Today’s episode features Rachel Balvokec, a professional baseball hitting coach working with the New York Yankees. Rachel made headlines when she become a minor league strength and conditioning coordinator and coach for the St Louis Cardinals from 2011-15. Rachel also has experience working with the Houston Astros, as well as the Dutch national baseball and softball teams, and has also worked with many successful organizations such as EXOS, Louisiana State University, the White Sox and many others. She is also a former NCAA Division I softball catcher.
When working in any sort of team environment, knowing keys of successful organizational culture is not an option if you wish to be great. Those of us working in the coaching field often have many different “hats” that we wear, be it strength coach, sport coach, nutritionist, or “unofficial sport psychologist” (or maybe even official sport psychologist). It’s very easy to get buried in the X’s and O’s of exercise selection and periodization (and it’s good to have these things mastered) but it’s critical to zoom out and look at the greater principles that lead to the success of an organization.
This show is about both of those things. On the front-end, Rachel talks about what she has learned as a strength coach that she’s carried with her into her time as a hitting coach. She discusses what spurred her to move “up the ladder” in regards to the amount of change and impact she new she could make on players by moving to sport coach, as she moves towards her ultimate goal of being a general manager. Ultimately though, this show is really about the second portion, which is high-performance leadership, team culture, and tough love. It’s about what’s really demanded at the highest levels of competition and performance, whether in a sports, military operations, or business.
Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.
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Timestamps and Main Points
6:20 Rachel talks about her transition from strength and conditioning coach, to hitting coach, and her career aspirations
20:20 How Rachel approaches hitting coaching in light of her former strength and conditioning experience and how helpful it is for sport coaches to have S&C experience
24:40 How Rachel views periodization for working with hitters, and how hitting is generally behind pitching in regards to the application of sport training principles
32:05 General concepts in regards to what good hitters can do from a weightroom perspective
36:40 Rachel’s rear view thoughts on the strength and conditioning industry and advice for strength coaches
41:35 Rachel’s perspective on what a strength coach offers from beyond a strength, KPI and “X’s and O’s” perspective. What the heart of being a strength coach really is.
47:00 Thoughts on tough love and culture in winning teams
58:00 Rachel’s take on why Augie Garrido’s “chewing out” of his players an example of tough love and the importance of “high support, high demand” parenting, coaching and leadership
1:12:30 Critical Hardships in Rachel’s life that formed who she is now
“There’s something to be said in having a larger role if you can have an administrative position”
“No matter what was going on in the field, I could go and crush it in the weight room where 1+1 =2”
“It’s not tough (not doing the strength and conditioning workouts anymore) because my passion has always been coaching”
“Being a hitting coach is not that different for me personally (than s&c). Now I’m just coaching the body to do something else”
“Every strength coach’s dream is to have a sport coach who used to be a strength coach”
“If you were to apply general periodization principles to hitting you would A: have days off, which never happens”
“Hitting is behind pitching in the technology space; the radar gun has been around forever”
“(When coaching a skill) There’s research to show that more novice coaches are going to distal parts of the body and expert coaches are going to the center of the body”
“I still will refer to the strength coach to learn about the character of the athletes, because someone can be very successful on the playing field, but not work that hard”
“At the end of the day, if you are getting groups of people to work together, individualization is one of the most poisonous things you can do. I don’t believe in a snowflake approach, I believe in a snowman approach”
“If you are in it to win, there has got to be some sort of standard to be held, and it has to be high. If you are pushing people to the limits of their ability, two things are going to happen. One is that not everyone is going to be happy, because that is a really uncomfortable place to go. Two is that you might push them too far”
“The snowman must survive, even if some snowflakes melt away”
“If you had to be successful to save someone’s life, how would you do it differently?”
“It is a privilege to be held to that high of standard (the high demand found in high performing organizations, or the standard held by Augie Garrido)”
“It’s actually the highest form of love to look at someone and say, that’s not good enough”
Show Notes
Augie Garrido Demonstrates Tough Love with His Team After a Loss
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About Rachel Balkovec
Rachel is a professional baseball hitting coach working with the New York Yankees. She was formerly a minor league strength and conditioning coordinator and coach for the St Louis Cardinals from 2011-15 (as the first female strength and conditioning coordinator in pro baseball), then switched to the Houston Astros Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator. She worked with the Dutch national baseball and softball teams in the past year while studying for her second master’s degree.
Rachel is also an international speaker, and entrepreneur. She has worked with some of the most successful organizations in sports such as EXOS, Louisiana State University, the Chicago White Sox, Arizona State University, Los Tigres Del Licey Beisbol, the St. Louis Cardinals the Houston Astros, and the New York Yankees. Rachel has two master’s degrees in human movement and performance, and is a native of Omaha, Nebraska along with being a former NCAA Division I softball catcher.
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