it's just, hey, look on my phone. Look at this tick tock. True. Right. Yeah. Nobody goes outside. Nobody. I don't see anybody. I live in Florida, right? The weather's always pretty good. I don't see kids outside

at all. And I live in a residential neighborhood. I don't see any kids outside playing. Nobody. Nobody. It's incredible. I know. Well, we're not here to solve the world's problems. No, we're not the phone. You know, the phone is ruined society. Um, oh, I have to bring this up to last night. Watching this hitter, right? On you on film on YouTube. So I didn't forget. Swing

plane approach and make the ability to do it. You need to make adjustments, confidence. What are those things? Remember, Jim Boas, four pillars of hitting. Now, do you know who that player was? I was at an amateur player. Was it a big league? Sal Freelig, baby. I'm going to tell you something right now. Moving out the list. Yeah. When I knocked it out of the park

with him, I'm, I hit it. I hit that 450 feet in my evaluation. Yeah. I, I couldn't. I think he has, I think he has a better swing plane than than Nemo does. Time will tell what his grittiness, but I'll tell you, I mean, the guy, you're right about confidence, adjustability and swing plane. He does all of those things. He may not have a tail. He's

got a lot of power. No. Because he's not a huge guy, but that's not his role. His on base percentages. He's, his on base percentage is going to be high. He's going to put the ball and play. He's going to hit the ball hard. He's going to find a lot of barrels. As he gets older and more mature, he'll be able to harness that power a

little bit. And, you know, maybe anticipate pitches a little bit more to drive. But yeah, I think that was a really good draft pick. Yeah. I just made me feel, I looked as numbers to last night. He just made me feel good. And then I looked back when we did a mechanical breakdown on him. I looked back at some of my notes that I said about

him. All right. I could see you're getting the way I'm done. No, there's another guy that I probably shouldn't say his name. Don't say his name, but you can allude. Okay. So there's this player. And he shut up on my list of a lot of players that whatever are going to get drafted this coming year. Yeah. And this player plays at a division one program. He's

a college player. He is the son of a major league former major league player that was an everyday player for a pretty decent amount of time. I mind you. No more biographical notes. I don't want to get you in trouble. No. And, but if you look at his swing plane was amazing. His efficiency was amazing. And when I looked at his stats or somebody sent me

his actual stats. So I try not to look at stats when I'm doing my reviews to be biased. You know, like, oh, this guy. Maybe he just had a good year or maybe he just had a bad year, but he has, he still moves it pretty good. He struck out, I think, less than a dozen times or something like that at the college level. Wow. That's

like a weekend. How many bats? Full season. How many is that in college? 200? Yeah, 150 to 200. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it was mind blowing, but totally matched what when we talk about Freelik and his swing plane. Like he's going to run into a lot of balls. So when you have a swing plane like that and you're efficient, meaning you're not long to the ball.

And then you're kind of, you know, you stay on plane. Usually that doesn't happen, but that you stay on plane really long. You make a lot of contact. This was he was super short and efficient so we could wait a long time to make up his mind. And then once he did put his swing on, you know, it was in the context zone for a long

time. So, and again, not a ton of power. But also not a massive guy. You know, so you have to, but amazing stuff. Like you don't see that anymore. I mean, 12 strikeouts. They're first rounders last year that got drafted in college. That's, may have struck out 12 times in a week. Yeah. Right. Strike out 12 times in five games, four or five games. No problem.

Still first rounder. Pretty impressive that that ability and people still work on that. And there's a former kid of a major leager. Right. There's a lot of them out there. I just saw a man he Ramirez, one of his kids. He's got a lot of kids. Not Mani Jr. He's got to be pretty old now. But I don't know what this, what his son's name is.

The left hand hitter is going to go to Miami next year. University of Miami. He committed. You know, and it was funny. He didn't look anything like Mani. His older son. That was big. I think he was actually taller than Mani. You know, had kind of his leg kick. He was right handed. He was kind of upright. It was kind of cool to watch. Like that's

his kid. This kid was left handed in squatty, you know, at a crouch stance and a really nice sweat. It's interesting to see what sons of major leagers, how they swing and what they're taught and what they work on versus, you know, people that just take their kids to the local guru. You know, and then what they're taught versus, you know, what Mani's teaching his kid

or what. That's like, Vlad Jr. He doesn't look really. He doesn't have certainly doesn't have the approach of his father. Yeah. It's a lot. That's a lot different. Right. Yeah. Maybe I said it. Vlad Jr. Did I say? No, said Mani. No, said Mani, but I'm bringing up Vlad as an example. I have a big deal too, by the way. Kevin Bigeo. Same thing. Yeah. Not

even close. Not even close to right. Right. You know, I've even had more. Right. And Kevin has more of a longer swing. He trusted for more power. Whereas father was more of a contact guy kind of at times. You know, he's not. He wasn't afraid to just slap it. Hit it off the end of the bat. Slap it and go the other way. Softline drive. You

know, for Kevin is more kind of. You know, get into him. Episode 129 email us your questions. Jimbo podcast 21a Gmail.com. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or you can reach out to us at Jim Tara and at Epstein. You playing with the dog right now? Yeah. She's a little love. That's the new one. She's got the hand on the microphone. Hand on the mic.

That's, I mean, that's pretty adorable. She's gonna eat them all. Yeah. Okay. You're good. Yeah. Mom's out of town. So I gotta take care of the dog. Wait. So mom's out of town. Everybody's out of town. No, just. Viv and myself are in town eating good, we're eating. We practice every day. Really? Staying last night. Really? Staying mushrooms and how do you grow? How did you

grow the steak? It was so good. So I grill it. I get a thick New York. Yeah. Like that. Yeah. And then I put it on the smoker on low smoke, like 210 degrees. And I'll smoke it for like, I don't know until the internal temperature gets to 115. And then I sear it in a cast iron skillet. Until it gets to 125, which is about

three minutes on each side. And then let it set. And it's like perfect medium rare. And so you, you, okay. So you put the skillet on the grill. I did. It was snowing yesterday. So the cast iron skillet on the gas stove, which is still legal here in Colorado. Okay. So you don't use, because I know people, I don't, yes. I know people who use a

skillet on the grill. I have a cast iron plate on the gat on my big outside gas grill. Yeah, you could use that too. I was telling Viva last night, I should do a video of it, because it's, I started doing it like a year or two ago. And it's like the best steak ever. So we should add like grilling tips like we can. We'll put

it here first. So you don't put. So you put the. You know, reverse sear method. Okay. Do you put the steak just straight on the gas grill? No. So it's on a pellet smoking grill. Okay. So it's smoked. So I know I season it. First I dry it off as much as possible. To get all the moisture off of it. And then I'll, you know, salt

and pepper it. Pretty good. And then I'll let it sit so that the salt essentially soaks into the meat. Wait, it's like, why don't you just marinate them? Why don't I want to marinate? I don't want to. Why not? I want like crazy. Terry Ockier anything like that. All right. Good. You could, you could, you could do that. But then that takes away from the smoke

flavor. Okay. So if you marinate, you don't need to smoke. And then you just low, low heat that thing gets some smoke. So it doesn't take away from the meat. But it cooks it slow. So the fat inside, you know, stays in there. It doesn't like drip out too fast. And then at the end, you sear it on the cast iron skillet. Then make it, then

let it rest for a little bit. It's just wonderful. All right. I got to try this. It's good. I'll make a video next time. We'll send to you the next time I'm in Tampa. You never know. I might be in Tampa soon. Yeah. I'm waiting for you to come. Combine. People people people people like Tampa. They do. I know. They do. As evident by the housing

market that is going way too expensive. So thanks everybody for moving here. Yeah. Um, five years goes. You're the new Colorado. Yeah. We right. Yeah. Um, all right. We'll get into today's. Today's episode. Um, episode 129. Um, setting proper goals. That's our topic and teased it earlier. I have a family extended family member, not my parents or sister. Won't go into too much detail. But I

say the last 10 years, I guess. Uh, I would talk about my goals with him. More like goals that I had just in conversation and passing. And I always get the condescending reaction. Right. Oh, you know, that'll never what's what's the plan here? You'll never do that. Boba Boba Boba. It was always had negative had a negative force field, if you will, around that condescension. And

I just got tired of it. And I cut that person off. And I'm glad I did. That's good. Um, so it brings me back to what you said last week with Peter Lanzo and the professor telling him this is not a realistic goal. By the way, Peter Lanzo was in his hometown of Tampa this past week, plant high school, which I like the high school. Don't

like the kids there because all they do every time they're off is go to the fitness center where I, where I work out. And I won't say what it is. It rhymes with a wrench written. And they, they take up all of the space. It's like, uh, it's like all the high school kids are there at the same time. It's like God damn it. You just

got a period off, man. And, um, anyway, Peter Lanzo was in Tampa this week. He was hitting some bombs and plant high school. And there were a lot of people watching. A lot of people looking up to him. And that professor at Florida said it's not a realistic goal for him was wrong. Now I think there are ways you can set realistic goals and get to

that bigger goal. But if you want to set a huge goal, a goal that is astronomical. They were just regular goals for myself, but the condescension came through. And that's when none. See you. But with Peter Lanzo, for example, kind of comparing apples and oranges here, saying, I'm going to be a major league baseball player. Okay, that's great. You're setting a goal. That's your main goal.

Right now, Epic comes to down to setting the proper goals and being able to take those steps, whether it be big steps, small steps, little by little, and achieving that main goal. So that's the point of today's episode is that you're going to be able to get to the goal. Because getting people to understand how to set proper goals to reach that main goal that circled

on your imaginary whiteboard in your head. Yeah. And some people you call them dreams. Right. I mean, where do you see it's almost like a five year when people say, where do you want to be in five years? You know, if you ask a high school kid, where do you want to be in five years? You ask a 12 year old, where do you want to

be in five years or you know, you have to create a journey to get yourself there. Okay. You say, I want to be a starting shortstop for a college baseball team. Okay, that's a good goal. I mean, you can narrow it down to a division one to, hey, maybe I want to play a division. I want to be a shortstop at Stanford University. Okay. Well, let's

break that down into what do we do over the next six months to get there. Well, number one, you better get your GPA up. Number two, you better take an SAT prep class to get that number as high as possible. Number three, you better get bigger and stronger, your nutrition. And number four, you better work on your, your technique, whether it's hitting or fielding or throwing.

So you can break that up into all these little mini, mini, I guess you call them goals, but like proximal goals. Yeah. Proximal goals. And, and you now dedicate your time to that. Okay. Now this is where we want to be in six months. What am I going to do this week to get there? Okay. Well, I want to, you know, consume, I need to consume

an extra, whatever. 8,000 calories per week. Okay. So how am I going to do that? Okay. Well, I'm going to, I got to add in an extra meal each day, you know, an extra, whatever, you know, amount 500 calories each day, 600 calories each day. And oh, wait a second, I'm working out more. So I'm going to burn those calories. So now I got to have

an extra thousand calories a day. Yeah, it's a makeup for all the workouts that I'm doing. So yeah, you can break that down and get as detailed oriented as you want. But it's not just, hey, you know what, I want to be a division one baseball player or division one. It's what is the process to getting that in that process includes, like you said, you know,

proximate goals. Short term goals that are achievable. If you just have one big goal and you don't have short term goals that are achievable, then you're going to get frustrated and you'll become pessimistic and then it doesn't work. So that's why I said, you know, hey, I want to lose 50 pounds. Okay. Well, goal should be specific, observable and measurable, right? Those small goals and turning

them into shorter term, term goals that reach the long term. Okay, you want to be a starting short stop at Stanford. Okay. Well, now let's research what all that entails, not just on the baseball side, but also on the academic side. What does your GPA need to be? What does your SAT score need to be? What kind of references do you need to get into that

school? Because again, playing college baseball at a really good division one institution is a lot harder than say playing at a division one institution when it comes to football or basketball, because meaning getting into that school, right? Or getting a lot of money to play baseball at that school, because baseball is not as big of a revenue generator as football basketball. Yeah, you're going to need

academic money. First and foremost, you're going to get a lot more academic money than you're likely going to get athletic money. Unless you are a freak. Okay, if you're a big freak and you're one of the best five to 10 players, I mean, outside of Florida, Texas, and California, but if you're the top player in your state or one of the top three players in the

state, then you might get some pretty good athletic money. But if you're not, then you can still play at a very, very high level, but you're going to have to pay for it. And by paying for it, you can do that by having quality test scores and volunteer work and endowments and getting scholarships on your own in the area. So sometimes you have to figure out

where it works. Where are my parents in this? How much can they afford for college? Do I need to take out extra student loans? Do my parents have $1,000 or $10,000 a year they can support? Well, college is going to be $55,000 a year. Okay, so I mean, they're going to go into debt, or I'm going to have to figure out a job, or I'm going

to have to get as much scholarship money as I can. So, you know, and then how do we attain that? Okay, maybe I need to get a job. Maybe that's maybe that's on my, uh, So we were doing it. It was fun yesterday, Vivian. We were hitting yesterday. It was kind of easy after school, no practice. And and she's like, Hey, can I see what my

swing was like last year? And so we had the hit tracks and we pulled it up. And so our goal discomfort was topp kind of getting away. She was starting to lunge a little bit and getting, you know, she would let go almost right at contacts sometimes, right? So powering through to our, we've done so many extension drills this fall. So doing that and finishing higher

because her front arm would collapse after contact because she wasn't super strong and whatever. So she doesn't know that she's making these adjustments, but she's hitting the ball further and harder and she's growing. So that helps. But when we pulled up those two swings, it was like, Oh my gosh, like that was you a year ago. So when you can have that, Hey, this was our

my squat six months ago. And this is now I'm squatting, you know, 45 pounds. More now that makes you feel good. It releases endorphins. I achieved my goal. Now we can go ahead and reassess and and possibly get more of my cousin who goes to Sawyer who goes to Harvard. He's the one in all the video examples when he was a kid on the Epstein online

Academy. You know, he is a really smart guy, right? So he went and got, I don't know. I think it was a 31 on his ACT without studying because he's a jerk. Yes, that right. And so Harvard said that's like the bottom. He's and they said, if you can get a 33 or a 32, one more point. I don't remember. It was one or two more

point. Then whatever it qualifies you for boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So he studied for it. And he actually had a good night's sleep before in a breakfast. And then he went out and got like a 33 on it. And all of a sudden it gave him a lot more. So as as a as a student, we have to, you know, figure out what's important. Maybe

that one extra point on the SAT, maybe fighting for that A. I mean, I don't know. I was that B plus a minus student a lot in high school. And I had to fight for those A's. It probably made me a good salesperson. You know, or maybe it didn't. But I would be like, I worked so hard on this. Come on. It's a half a point.

You know, and then my daughter, my middle of the high school. And she got a B plus because she had an 89.4. Yeah. And they would have. And they would have rounded up it in 89.5. I'm like, so they double rounded up. Right. I'm like, they went 89.4 to 89.5. I'll round it up one more to 90. Right. And I'm like, you, you need to go.

That is big. Go tell it. I'm, I'm working my butt off to get to college. This is really big for my GP. I want to go to a good school. I want to do this. That teacher's going to, wow. This person really cares in there. One piece of advice. Know your teachers. Know your professors when you get to college. I'm telling you, if my hardest, we

may have talked about this, but my hardest class in college, I don't know why they put me in this class. My freshman year was like music history. Music something. I don't know anything about music. My parents never put me in a piano class. I didn't play an instrument. I don't know what notes are. I don't know what the languages, the music, you know, reading music. And

they put me in this class. And everyone's like a music teacher. And I don't know what's, I don't know what's going on. And I failed. I bombed the midterm. Like I probably had a 40%. And I'm telling you I studied like crazy for it. Because I knew it was going to be hard. So I went in and talked to the teacher. And he was the coolest

guy. And he realized he's like, so you've never had any musical experiences. I'm like, I don't know what's going on. I'm learning this is like a new language. He's like, okay. And he totally helped me out. And then I think the final, I took the final. I think I got like a D. Probably like he saw improvement and he knew I worked at it. And he

totally gave me like a C in the class or a B in the class. I don't remember. But I passed it. It's all I needed. Yeah. So know your professors. They will help you out. And I brought up classes that you don't know anything about either. That's not good. No. Life lessons have all been there. Um, I've led you brought up though with Viv talking about

comparing the swings from last year to this year. That's the other point I wanted to bring up performance and technique goals rather than just overarching goals. Talking about, okay. Performance technique. What are we trying to accomplish that day in the cage with our performance? For example, talk about it earlier on in the show about 10 swings, 10 line drives right back of the middle off the

tee. Hit the back of the cage. That's your main goal today. Let's achieve that first. And we take that small little step performance and technique goals. Yeah. And it's it's small. It could be one thing. Hey, let's not step out. You know, maybe I have a player that just steps out all the time. They pull off with their stride. I don't care about your swing point.

I don't care if we don't barrel anything up. Let's spend this week. You doing this. We're going to do it now. We're going to and you're going to do it at home every single day this week. It's low impact to you five minutes or less a day. When you come back next week, I want that fixed. I want to be able to move on to your

top hand. I want to move on to your rhythm. I want to move on. So if you have four things, that we're working on as a hitter or as a field or whatever, you know, you're working on, you can't work on four things at once. You have to divide that. Look, you know, let's let's take our time. Yeah, you might have games starting in three weeks,

but what's the most important thing for us to get down you starting to move at the right time. Right. So all I wanted you to do if you can start moving on time by the time, you know, game start boom, we're good. And then once you start moving on time. Okay, let's focus a little bit more on. And staying connected or making sure we don't get

long with our lead arm. Okay, let's work on that. But if we're constantly going back and what I use the analogy I use is you got to put stitches in it. Okay, if you're stepping out all the time. Well, if you're thinking about stepping in, you can do it. But if you don't get the proper reps over and over again, then when as soon as you

don't think about it, as soon as you're not consciously competent or conscious of that move, you won't be competent. So we got to put stitches in there. Boom. And you step out, okay, we're going to spend maybe it's two months, three months, not stepping out. Boom. We put stitches in it. And now I never have to worry about again. Right. It's all healed up. But if

we have a gaping wound and we're just kind of putting a bandaid on it, that wound's going to keep opening up every week. So take that one thing, take that one goal, right. That one short term goal. That is the first rung on your ladder to get to the top goal and master it. Because if you don't master that first one, you're going to keep slipping

up and down that ladder and you're never going to make it to that top. Like evaluating what works and what doesn't work as well in those goals. And so then you can make the adjustments on the fly. Absolutely. Because you're going to fail like some some are going to, you know, not everybody is going to get a 33 on an ACT. All right. But if you

started with a 19. Let's see if we can get to anyone. Isn't 19 bad though. I don't think 19's too bad 19 will get you into college as an athlete. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. 19's okay. 21's better. I think 21's about average. Just finding 21 was my number pretty much my number growing up. My favorite number two. That was, oh, okay. I didn't know if that was

your ACT number. And it's my birth date, 21st of August. And it was your 21st average, 21's average, you're only going to do, you know, I guess. I guess that's that that explains it all doesn't it? It doesn't. It's not going to be a good thing. It does. All right. Hold on. In 2022, the national average was a 19.8. So, okay. So 21 would be slightly

above average. Correct. Based off those statistics. Facing off of all the people tested. How many people was was the sample size? I don't know. Okay. In Alabama, it was 18 in Alaska. It was 20.6. Okay. Well, let's, okay. So, but let's, okay. No disrespect. We have listeners in Alabama, but. Okay. 26 was Connecticut. Okay. The better. Like, let's, let's go bigger states. Florida. What was Florida?

Is there everybody lives in Florida now? What does that start with an F? Florida 19. Georgia 21. Either. Why? Like Alabama. New York was high. California. California. What about the district of Columbia? 26.9. I think that's the highest. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's the highest. Yeah. Fucking break. Okay. Well, I think that we touched on everything today. Episode 129. Setting proper goals. Did we not? We

literally touched on like everything. Everything about life. I think we did. Yeah. Anyway, the average, sorry. The average nationwide is 19.8. Okay. So 21. Just so we know for the record slightly above average. Yeah. I'll take it. If you're a good college athlete, you're not going to get you into most places. Next week, Julio Rodriguez mechanical breakdown series. That's going to be a good one. I

haven't really dissected his swing. Yeah. So Julio Rodriguez mechanical breakdown series volume 38. I think that's next week. Our first one of 2023. Any plugs you want to, you want to get in here before we get out of here? Plugged. Yeah. Talk about goals. That's what we do at the end of the year. The Epstein online academy. What is the most important thing? Like my, my

speech about what's the most important thing right now? That's exactly what I do with all my players nationwide. Okay. What's the most important thing for you to master right now when you're nine. I got some eight nine year olds in there that are studs. And then I got 18 20. I just got a new college kid from California that's in there. What's the most important thing

for him to accomplish before the season starts? So if you're unsure, that's the best thing about the, the platform. If you're unsure, what you need to work on rhythm, timing, mechanics, that's why you sent it a video. And then I can tell you what the most important thing is and how to address it. So I picked this, I picked the perfect title of today's episode is

what you're trying to say. That was your short term goal was what what episode should we do? You know, for the week of January 23rd. It was perfect timing. Perfect timing. Yeah. It really is. This is going to be 21, maybe 21 slightly above average. Yeah. Maybe you had a 1500 on your SAT though. You know what? Nobody will ever know. No one will know. Because

that's the mystery of it all. One part of life. All right. We're finished episode 130 next week. Be sure to subscribe. Reach out to us on social media. Jimbo podcast 21 and Gmail.com. Have a great week. Talk to you next Monday. See you later.