Open Letter to Baseball

My name is Donnie Watson, and I am writing this letter because baseball is broken. The sport we love, we pursue and discuss through endless hours of practice, games, tournaments and travel is doing more harm than good to the majority of its developing players, and betraying the trust of its biggest fans; their parents.

Because of my desire to affect real change in baseball’s injury-repair-injury epidemic I have stepped away from Division 1 coaching and will be speaking, teaching and training athletes in in North Texas this year and coaching at Trinity Christian Academy in Addison, Texas.

Most importantly, I am working night and day to share my passion with players and their parents and coaches. Together we are questioning and overcoming the traditional methods used to develop athletes in our sport. Baseball is hidebound in tradition — it is passed from father (and mother) to son — and slow to accept change. Unfortunately, if you’re a parent, this means that you are not only immersing your son in the very methods that set him up for failure, but you’re also paying good money for this privilege AND maybe even scolding him if he doesn’t embrace the team “concept.” Ouch.

Because of the urgency of our mission at the Complete Athlete I also have an offer for you as my thanks for reading this letter and passing it along to your friends. Please read on…

Why this is important
Having experienced every level of baseball’s evolution in Texas since the early 70′s, I have an information set that will cause you to rethink the traditional choices available to teach and develop your baseball playing athlete. And this isn’t just one coach’s observations. Our research and performance solutions have been developed alongside many of baseball’s great throwing mechanists including Dr. Tom House, Nolan Ryan and Dr. James Andrews.

There’s a lot of info, and it is next to impossible to keep it short and sweet, but I’ll try to keep it simple.

Simply put, as I said before, baseball is broken, and the environment encountered by many of today’s young athletes is full of information, people and issues that not only inhibit athletic development but also make it more difficult for these athletes to become leaders on and off the field.

Some of these issues include:

1. Misinformation about effective and safe pitching/throwing mechanics based on years of unchallenged theory and opinion
2. Dramatic increases in the number of avoidable arm, shoulder and lower back injuries as a direct result of improper mechanics, overuse and a lack of functional strength
3. Unhealthy competition environments where the result of the game becomes more important than how the game is played and where leadership examples set on the field and in the stands stand in stark contrast to the ideals we hope our young athletes copy
4. Missed opportunities to teach life lessons about nutrition, in the context of athletic development, where young athletes will find the information relevant to their performance
5. Cavalier attempts to address and eradicate the use of steroids and the just as frightening and important: the misuse of legal nutritional supplements in all sports
6. The lack of strength and flexibility to support the specific useable strength requirements of the overhead/rotational sport athlete, the workload cycles pitchers and position players incur throughout the year and the general disregard and disconnect the traditional power-based programs have shown to accept any responsibility for their part in the injury/surgery epidemic in our sport
7. General confusion about the recruiting process and how to compete for college scholarships and/or professional money.

I bet you didn’t know how broken things could be, but I’m guessing you suspected something was wrong with the very systems we’ve relied on, funded and trusted.

Confusing Activity with Progress
You spend a lot of money and I know the outcome you hope to orchestrate. But for all the games we log each year in high school, summer and fall, not to mention all the lessons, camps and clinics we attend in the course of a year, I have yet to find a baseball player of any age that can tell me:

1. Based on science, the mechanics of a safe and efficient throwing delivery,
2. The functional strength requirements to duplicate a repetitive motion without getting hurt,
3. The nutritional factors needed to ensure optimal performance during a year of prepare, compete and repair cycles and,
4. The mental/emotional competencies he must master as the pool of talent and strategic execution improves to stay competitive.

It sounds like a lot to learn, but taken step-by-step, the boys that embrace it are the ones that stay healthy and surge ahead of their peers. As a parent you need to know these answers too.

And as a concerned parent, I want you to join me in the health and performance debate! We develop leaders on and off the field and build better baseball players because they want to take responsibility (yes, take responsibility) for their own development.

The Bottom Line?
The most important period of your son’s performance cycle is about to begin.

90% of skill development happens from the last day of his spring season until the first day of the next spring season. As I mentioned before, there is also a tremendous amount of urgency in our mission — if we do not take charge now and begin training athletes like your son and his teammates in the correct methods for developing strength, technique and performance maintenance, another 8 months of potentially career-ending activities will ensue.

So, to introduce our methods and mindset to you and your son, I will be opening up our doors in the next couple weeks, at Trinity Christian Academy, and at the Ben Hogan Center in Fort Worth, Texas, to deliver our special Weekend Performance Symposiums. I want to personally invite you and your son to attend.

Why We’re Important
There is a pre-programmed structure to our system. Without following the steps, athletes and parents get short-changed and spend too much time (and money) “catching up.” You don’t go to college after sixth grade, and you don’t step into our Pitcher Prep training without the proper foundation.

The correct progression is as follows:

1. We start with the Performance Symposium Class. This classroom session details just how the successful got where they are, and how so many other factors derail the careers of the most talented, driven athletes in sports. From functional strength, proper bio-mechanics, the mental/emotional equation and the nutritional abuse we’re heaping on our kids, we cover the four legs of the “table” of success and honestly address the issues and systems that are screaming for change NOW.And the best part is this isn’t radical mumbo-jumbo. It is proven science combined with proven training and programs. You’ll watch your son’s eyes glaze over as the information flows. The good news is that he’ll embrace 70-80% of it out of the box, and we reinforce it all in following sessions. It takes time, as all good things do.
2. After the Performance Symposium Class, comes the Performance Clinicevent, where our athletes soak up many of the most important lessons they’ll ever learn, in what we call the “Prepare-Perform-Repair” cycle. From the vital steps in our Dynamic Warm-up (imagine cutting the number of warm up throws needed to play in half and multiply that savings over a season of games and practices) to the strength-building weight and cords drills that will actually have pitchers stronger after a season this session lays the ultimate foundation for success. It also lets your son know, in no uncertain terms, that he’s responsible for his success, and failure to take charge means settling for less.
3. Pitcher’s Prep and Prep-U is where the results reveal themselves. These scheduled sessions hammer home the lessons learned in steps 1 and 2, and propel your son into a leadership role for himself, and others. The multiple sessions here follow a logical day-to-day progression of training steps that create the finely-tuned rhythm pitchers must embrace to pitch in a rotation.

The Epiphany
After your son completes our three-step process, he doesn’t need more lessons or weekly sessions with a pitching coach. He is now empowered to be his own best coach. An occasional Complete Athlete bull-pen session may be in order to help fine tune or answer questions. It will also help him stay on track if he works with classmates (the best form of peer pressure), but for the most part he is now a battleship steaming along certain in it’s course and mission.

The only reason to get together is for high-level counseling, or perhaps for our Recruiting Module or Assessment (nutritional or mental/emotional testing) Sessions to round out his profile for scouts’ or recruiters’ evaluations.

It is hard to believe someone in this age of baseball would advise you to stop taking lessons, but believe you me, it’s a billion dollar industry that’s teaching more falsehoods and hearsay than one could imagine, and it’s time to break the mold, before we break the bank.

Your Next Steps
To get started and reach more athletes and parents more quickly, we’ve actually reduced the price of our 3-Day Weekend Performance Symposium/Clinic Sessions (a $599 weekend that combines steps 1 & 2) and are delivering it in two sessions at a new rate of $299.00

So, you save $300 and you leave the symposium weekend armed to the teeth with great information and a PLAN. We will have done our job informing you on what to look for and avoid in further training, and change starts with information.

And, once you attend the weekend Performance Symposium and see, hear and feel firsthand, what the right combination of training and instruction can do to make your son his own best coach and leader, and watch his reaction, two things will happen:

1. You’ll see a change starting to build in his interest and intensity
2. You will immediately want to book your Prep-U Session. Prep-U will translate much of the Performance Symposium classroom lessons and physical workouts into a regular weekly regimen each Athlete can follow rigorously.

The Peformance Syposiums are available on a first-come, first-served basis and class size is limited because these sessions are cementing into your son (you’ll learn too) the why’s and how’s of proper training, and that takes more than just going through the motions in a crowd.

And if you’re not convinced these two action-packed days didn’t make a difference, we’ll give you your money back.

Like I said, I know you’re paying a lot to put your son in the best position to succeed in his baseball career, and we’re sincerely interested in helping you make the most of your investment, so if this interests you, make your reservation today while classroom space for the FREE Symposium, and Clinic Sessions is still open.

I also want to speak with you directly to explain how the big picture relates to you, your athlete, his pursuit of high-performance and the attention that comes with it. If you received this letter in an email, please reply directly to this email with the best time and telephone number to reach you. If you are reading it online, click here to email me.

You can also call me anytime @ 214.704.8017 if you want to chat sooner.

My heart gets heavy when I see young men robbed of their biological potential via overuse and improper training, and it lifts dramatically each time I get an email or call asking for a space in our program. We are making a difference, and it starts with determined parents who want nothing less than the best for their kids.

Thank you for reading this letter, and for opening your mind to the possibilities. With your support we can help your son blaze a trail to his potential. It’s powerful stuff — becoming a self-determined leader — and the rewards will last his lifetime, and maybe change (or save) an American pastime in the process.

My Sincere Thanks,

Donnie Watson
The Complete Athlete

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Phone: 214.704.8017
Website: www.complete-athlete.com
Email: donnie@complete-athlete.com