Reclaim your downtime
December 10, 2011 by Coach McCreary
Filed under Coaching, Off-Season
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| An iPod could be your off-season’s best piece of baseball equipment. |
One of the biggest challenges for student-athletes at any level is managing their time. Juggling the time commitments needed to be the best student and best athlete you can be is no easy task. Ironically, when I was a student in high school and in college, my grades tended to go up during the baseball season. I’ve heard other current and former student-athletes say the same thing so I was not unique. I think what causes this to happen is the fact that the student-athlete knows he/she does not have as much time to mess around during the season and makes adjustments to manage their time better. This better management of studying, sleeping, eating. and free time usually turn into better performance in the classroom. At least it did for me. On the flip side, the off-season is when procrastination tended to set in for me because I falsely thought that I had all the time in the world. This led to more laziness and other habits that tended to waste more time during the day.
If you are a player or coach and are falling into this same off-season mode, then reclaim your downtime! By far, the best advice I can give on how to do this is to get an iPod or MP3 player. If you have one already, start using it. I have an iPod so I’m not too sure how it works with other MP3 players but iTunes, in my opinion, is one of the best resources that currently exists. There are thousands of free podcasts and iTunesU presentations that can be downloaded to your iPod to make your downtime more productive. Podcasts on everything imaginable exist. Start looking around for some that interest you. I tend to focus on the ones that deal with baseball and coaching. I’ve even purchased audiobooks and listen to them on my iPod as well.
Whenever you are doing a somewhat brainless activity (bike riding, jogging, shoveling snow, etc.), put in those ear buds and start turning your downtime into productive time to learn something new.
Take better control of your downtime and “brainless time.” You will learn much more and will become a better informed player or coach as a result.
FYI: Baseball By The Yard podcasts will be arriving in the near future! Stay tuned!
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