FAQs

Short answer: It’s complicated.

Motor preferences aren’t just habits — they reflect how the nervous system organizes movement based on structure, perception, and sensory input. For most athletes, especially experienced ones, these patterns are remarkably stable over time.

But injuries complicate things.

Let’s break it down:

• Pain (even without damage): The brain might change movement patterns just to protect a sensitive area. The preference hasn’t changed — it’s just harder to access. Once pain fades, coordination often returns on its own.
• Tissue damage (e.g., muscle strain or joint sprain): Can block preferred mechanics. The athlete compensates not because the preference is gone, but because it's no longer the easiest or safest option.
• Long-term compensation: If rehab promotes non-preferred movement patterns, athletes might drift from their original coordination. But many describe a strong “return to form” once they reconnect with what feels natural.
• Structural trauma (e.g., surgery): The nervous system may still "remember" the preference, but the body may not be able to fully express it. The goal becomes adapting around the preference, not replacing it.

Can athletes perform outside their preference? Yes — especially when strong, focused, or fresh.
But that performance is more costly, more sensitive to fatigue, and harder to repeat under pressure.

Bottom line:
Injuries may blur the expression of motor preferences — but rarely erase them.

Flat feet might seem like a minor structural issue — but their impact runs deeper.

The foot is packed with sensory receptors that provide vital feedback to the brain for organizing posture, balance, and movement. When arches collapse:

• The pressure map becomes less accurate
• Sensory input gets blurred
• The brain adapts — often leading to more rigid, visually-guided, or hip-dominant strategies

These adaptations aren’t always visible — but they move the athlete away from their natural motor preference. They’re managing, not expressing.

Under fatigue or stress, performance often drops — not because of poor effort, but because the nervous system is constantly compensating.

Over time, this can lead to:

• Altered joint loading and muscle recruitment
• Changes in anterior/posterior dominance
• Distorted aerial vs. terrestrial tendencies

So do flat feet change motor preferences?
Probably not at the core — but they can mask or distort them.

That’s why addressing the foot — with barefoot work, insoles, or targeted strengthening — helps athletes reconnect with their natural coordination.

Some hitters naturally swing more horizontally (sweeping, across the zone). Others swing more vertically (through the zone, sometimes diagonally).

These tendencies often reflect how a player processes visual motion — not deep-rooted motor preferences, but perceptual ones:

• Horizontal hitters may track lateral break better
• Vertical hitters might respond better to rise/drop

But when it comes to adjustability, swing shape isn’t the whole story.

The real driver of adjustability lies deeper — in motor coordination:

• Is the athlete aerial or terrestrial?
• Do they organize movement through supination or pronation?
• Can they manage posture and pressure under pressure?

A hitter might look efficient on video but could be compensating with effort rather than expressing true coordination.

Takeaway:
Understanding visual tendencies is helpful — but understanding how an athlete’s nervous system organizes movement is what truly unlocks performance.

“Corrective exercise” often implies something is broken — but broken compared to what?

Instead of correcting based on a model or cue, we ask:
What does this athlete need — right now — based on their structure, goals, and experience?

We don’t try to “fix” the movement. We assess:

• Are they in pain?
• Returning from injury?
• Performing well but looking for more?

From there, we create a simple plan: 1 month, 3 focuses.

It’s not about volume — it’s about meaningful direction, with the athlete’s feedback guiding the process.

Sometimes we work with their preference.
Sometimes we go slightly against it — not to change it, but to create awareness and adaptability.

In unpredictable sports, we’re not chasing perfection — we’re building coordination that holds under pressure.

Yes — absolutely. Let them move, explore, fall, and adapt.

Kids don’t “think” through movement — they feel their way through it. They imitate. They repeat. Their nervous system self-organizes.

But…
Today’s environment isn’t natural. Kids absorb swings and drills from social media, copying movements that might not fit their own coordination.

That’s where good coaching comes in.
Not to overcorrect — but to gently protect the child’s identity as a mover.

We don’t want Instagram copies.
We want kids to build instinctive movement that’s theirs.

If swing decisions are supposed to be delayed and optimized, why would we divide vision into four zones?
Wouldn’t one or two be enough?

Well — here’s the thing: the Vision Dial isn’t just about when you see the ball.
It’s about how your visual system and your body work together to process space and make movement decisions.

Think about it:

• We don’t see the same way in all directions.
• Our vision is made up of central and peripheral zones.
• We also have a dominant eye, a visual function called motor eye — the one your brain relies on more to see danger.
• And… our eyes are physically separated by the nose.

That means:

• The right eye tends to see better to the right.
• The left eye tends to see better to the left.

So when you combine all of this — central vs. peripheral, dominant vs. non-dominant, left vs. right —
you naturally get four functional zones.

One of them will usually feel great:
It’s the zone where all your visual and motor preferences line up.
It’s where tracking, timing, and movement feel easy.

One zone will often feel the opposite:
It’s misaligned with your visual strengths —
and tracking in that zone may feel forced, delayed, or unclear.

And the other two zones?
They’re somewhere in between.
Their quality can depend on the situation, the pitch type, your energy level…

That’s why you need to test them in context — in training, in live reps.

So the goal of the Vision Dial isn’t to limit perception —
It’s to help you map your strengths —
and just as importantly, to learn how to deal with your weak spots.

Because in high-level hitting, it’s not just about seeing the ball.
It’s about knowing how you see it best.

No. There are no absolutes.
But there are guidelines — and that’s a big difference.

Here’s why.

Human beings — beyond having a common global anatomy — are incredibly different.
Their structure, their physiology, their timing, their perception… none of it is identical.

So the way they create force, the sequence they use, the muscles they recruit —
all of that is individual.

We like to say:

“The truth of one is not the truth of all — and vice versa.”

Some people will say:

“Well, to throw hard, you must have ground contact.”

But then I’ll ask:
What about Derek Jeter’s jump throw from shortstop to first?
He’s airborne — and still throwing a laser.

That’s the thing about absolutes:
There are always exceptions.

And more importantly —
The body is a living variable.
It changes with fatigue, with context, with emotion.

How can you build a universal law on something that keeps changing?

So instead of absolutes, we work with guidelines.

Because within certain motor profiles — like the “big 4 families” we use in our system —
we do see patterns, tendencies, and sometimes biomechanical limits.

For example:
If you throw a baseball very hard with your elbow consistently below your shoulder line,
your body will probably let you know — fast — that something’s wrong.

That’s not an absolute…
but it’s a biomechanical red flag — a position that increases stress and injury risk.

So guidelines give us structure.
They give us a direction. A warning system.
But they also leave room for exceptions, for adaptation, for individual expression.

Now… maybe the most important part:

If you scroll through social media today, you’ll see a lot of coaches —
let’s be honest, gurus — pushing one technical model,
one “ideal swing,” one way to throw, one repeatable system.

But most of the time, they’re not speaking to human diversity —
They’re serving a business model.

The more rigid the method, the easier it is to package, to brand, to sell.

But real athletes don’t live in systems.
They live in bodies.
And those bodies don’t fit into neat categories.

So maybe instead of trying to sell systems,
we should be learning to read the human in front of us.

Because no model — no matter how polished —
can replace the depth and variability of how people really move.

And that’s why, in the end,
guidelines will always beat absolutes.

When we talk about performance, we often think about strength, speed, or technique.
But underneath all of that, there’s something even more fundamental:
The way the nervous system organizes movement.

And sometimes… what gets in the way isn’t a lack of training —
It’s primitive reflexes that were never fully integrated.

These are the reflexes we’re all born with —
like the Moro Reflex, the ATNR (Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex), the Spinal Galant —
they help babies survive and learn to move in their first months of life.

Normally, they fade away as the brain matures.
But sometimes, they stay active — even in adults.

And when they do, they can take over coordination when the system is under stress or fatigue.

You might see an athlete with:

• Too much extension — shoulders up, head back, legs locked.
• Or the opposite: too much flexion — everything collapsing forward, unable to create leverage.

These patterns aren’t just bad habits —
They’re often the signature of an active primitive reflex interfering with motor control.

In those moments, the body isn’t choosing its coordination —
It’s being pulled into survival mode.

And even though the athlete might still perform, their efficiency goes down.
They compensate. They burn more energy.
And sometimes… they get hurt.

So yes — primitive reflexes can absolutely influence performance.

They don’t just affect posture —
They can affect timing, rhythm, visual tracking,
even emotional regulation on the field.

The good news?

Once we identify which reflex is active,
we can integrate it through targeted work —
using the right drills, at the right moment.

It’s not always a matter of more strength or more reps —
Sometimes, it’s about unlocking the nervous system.

Because when the reflexes settle down…
Coordination comes back.