I think in order to get the most out of the athletic tools you bring to the task you& #39;ve gotta work with, not against yourself.

Because of this I generally hate working on mechanics with kids, as I& #39;d rather give them a task to solve *their way*, rather than *the correct way*.

I can stare at Ruth, Bonds, Aaron, Trout like everyone else & infer from the positions they start in & finish in what positions my kids should be in.

But there& #39;s a difference kids imitating a pro hitter & a kid being forced into mechanics that aren& #39;t compatible with their body.

Whether it& #39;s training kids through mechanics or through environments & task solving, we& #39;re looking for the same thing.

Adaptation

But if there is a difference, I think adaptation to the environment is more likely to preserve athleticism than an arbitrary mechanical approach.

This idea isn& #39;t some invention of mine, as what we are driving toward in youth baseball - mainly that external cues driven by feedback from the environment are going to provide superior results - has been substantiated in sport research over & over again. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19826287/ ">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19826287/...

What& #39;s more likely:

A child, with limited capacity for consistent motor control & proprioceptive development, will master a "correct" internal mechanical cue to solve a task

OR

That same child consistently solves the same task by deploying a variety of their movement solutions

We constantly mythologize the simplicity of the game:

See ball, hit ball
Just play catch

etc. But when we pair that desire for simplicity w/ constant klaxons going off whenever players move mechanically "wrong", regardless of the outcome, I think that dissonance hurts our kids.