Off-Season Offensive Prep Plans

Hi everybody, welcome to another edition of the Lab at the Institute of Podcast episode 122. Thank you as always for making us part of today on the audio side Apple's leading spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you haven't done so already, please do subscribe and leave a review and of course you can watch the show on YouTube as well of the Lab Epstein hitting

podcast. YouTube page that is at Epstein hitting podcast on YouTube watch previous episodes and watch today's episode 122 discussing offseason prep plans. So let's get into it here. We are on Epstein Standard Time today. Freshly value-inter-successful business zone of former coach friend and co-host. Listen, you made fun of me off air about my lighting and you do it every week. So I have to just get

that dig in there. How you doing there kiddo? I'm good. I'm on the road. Don't give me Epstein Standard Time. Pacific Standard Time now throws everything off a little bit. Back in COVID territory where we started. This is where we started the podcast two years ago. Back at the ranch. Yeah, that's where I was when we started. Oh shit. I was actually sitting here over there

when we first had our initial conversation. It said, hey, we should do this and then we did our first one. That's right. Gardenerville, Nevada. So that first episode, episode one, when we remember remember what we talked about. But that was in 2020. My of times changed when the Astros were coming off. That was before COVID or was the Doring COVID. It might have been right. It

was right after. So as soon as COVID hit, we hit the road and drove here. Here we are. I know. Sack at it. Yeah. Back at it getting getting ready to go. Rear enough for episode 122. Again, thank you for joining us today. We're talking about offseason prep plans. Do you have a couple of things to get to inventory wise? I want to touch on Cody

Ballinger because we talked about him on this show before and you've mentioned some of the mechanical fallacies that he suffered. Really since the year 2020 after that MVP season in 2019. He was not intended by the Dodgers this week. What do you think? Cody Ballinger? She's going to kind of throw it to you here playing quarterback. If you want to feel old, by the way, we're

talking about going back in the past. I was on YouTube this morning. You're not going to believe this. Somebody. I don't know who it is. But somebody out there. He posts like old football games like from like the 90s 2000s and then he does it from like last decade too, meaning like 2010 to 2020. And I remember it like it was yesterday. This was in 2016

because the Lions are playing the Giants today. We're recording this on a Sunday. Yeah. He posted the 2016 game Lions and the Giants at Medlife Stadium. And they're playing that game today in 2022. So if you want to really feel like time is flying and you're getting old. It is flying. I remember when Cody, Cody Ballinger was an MVP. 2019. That was felt like yesterday too.

What's going on with him? What do they need to fix? Cody and his hitting crew is hitting instructor. It's been quite a journey for him from what I've observed. And he's still talented. He really is. And he's changed his swing plane. A lot from probably 2020 when he first started struggling. And then last year and then this year, I felt like he's tried to flatten it

out because he started to get exposed. Right. He had kind of a big upper cut and a narrow base and a big upper. You know, narrow base is kind of tend to having more of a, you know, down and up kind of swing. And so he started to get exposed, right. With fastballs up in the zone. So he's changed his swing plane. I've seen videos of

him flattening off his swing plane and batting practice. So I know he's working on that. But his main issue is his rhythm and timing. And I know I'm not the only one that sees it. But he moves very late. You know, we talked so much about it. I mean, all the, all the, I'm not going to say that I don't know what to do. So those

of you that are listening, thank you very much. I do. I can even review on the podcast. I don't they don't like you. You just have to ask. I just have to ask. That's how it is. That's how easy it is. We just have to ask. I ask every week. And we don't get, we still don't get that. You have to send a link. You have

sent a link. The link is easy. Yeah. Okay. So getting back to Belinger. You know, he moves late. He moves very late. He moves after the ball is out of the hand. And so he's essentially striding and swinging at the same time. He's his foot's in the air. And he's, or I'm sorry. He's lifting his foot and making up his mind at the same time. It's

very difficult to do. If you watch just about the remaining 99 point, you know, 9% of major leaguers, their rhythm starts way earlier than his. And it gives them time to read and kind of relax. And they're not going to be as jumpy. So that's his main issue. If he can change that the concern that I have is that people have told him to do. That.

And he hasn't, you know, the adjustments that I've seen are, oh, he's holding his hands up higher or his bat tip. All of that is style. And none of that changes the root of, of the issue of, of him moving late. And so I'm hoping that he, he finds either comfort and a new staff, a new hitting staff or a new hitting coach or he just

decides to work on it. This off season. But it is the one thing. I don't know if anyone's going to get a deal. But I think that he's probably going to sign a one year. Pretty decent number deal just to try to get him, you know, put his backs against the wall so that he can get a huge deal next year. If he proves that he

can come out of it. But it's been too many of that since he struggled. It's not like it was just the COVID half COVID season. It was all of 21, all of 22. That's he's going to have to turn around. He's got a lot of heads to do it. Now, fortunately, he does other things very well. He's a, he's a good defender. He's got a good

arm. He's a good bass player. So he'll help somebody out. I'm just not sure he's going to get a multi year deal right now. Because it's a huge risk. And, and is it him? Is it he doesn't want to change? Could, could that be it? If that's it, then it's going to be hard to find, you know, find a team to latch on and invest a

lot of money. Let me ask you this. So do you feel that maybe with Belinger? We don't hear that often. You don't hear that all that often anymore. But do you think that would really come into play for him and could be a truth? Defining factor and getting him back to where he was? Thousand percent. Yeah. Because everything seems very fast with him. Right. I mean,

everything from the start to the swing. It's just all very rushed, as you mentioned. And we've talked about it numerous times, previous episodes in today. That might be the biggest key issue for him. I don't see many mechanical fallacies. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you do. But I really don't. I think the biggest thing for him is just, he's just got quick feet, quick hands, but he's

always late. It's just hard to hit that way. It really is. And he's the fastest there is. You know, if we put a timer on him, he's fast from his load to footplant. And just like all the players I have in the academy, we do like a three-second drill or a one-one-thousand-two drill. We do that a lot. And I do that with kids that are nine

and ten years old, just so that we don't have that problem when we get older. It allows for adjustability. It allows for a proper loading and weight distribution in our strides so that we're not, you know, over our back heeled or over our back foot too much, over our back knee too much. And then we're not jumping forward too much. So it's a really great drill

and a great move. But we have to be able to, it's easy when you do it at an early age. At his age, it shouldn't be an issue because he's a talented athlete, right? I mean, he's at the top of his athletic performance. He's at the top of that pyramid. So I don't think it would be a huge issue for him to do that. I think

he has the balance to do it. I think he has the adjustability to do it. He just has to have his mind in a place where he would accept it and work on it. Right. And do it every single day here over the next two months before spring training. I do have a team that may fit him for one year deal. Kind of a small ballpark.

And yeah, I think you would really hit there very well. If you'd like to know which team that is email us, your mobile podcast, 21 at gmail.com. I got a. You're going to be in center field too, because you don't like the center fielder. I'm going to put him in center field. I bet you are. He's a good center fielder. Great athlete. He's a great. Cody

Belinger. So I'm just saying that he would fit in with a team there on the Eastern seaboard. I'm not going to say which team it is. I'll leave that to everybody's. Everybody's imagination. I'm not a fresh right. I'd go to Chicago. No pressure. Right. Nobody. He's not going to win. I can go have a huge year. And then signed with somebody. I have to take some

inventory to I heard on Jeff rise podcast recently. He promoted this on on his Twitter page. Mike Piazza. He was talking to Mike Piazza. They were going back and forth. Recently, and he had Mike Piazza on his podcast. And I want to say that I'm right about something. I never like to pat myself on the back. Was it a Ted Williams thing? Ted Williams used to

go over to Mike Piazza's house and used to watch him hit and give him instruction. So I was correct about that. I saw that it was really cool to. Yeah. I'm not sure that he did it on a weekly basis. I didn't say weekly. I'm just saying he went over his house. You know what was so great about that clip was. Piazza looked ugly hitting right.

It wasn't a pretty. I don't think it's face. Okay. You like you watch kids today taking batting practice that are 16 17 18 years old. Yeah. And it's like wow. Like that is what a beautiful move. And you see Piazza is kind of losing his balance. But you hear William say boys, he's got such quick hands. He hits the ball so hard. And those are the

things you can't see on video. So when everybody recruits and puts them in the same place, they say, oh, here's my recruiting video. And you're like, dude, that's a really nice swing. That's a really nice swing. But how does that ball jumping? How does it sound? You can't always, you know, use just video and random metrics. Sometimes you actually have to be there to see it.

And I bet it sounded different. They always said, Vlad Guerrero, when he hits a ball, it sounds different. Meaning senior. And Moises, Saloo was a guy like that. It just sounded so you knew who was hitting in the ballpark when he was doing it. And sometimes that makes a big difference. There's some kind of kind of extra energy, right? It impact that some players are able

rather than the other way around Piazza swing looked really ugly and batting practice. You know, who else is swing looked really ugly and batting practice? Dustin, Badroya, Mike Piazza and Dustin, Badroya were great major league players. I would take instruction from them any day. So it's got to revert back to what we were doing before. You haven't ugly swing and batting practice. That's okay. But you

have to still produce in games. I'm not saying you shouldn't hit certain metrics. You have to. But we're now doing it, not you, not you, of course, but you know, coaches, other social media coaches are doing it the opposite way around. And some big league organizations are starting to do it. The opposite way around. And we need to get back to the other way. Hey, if

your swing is ugly and batting practice, that's okay. We need you to produce in the game. Stop worrying so much about becoming a showcase player rather than then just becoming an actual baseball player. I'm seeing a two app with people in the field as well. There's videos posted online of guys at short, you know, trying to show off their arm strength. They field, right. But when

they go through their footwork, they do an extra crow hop and they try to get that extra arm strength you as a fielder in the infield. For every this is a little lesson for everybody. And the infield, you love when I give lessons. I know every step is what every step is sequencing. That's what gives you the arm strength, not that extra crow hop, right. Because

that never play at the major league level. The game is really fast. Anyway, sorry. That's what it's every extra step and outfielder takes the right to take. So you got to get rid of the ball. Yes. But what is going to happen that's going to show up is this guy throws 99 across the infield. Right. So that's. That's how it plays. And that's why showcases do

have games, but there's not enough emphasis put put on the games gamers or gamers man like I. I worked with players before that I remember I talked to a division one coach about. And I said, Hey, you know, this kid's kid moves really well in this and he's super fast. He ended up playing football in college division one football. But he could play baseball too. And

the coach told me he's like, I've seen him. I mean, he looks great. I've seen him probably in 10 or 15 at bats. And I just want one line drive up the middle. I've only I've seen a few hits and their hooks down the left field line. You know, or what he just doesn't square, even though everything looks right. He doesn't squared up. And he was

probably right. He ended up playing football. We'll never know. But was he a gamer. Wasn't a gamer, right. Maybe he get his heart rate up too much. Maybe he tried to do too much. And you have to see players perform in games. And some players just do. So players just get into a slower. They get into a different concentration zone. And those are the guys that

hit for that that drive in a ton of runs. There's certain guys that drive in 80 RBI's that are number three, four and five hitters. And then there's guys that drive in 120. And most of that is mindset. Most of that is relaxation. And most of that is clutch. And you can't teach that. You have to find that. You can try to teach it with mental

coaches. But for the most part that player has probably been like that since he was 14 years old. Right. Well, anyway, if anybody has any questions, email us. at gmail.com, reach out to us on social media at Jim Tara and at Epstein hitting. Hey, this week up on cross functionality with Cassie Riley Bosch and I cross functionality. Please subscribe. If you haven't done so already, wherever

you get your podcast, watch the show on the softball strength academy YouTube page. We talked about training calendars for players as a coach creating those training calendars year around four your players. How do you do that from the offensive side? How do you before we get into our topic today of offseason prep plans? How do you create a yearly training calendar that is that best is

best for hitters and is most sufficient that gets them to where they need to be? All of that's individual to the player. What what are their needs? What are those players needs? Is it Belinger, right? His needs are rhythm and timing. Is it somebody else that might have mechanical issues, a 13 year old player that has bat drag that's starting to grow and their muscles aren't

quite filled out yet and their arms and elbows get left behind. That's probably the biggest issue that I see with players is that our body. We did a big KVEST report, not report, but assessment down at the lab where we did vertical job. We tested everything and then KVEST was part of the hitting assessment as well. The amount of players in that 12 to 14 you've

arranged that are very lanky. They're starting to grow. How much they rotate their hips, but the rest of their body just lags behind. They're not able to transfer that energy from their hips to their shoulders to their hands. So you have to train them. Accordingly, so for instance, if it was one of those players that used their hips aggressively, but their upper body lagged behind and

then their hands didn't have any of the sequencing, right? They didn't have any of the kinematic sequencing. So the energy never reached their arms, hands and bat. Well, that doesn't do you any good. You maybe they go to a hitting coach or maybe their high school is like rotate, rotate, rotate, turn, turn, turn. Make sure you have a tight turn. Well, those are all good, but

we're not going to be able to do that. We're not using the body correctly. So those players, right, we put them on an upper body stress plan. You got to do a lot of bottom handrails, a lot of top handrails, a lot of resisting with your hips and shoulders. Don't let them go, right? We're not going to use them at all. I want you to, you're

still going to use them, but I want you to think about using 90% upper body. Again, going back to Bregnet. Bregnet is probably the most vocal person about that. This is what I think about. This is what I do, yet he rotates just fine. His hips rotate fast and his shoulders rotate fast. So overdoing the moves that you need to do. Maybe we have a left

handed hitter that is a right handed thrower. And their lead arm is pretty good, right? Because that's their their bottom hand is their dominant arm, but they're usually with those players. I see a lot of front leg issues, their front knee stays close, their front foot stays close, their front hip stays close. And if it stays close too long and then the upper body starts to

go. So before the hip goes, now all of a sudden we're making pretty good contact. We have a good swing plane because our arms and hands are good, but we don't have the power behind it. So we need to, we probably are leaving four to five miles an hour of exit velocity on the table. Okay. So maybe that player we're doing a stress plan, look lower

body for the next two months. This is the time December and January November December January is the time to make mechanical changes. Mechanical changes or rhythm changes. Okay, but we're not worried about timing. So it's, it's the process. It's not necessarily, oh, I want to see spin. I want to see velocity. We're not worried about that right now. We're getting the body into the right position.

So again, it depends on the player. The key is during the offseason or when it's cold, I'm working on the issue that's going to make me better. And then comes a mid January mid February. We're starting to get ready for games. Now we hope that that's set in. We still monitor that, but now we're going to crank up the machines a little bit. We're going to

hit more braking balls. We're going to do fastballs, change ups. We're going to do high velocity fastballs at the belt. Then we're going to do sliders down to make sure we can cover different pitches and different zones. And then we get into our season. And then that's a whole other beast, right? Maybe we're working more timing. Now we're having issues during the season where earlier late.

So the cycle and that calendar continues to turn over. And it should be different aspects that we're working on. The most important right now in the winter is going to be any kind of mechanical. Or barrel swing plane change or rhythm change. So a change where we're. It's not a it's not a bandaid. We're trying to put stitches in something that needs stitches. And then as

we get closer to the season, then we slowly, if we need to get to 90 miles an hour for a high school player. And without freaking that player out. So it's a total process. And if you have a good, good hitting program or good hitting coach or a good facility that you train at. Hopefully they're doing something similar in terms of planning for you as a

player. Yeah. So again, subscribe to cross functionality episode 18 this week with Cassie Riley Boehm. I wherever you get your podcast, watch the show. Softball strength Academy YouTube page. You kind of already broke into our episode. So this week episode 122 off season prep plan. I do before the show. I wrote down five elements of an off season prep plan. So I want you to correct

me or, you know, whatever. I just went off there. I thought that was the main topic we were discussing. Well, kind of kind of ties in. Let's see how I did that. You can fire me if you need to. So, so the first one, rest and recover. You know, what now that I think about it, that room is I know I just came to me that

room. Are you okay? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you joke on your coffee. That room is the where you did the first episode. And now it just came to me. I was trying to find it like that. Was that the room? And then finally, someone off in my head. Rest recovery is number one. That's the first part of the off season prep plan. Inventory,

that's number two. Diagnos, number three. And again, we're talking for off season, from say, I don't know, October, beginning of October, until if you're in college, you ramp up, I don't know, mid February. Right. Sprite Training, mid February. So I began in October, I committed. I, yeah, it's really is not much time. You know the college guys. They're back January 10th. Okay. So I'm wondering either

argument or an interview, there's just more screen right now, obviously told you something. Like this Hari Sign Language'sLa Physics. Right now very handy conversation types are ongoing. So, that's already been reported because of two lessons. And yeah, one student, yeah. So that was not books, regardless of, yeah. This was also listed by the interviews and sometimes his fingers crossed with him. So, there's actually a few

types of cases that I taught during my . Globavarock time and lines Kh gheeq, Tamil So, they're trying to earn a spot. So it's a shorter, you know, it's a short season unfortunately. I only got three out there. Hold on. So hold on one second. I get it. You can say it Jim. Right. Rest recovery, taking inventory. You would think we'd have better chemistry episode 100,

20 fucking two here. Rest recovery, take inventory, diagnose, specify. Right. So now you really get into the meat of what we're trying to do and try and building off the three other points of our off season hitting and then ramp up slash timing. So how are those, I came up with those five this morning when I was thinking about and prepping for this show. Am I

close, wrong, completely wrong, off with. No, you're exactly right. I think rest and recovery after a season. Yeah. If we look at more like an amateur season to travel ball season, they're going to be done in August. Right. They'll have some rest and recovery kind of mid August to mid September. And then there's fall ball that may have fall ball, which is really just games. So

sometimes I've had more players lately take the fall baseball season off and rest and focus on, you know, start that prep that you were talking about. Let's take inventory. Let's number one rest for a few weeks. Rest the arm rest the body. Then let's get back into what's the most important thing. A lot of 15 year old players that I work with high school players. You

know, it's more important. So you have to figure out that's the diagnosis. What's going to make me better? We didn't really talk about that earlier. Is it swing plane? Is it timing? Is it sequencing? Maybe it's mass. Maybe it's nutrition and strength. That could be part of it too. Where you spend more time doing that. Some I will say, I'm not sure if I can do

that. I will say you put on 10 pounds, you're going to hit the ball way harder. Then if we get your front shoulder down one frame earlier and we create five more degrees of separation, that's not going to lead to as much increase in velocity is 10 pounds of muscle. Okay. So sometimes that's a big. We didn't really talk about that, but that could be one

of the pillars that you need to be successful. It might be strength conditioning and nutrition. Let's kind of take an image. Yeah. Absolutely. Just looking at yourself as a player and where we need to get better. I mean, we're talking to this from an offensive standpoint today offseason prep plans, but you can take inventory really of any part of your game, physically, mentally, whatever. I think

it could be if you're a pro player. It might be I need to lean out a little bit. Yeah. We talked about sand. A couple of weeks ago. He's got to lean out after the season. A lot of times we lose a lot of weight. Gosh, I remember the minor league season. I lost a ton of weight. Just 140 games of bad nutrition. And not being

able to you go to work out in the morning, you're like, I have zero energy to work out right now, because I just got off a bus four hours ago. So it's obviously a little bit better now. But maybe it's I need to I need to get my my body back in condition. October, if we're a minor league or October, November, December, and then January, maybe,

okay, I'm going to start hitting some more. By the time you get to that age, your mechanics are usually pretty darn good. And you can prep for spring training. It's not a big deal to get your swing back locked in. If you're trying to make the change like Belinger, that's different. But for for most major leagueers, you know, they're going to be taking swings, but they're

not really working on a lot of stuff. They might be working on hitting pitches in different part of the zone, but they're not working on any kind of mechanical or rhythm changes. So they're going to spend more time working out, getting faster, getting stronger, getting leaner or bulking up or working on their agility in first step. So I think that's a good thing. Again, taking inventory,

what's going to make me better from mid February? Well, also too, you know, if we skip down to the specify part with major leagueers, you know, you talk about getting stronger, you talk about healing injuries or working possibly working around some of those nicks that you may have in your body and just that wear and tear. But if you're playing, for example, if you're in the

postseason, if you're somebody like a one so to write in the playoffs or, you know, whomever, right, or Jeremy Pena, I mean, I mean, his weaknesses are now on display for the whole baseball world. See, because the Astros were in the world series, he had a lot of positives to his world series, world series MVP, but there was still obviously some negatives as a game of

a game of failure, right? Now, not with standing. The fourth part of this, the specify part at that point, do you think what major leagueers are doing or at least should be doing in terms of specifying is understanding where their weaknesses are looking at some heat maps and saying, okay, I need to attack this weakness in my swing, this small hole in my swing. Because you

know that teams, analytics departments, scouting departments, they have that on you, where weaknesses and there, you know, they're going to attack you next season. Genius. Yeah. I mean, I'm a pain or me. No, I'm talking about you. That's exactly what, but, right, I mean, because there's so much information out there. That, you know, you know, I always, no, I was going to say, I'm sorry. I

was going to point out Ryan Howard though years ago, 2006, right? Yeah, that MVP season 54 home runs. The next season, you still great. But he wasn't as good because teams are starting to simply just attack his weakness. There wasn't as much information back then as there is now. Now they have every little use on you teams. Use your own analytics department to figure out how

they would attack you. Use those guys that are crunching numbers and taking different bats. How would you attack you if you're going to your pitching analytics department. Hey, instead of every opponent, how would you attack your own players? That's what you want to work on. What other other teams, other organizations are going to do to you. So that's a great idea. It's, you know, and again,

doesn't mean everybody hits a spot. Okay. We still have to be able to hit mistakes. That's it. But going into an abad and knowing, okay, early in the count, I may see soft stuff, late in the count. I might see heart stuff. Okay. Then we have our plan. Okay. I'm going to sit soft early. If they make a mistake soft, I got a chance. So that's

really what you want to do. When you're looking for mistakes, yeah, sometimes if you're sitting dead red fastball on an OO count and you get a hanging curveball, it's hard to pull the trigger because you're, you're amped up and you're ready for that. And if you do pull the trigger, you'll be like Bryce Harper who's throwing at every first pitch in the playoffs and you'll fall

it off or miss it because it wasn't exactly what he was looking for, but it was a pretty good pitch to hit. Okay. But if you say, you know what, the first three pitches might be soft. I'm going to sit on that. So even if the count goes one and oh, I'm still sitting. to fall, just work out because we're working for talks from one by

one, you know what I'm saying? Well, if we have something here, to do and we have machines here like game scum, opportunity you want to put them away with breaking balls or do you want to put them away with high fastballs. So that's going to be the later pitches. How they want to put you away will be the late, you know, the the third, fourth, fifth

pitch of the at bat. But if you can go 180 degrees to that early in the count, that's when you can strike and that's when you can do your damage. Yeah, when you start on the ramp up phase, when do you start incorporating drills now? Drills, I would start during the I know when I work on. Yeah, if I know, I took inventory and now I'm

creating a plan that's going to be now, that's going to be right now. It's going to be November timeframe is, okay, I need to work on my bottom hand. I need to work on my top hand. I need to work on rotating less or rotating more or getting a better load or better rhythm. That's when I start doing drills. And I do drills at a very

focused, non stressful environment where I can complete those drills without reverting to my own old muscle memory. That is the key to change. If you take 100 swings today that are perfect locked in on my, my, my lead elbow isn't pushing back at rotation. Okay. And then tomorrow I go hit live and I take 100 swings where my arm does the exact opposite. You're not making

any progress. So you need to get the stress levels down during times of change and then slowly amp that up. Okay, two, two weeks from now. Let's go ahead and make it a little bit tougher. Okay. We're still performing it correctly. And then a couple of weeks after that, let's make a little tougher. And then we're at the, you know, we're at the time where we're

going 100%. But this is the time when you do drills and you do them in a controlled environment. All right. So what about the, we touched on a little bit earlier. What about on the mental side? How are you preparing? How do you fit in mentally preparing yourself into offseason prep plans? I think that take inventory part that you, you mentioned before as a big piece

of that. I don't think I'm changing my, my, my mental plan. Maybe I have maybe some new techniques on relaxation. Maybe I'm breathing a little bit different. I'm trying to add a deep breath in when I step into the box. I get my sign. Big deep breath. Maybe I'm focusing on a part of my bad or a foul pull or whatever it is. Boom. So maybe

routine. We're working on. I don't think I'm working on a full mental plan is how I'm going to attack a pitcher or how I'm going to attack the season. When the season started, I don't think I'm getting there yet. But possibly in the, let's, let's create a routine and relaxation to try to get my heart rate down and to clear my mind when I'm in the

box. That would definitely be a part of the process that I would work on this time of year. All right. Well, I think we pretty much covered everything today offseason prep plans, right? I think we're good to go and checked all the boxes. We did. It's very important this time of year is sometimes players wanted. And again, it's different for every age. If you're 10, you're

playing basketball right now. And that's totally cool. Like play basketball. Have a good time. If you're getting into that, you know, 14 year olds were, okay, I'm, you know, baseball and softball and kind of dedicated to that. Now it's really time to dig into it and master my trade. If you're in college, obviously that decision has already been made. So you better get after it. So

we have, like I have the college players coming into the lab in. January 2nd through the 4th. So we got a bunch of, and that's fun. But before that, I'm having conversations with all of them now. This is what, or what do you want to work on? How was your fall? Where did you get exposed this fall? What was your miss this fall? What did you

do? Well, this fall? Okay. And then I'm going to set up everyone's training appropriately. So when they get there in January, because they're all going to have to report to college by January 10th, we got to get them locked in so that they can either keep their spot. Or we can get a spot from somebody else. So that's what that's for. But again, that's a month

and a half from now. Much different than what they need to work on now. Okay. Well, you had this problem. Let's work on our stride and rhythm. You had this problem. Let's work on keeping your shoulder down. So they're taking inventory and working on technique now during finals when there's not a lot, you know, finals will be in another couple of weeks. But there's not a

lot of practice right now. They're doing some small individual work, you know, small group work for fielding and whatnot. So it's very real. So I'm going to take them from that first week of January into when they start prepping for the season, which starts in mid February for college players. Alright. So again, if you have any questions, please reach out to us. Jimbo podcast 21 at

gmail.com. And we will best try to answer those questions. Any questions about today's episode 122 offseason prep plans or questions about anything regarding hitting baseball life. We're here for you. We are. We're going to be able to do that. We love our customers and our listeners. Yes. Yes. By the way, go to the Epstein online heating academy too. A drill. Yeah. It's better. I mean, it's

if you want to get better. Yeah. If you don't want that's cool. I mean, a lot of people don't want to get better. You know, but the great part is I'm getting coaches, you know, coaches. I got to come up with something for coaches, hitting instructors are like, Hey, how can you help me work with my players? And it's a really good. The best, the best

way to do it is through certification. But I only do that once a year. So it's, it's tough for everyone. But it's like, let me work with you and your player. It's so beneficial. Meaning, you know, here's your player. I'm going to evaluate the player you're working with. I'm going to give you feedback. Now we're all on the same page. The instructor is learning the player

is learning. It's not just drills and information. Sometimes, you know, there's a lot of people out there that's self content. You know, you can buy my package of this, that and the other. But there's no feedback. It's just here's a drill. Do it. And hopefully it works. So what sets us apart is, look, here's drills, but this is why. And this is what the player. And

here's how to implement it. So you actually have a person that's helping you through the process. So if you need help, we're here for you. Yeah. And if you want to understand what app is teaching why you're doing certain drills. Go to Epstein online, hitting Academy, don't go to Twitter where people like to think they're really smart and you scientific terms that nobody understands. So then

it tricks people into thinking, wow, that person's really smart. I should go to them for instructions. It works. You got to be able to implement. That's what makes us different is the key word. We can implement the words so that everyone can do it. Yeah. Implement is the word of episode 122 next week, episode 123. We're going to do something a little bit different. This will

be a lot of fun facing an ace. So Epin I, we're going to come up with an ace at the major league level of a pitching staff. And we're going to talk about, we're going to grab a report, right from baseball. We're going to go through baseball, but it's not going to be, you know, we're not going to create a report ourselves. We just simply don't

have the time. Never the let we could, but we don't have the time. So we're going to get our information from baseball, so Von dot com. And Epin I are going to go through. He's going to go through with me as if I was the hitter. It feels like you've done that before, but nevertheless, he's going to go through it with me. And we're going to

talk about how to approach facing an ace and how to put together a hitting plan, facing that ace for at least two at bats. And that ace could be a I don't know, a Justin Burlander, yeah, Burlander, sure. We're going to do that next week, episode 123. What are you coming up at the lab? Happy Thanksgiving, by the way. Well, we're just prepping for our college

guys coming in next month. And then our weekly classes now, all our instructors, we did the big assessment. So I'm urging all of those players to spend some time with their, with our coaches down there to go over what it means. What is the Kvesta, you know, they get reports and they do that at different showcases too. Well, hey, coach, I got this on the blast

and I got this on Kvest or the rep. So do or whatever. And then kids have no idea what it means. So let's sit down and have a conversation and talk about it so that we can get better. So that's what they're doing this week. You know, it's kind of a slower. We're not going to do a lot of hitting. It's Thanksgiving week, but schedule time

with your coaches to go over all your results. All right. Perfect. Great job today. Ep Episode 123. Thank you very much. I sense the sarcasm. Happy. There wasn't you were sharp today. Always. All right. We will talk to you next week. Everybody, Episode 123 subscribe from you haven't done so have a safe happy Thanksgiving. Talk to you next month.