Cue vs Reality - It's only wrong if it doesn't work

If you've ever been on the internet, specifically the baseball training side of the internet, you're aware there are quite a few different, often opposing opinions, on the best way to swing a bat or throw a ball. "Stay balanced", "stay back", "keep your head still", "get your foot down early", "get the ball up early"; these all seem like pretty popular things to tell a young player. But are they correct? You're gonna hate the answer...

The answer is, sometimes. Sometimes they're correct and sometimes they're not! All of those coaching instructions are called "cues". And that's what we're discussing here today. What is a cue, why do we use them, and what's the best way to employ them.

What is a Cue?

A cue is a feeling a coach gives you to try get you to move a certain way. "Squish the bug", "stay closed", "stay through the zone", "finish out front". These are all cues that a coach is giving you in the hopes you'll improve your swing or throw. Many of these cues are used by the best big leaguers ever, and have become ubiquitous baseball mantras.

The problem is, many of these cues are so vague in their description that the athlete can literally accomplish the cue without actually making any improvements in their swing or throw. And worse, if they didn't make any improvements then, in all likelihood, they actually got worse, because now they're thinking of something that is preventing them from actually improving.

How to know if a cue is working?

The simplest way to know if a cue is working is to have some form of measurable feedback to test it with. Did your throw or bat speed get faster? Did your swing get quicker? Does your arm feel better during and after your throwing session? Did you throw more strikes? These are simple results that are relatively easy to measure and directly impact our performance as a baseball player. If a cue makes you immediately, measurably better at these criteria, you should think about employing that cue more often.

But what if the cue made you worse? Firstly, so long as you made an explicit attempt to try something new and you measured the results, then you didn't get worse. You may have learned a way to NOT accomplish your goal, but knowing the ways NOT to swing or throw is very important. But secondly, if a cue made you immediately measurably worse then this is where the value of a coach becomes much more important. Because it really, really matters WHY you got worse.

The path to improvement is non-linear

There are a million ways to swing and throw like a high school baseball player. But only 10 thousand of those ways work in college. And only 100 ways transfer to the minors. Of which 10 will get you to the major leagues. And 2-3 of those ways actually keep you there for awhile. What this means is that your feedback in games can be very, very misleading. You might be good in high school because you've chosen one of the million ways to swing or throw that works at the high school level. And the more you practice the better you become...in high school. But you get to college and all of a sudden those high fastballs are beating you, or the hitters are laying off your 2 strike curveball in the dirt. This happens to 99.99999% of players to play baseball. Eventually the next level defeats them.

And this is why its possible to get measurably worse in the interim, despite the fact you're destined for improvement in the long run.