“I think people’s thinking process is too bound by convention or analogy to prior experiences. It’s rare that people try to think of something on a first principles basis. They’ll say, “We’ll do that because it’s always been done that way.” Or they’ll not do it because “Well, nobody’s ever done that, so it must not be good. But that’s just a ridiculous way to think. You have to build up the reasoning from the ground up—“from the first principles” is the phrase that’s used in physics. You look at the fundamentals and construct your reasoning from that, and then you see if you have a conclusion that works or doesn’t work, and it may or may not be different from what people have done in the past.” – Elon Musk

First Principles Thinking: Building Better Pitchers and Hitters

Two separate three-part series blogs detailing my thoughts on foundations for the swing and throw, inspired by Elon Musk’s physics-based model of first principles thinking. 

May
13

First Principles Pitching: Introduction

It was my junior year of college when I had a profound experience that impacts my coaching style today. The year, up until then, had largely been a disappointment for myself. The winter prior, I experienced and had success using new training tools. Of those included weighted baseballs. I decided

May
13

First Principles Pitching: Overcoming Inertia

First Principle #1: Overcoming Inertia Inertia, by definition, is the tendency for an object to resist changes to its current state pf motion. A body at rest will stay in rest. A body in motion will stay in motion, unless acted upon by an external force. When we throw a

Jun
29

First Principles Pitching: Creating Leverage

I chose the word leverage for this section specifically because I believe it captures at its core what pitchers are trying to do between leg lift and foot plant. We’re not quite dealing with fulcrums and levers. Humans are omnidirectional movers; there is one “lever” that controls the throw. But

 

Jul
31

First Principles Pitching: Rotation

If there’s an inefficiency in the delivery, you can usually pin it back to some subset of bad rotation. Something either isn’t turning when it should (e.g. pushing), or it’s turning when it shouldn’t (e.g. spinning). Of all the style involved in a throw, rotation is the one thing that

Oct
16

First Principles Thinking: What Elon Musk and Mike Leach can teach us when it comes to building better hitters

In the back room of a drab Moscow restaurant, Elon Musk had finally had enough. The year was 2002. Musk was in Russia looking at the price for what he thought was two Depnr rockets. The decommissioned missiles were the start of what he hoped would become a world changing

 

Oct
20

First Principles Part Two: Creating Leverage

If overcoming inertia is how a hitter moves sideways, creating leverage is where a hitter works from when both feet come back to the ground. Snapshots in time aren’t great ways to evaluate the totality of a movement. But the geometry of where guys work from at landing gives us

 

Oct
27

First Principles Part Three: Evaluating Rotation

How guys rotate is the most complicated, but most important part of the puzzle. Of all the style involved in the swing, rotation is the one thing that unites us all. It doesn’t have to look a certain way, but certain things do need to happen. Great hitters are great