GUELPH ROYALS HIGH PERFORMANCE PROGRAM
MISSION STATEMENT
2019
MISSION
We believe in building a baseball program that emphasizes long term athletic development and a culture of commitment, competitiveness and teamwork, so that every player is afforded the opportunity to grow as an athlete and person.
For us, the personal development of each player is just as important as the athletic development. We believe in a culture that sets goals, embraces hard work, learns from failure and sacrifices for the good of the team.
PURPOSE
A comprehensive baseball program that is designed to offer players a highly competitive and intensive environment. Players will have opportunity to follow a 12 month baseball program that includes year round team activities with a strong focus on strength & conditioning in the off season. Players will also have the opportunity to play in the OBA Elite Division and attend US Showcase Tournaments.
VALUES
❝ Playing it safe is losing by default. Justin Su’a
Selfless (Team) Players invited to this program are taught to embrace team goals and support their teammates at all times. They compete hard against their teammates in practice so they are prepared to compete hard with them in games. They understand the importance of team for their own development and are always looking for opportunities to make their teammates stronger.
Excellence (Work) Players invited to this program are taught to love the work of getting better. They embrace every opportunity to learn and understand that their athletic development will require their dedication, commitment and a positive attitude toward meeting our program standards. The program is designed to challenge them and to push them to reach their highest potential.
Energy (Competition) Players invited to this program are taught to love competition. Win or lose, they embrace it as the opportunity to grow and test their skills. We believe that playing the best competition will enable the very best in our players. It will require them to find and develop the fortitude, the camaraderie, the teamwork and the desire that we call “energy.”
SUCCESS
“ Success is rooted in a constant state of learning, humility, and a sustained effort at improvement.”
If you want to achieve something, you need to be willing to go into the hard places - you need risk, and challenge, and adversity. You need a goal to push you and that goal must be uncomfortably difficult, out of reach, and it requires you to become something better than your current state if you hope to achieve it.
That is the reason we seek to join the Elite Division of Ontario.
We believe Guelph has a place among the best programs in Ontario.
PROGRAM PHILOSOPHY
Our philosophy begins with the premise that process and environment have a greater impact on athletic development than any other factor. The instruction that a player receives will only work when it is combined with the right environment and with a commitment to process within team planning.
We believe in teaching sound baseball fundamentals, but we also believe that the high school athlete must pay greater attention to training strength, mobility, competitiveness and intent.
PROCESS
Our focus is on the process, not the results. Results can lie; they are often beyond our control. We know that in the long run, results are produced by the processes you faithfully follow. We can and do always control the process.
● Being process oriented means following strict routines for the organization of the pre-game, the dugout, throwing and pitching routines, post-game recovery and practice habits.
● Being process-oriented means focussing ourselves around learning goals rather than performance goals; it means focussing on one specific goal at a time.
● Being process-oriented means being patient and taking consistent small steps forward. We teach the players that one does not leap towards their goal; its a slow, deliberate process of daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal progress.
ATHLETIC DEVELOPMENT
We believe in training our players as athletes, not just as baseball players. This is a crucial age for players to develop strength, mobility and competitive intent.
● The program will prioritize Strength and Conditioning training, especially during the offseason.
● It will maximize the use of constraints (resistance bands/weighted balls/plyo care/weighted bats) to train. Constraint-based training has become more popular within baseball culture because it has proven to be the best method to train intent and develop explosive athletic movement.
● The program understands that athletic development requires a focus on external cues. The Bernstein principle has proven that athletes are better served by focussing on the external goal of their action, rather than by thinking about their internal movements. The focus of the coach is on creating the environment that will produce adaptation, challenge and self-discovery.
● We believe a comprehensive skill development program must train instincts and motor skills. Baseball practice needs to include drills that work on anticipation, processing, decision-making and reaction time. Its needs to include failure and stimulus to adapt to the environment, much like in a game. By developing drills that test their sensory action and challenge their movements, we can train them to be more instinctive and reactive players.
DATA
We believe data is crucial to player development. In the off-season we organize consistent tracking of pitching velocity, throwing velocity, speed and exit velocity. These metrics are used to gauge improvement and also identify issues. The numbers help the athlete “see” progress, as well as it aids in the definition of clear goals. Instead of trying to “throw harder” we can set goals to gain (x) mph. We follow up that off-season program with in-season measurements, both in competition (game) and out of game (practice) setting.
The numbers we chart also reflect the key metrics that will become important to the recruiting process when they attend showcase camps. These numbers will provide all of us with the ability to properly situate each athlete within their age group and make proper
decisions about where to focus our training and where to focus our exposure opportunities. TRUST
We believe that trust is essential to the training process. For us, building trust means telling players the truth, even when the truth is not something they want to hear. We believe that feedback and communication is essential for the athlete to understand their role, our expectations and what we are working on with them. We develop this feedback in a number of ways. First, we encourage questions and open dialogue between coaches, players and parents. All questions are welcome, including discussions of training goals, positions and playing time. We have always found that a respectful, open dialogue tends to produce the best environment for all concerned. Second, we will provide the players with ongoing verbal feedback, often in 1 on 1 meetings, as well as written feedback in the form of online coaches journal. Video analysis will play a large role in our program.
Additionally, we believe in trusting the player. Much of our training is directed toward the player developing self-awareness about their own skills, habits and needs as an athlete. They need to develop a “feel” for their position, the game and their own body. This feel can be developed by training instinct, creating challenging practice environments and allowing the player to fail by applying their own perspective to a task.
OUR RESOURCES
We believe in transparency, collaboration and constantly improving not only our own education, but the education of the players and parents in the program. Here is a current list of resources we are using to develop the program and players.
PPA HITHOUSE
The program works closely with the instructors of the PPA Hithouse to develop winter training goals. The instructors at PPA work weekly with the players at team sessions and also work closely with many of our athletes in private instruction.
THROWING/PITCHING PROGRAM
Our pitching program is derived from Driveline Baseball (www.drivelinebaseball.com).
The program has purchased Hacking the Kinetic Chain, which includes constant support from Driveline staff as we personalize the program to each athlete. This was Year 1 of our Driveline implementation and we continue to work as a coaching staff and with Driveline to optimize the program for our environment, athletes and season outline.
In addition, we have networked with other groups developing a Driveline program, including the Toronto based Baseball Development Group (www.baseballdevelopmentgroup.com)/@baseballdevelopmentgroup) and Tread Athletics ( @treadathletics).
The Baseball Development Group is customizing an assessment and screening program to use this Fall with our team to further develop our throwing program for all players (pitching and position players)
STRENGTH/CONDITIONING
Our Strength & Conditioning program is guided by the Gryphons Performance Centre at the University of Guelph, led by Josh Ford and Mac James . This Strength/Conditioning focus is further supported by Pat Coughlin at the Hithouse.
We recommend the following online resources that we continue to learn from for linking strength training with baseball focus: @dr.dalebartekdpt @cressysportsperformance
RECOVERY
Our recovery routines have been greatly influenced by Driveline Baseball and by studying the work published by the Baseball Development Group, especially as it pertains to the importance of the CNS for athletic development. See: Recovery for Baseball: Key Concepts, Thoughts and Practical Applications
HITTING
The use of weighted bats, together with other over/underload implements, has gained traction in baseball as we continue to learn about their advantages for developing better movement patterns. We have been using the Hitting Jack for two years. This past season we invested in Driveline’s program of weighted hitting plyo balls and have incorporated it into our hitting practice and pre-game BP.
The next progression will be utilizing weighted bats. We are currently beginning to look at the Driveline Axe bats as a potential tool for our hitters. Additionally, we have recently networked with Chad Longworth (www.chadlongworthonline.com/ @clongbaseball). We think there is a lot to learn from this hitting instructor and look forward to looking into his hitting program for potential implementation in Winter 2019.
CONCLUSION
The program is committed to innovation and applying advanced baseball training resources to player development. The resources will evolve over time, but the desire to be early adopters of new technology and science will remain a core principle of our programming.