Minnesota Blizzard Baseball

What some coaches and players make mistakes with is that some players need to hear entirely different lingo and language than another player, while describing the same thing. 

In this blog, I am going to be covering the outlines of mechanical and mental cues, to help yourself coach players differently or adjust for yourself.

• I. Mechanical Cues

Mechanically, we all have our struggles. The mechanical cue that you may want to focus on depends on multiple things, but first you must recognize where your "disconnection" or "deficiency" is. This could mean a range of things, including:

1. Identifying where your main miss is (Up, Down, Glove/Arm Side)
2. Where your arm pain or soreness is after throwing or during throwing
3. If you are having trouble spinning your breaking balls
4. Changeup struggles
5. Velocity deficiency compared to body composition

Some common mechanical cues that I use for my pitchers: 

Rotate in a Phone Booth - Keep your weight central and rotation tight, in your hula hoop

Use your right hip as your directional target (FBs)

Pull your hand diagonally through the zone (SL, SLV, 2-8 spin - see image below)

The blue lines signify someone (RHP or LHP) who's arm slot is upper 3/4's, 1:30/2:00 Arm slot.

The red lines signify someone (RHP or LHP) who's arm slot is lower 3/4's.

There are different cues for all different mechanicals flaws that can help you in bullpens, during catch play, and during games (if that works for you.) If you are interested in learning about all of the possible the in-depth cues that Coach Jensen and his team have, sign up for our Summer Bootcamps, camps, or remote training! You never know what will work best for you, until you work to your strengths.

• II. Mental Cues

90% of the game is in our head. Truth be told, it is the biggest hoop to jump through at times, but once you are able to figure yourself out, it is smooth sailing - getting hitters out becomes a lot easier. Of course, there is never just one thing mentally that causes a player to struggle. Confidence is likely a large factor, with many other things building into that. 

I like to think of mental cues as re-centering tools. Living through the game and playing the game ONE PITCH AT A TIME is something that I and many other pitching coaches preach throughout the country. One of the main questions is: how do you re-center yourself after you haven't executed a couple pitches in a row? 

Resetting yourself. Resetting yourself and your mental state should be built into your routine, like discussed in the previous blog "Execution Only Happens With Confidence" . This can be many different things. A common form of resetting your mental state is finding a common sight upon fields. An example of this: Jake's reset is taking a step off, staring at the top right lightpole in right field, and then he takes a deep breath and locks back in on his catcher. Some guys inflict pain upon themselves, like pinching their arm to stimulate their body and feel something other than your heart rate. 

• My personal reset cue was to roll my right ankle. Half-stretch, half-pain - I injured my ankle a lot throughout the course of my life, so I was able to make that my "cue." The end goal was to feel something different, to reset my mind to be able to lock back in on the task at hand. 

A reset can prove helpful for many reasons, but mainly to slow the game down. As pitchers, we control the game, we control the dynamic, we control how fast everything goes and how the pace is dictated. 

You can do other things for a reset besides looking at something or feeling something. I also personally tried to go to a happy place for a brief moment to increase my morale. My favorite food growing up was buttered noodles with some parmesan cheese. I stepped off the rubber, closed my eyes, took my hat off, took a deep breath, and imagined those buttered noodles. As silly as it sounds, giving your mind a break from processing at bat after at bat - or after you throw a couple of balls in a row - gives yourself a morale boost.

Another mental cue that helps differentiate the field from your everyday life, and how to shed burdens that you have been carrying on your shoulders from school, family, or life, is "taking off your chain." One of the worst things you can do is take something that is an off the field struggle and bring it on the field.

If you wear a chain, you can use it as a symbol of shedding your burdens you carry and take it off before you step on the field for practice or a game. This does not have to be a chain, you can use this for many other things. Some of my college athletes use the exchange of their turf shoes for their cleats before practices and games as the shedding of their burdens. Some athletes that I coach use the tape that they put on their wrist as their shield from outside burdens. These are all effective mental cues that lead up to success on the mound.

This Winter, in our Elite Pitching Program, we have had some pretty impressive jumps. Using some of these physical and mental cues, allowing our athletes to learn about their bodies in space, 27 of our 30 High School pitchers have eclipsed their PR's from before we began November 18. 

Learning about yourself is one of the most under looked factors when it comes to pitching development. If you are unaware of where your body is in space, recording video and matching up physical cues with what you see on the video allows you to process and understand what things are supposed to look and feel like.

We are running summer pitching bootcamps this upcoming summer of 2025.

If you want to learn more, or get in contact with me about how to train with myself and The Minnesota Blizzard, email me at michael@minnesotabaseballacademy.com