Brent Pourciau
Alright this is Brent Pourciau at TopVelocity.net and I am here with Jim “The Rookie” Morris and we are going to talk some baseball today. Jim, I would like to say it is an honor to have you here at TopVelocity.net, I want to tell everybody that you have a great story. Everyone can go out and see the movie, The Rookie, but today I would like to talk some pitching with you mainly. Maybe you could start with telling everyone what you are doing today.

Jim Morris
As of now I am a motivational speaker. I speak all over the world and I talk about second chances and chasing your dreams and having faith in sometimes things that we can not see, to go out there and reach a little farther than we thought we could actually go. That was my whole deal with my high school kids at Reagan County High school and that was the deal with me. I mean I pushed it on them and they pushed it back. Because of that now they showed me that sometimes we are not to old to chase our dreams and I get to go around the world and talk about it.

Brent Pourciau
That is great! What kind of groups do you speak too?

Jim Morris
I speak to all sorts of people. I speak to corporations, I speak to churches, universities, high schools, elementary schools. I am a spokesperson for a organization called arms of hope that gives kids and women get out of abusive relationships second chances.

Brent Pourciau
Alright, well that is great! Like I said it is great to have you and I want to, for the community, I sent you that analysis I did of your pitching did you get to look at that?

Jim Morris
I did! Chapman was a little more centered than me.

Brent Pourciau
Yes, I just felt like, I mean, it is amazing when you are being compared to Chapman who is able to throw three digits. Your velocity was already exceptional. All I saw in the difference was his ability to generate a little more momentum into his front foot.

Jim Morris
He certainly did and he was very limber looking. The tendon strength and the ligament strength that goes with the joints make him able to really reach out there and pop it!

Brent Pourciau
That brings up a good point. I would like to start with you going over your surgeries. Is it true that you had nine surgeries?

Jim Morris
Yes, I have had five elbow surgeries and well now five shoulder surgeries.

Brent Pourciau
Wow, I can’t imagine surviving that. So, can you go into when your arm started to breakdown what kind of pains were you having and experiences you were having on the mound?

Jim Morris
Mine started when I was a teenager. I played summer league ball, I was in a football town, so football was number one and we knew baseball was a step child. So we got to play 10 games a summer and if we got in the playoffs a few more but I started getting sore…You know when your father is the coach and he goes can you pitch? Your not going to say, NO! I wasn’t able to say, NO because I wanted the ball and I wanted to be able to throw the rock and consequently I got sore but it would pass and I thought nothing of it. Two years into minor league ball I wake up in extended, not extended, fall league down there with the Brewers and my roommate is Plezia, Dan Plezia and I wake up and my arm is locked from the elbow. My arm is swollen like a softball and you know we are stupid and we are young. So I set my arm out on a table and Dan is trying to straighten it and we can’t get it straight. So I have to go into the trainers, the athletic trainers and I said you know I can’t straighten my arm out and basically what happened by that point was Doctor Frank Jobe went in and did Tommy John surgery on me. He took a ligament out of my ankle and stuck it in my elbow and when I woke up he said, “Jim, you did most of this damage when you were 15 or 16 years old.” I looked back at that when I was a coach and said, “You know what that makes sense because I teach my kids fastball, fastball, change up, fastball, fastball, change up until they are old enough to throw breaking pitches and everything else that goes with that and I keep a steady count or pitch count which I never did as a teenager. I was paying the price for it and he said. “You completely tore your Medial Collateral ligament and 80% of it was done when you were a teenager.

Brent Pourciau
Which is a common injury today. Andrews’ statistics show that Tommy John surgeries have gone up 700% in the past 5 years. What would you credit this too besides throwing a lot of pitches? Would you say it is a mechanical issue?

Jim Morris
For me learning how to pitch! I was a little bit jerky when I was younger and overthrowing I think is a good term. I think I tried to overthrow, I tried to throw the ball through a wall every pitch. I didn’t try to hold back at all and I was not smart in that. In today’s society we have a bunch of kids who want to get to the big leagues so they are pushing their bodies as hard as they can. They know have their own personal trainers and they play select ball. So instead of playing a good schedule for a teenager of 40 or 50 games, they are playing 150. They are playing as much as the big leaguers are and I just think that is wear and tear.

Brent Pourciau
Right and you even look at these travel teams and they 13 kids on the team and not only do those kids play in the field but they are also the pitching staff.

Jim Morris
Yeah, they never rest.

Brent Pourciau
Yeah they don’t give them a rest and you are right if they are a kid or pitcher who gets on the mound and they are just trying to throw it as hard as they can every time then they are just making themselves more vulnerable to injury, especially if they have bad mechanics.

Jim Morris
Absolutely

Brent Pourciau
So why did your surgeries move into the shoulder?

Jim Morris
You know after I had the Tommy John surgery I concentrated so much on getting my elbow back into shape that I neglected my shoulder. Consequently I didn’t do any stretching or any weight work and to credit the old school thought when I started playing minor league ball you didn’t lift weights. You ran and then if you were sore you ran some more and on top of that you ran a little bit more. So weights were not a big deal and then the second time I came back weights were huge. So I think that if you keep your body in tone with weights and cardo then I think you are a lot better off. Now a days I think the training regime is a lot better for kids but I still think a lot of kids get out there and see a radar gun behind the screen and the first thing they want to do is light it up.

Brent Pourciau
What shoulder surgeries did you have? What did they work on?

Jim Morris
The big one that I had was the first one when Dr. Jobe went in and tightened the rotator cuff muscles, all four of them and then later on after I had really quit minor league ball and gone back to college I had one and I had a three and a half inch bone spur with a prong on it that went up the top part of my arm into my rotator cuff. It had sheared my cuff and they had to go back in and shave the joint out so it would fit properly and they cut 80% of the top of my deltoid out because I had fraid the muscle so bad.

Brent Pourciau
Is that like an acromioplasty where they shave the tip of the acromion?

Jim Morris
Yes, Sir.

Brent Pourciau
I had a similar operation as well. So, what was, about four surgeries in the shoulder or was that three?

Jim Morris
Up into that point. That was the fourth one. I have had one since then because if you start having bone spurs then you have a tendency to have them again. It was just a little bone spur and they pulled it out before it got bad and I have been fine ever since. I can go out and throw now. I just can’t find anybody to throw catch with me!

Brent Pourciau
You should come down here I would love to play catch with you. How old where you at your last surgery? Not the one you had later in life but that one you had while you were still playing or were you still playing?

Jim Morris
By that time I had quit. I was playing college football at that point and I was 28 years old when I had that surgery.

Brent Pourciau
28, what number was that when you were 28? How many more did you have after you were 28?

Jim Morris
I only had one more in my shoulder. That was the big one and when I woke up Dr. Ryan, the guy who did it for me said, “Jimmy, you are not going to pitch again, you can’t, you do not have anything in there to pitch.” The body is an amazing thing and I speak at churches for a reason because I have a lot of Faith. For whatever reason I came back not only throwing extremely hard but a lot harder than I had been throwing before when I was supposed to be so young and talented.

Brent Pourciau
So how old were you at that last surgery?

Jim Morris
28

Brent Pourciau
So basically from 28 to 35, 35 is when you went to that tryout, correct?

Jim Morris
Yes, Sir.

Brent Pourciau
So that was 7 years and that was when you were with the boys, with the team and you were pretty much a coach. You weren’t considering yourself a player anymore, right?

Jim Morris
I was coaching around the state of Texas in different high schools and I have a thing against pitching machines because if I stand behind the plate I do not see the kids swings as well as I do on the mound throwing to them. So I taught myself basically from step one over again how to be smooth and not put much pressure on my arm while I am pitching to these kids so I can throw everyday to them. In doing that I can watch them in their approach to the balls that are coming at them and over that period of time, 7 years of batting practice, my arm strengthened up.

Brent Pourciau
Do you credit all that batting practice to your rehabilitation or were you doing any other type of conditioning or anything?

Jim Morris
I was lifting a lot of weight! Not only that I was stretching at the time because I was throwing long toss everyday with my outfielders and pitchers. Just the mechanics of needing to throw everyday, making yourself as smooth as possible, taking as much pressure off of the arm as you possibly can, the ball started jumping. I didn’t even realize that I was throwing hard because it was so free and easy. It wasn’t like I was trying, like when I was young, to really gut it out. I was just letting it go.

Brent Pourciau
It sounds like you said you were lifting weights, you had a good strength and conditioning program. Were you doing that with your team? Was that why you were lifting?

Jim Morris
I did that through my high school with my high school baseball kids. We lifted three times a week, rain or shine we lifted and if it took away from batting practice so be it because I wanted my kids strong. Not only just for baseball but for the rest of their lives. The more you can learn and the more you can mentally strengthen yourself the better off you are.

Brent Pourciau
Right, I am a big advocate of strength and conditioning but it has to be a very intelligent program. Can you tell us more about the lifting program you all were doing?

Jim Morris
We had a basic strength program where you do dead lifts, squats, a lot of leg stuff and a lot of core stuff. We did a whole lot of abdominal things and we did Dr. Jobe’s exercises for the shoulders and cuff. It wasn’t just get out there and lift the gym. It was little bitty tiny increments of weights and strengthening the joints, so that they could take the stress of either throwing, hitting or running, anything that we had to come up. I wanted them to be prepared for. So we did heavy weights but we also did little things that sometimes people think are tedious but man they sure do save you a lot of heartache and pain.

Brent Pourciau
Exactly, I experienced about a 10 mph in a velocity gain in my career and I credit your motivation story to the mental side of it. I had rotator cuff surgery and Doctors pretty much gave up on me. They said I would not be able to compete in college again and I was 24 at the time (correction, I was 18 when I had the surgery and 24 when I got my velocity back). I worked with the Olympic lifting Coach, his name is Coach Gayle Hatch, and one of his portage Kurt Hester and they trained me through the Olympic lifts which are all total body lifts and it was my key too. The one thing that Kurt said to be was, “Brent, if you can’t through hard anymore then why not just be the strongest guy on the team.” So I took that mentality and said yeah, at least this gives me some hope and what I learned was that the stronger I got, all of a sudden my arm started to come back. Ultimately what it was teaching me was that I was developing total body strength and when I was throwing I was throwing like I was performing my power cleans, I was using my total body and not just my arm anymore. I was able to get up to 94 mph. I am just excited to hear that you did have a great strength and conditioning program. Not that credits everything to it but it is probably what got you feeling strong again.

Jim Morris
I think that when you have a program like you did and I did with the kids and you get in their with them and you show them that you are doing it along with them. It pumps them up some. The mental pluses from doing that are incredible because it makes you mentally tough and it makes you think like you said, I may not be able to throw as hard as I did but if somebody charges the mound I am going to be ready and all of a sudden you are throwing hard and you don’t even realize it because you are just utilizing things that you took out of the weight room and bring them on the field and then all of a sudden you are throwing gas You are then like, Wow, where did that come from?

Brent Pourciau
Exactly, I think the one thing you pointed out was the fact that as a coach you were pushing your kids by competing with them in the weight room and on the field and I think that is critical. I mean I have started coaching some and I have seen the most impact on my players when I am actually getting dirty with them and pushing them as well.

Jim Morris
Absolutely, I think the whole thing is a competition. We did everything that was competitive man, we would have batting practice. We would run them out and would have teams with squads, A, B, C and D and we would get in there and as long as you could hit you could stay in the batting cage and that would make everybody want to hit more. When we had the field and if you didn’t make any errors in your group then your group got to hit again. Everything was a competition to get us ready for the next level.

Brent Pourciau
Did you focus on diet with the kids? Did you make it clear that it is just important that you put good things into your body and all that stuff?

Jim Morris
Diet is very important. Getting sore and drinking water is number one. You can drink Gatorade while you are performing. If you just drink Gatorade while you are sitting around all you are going to do is gain weight because that is for actually maximum output. So water, cleansing your body everyday, getting the lactic acid out, stretching, running some. I wasn’t one of those guys who got up there and screamed and yelled and cursed my kids. I didn’t make them run from dawn until dark, we were actually trying to achieve a goal in every single thing we did and do the best at it we could, 100% of the time.

Brent Pourciau
You said diet was big. Did you really get into diet with them or you just told them guys just be aware of what you are putting into your body or did you get into it like guys I want you eating a lot of protein, alkaline green vegetables?

Jim Morris
In 99 that wasn’t as big as it is now. Back then I was just telling them to be aware of what they were putting into their bodies because whatever you put into your body is going to be reflective of how you play and so we just tried to be smart and healthy at that time. Now a days it is even more out front. Diet is really a huge deal now. I look at the people throwing so hard now and pitchers really dominated this season in the Major Leagues. It was fantastic to watch.

Brent Pourciau
Yeah they really were. You mentioned running. What kind of running program did you have? Was it a speed and agility based program. I want to believe that you stayed away from long distance running or could you just elaborate more on that?

Jim Morris
We did no long distance running whatsoever. We did bleachers and we did cones. We did stuff on the base path and little bitty things. Pickup drills and anything to help us stretch, move and perform at our top level all the time. When we hit the field and it was on. We are moving from the beginning to the end and we are not stopping until we are done. The long distance stuff tears down all the muscle that we are building up in the weight room and it serves no purpose for me. If you want to do something like that go get on a bike and ride to strengthen your legs. Don’t sit there and tear down all the body muscles you just built up in the gym.

Brent Pourciau
As much as I am not really surprised that you had this great program across the board from diet to strength and conditioning to speed and agility, anaerobic training but to me it is becoming more conventional wisdom to train like this for pitchers. It just was so forbidden so opposite of how they taught it five to even ten years ago. How did you learn all of this? Where were you getting your information from because this wasn’t the normal of how pitchers and baseball players where training?

Jim Morris
It was a trial and error deal for me. I knew from the other surgeries that I had that what I was doing was not working. So I figured that if it could make someone in their 30′s stronger and able to compete better then it was going to make teenagers stronger and able to compete better. It was one of the biggest things that we did and the kids hated it at first and then they begin to start loving it, was a jump rope program. It builds up quick twitch muscles and helps you move a lot quicker and react faster and so we had jump rope programs and jump rope stations and pick up drills. It was just a trial and error deal for me and if it worked for me then it had to work for them and when they started seeing results they totally bought into it.

Brent Pourciau
I think that is a credit to you and your success as a coach and your ability to come back and play Major League Baseball. It is just great to hear that you were doing a total fusion of things that not only helped your team do as well as they did when you were coaching but was really your success to getting back to playing Major League Baseball.

Jim Morris
Well I appreciate that! Part of my degree is in Kineseology. So body movement is a critical deal and I had great professors at my college. You know you learn good things for your sport by looking at other sports. In doing that you can integrate those with you because there are some of the same movements and some of the strength requirements that you need from other sports. I just took those and incorporated it into baseball.

Brent Pourciau
I think that is brilliant. That is really what I have tried to do with TopVelocity.net. I believe it is a fusion of things and it really is all based on science. Science has really revolutionized sports and unfortunately baseball has kind of been the one lagging behind but I think it is now catching up and that is why you are seeing a lot of talented ball players. Strong powerful hitters and strong pitchers out there. I wanted to go into. We are leaving one big thing out, as much as I like to focus on what we have to do to get our bodies to be an elite athlete, I think of course the mental game, like Yogi Berra said how important the mental game to baseball is. I would like to go into the mental side of it. What were you doing mentally with your team and what were you doing mentally with yourself that was giving you these improvements?

Jim Morris
What I did with my team was an everyday deal. The day that they came up with a challenge for me was a huge deal because basically what they threw back at me was you teach us how to act and react to every situation that comes up then why are you telling us to chase our dreams if you are not doing it yourself. So what I did all the time was that we could be in the middle of practice or in the middle of a game and sometimes I would call timeout to just go and talk to the pitcher so I could pull everybody in and go, “What just happened here?” and have them answer me. We would have a quiz in the middle of the game and if it was a tense situation or whatever kind of loosen everyone up I would get everybody to giggle a little bit and then we would go back totally ready. I think everybody gets so serious with everything they do, it has to be just picture perfect. Well not everybody is going to hit the pitch that they need to hit, not everybody is going to make the pitch they need to make and not everybody is going to catch that ball that they need to make or make the throw over to first. Pick each other up and support each other and so we had a big support system with our team. I didn’t allow anybody to get on anybody else or get on the other team. We respected the game for the game and we played it the best that we could.

Brent Pourciau
As far as individually, I mean I think that is a great mental approach for the team, individually can you talk more about the mental side to what you were doing, not only your team was overcoming and perform when the history of your school was that you were not a good team and then also you going from Doctors telling you you will never play again to all of a sudden I am throwing the ball in the upper nineties and I am going to go tryout. Individually what were you doing mentally to pull that kind of success out of your players and yourself? Was there a lot of inner dialog?

Jim Morris
Absolutely! I think that anybody who has coached for any period of time and you know this and I am just going to be redundant because you already do this, every person is different and every makeup of every person is different. And you have got to coach the kids to their makeup and some kids you put a little more pressure on them and it makes them perform better and other kids you put that pressure on them and they fold. You just have to learn who your team is and the individuals there is and every individual makes up that team. So you have to be able to communicate and get your point across to every single kid while you are teaching the whole team sport. Being able to do that I was able to kind of coach myself and from point A to point B make myself as smooth as possible from my approach standing on the mound to making a pitch to throwing it to my kids to telling them how to hit it and learning where some of my hitters holes were. I mean I had some pretty good hitting kids. The big deal about that was at the beginning of the season in 1999 my kids couldn’t hit anybody and at the end of the season I am not getting high school kids out man they are killing me and I am like yeah, I am going to go impress a scout. Then I find out my kids are hitting a 98mph fastball everyday and I thought, Wow they have learned and I have learned and every person is different and every person needs to be taught to their strengths and made to feel apart of the whole situation. They are all different.

Brent Pourciau
Lets jump into when you went to that tryout, amazing things happened, you got picked up, how did your mind set change now that you are on the road, you are playing minor league ball and you know that you are far away from your family and you want to get to big league ball as quick as you can or get out? What were you doing mentally to prepare yourself for each game and to really push yourself to reach that goal and to get to major league ball?

Jim Morris
I think the biggest difference I made between 19 and 25 and then being 35 was I knew about life, and I knew what it took to get to the point that I was now at. I started off with the Rays higher than I had ever gotten too in then minors the first time. The first time I thought I have to go out and strike everybody out because that is my job and I have to do the best that I can. When I went back at 35, I am going to do the best that I can and what ever happens happens and if it is bad I am going to come back again the next day and be ready again. You just prepare yourself, anything can happen on the baseball field. If it is bad, so what! You know they say a good hitter hits 300. That means he fails 70% of the time. In pitching it is the same thing. We are not all going to have 100% great outings. Take whatever lesson you can out of what went wrong the night before and you go now I am ready, I have learned that part and that is not going to happen again. I will now attack it from this way and you talk good thoughts to yourself basically and you let the bad stuff go because if you let it eat at you, you are just going to come up the next time going, I can’t do that again and all your body hear’s is, you are going to do that again. So you repeat those habits and those things that went wrong over and over, instead of improving on yourself. I don’t want to say I didn’t take it as seriously but I didn’t put as much inner pressure on myself to perform all out, all of the time. I did the best I could every night and if it wasn’t good enough, I will get them tomorrow night.

Brent Pourciau
So what did you do, kind of to jump back to the physical approach, what did you do during time in minor league ball and into major league ball to keep your velocity up? It was really tough for me, when I played a little minor league ball after I overcame the arm injury and arm surgery, was to keep my velocity up, especially after surgery. What was your approach, I mean were you having any issues with keeping your velocity up because you were really known for your velocity?

Jim Morris
No, my velocity was when I went back pretty much true every night out. There were some nights, especially in Durham, when I didn’t feel good man I wasn’t used too being able to be called in every night. I might throw for one hitter or I might throw for three innings. I can remember one night I came in and they had the gun in the left center field area and I would throw a warm up pitch and I would turn around and it would go 84, I was like “OH NO.” Another one 84, “OH NO.” Then the guy would step in the box and I would let one go and it goes 98, then I am like, “There it is!” It is a lot of long toss and keeping up your weight regimen. You can’t let down in your workouts just because you are tired. That is when you have to get after it. That is when you do the most good for your body and then again the diet and the drinking of the water to flush out the system all helps get rid of the lactic acid so you are ready to perform day after day. A lot of people do not like to drink water but that is number one.

Brent Pourciau
Yes, you are correct. I mean I read all of these studies that are coming out even today that talks about hydration and it is still what separates great athletes from average athletes. Great athletes hydrate better than good or average athletes. Also on that same note you brought up long toss. There is a lot of controversy around it like how far do you stretch it out? Can you talk about when you would throw long toss how would you stretch it out as far as the distance?

Jim Morris
We would go three or four minutes at 60 feet. Three or four minutes from 90 feet and three or four minutes from 120 – 150 feet. I am not talking about throwing the ball from the right flag pole to the left flag pole or any of that stuff but just getting your whole motion like you would be on the mound, except you are putting an extra step in there to let the ball go a little bit farther but you have the same follow through on your arm with the same release point and you make sure your hand is out in front of you every time. So you are releasing the ball the same way as you were if you were on the mound.

Brent Pourciau
So when you are 120 – 150 are you keeping it on the line?

Jim Morris
You know that depends, sometimes I didn’t feel that great and I couldn’t put it on a line but most of the time if I can put it on a line then that is what I am going to do because that is where I got the most benefit from.

Brent Pourciau
Do you do a lot of long toss with your guys in high school, with your team?

Jim Morris
Absolutely

Brent Pourciau
I think what we are leaving out, the last point I would like to go into which I believe is important, I contacted my news list, my list of subscribers at TopVelocity.net and I told them that I was lucky enough to do this interview with you and if they had any questions and faith came up which I think is an excellent topic, it is a critical topic. I would like you to go into the importance of faith in your life and in your success as a ball player.

Jim Morris
Faith is a huge do for me. My grandfather was a man of faith and was my grandmother and to have something to lean on is incredible but I went into baseball at 35 knowing that I had failed every single time when I was supposed to be young and talented. I had to lean on my faith to sustain me. There were times that I had never been away from my kids. They were 8,4 and 1 at the time and I thought how do I do this? Basically I would just pray, “God I am hard headed and if you really want me to do this then you need to show me that you want me to do this.” Everyday I would go out and perform. It was the most amazing thing, there were periods of time in Triple A that I wanted to quit and I thought I can’t keep going on. I miss my kids, I am not able to pay any of my bills, I am making minor league money, “What am I doing?” It always came back to my high school kids. Who I made them a promise that if you ever get a chance to chase your dreams you chase it. So the prayers continued. For instance, I couldn’t pay bills and I am like I need to quit, I got to go home, I have a coaching job in Fort Worth at a big school. I got to start drawing a pay check and Louisville Slugger had given me a glove just to use the next week it ends up in Sports Illustrated with the arm out and the whole motion thing and Louisville written right across there in perfect vision for everybody in the picture and they gave me a contract. They sent the money home and I stayed a little bit longer. The next time I needed money it was a spike contract and all of a sudden there I am in a pair of spikes in this huge newspaper article on the front page with my leg kicked up and the logo of the spike sticking out there. It was just things happened in such sequence that God had his hand in it and there is no denying that. I could sit there and go it was because I lifted weights, it was because I stretched, it was because I threw and taught those kids the perfect way to do things therefore I was perfect. That is not it at all. God took care of it from day one. I went to the tryout and found out I was throwing 98 and I thought you have got to be kidding me man and they made me come back in two days and I threw 97 ever pitch in the rain. I thought WOW and then they send me into Double A and the first night there, in Double A, in Zebulon, North Carolina I throw 91, 92 miles per hour every pitch and I thought, oh, I am dropping off. The next night I throw two innings and throw 98, 99 mph and strikeout five people in two innings. From then on it was just lights out and I attribute my faith to all of it.

Brent Pourciau
If you could pick a percentage of your success, what percentage went to faith? Or what percentage of your success would you credit to faith?

Jim Morris
100% – There were a lot of things I think, because of my faith, I was able to learn the things that I needed to learn to put me in that position to begin with and through learning to do all those things and do them the right way. You know it was all trial and error, figuring out what was best for my body therefore figuring out what was best for my high school kids. All of it built up to that ultimate point where God said your ready and I think he said I am going to give this to you because you are going to learn something from this but a whole lot of other people are going to learn from it and once you do that you are going to go and do something for me and that is what I am trying to do now with my speaking.

Brent Pourciau

I have one more question from my subscribers I just wanted to get it out there. It was kind of interesting, he was a big fan of Ron Guidry and Ron Guidry during his time, even though we talked about weight training, during when he was young he would work on a farm and did a lot of heavy lifting and Glen wanted to know if you had done any, even when you were coaching, were you doing any other work, farm work, or something, this is what he is asking?

Jim Morris
You know I took care of our whole baseball field and in doing that you know we, I brought in dirt from Oklahoma to put on the infield because out in west texas you have kolache and it is hard as a rock. You can water it and five minutes later you are sliding on gravel and so I brought in dirt and when you put dirt all over the field and I put my grass seed and I tilde up my field and I worked everyday and we made a batting cage and we poor concrete and we did all that stuff. All of it! Anything you can do to make your body stronger.

Brent Pourciau
We are just simulating that kind of work when we are in a weight room.

Jim Morris
Absolutely! I taught myself so much then that I feel like I have to do it now and now I have a ranch and I do stuff everyday that pushes me to my limit but it makes me feel better the next day. I wake up and I feel a little bit stronger and I am like, YEAH. So I go out and do more the next day.

Brent Pourciau
Yes, because you are also connecting with Gods earth too you know, when you are out there.

Jim Morris
Absolutely!

Brent Pourciau
Well I think a good way to end it would be, I know there is going to be a lot of guys listening to this, because I get them on my site, they are kind of the guys we were before God intervened and really say someone who is 24, 25 or even 18, 19 that are not throwing hard or they are really not grabbing attention when are on the field and they want so bad to be you know the ace pitcher for their team or they want so bad to get picked up or looked at by scouts or an opportunity to play some professional ball. What advice would you give to those kids who just need an inspiration, besides watching your movie because that is a great inspiration, what words of advice would you give to them?

Jim Morris
A couple of things. I think the dream that we start chasing may not be the dream that we end up loving. It could be coaching or it could be anything to do with baseball. Some of us or just no players but we learn while we are there and for those who do not want to hear that I think one of the biggest things I taught my high school kids was and did myself was if you want to be the best person that you can be then surround yourself with the best people possible. If you surround yourself with positive people who are looking out for you and you are looking out for them and it is truly a team effort then you are making yourself better every day whether you realize it or not. If you hang around people who are questionable or you do questionable things then you are causing your own failure. So surround yourself with the best people possible so you can be the best you that you can possibly be and hold your head up. You are getting to play a game that people would kill to play. This is the greatest game our country has ever known, it has with stood wars and everything else and it has brought us through so many bad times. It is a great game and it is also a game that you can set along side life. It is like a chest match. We try to out do the other team one move at a time and guess what they are going to do so we can be ready for it. It is a fantastic game. Have fun while you are playing it and don’t put that inner pressure on yourself so much that you are squelching your own success. Have fun with it!

Brent Pourciau
I think that is excellent Jim. I know when you speak this is probably a reflection of what your speeches are about and of course you speak to teams. Do you speak to teams a lot?

Jim Morris
Yes, sir. Absolutely, I do. The questions they have are very insightfully and there are things they are going through and I think….I am very fortunate. I am the guy next door who had something incredible happen and it happened through a group of high school kids. If God doesn’t have his hand in that then what does he have his hand in? I mean because I get to go around the world and talk to adults and kids who are looking for that dream and it doesn’t matter what the dream is they are just looking for that dream. To be able to talk to these young baseball players and tell them hey, I failed every time when I was supposed to be good and it took until I was 35 to be ready for it. Give it a chance!

Brent Pourciau
Like I said this was a great honor and I am sure everyone you speak to feels the same way and I would just like to say thank you again Jim for having this interview with me and I wish you the best and if you are ever down in the New Orleans area please look me up I would like to show you around town.

Jim Morris
I would love to come down there are see what you are all about. Keep working with those young kids.

Brent
Thanks Jim. Hopefully we will talk soon, if not everyone can listen to this great interview or hire you and get you out there to speak to their team or church or business.

Jim Morris
Thanks Brent. I appreciate it!

Brent
Thanks Jim best of luck!

Jim Morris
Thank you!

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What makes a BAD pitching Coach?

Someone who has no experience in playing the position at the top levels of the game, or someone who has no certified education of how to coach the position.

How can a BAD pitching Coach effect a pitcher?

Pitching takes a tremendous amount of muscle coordination. The body must naturally understand how to build maximum momentum and torque, to deliver an above average fastball to a specific location. It is a pitching Coaches job to guide the pitcher to reaching his athletic potential. This takes an expert understanding of the position and the athlete. If the pitching Coach is far from an expert then the chances of him being a guide to the pitchers athletic potential, is very poor. This could be detrimental to a young pitchers career because promoting bad mechanics, due to the lack of experience or education, will decrease velocity and cause injury. It happened to Me.

What are the signs of a BAD pitching Coach?

1) No experience in the top levels of the game.

2) No certified education in the world of pitching and athletic training.

3) A poor understanding of Physics Driven Pitching Mechanics.

4) A poor understanding of the physiology and psychology of his pitchers.

5) Over throwing his staff of pitchers.

6) Discouraging his pitchers from using a strength and conditioning program.

7) Forcing his pitchers to throw more breaking balls than fastballs.

8 ) Using Long Distance running to build endurance in his pitchers.

9) Excessive amounts of long toss.

10) A poor warm-up and dynamic stretching routine.

11) Not educating his pitchers on proper athletic nutrition and rehabilitation.

12) Not educating his pitchers on the mental game.

13) Uses a lot of poor conventional wisdom to coach his pitchers.

What are the signs of POOR conventional wisdom of pitching mechanics?

These are old techniques of pitching, that have been proven throw science, to decrease velocity or cause injury.

This would be Coaching the pitcher to:

1) Take the ball out of the glove and reach it to the sky.

2) Get into the T position. Glove hand to target and ball to center field.

3) Pull the glove hand in hard to your body, while pulling the throwing arm down to throw.

4) Kick the back leg up high after release. He may even use a chair for the pitcher to kick his leg over, after release, to force this bad pitching mechanic.

5) Keep your landing leg bent at release. Do not let it straighten!

6) Pull your head down hard during pitch.

7) Wipe your arm.

8 ) Slam your chest into your landing leg.

9) Move your arm faster.

10) Drive your glove hand to the target.

How to PLEASE a BAD Pitching Coach?

I will be the first to tell you that this isn’t easy. Due to the high percentage of BAD pitching Coaches in all levels of the game, ever pitcher will deal with a BAD pitching Coach a few times to many in their career. The best way to deal with a BAD pitching Coach, without him having an effect on your career, is not to avoid him but to please him. Here is some TIPS that will help.

1) Do whatever he says when he is looking and then do what you think is best when he isn’t looking.

2) Study the game, the position, physics driven mechanics and strength and conditioning. Become your Coach.

3) Do not let him catch you educating the other pitchers. Especially if he is a HOT HEAD.

4) Do not screw around when he is around you.

5) Do not talk bad about him to other players.

This is the MOST IMPORTANT TIP:

6) You must IMPROVE.

The hardest thing that any pitcher or athlete must learn, is that it is a rare case for you to find a Coach that will propel your career to the top levels of the game. This is because, they are just as concerned about their job, as you are about your job. So if you want to make it as a professional one day, you are going to have to knock down a lot of doors. You will always find support but the only person that is going to help you get their is yourself. I will leave you with this quote from Nolan Ryan.

“Pitching in the big leagues is a dream. Preparing to pitch in the big leagues is a nightmare.”

What you need to do first in your young career is focus one becoming an exceptional athlete. Scouts are looking for players who are talented athletes with little wear and tear. This is true with any recruiters out there. They do not want damaged goods. So the less time spent on the mound, at a young age, and the more time spent improving your athletic performance, the better. Play every position if possible and if you get to varsity baseball in high school and you want to just focus on pitching, then I would so, “OK, Do it!”

This doesn’t mean you should NOT practice pitching mechanics before high school. Start learning proper pitching mechanics as young as possible because proper pitching mechanics mean proper throwing mechanics. Proper throwing mechanics also produce proper hitting mechanics. This is because a Coach who knows how to train proper mechanics, understands how to train the athlete and not just a pitcher or hitter. This is also why I encourage young athletes to play as many sports as possible, without them overlapping. This is because, once again, we must train the athlete and not just one specific talent.

To prove this, just look at Professional sports. Pro sports are full of multi-sport athletes. Greg Maddux is a great golfer, along with John Smoltz, Roger Clemens, Ken Griffy Jr. Cal Ripken loved to play a lot of basketball in the off season. Tom Glavine was drafted in the NHL back in 1984. Michael Jordan retired from basketball to play minor league baseball. Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders and Brian Jordan, to name a few, played at the same time for the MLB and the NFL . The list goes on and on.

So, stop trying to fit yourself in the perfect mold of a pitcher at 14. Focus on your competitive edge and learn everything you can about the sport and all the positions. I always tell my pitchers, “Train the athlete first and then you can train the pitcher.”

Many athletes today have the desire to reach a higher level of athletics. Whether it is an athlete going from Jr. High to High School, or an athlete making the transition from high school to college athletics and the big one college to professional athletics. All throughout America, young athletes have dreams to make it to the top of their sport; many try only a few succeed.

To make it to the professional level it takes all the intangibles of practice, hard work, heart, desire, skill, strength, speed, etc; but, one of the most important traits is a simple word and it is genetics. Some athletes can top out their genetic potential only running a 4.97second 40 yard dash or topping out their fast ball at 78mph and that is ok, but ask yourself as a parent or an ex athlete, did I max out my potential? When did I start really training and being educated by my coach on how to and why? Did my coach teach me the right way to train and perform the different tasks, drills, or tests?

Like many of today’s strength and speed specialists, we have all heard of the NFL Combine and different combines being held around the nation that tests the athletic ability of the athlete. One of the questions in football is how fast the athlete’s 40 yard dash is, in baseball it is how fast the athlete can run a 30 or 60 yard dash. Some athletes are born with being able to run a 4.23 second 40 yard dash or other talented gifts such as being able to throw a baseball 98mph at only 18 years old but how about the athletes who are not blessed with these abilities and genetics. I am a speed and strength professional and I am going to tell you these things can be taught. In theory, can every athlete train and run a 4.2 second 40 yard dash or throw 98mph NO but if coached properly and if an athlete starts early enough in their life to program their body then they can get the most out their genetic make-up. In an athlete’s life they will be timed by a scout or coach to see how fast they are. Keep in mind, this does not tell the coaches or scouts how talented the athlete is at the particular sport but just their speed. Therefore, this is just a test and should be treated like a test which means being educated and studying for the test. This brings me to Fitts and Posner Three Stage model of learning a motor skill.

1st Stage of Learning

Paul Fitts and Michael Posner presented their three stage learning model in 1967 and to this day considered applicable in the motor learning world. The first stage called the cognitive stage of learning is when the beginner focuses on cognitively oriented problems (Magill 265). This is when the beginners try to answer questions such as: What is the objective of the 40 yard sprint? Where should my hand be on the line coming out of a three-point stance? How and where do I place my feet? How is the weight distributed? There are many questions that an athlete has when they first try to learn a three point stance for the 40 yard dash. And surprisingly the older the athlete, the harder it is to teach the proper mechanics of the start. This is because they have been doing it their way most of their life. Remember it is easier to teach new habits than to try to fix bad habits. Fitts and Posner explain the learner must engage in cognitive activity as he or she listens to instructions and receive feedback from the instructor (Magill 265). Of course during the first stage the learner or athlete is going to make many errors and the errors they make have a tendency to be large. The learners or athletes in this stage are conscious incompetent. This is when the athlete realizes that they not as skilled as perhaps they thought they were or thought they could be. One of the ways to help the athlete through this first stage and show their mistakes is through video analysis. From experience, once the learner or athlete can watch their errors they tend to correct them at a faster rate.

2nd Stage of Learning

The second stage of learning in the Fitts and Posner model is called the associative stage of learning. The transition into this stage occurs after an unspecified amount of practice and performance improvement (Magill 265). The learner or athlete reaches this stage when they have developed the knowledge of what, how and when to do the different tasks in a sprint to achieve the goal of the skill. Of course the athlete makes fewer mistakes in this stage and is more consistent with the different stages of the 40 yard dash. The athlete now understands how to start, how to load the arm and legs in a three-point stance, how to breathe, when to breathe, arm placement, etc. In the associative stage, the athlete is going through conscious competence. The learner or athlete knows how to do something; but, in spite of this, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration. This great deal of consciousness and concentration usually makes the athlete tense or disturbs breathing which could inhibit the athletes’ sprint performance.

3rd Stage of Learning

The third and final stage is called the autonomous stage of learning. In this stage the skill has become almost automatic or habitual (Magill 265). Learners or athletes’ in this stage do not think about all the steps required to run a fast time, the athlete just performs and runs. In this stage as a coach we like to call it unconscious competence. The learner or athlete has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes “second nature” and can be performed easily with only little thinking. During this stage the learner or athlete can go up to the line knowing all the answers he or she was asking, thinking, and being coached on during the cognitive and associative stage.

In closing, Fitts and Posner’s Three Stage Model of learning can be used in any athletic drill or movement. Of course, there are other different theories of learning but with the Fitts and Posner model it is simple and it works. As a coach you can use this model with all of your athletes learning a new skill or movement. Remember coaching means teaching, of course it is easy to go out and train a bunch of athletes just running them into the ground and many coaches still do that because they think the harder the better. To be a great coach remember sometimes less is more. This means that sometimes less work and more coaching towards the athletes’ can be more beneficial. Finally, in motor learning and motor control the whole basis is being able to program your body to learn and do different things. The earlier you start programming the correct way to do specific movements, like run, jump, throw, lift, etc. the better student or athlete you will be. The important aspect is learning the proper technique sooner because the longer an athlete waits there is a greater chance of the athlete picking up bad habits. That is why it is so important to find a qualified, educated coach or teacher who can show and teach and explain why the proper techniques of training.

References
Magill RA. Motor Learning and Control: Concepts and Applications. 8th ed. New Your, NY: McGraw-Hill; 2007