by Ron Wolforth, Texas Baseball Ranch

Whenever a young man breaks a record at the Texas Baseball Ranch, I will as a habit, make the comment…

"Wow…just think, if you can improve that much every week, by the time you are X (typically I add 10 years to their current age) you'll throw it 132 mph…and that'll be a record."

Everyone laughs, but my point is made...

While we all know that intellectually, emotionally we just can't seem to get our head around a plateau. We just assume we must improve from yesterday and give it no more thought than that.
   
But on the topic of plateaus, we must take a cue from the stonecutter. Sometimes what appears on the outside as zero progress, on the inside is just the opposite. And suddenly all the tedious prep work turns into dramatic change, revealing how the effort us rewarded.
   

Most of you know how much I like numbers. Let me give you some numbers to chew on. Let's just call it a friendly reality check into my world as a professional teacher.
   
Let's say we have a 12 year old boy and he was very slightly above average in velocity at 58mph. One percent of 58 mph equals .58 mph…or roughly 1/2 of a mph.
   
So I ask you… how about a goal of let's just improve 1/2 of a percent each week? That goal SOUNDS VERY reasonable right? That's just .25 mph per week.
 
If this young man improved just 1/2% a week, in one year he would gain 15 mph in a year, so at 13 he would be throwing 73 mph, which certainly places him in another level far above average. Well done!

But if he just kept up a pace of just half of that gain for the next 5 years..or 1/4 % each week or .125 mph per week…or in other words gain 6.5 mph per year until he was 18 years old…he would be:

• 80mph at 14
• 86mph at 15
• 93mph at 16
• 99mph at 17
• 105mph at 18

And…that…ladies and gentlemen… would indeed be a record.


Week to week, small incremental gains of 1/4%, 1/2% or even 1% are very, very, very, very hard to notice…. EVEN if you are measuring on a regular basis.

• And if you aren't the obsessive record keeper I am?
  Tougher still.
• And if you are like 90% of the population and don't measure at all?
  It's almost impossible to detect small incremental gains. 

And that's in fact how all of us improve… incrementally… and painfully slow…over time…which can be a big problem if we don't routinely measure our progress.

If we don't measure, we obviously will be even more susceptible to being discouraged or disappointed by our 'apparent' lack of progress and the occasional failures and setbacks that invariably litter each of our paths.
Maybe that disappointment is justified…maybe not…but if we aren't measuring it…we are even more vulnerable to any hint that we are just not making progress. Without objective feedback it is very easy to be distracted or derailed from our stated mission or purpose. And even if we measure… because of the natural ebb and flow of human events… we may even appear to be going backward in any one snapshot in time.

I remind everyone…it obviously doesn't take large gains for someone to develop into a phenomenal talent. What is does take is persistence, perseverance, attention to detail and hours (around 10,000) of deliberate practice.

1 Plateaus are natural  
I've been doing this for 15 years and have had dozens and dozens of amazing improvement stories of 12-15 mph in a year…but no-one has ever improved 1% every week for a year. Plateaus are natural parts of EVERYONE's growth. In fact, small 'plateaus' happened even within these incredible stories of growth.

2 'Disappointing' and 'discouraging'  
Very frequently I see solid and steady incremental growth being categorized and labeled by athletes and parents as 'disappointing' and 'discouraging' simply because the gains were 'so small'. They want to be 'there' already. But instead, through their own erroneous and short sighted assessment of their progress and the negative words they used to describe their situation, they have actually sown the seeds of their ultimate failure.

3 Become discouragement proof  
To truly be exceptional you must first learn to become discouragement proof…or at the very least… discouragement resistant. And truly understanding plateaus and small incremental improvement is very important to that end.

4 Enjoy the plateaus  
At the Ranch we say…To become great…you first must learn to enjoy the plateaus.


Ron has chosen to stop part I with these 4 concepts - in the hopes they sink in first. In Part II, to be published in a week or two, he'll discuss some of the systematic steps they take at the Texas Baseball Ranch when an athlete's measurements are trending down. Stay tuned.