What's up baseball players. I'm Coach Dan Blewett. In today's
video, let's talk about how to get out of a slump.
Alright, so if you're new here, I'm coach Dan, I'm a former pro
pitcher. And here my channel, I do tons of videos about pitching
about mindset, strength training, arm care, baseball
strategy, all of it. So stick around, be sure to subscribe and
share this video with a friend later, if you found that it
really helps you get out of your slump. So today, slumps are
gonna apply to both hitters and pitchers and really just means
the same thing I know, it's typically you think of a slump
as a hitter thing. But for me as a pitcher, I had a couple bad
weeks every season where that was like I'm in a slump, I'm not
pitching well. So this will apply equally, these bunch of
different tips to whether you're a hitter or a pitcher. So let's
jump into it. Number one, the first thing is you need to
figure out well, this is bad luck, and you don't really need
to change. Or if it's actually something's wrong, whether it's
mechanically or your mindset, or something actually actually
needs to get fixed with your, your skill level or your level
play or your mechanics or whatever it is. So if you're
lining out a lot, as a hitter, if you're hitting the ball
pretty hard, if you're having good at bats, and you're just
not getting a lot of hits, there's no cause for change. So
you can't be mentally weak, where you consider yourself in a
slump. When you've stung the ball a bunch of times, you just
haven't gotten a lot of hits. So you need to be mentally tough
and understand the difference. Same thing with pitching. I've
had times when I just got bad outcomes a bunch of times in a
row, when I was pretty sure I threw the ball pretty well.
Sometimes you make really good pitches one outing, and you get
hit some days you make really crappy pitches, and you don't
get hit. So you need to have some wherewithal and really sit
down and think, alright, let's go back through my last couple
outings my last bunch of bats. Did I have a just a string of
bad luck? And I played actually pretty well? Or did I actually
play poorly? Number two, you need to stay in your routine. So
your routine is the thing that got you there in the first
place, right? So if at the beginning of the season, you're
doing well or like halfway through the season, you were
doing well. And now a couple weeks later, you're doing
poorly. Well, what was the stuff you were doing before you know
in the before time, essentially, when you're playing? Well. If it
was this, you know long routine of you know the way you get
ready the things you do in a week you the way you eat, the
way you sleep, the way you train. If all those things used
to work for you, don't just abandon them all. Now stay in
your routine. keep getting your reps in, keep getting your sleep
show up to the ballpark at the same time. Go through all those
those motions that help you stay consistent, don't suddenly stray
from all of them, and get way off track when something's not
going right trust your routine that if it's doing good things
when you're playing well. It'll help you get back on track.
Also, number three, stay positive. And this is one of the
big things, especially younger players is you spiral out of
control when things don't go your way. So if you hit the ball
hard a couple times, and it goes right out somebody and suddenly,
you know woe is me and I stink and I can't get ahead and I
can't you know you're up at the plate or out in the mountain,
you just really don't believe in yourself, guess what, everything
gets way worse, you could take a slump, it's really just luck
based. And you could make it skill based because now your
mind's not right. And you believe you're gonna strike out
or you believe you're gonna get hit before you know you can get
out there. So don't let positivity be the reason that
you stay in a slump longer than you should or get into a slump
in the first place. Now I don't believe in this stupid rah rah
BS. I think there's there's too much talk about staying
positive. And yeah.
Positivity to me in the real world just means reminding
yourself you belong on the field that you belong, whether you're
a three hole hitter and your last 20 just remind yourself
like, Hey, I'm a three hole hitter I belong here, Coach put
me here for a reason. I'm gonna get out of this, but I'm a good
hitter, and I deserve to stay here. So that's to me what
positivity means it just means being your biggest fan. And
being confident that you're there for a reason. And that you
can play at this level and that you can dominate this level. It
doesn't have to be this rah rah bs where you're just like, uh,
you know, that fake? You know, like that fake cheeriness that
no one really relates to number four, don't accept too much
advice. Lots of times when you're struggling, everyone
wants to come tell you how you can get out of it. They want to
give you this tip or this tip, Do this drill do this thing is
what I do is what I do. If you have 10 cooks in your kitchen,
it gets really hard to make a decent dinner, right? So when
you get into a slump, you really kind of need to put your armor
up a little bit to people that you don't really want their
input. You should always want good input from people that you
trust. And it takes a while to build that trust. So when I was
struggling, I always had a couple people on my team who I
could say, Hey, man, do you see anything different? You know, it
does something often to you, like, Can you give me some
feedback? Like what do you see? Why am I pitching so bad right
now? But I wouldn't want that from 10 different guys because
guess what, I'm probably going to get 10 different answers
because they all have 10 different perspectives and
they're probably telling them a lot of stuff that works just for
them now. It's great.
To get info from an inland like, I've learned so much from every
one of my teammates, I learned this thing from this guy and
this thing from that guy a slider grip from him a change of
grip from him, you know, a slide step tip from this guy, like you
learn so much from everybody. But when you're really
struggling, it's really tough to get feedback from 10 different
people and interpret it properly say, does this apply to me? Does
it not apply to me because if you had a sinker baller telling
a foreseen pitcher, that you should pitch this way, that
might be completely bad advice, it might be good to another
single roller blow up, you understand what I'm saying. So
find a couple people that you trust, and go to them. And if
you don't know who to trust, then find someone that you
really admire and respect and ask them. But when a lot of
people start bombarding, nod your head say thank you, you
know, you can certainly listen. But you shouldn't go running
around trying to make everyone happy and feel like you're
enacting. You're acting on their advice, because it can really
just make things way worse. And it can make that slump really
confusing and hard to get out of the next thing is make small
incremental changes. Here's a great example. You're a hitter,
you're a hitter and you're struggling at the plate. And
you're typically just, you know, lift your foot up and touch back
down kind of stride kind of hitter. Now, some hitters do
really, really well with a big leg kick, right? Like Josh
Donaldson in the big leagues. He's a great example as a big
leg kick when he hits. Now, if you're going in, do you have a
two week rough patch? Are you going to suddenly adopt some
massive leg kick and completely overhaul sort of the way your
swing starts? Maybe in the offseason, but probably not
during the MCs. And that's not an incremental change. That's a
pretty large change, right? You wouldn't start if you're too
close to hitting standards, you wouldn't start with one those
way open standards where you step into it, right? That's also
a really big change. Sometimes those things help. But most of
the time, that's too big of a change, because now it's like,
okay, I was uncomfortable. I was like a little bit off
mechanically, whatever. And now I'm doing this new thing. It's
also equally uncomfortable, cuz I've never done it before. And
it's very different than what I used to do. You don't want to
make that big swing either. So you want to make small
incremental changes. So if something's wrong with your
stride, whether you're pitcher hitter, or something's wrong
with the way you stay close, or your lunging your weight shifts,
work on the smallest possible change first, to see if that
gets you back on track. Because again, think about it slumps,
especially when there's a big mechanical component, like say
you're pitching mechanics a little off, you're leaking as a
hitter, whatever it is, those are not big changes. There's
just like little things that you got kind of wandered off track.
And now you don't feel very good at the plate. So it's going to
be a little thing that gets you back on track, right? So don't
make these huge changes that are going to probably make you
equally uncomfortable and keep you in that slump. And my last
tip here is take your your placebos. So what I mean by that
is, you know, that fancy wristband, or your cool
necklace, or your new bat, or your shiny cleats, whatever it
is all those things that help you like, look good, play good,
right? Those things don't actually make you a good
ballplayer, right. But they do put a little bit of a pep in
your step and they can make you excited to be at the ballpark
when you're otherwise maybe not right. It's a really cold
miserable day, but you've got a sweet new hoodie on like you
just got some new team gear. It makes that crappy day feel like
you know a little more fun right? So even though those
placebos and now hopefully hopefully you know what a
placebo is, it's when you take a sugar pill that has no actual
medicinal effects, but it makes you feel better anyway because
you believe in it. Those placebos whether it's just you
know, your new, you know, new gear, whatever it is, they don't
actually help. But sometimes they do help just because they
can give you that little confidence boost, when you're
down, they can put a little pep in your step. So if you have any
of those things, and you want to like a new wristband, something
cheap, that's going to help just like yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready
to hit today. I feel good, I look good. Ready to play good.
So be it whether it's your favorite bag of seeds, or an a
nice new Gatorade flavor, it could be something really small.
But I say take every little thing that can help. Definitely
don't make your mom and dad go buy a new one for $1 bat. But
every little thing that can help just to get that confidence back
up and you get a couple hits, and then boom, you're right back
in the thick of it. Okay, so hopefully today's video on how
to get out of a slump and baseball was helpful. It's a
really tough thing. And everyone remember everyone is going to
have a season that's full of waves, you're not going to hit
three out of 10 and hit 300 for the whole season, you're going
to go over 10 and then six for 11 and then you're going to go
three for nine and then you know seven for 12 it's always going
to be this ups and downs. And so you have to learn to deal with
the downs productively so you have shorter slumps and longer
successful periods. That's how you put together a really good
season, whether you're a hitter or a pitcher. Alright, so if you
enjoyed this video, definitely subscribe. Share this with a
friend. I'm sure you have other players or players on your team
if you're a coach or a parent who could use some slump advice.
And thanks again for watching. Be sure to check out the links
in the description below and I'll see you in the next video.