Dr. Luke Wilkins - Sport and Exercise Psychology, La Trobe University

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to the ABCA's podcast. I'm your host Ryan Brownlee. Get the Pro treatment and design your very own custom Rawlings Glove just like your favorite big league stars. Choose from countless patterns, web types, lace colors and more to showcase your unique personal style. Start with a pro design and change it up with your team colors or build yours completely from scratch with your name, number and state flag. Visit Rawlings.com to design your custom glove today. Happy Fielding. This episode is sponsored by Netting Pros. Netting Professionals are improving programs one facility at a time. Netting Professionals specializes in the design, fabrication and installation of custom netting for backstops, batting cages, dugouts, BP screens and ball carts. They also design and install digital graphic wall padding, windscreen turf, turf protectors, dugout benches, dugout cubbies and more. Netting Professionals is an official partner of the abca. Continues to provide quality products and services to many high school, college and professional fields, facilities and stadiums throughout the country. Netting Professionals are improving programs one facility at a time. Contact them today at 844-620-2707 or infoettingpros.com, visit them online at www.nettingpros.com or check out Netting Pros on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn for all their latest products and projects. Make sure to let CEO Will Minor know that the ABCA sent you. Now on to the podcast. This week on the ABCA podcast is Latrobe University professor and former New York Yankee Dr. Luke Wilkins. Wilkins is a Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology within the Sport and Exercise Science Department at La Trobe. He's Subject Coordinator for Motor Behavior and Sport and Talent Identification and Development. Originally from the United Kingdom, Wilkins obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham where he explored how visual, perceptual and cognitive skills impact sporting performance. Between 2018 and 2020, Wilkins worked for the New York Yankees organization as a sports scientist and lead skill acquisition specialist. Wilkins is involved in a number of global research collaborations which include projects exploring the use of the pink ball in cricket, the gaze behavior of baseball batters, and how virtual reality technology can be used to enhance sporting performance. This episode is a deep dive into Dr. Wilkins research paper, a framework for using Virtual Reality to Enhance Psychological Performance in baseball. You can also dig back into the archives and listen to episode number 260 to get tips on skill acquisition. Let's welcome Dr. Luke Wilkins to the podcast, all right here with Luke Wilkins, Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology at La Trobe university. But from 2018 to 2020 was here in the States with the Yankees, but has Been on with me, I think we were saying, two and a half years ago. I think you were on with me last time. So Luke, thanks for jumping on. [00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no worries. Glad to be back. I think it was just before I moved to Australia, so would have been about two and a half years ago. So. [00:03:35] Speaker A: Hey, did you work with Craig Morris who's over here working with us? Tennis association came and spoke. He does the grassroots project for, for tennis over here. And he had actually mentioned your name a little bit. So I put that in my notes from the, the youth summit we ran. It was cool because he's on the tennis side, but he came and spoke to our group about how to, how to help youth baseball in the United States. [00:03:59] Speaker B: Okay. [00:04:00] Speaker A: Junior tennis does with different colored discs, different sizes rackets, different size balls, which we're hoping to try to influen a little bit on the youth baseball side. [00:04:11] Speaker B: Obviously lots of crossover with intercepted sports like that. I, I think I mentioned last time I had no knowledge of baseball until I joined the Yankees, but I have a very good knowledge of cricket. So a lot of crossover. And likewise with tennis they'll be transfer of skills. So I can see, I can see how that works. [00:04:28] Speaker A: Yeah. And you published a paper that you sent to me. It's very, very interesting. It's called A framework for using Virtual Reality to Enhance Psychological Performance in Baseball. What was kind of your impetus to start that? [00:04:40] Speaker B: Yeah, that's, that's good question, actually. Well, when I left the New York Yankees, what I've been tasked with doing for the previous sort of two years was to bring in a virtual reality training program and training and testing because we always think of virtual reality as training. But actually probably the biggest upside is, is just understanding the sport and the athletes better through virtual reality. And so when I left, they were looking to hire someone to replace me, but they weren't able to do that for a variety of reasons for quite a while. And so I was sat there worried that all this sort of two years of effort was just going to go to waste because it needs someone to drive it. Right? Like you can't rely on coaches, you can't rely on sport, you know, other sports scientists because everyone's so busy that you need someone driving that. And if you can't get someone to drive it, then at least you need to have a here's how you do it ready made formula of this is who needs it, how and why. That was the inspiration behind putting together this framework to try and simplify how you would actually implement VR and When you'd implement VR and all those sorts of questions to try and ease that transition. Because you know, if you're not on, if you don't have expertise in that area, it's an easy thing to just go, okay, we'll leave, we'll leave it to the side for now and maybe come back to it. And that's understandable. [00:06:12] Speaker A: And let's go through the used six different cases to use for it. So I kind of want to get your thoughts on that. And the first one was obviously pitch recognition training. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And you know, a few of these are just things that players do anyway, right? Like players do pitch recognition training, but they do it on iPads, on TVs, on phones, players do gain day scouting reports again on iPads, on computers, whatever it is. But what we're just saying is, look, there's huge advantages of doing in VR instead, first of all, you get the sort of correct perspective because a lot of the time on these iPads you're doing it from sort of behind the batters box, right. Or you're doing it from a slightly different angle, not quite the exact sort of perspective that you need. And that's important. And you can also actually interact with the, the world I guess, as opposed to just watching it and tapping a button of whatever you think it's going to be. So we're just taking things that people do and just making it better, at least from from our perspective. So that's the first two cases is sort of pitch recognition training and then game day scouting. [00:07:28] Speaker A: So and then pitcher strategy, which I probably goes, probably goes into game day scouting a little bit too. And how you're going to get pitched. [00:07:36] Speaker B: Yeah, a little bit. I. This is maybe my favorite one because this is one where I think not many people would do it because it's a little bit more of a long term project. So the idea behind this one is that you generally you're going to use virtual reality with hitters, right. Because pictures are, you need to protect them so much and you don't want to increase their workload. So you're going to do it with hitters. But doing things with hitters allows you to understand what pictures need to do to navigate it. Right. It's just like a cat and mouse sort of thing. If you can understand what a hitter does well, you can understand what is needed to exploit that. So the example I always give is in virtual reality or sorry, in the real world it's difficult to ask a picture to throw 10 pictures from here and then Suddenly throw one from down here. It would be probably quite dangerous from an injury perspective and sort of very difficult for them to do in a really controlled and rigorous manner. But in VR you can easily do that. So allowing you to do that allows us to understand, okay, is changing that angle of the pitch affecting how a batter sees the ball and where they're looking at and if it does, then actually can we train a 19 year old pitcher to produce this sort of surprise pitch as we would call it? And yeah, so there's that long term element to that one, but something that I think would be fun to study and fun to investigate. [00:09:12] Speaker A: So yeah, because nobody ever thinks from the, from the pitcher's viewpoint on that part of it. [00:09:17] Speaker B: 100%. Yeah. [00:09:19] Speaker A: Which is also why it's good because you always come with fresh set eyes where you come from a research based and science background where you ask good questions, where somebody that's in it probably doesn't even think about that, but you're really good about asking good questions and. [00:09:34] Speaker B: Also asking bad questions as well. Because I don't know baseball as much as, you know, 95% of people in the world. You know, I'll ask these questions and eight, there may be stupid questions, eight of them may be silly questions that, you know, an experienced baseball head laughs at, but two of them might be useful, two of them might be good and if that's the case, then I'll take it. [00:09:58] Speaker A: So, and you mentioned post game analysis then too. Is that almost like reframing your bats where you're going to go back and, and participate in the, the exact same at bats you through? [00:10:10] Speaker B: Yeah, you absolutely can do that. I, I think you can use it in a few different ways. So again, most sports have some sort of post game analysis looking back on particular players and going, okay, what was the decision made there? Why did you do it? Have a discussion centered around that. Now again, you do that in video anyway. But what we can do with VR now, and in particular there's a company called Resol that allow you to do this is you can replay exact plays but from the perspective of that player. So pick any player on that field and you can put yourself in their position, exactly where they were and watch that play again from their perspective. And coaches could find that really valuable. Right. Like you might sometimes scratch your head and go, what was the catcher thinking? Why didn't he throw that to second? Or what was the picture thinking? Why didn't he see that runner? Well, put yourself. We can put you in that VR world and see exactly what they were seeing and maybe there's something that you didn't notice. And I think that's a really crucial one as well. That'd be really nice to sort of enhance the coaching perspective and maybe sort of see what they missed or maybe. [00:11:25] Speaker A: What they did see and also see when they're doing it right too, because I think that's a big proponent. I think it's coach. We've talked about that multiple times here the last month with some of the pro guys that have been on about trying to emphasize when they're doing it right as opposed to spending so much time on when they need to make adjustments and basically saying like, hey, you did this right. We focus so much on when they're not doing it right. A lot of the time where it's like, okay, you did this right and you had the right decision making on this. [00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah, that's so true. And even players, surprises sometimes we're like, wow, how did they do that? What were they even thinking to come up with that? And now we can go, ah, okay, so they maybe saw that, whereas every other person in the world didn't see that. Because for whatever reason, that's what makes them great or that what. That's what makes them the person they are. [00:12:11] Speaker A: So, and then psychological readiness, is that coming off injuries or is that just making sure they can handle the speed of the game? [00:12:19] Speaker B: So the injury one's probably the next one. So this is more to do with sort of anxiety and pressure and yeah, to some extent the speed of the game. So for me, there's probably three major transitions that occur in professional baseball. And you know, every transition between the levels can potentially be a major transition. So I'm not downplaying any single one. But for me, there's going from college or high school to your professional organization, that's going to be a big leap for a lot of players. The second one is Dominican guys or sort of Latin guys coming to America, many of them doing it for the very first time. That's a huge transition culturally, not just in terms of the baseball world. And then the third one is AAA to big league. Right? That's. That's the major step. You're suddenly going in front of 50, 000 fans potentially. And with each of those, the anxiety, the pressure, the stress, all of those things are going to be huge. So what can we do to try and ease that transition? Well, we can show them what it potentially is going to be like. We can almost give them reps inside Yankee Stadium. We can Give them reps inside the American clubhouse. I always say what I would do with the Latin doctor guys and all that lot, super easy to do is, you know, a few weeks before they arrive, put a VR headset on them. That shows them what it's like to step off that plane, walk across through the airport, walk into the clubhouse and just sit down at the canteen. Right. So simple, so silly. It might even sound a little bit unnecessary. But they then see, they. They're then prepared for the little things, what it's going to be like in. In America, essentially. Yeah. [00:14:14] Speaker A: And then you added the caveat on that. With the injured players, guys who can't. Can't get reps, actual game reps, they're going to use it to stay sharp. [00:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And that's. That's. So that's the sixth case. That's the maintaining engagement. And whenever we speak to coaches about VR, one of the big things we get is, you know, is it something that injured players can do? Is it something that rehabbing players can do? Because they've got these guys here essentially doing nothing. Right. Like their rehab and work might take half an hour of the day. And for the pro guys, you know, they've potentially got another five, six hours to kill if they can't go back to the hotel or wherever it is. And I used to walk through the clubhouse and you just walk past them playing Fortnite on their phones or whatever the latest game is on their phones, and, you know, there's a few things you can get them to do. But again, like I was saying earlier, everyone's so busy that we can't always be looking after the players and finding things for them to do. So VR potentially is something that they can be doing there. Now, could it be a placebo? You know, if you just put them in a headset and say, work on this cognitive training, this brain training, whatever you want to call it. Is that a placebo? Possibly. Does that matter? I'd argue probably not. [00:15:36] Speaker A: Placebo effects an actual thing, like it actually works. Placebo effect work, yes. [00:15:42] Speaker B: And I say this when we're talking about sort of a range of psychology things increasing a player's confidence and sort of almost like happiness and want and desire to be. Training like that probably goes above and beyond any sort of slight increase in visual, perceptual skill or anything like that, in my opinion. The other thing with that one, I think, is that with when you have those injured players and those rehabbing players, it can feel so isolating for them. You know, they're not part of the team as much. They're not sort of constantly interacting with their coaches and their teammates. If you can give them something to do that they think is, you know, part of training and part of their process, then that can sort of be a good thing in terms of their, their engagement and their, and their morale, basically their, their well being. [00:16:36] Speaker A: So we always hear them talk about feeling like they're on an island and, and that's one step to actually have coach player interaction. Even if it is through VR. They get another touch point from a coach where they don't feel like they're on an island by themselves trying to work through their injury. [00:16:52] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. 100%. [00:16:54] Speaker A: What do you feel like is the best protocol for VR? [00:17:02] Speaker B: I think if you've got the, the resources to implement it and the capability to implement it daily, then getting it to become part of a routine I think you're going to get benefits from. I don't think it's one of those novelty, let's do it every now and again just to prevent boredom, which some people can argue and that's fine. Like I get that logic. Some, some technologies are like that. Personally, I don't think VR is, I think if it can be implemented into a routine where, you know, they do it 15 minutes a day, 15 minutes every other day, perhaps depending on resources, that's how I would love to see it being used. That's, I think we're far away away from that maybe at the moment, but who knows? [00:17:52] Speaker A: All it takes is one player to do it and have success doing it. That's really all it takes. It's because it. Word of mouth spreads like wildfire. If you have one player that's putting up numbers and they're doing it religiously, then you're gonna have other people jump on board with yeah. [00:18:05] Speaker B: And, and you've got to remember we're still really early days with VR. So good VR is probably only sort of five, six years old. So if you're thinking about the types of players that are in the big league doing it like you're not going to implement it or it's unlikely to be able to be implemented with those AAA and big league. Right. Because they've already got their routines. So it's something that needs to be implemented with the lower guys that then make it and that they become part of their routine. So maybe that's only another year or two away. Hopefully there's someone that's been doing that, building their way up. [00:18:39] Speaker A: So, and we talked about Haptics a little bit last time. Have that. Has that gotten better as far as feeling when the ball makes contact with the bat? [00:18:49] Speaker B: I'm sure it's gotten better. Is it good enough? I would question it, especially at the very top level because they're so in tuned with their body, they're so aware of the smallest details that maybe would never get there with the technology. Right. Because even being 0.01 milliseconds off with it could be crucial. And just the way the technology works. Right. Like you've got to send it from the headset to the computer and then back again. And even that smallest of times could be something that an Aaron Judge notices and makes a difference for him. So do we ever get there? Maybe, but I don't think we're there yet again. [00:19:34] Speaker A: Anything new on the horizon for skill acquisition? [00:19:38] Speaker B: Ah, did you see. Do you know Rob Gray? Have you heard of Rob Gray? [00:19:43] Speaker A: I do know Rob Gray, yeah. [00:19:45] Speaker B: So he had a nice paper come out, came out last week, which. Or a couple of weeks ago that. [00:19:51] Speaker A: You may probably expert, isn't he, on skill? Yeah, he's expert in he, I think. [00:19:56] Speaker B: Especially when you're talking baseball skill acquisition. I can't think of anyone that's more in this area, more knowledgeable in this area than Rob. And he produced what I think is a beautiful paper called Practicing the Wrong Way. Were you. Did you see it? [00:20:12] Speaker A: I haven't, but I'm gonna read it now. [00:20:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So I can send it you after. I'll give a brief summary. Basically, he took what ended up being sort of three different groups of players, and one of the groups were instructed to intentionally try to pop up or intentionally try to ground ball it. Intentionally try to foul it out left. Foul it out right. So they were instructed to practice the wrong way. And the scientists and the academics may argue that that's not really practicing the wrong way. So that's partly semantics in my opinion, but it's a really interesting study because as far as I'm aware, that's new to the area. We don't really instruct people to practice the wrong way. We instruct people to explore different ways of doing things. And there's loads of literature on what we call differential learning, where people are trying to do different ways and trying to explore their body and the different processes and techniques, but actually telling someone the wrong goal and the wrong aim is new as far as I'm aware. And he did this very impressive in terms of sort of length and players and involvement. He did this very long study. And he basically found that this was better for them, this was superior in terms of their and skills than traditional training. And it's logical because you're exploring more, you're understanding more about your capabilities and the space. And the scientific word, I guess, would be, we call it affordances, essentially what you can and can't do. [00:22:01] Speaker A: Your end ranges and find your end ranges. [00:22:05] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. And um, so the idea and the conclusions were logical. But like I said before, I'm not aware of anyone that's actually done that before and it's really interesting. I definitely recommend yourself and listeners. [00:22:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Because it honestly, there's time and place for fouling balls off. Honestly, obviously not put in play. But you know, it. It always. You always think about the better hitters that you either coached along the way. They were able to fight pitches off and get them out of there without putting them in play just to buy another pitch. [00:22:40] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I did speak to a friend not long after the paper came out there and I said, have you seen this? And he said, he's a coach. And he said there's absolutely no way that could get implemented at the big league level. And I did think, yeah, you're right. [00:22:59] Speaker A: But it's something to think about. And again, that's where the science research part comes in. It's a good question because nobody's ever really thought about it like it. Would this be a better way to train at times where you're trying to get in your end range? And also probably teaching hitters a little bit more of a barrel manipulation piece to it too, where they're developing better feel for their barrel because they're trying to miss hit balls rather than square balls up, where they get a little bit of feel for that too. And would that, if you do work on that every once in a while, does that allow you a better capability of actually squaring the ball up more consistently because you're working and training that sometimes? [00:23:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's the logic. I think it's so interesting and I've been sort of racking my brain of how can you apply this to different sports? Could I do a replication study with a different sport? But I think baseball is quite nicely suited to that because as you've just said, like, there are ways when fouling off is. Is not necessarily like a bad thing or like a wrong way. And not all sports have that sort of equivalent, I guess. [00:24:01] Speaker A: Anything you've changed your mind on here recently? [00:24:05] Speaker B: Oh, that. That requires me to remember what my mindset was two and A half years ago? That's a good question. I'm not sure. I guess I know that I changed my mind from sort of 10 years ago on, say, you know, pretty pre New York Yankees, I was very much a case of practice. Correct practice can take you almost anywhere. But then my time at the Yankees did make me realize that there's some people that are just special and maybe that's a careful thing that I should say, but there are, you can't look at the judges and go, okay, he, he didn't, you know, have something about him. So that's not something that's changed in the last, since we last spoke, but it's definitely something that, you know, when people say, has your mindset changed? That's something I do think of. Yeah. [00:25:10] Speaker A: The elite of the elite, they're just, they're different. They are born different, they come out different. You know, yes, they do work, but there are some, and you can go across every sport and there's going to be people that you can point out or. Well, Ovechkin is a good, good guy's the all time scoring leader for the NHL. I don't think he works extremely hard. When you look at his background, I don't think ovechkin that, that ESPN 30 for 30 they did on him. I mean, he likes to get after it off the, once he's done. Like, he, I don't think he's working hard, hard, but he's, he, he's highly skilled at what he does. [00:25:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I love to watch that. Ice hockey is not that big a sport, but I did see that story. Yeah. And there's other examples you can point to. It's, it's slightly different, I guess, with someone like Usain Bolt, where physical prowess is obviously super important, but obviously there's stories about him. In boxing, you have people like Tyson Fury. Like, there's definitely examples that you can point to. Yeah, I, I, I never like to say that players are born with something, but for the. Yeah, what other way can you say it? [00:26:22] Speaker A: And I asked too, is there time for block training? I know everybody likes to talk about difference between block and random, and I did want to revisit that too, because I still think there's a time for it, especially with different age groups. [00:26:34] Speaker B: Do you know what? [00:26:35] Speaker A: I wanted to kind of get your opinions again on that, the block versus random training piece too. Yeah. [00:26:41] Speaker B: I mean, you've just said you want to get back into it. I think now's quite a good time because there's been a couple of studies recently that have gone back into that area and that's quite. For skill acquisition. That's one of the older areas, I guess. And it's always been, as you were saying, the idea that random's always best block's not really that good. But it is starting to emerge now that as with the case in most things, it's not that simple and maybe for especially the younger guys and sort of early on in the learning process, the block could be useful in other situations. It's not an area that I've done research in, but I do teach it, so I have some familiarity and it's definitely something that I think is worth following for the next sort of five, 10 years because I do think that picture will become a bit more nuanced and understanding that could be advantageous to, to people. [00:27:36] Speaker A: So do you, have you dove into the Torbit Torpedo bats at all? [00:27:42] Speaker B: No, but I did speak to Aaron Leonhardt who according to all the articles is the, the mastermind behind it. And I'll be honest, that does not surprise me because the guy's a genius. So. Yeah. Yeah, that was nice to see. I do have bat related ideas for studies. I'm not sure where the torpedo aspect comes into that, but it's interesting. It's very interesting. It's died down a little bit since the Yankees slowed off. [00:28:13] Speaker A: It always does, but it makes sense. But you know, again, they tested it like that's the thing. Like they, there was a lot of testing with individual players to go into that and it's not like they're using it but again that's where the testing piece comes in with the individual and, and if they hit the ball closer to the label then that's probably a good fit for them. [00:28:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's one of those that it's, it comes out and it's like this is so obvious. How has it taken 150 years for, for someone to, to do this? And I was speaking to a colleague and who's, who's huge into baseball, knows way more than I do and I was saying like surely, surely there's been other bats. Right. Like someone's done this before and he, he sent me a nice article about various bats. Crate, not crazes. I don't know if that's the right term, but sort of differences in the past. But yeah, apparently this is pretty new, so who would have thought? [00:29:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, but I guess I, when I look at it it reminds me of like an old C243. Like there had. There were Louisville Slugger had different models and the barrels were shaped different, but probably not that extreme. But there, there have been preferences with, with larger handles and larger barrels and skinnier handles. Skinnier barrels. There has, but not, probably not to this extent. [00:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting one. It probably delves into the biomechanics a lot more. Whereas my area is sort of vision perception and cognition. So it'd be interesting to see what sort of a biomechanist would say about it. And like you said, you know, people have probably tested it loads, so there is obviously strong logic to it. Yeah, it's interesting. I like it when I saw it. [00:30:01] Speaker A: From a cognitive standpoint with brain scans. Those areas of basically guessing in perception where an object's going to end up, they're stronger in those areas. Correct. [00:30:14] Speaker B: In terms of. Are we talking bats still now? [00:30:16] Speaker A: I'm talking about vision training, I'm talking about cognition. I just think the elite of the elite, I think they're vision, vision is better, but I also think they can guess better with a ball moving in space. Where it's gonna end up. [00:30:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I, I think, I think it's going to be specific to sort of like baseball type tasks. Right. So do they have better just sort of general vision? Maybe. I don't think that's as conclusive as perhaps some people assume. But they definitely have better sort of baseball specific vision and baseball specific cognition and baseball specific perception. So, yeah, I mean, that's why I was hired, I guess is to try and exploit that evidence. So. Yeah. [00:31:03] Speaker A: Would you change anything if you got rehired by the Yankees and went back? What would you, what would you start with now? Not that you're starting over, but even if you went back, what would you do some things differently? [00:31:17] Speaker B: Well, that's an interesting question because I guess there's a lot of things we trialed and errored. So if I could go back, then I would sort of just cut out that trial and error part. Right. And just get to the end point. But that would be cheating. So I don't know if that's allowed. I did learn some things. I learned that you can't just educate the coaches, you have to educate the players as well. We thought, okay, you gotta, you gotta go in there, you gotta tell the coaches why we want to do these things and why we want to make these changes. And we thought we were quite clever about doing that, but we didn't think about the players at all. And actually the players also need to know, okay, why is their training changing? Why Are they starting to do these different things? So I definitely changed that. That was in hindsight like an obvious mistake to make, but at the time it didn't seem that much of an issue. So I changed that. Yeah, I'd like to think, you know, relationship building, I thought I was quite good at that. But again, you can always be better and that's such a crucial part to baseball and to coaching and practice. So, yeah, I don't know if I do anything differently. I just do things a little bit quicker and maybe a little bit better, I guess. [00:32:35] Speaker A: And it is a player driven approach. And let's be honest, they're going to be their best coaches. Coaching does matter, but for a lot of them, they're going to be their best coaches when they need it. [00:32:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And it kind of links back to the whole, you know, using a T situation. I wouldn't ever support it, but if a player wants to use it, I'd never take it away from a player. You know, what a player wants to do. For a large part, I think, you know, they know themselves. Like you were saying. [00:33:08] Speaker A: Yeah, it's just there's so many outliers and so much gray area with it that, that there are some things that maybe in theory wouldn't work, but in practice they do work. And so that's where you have to have a bunch of different things to introduce to players because you never know what one's going to work for one player, maybe work for another. And that's why you do have to introduce a bunch of different things. But that's also confidence in the routine too. I think with the tee. I think that that's where the confidence in the routine comes from. Where should you be using it? Maybe, maybe not. But that's where if you have confidence in the routine that you're using, it is going to show up on, with on field performance. [00:33:45] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And that's why I think, you know, you're not going to be able to take a tee away from someone who's at a AA Triple A higher, but maybe you can a little bit lower down because those routines perhaps aren't as cemented. I don't know. [00:34:01] Speaker A: You have many students at Latrobe that are interested in baseball? [00:34:06] Speaker B: Not many, but when you find a couple that are, they are really into it, which is nice to see. So I've got a couple of students right now and he got me into watching the Clubhouse on Netflix. You need to watch it. [00:34:20] Speaker A: Anybody that hasn't, I've been shouting it from the Rooftops here since I watched it. It was recommended by a former player and assistant coach of mine. And then if you have not watched Clubhouse about the Red Sox season last season, I think it's some of the best television if you're an inch, especially if you're a baseball person. [00:34:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:40] Speaker A: I just think it's great for the general fan who doesn't understand how hard it is to play the game. I think that's where it's going to have the most value of people not screaming at baseball players as much anymore if you watch that. [00:34:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's a nice show, isn't it? [00:34:57] Speaker A: It's great. [00:34:57] Speaker B: It doesn't sort of paint much in a bad light, if that makes sense. Like, it shows how hard it can be, but it's not sort of digging into sort of negative stories or anything like that. So. Which is. I like that in a TV show. [00:35:14] Speaker A: How's your classroom set up for your. [00:35:15] Speaker B: Classes in terms of. [00:35:18] Speaker A: How do you set it from classroom design? You do anything different with your classes? Do you have many. Is it online? Is it in class? What do you have a mix? [00:35:26] Speaker B: So we have. It's kind of 50. 50. We have half of it online and then we have half in person. The most things you can get doing with them rather than actually just sort of talking at them. That's generally better, right? That no one wants to hear me. Although we've been yapping for half an hour now. Nobody normally likes to do that with me. So when I can get them actually doing things, they quite like it. We're going to be doing a bit of. They love Australian Rules Football. Not sure if you're familiar with it. They love it here. So I've had to learn that a little bit so that we can do those sorts of activities here. And cricket as well. That's nice. But unfortunately, not too much baseball activities yet. [00:36:07] Speaker A: How have you had to adjust with going to more online classes? [00:36:15] Speaker B: Do you know what, at first, when we first moved into it, I thought, oh, this. This is better. This will be easier. You know, you're just talking rather than doing something live in front of 300 students and talking at them. But actually, it's way more effort. It's way more effort putting together a video because you want it to be perfect then. Right. Whereas if it's live, you can make a mistake and it's all right, it's fine. You just explain yourself and you can clarify things when a student looks confused. Whereas online you can't see if a student looks confused. So you can Say something that you think makes sense and maybe someone doesn't. Yeah, it's harder than I thought it was going to be. But we're used to it now. We've probably been doing it three or four years. [00:36:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it's crazy. I would have not been good with online classes. I needed interaction in the classroom. Professors, I needed that. I mean you would adjust but one of my kids is all online. One of my kids is split hybrid. But the one, he loves it though, my oldest, he loves all online but I don't. It would have been really, really hard for me. And it seems like it's more work on the student too. It seems like you're seems almost more like high school because you're having to check a lot more. [00:37:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think it's definitely requires more self discipline from the students which perhaps is not a forte of the younger generations right now. But yeah, I, I think if you're bring, if you're brought up right now through that system, you're probably used to it and you still want that mix because students will always still want that interaction not just with the, with the teacher but with the other students as well. Probably more so actually. So they still want that mix. I'd be surprised if there's many students who want fully online. But yeah, I'd have been the same. I don't know if I'd have liked that much online. [00:38:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Do you have a new fail forward moment? Something you thought was going to set you back but looking back now helped you move forward? [00:38:13] Speaker B: What did I say last time? [00:38:14] Speaker A: I haven't checked. [00:38:21] Speaker B: I'm not sure that is a good question. I think you warned me last time, didn't you? I should have remembered. Do you know what? So I left the Yankees because my wife, my now wife was unable to get a work visa at the time and so we didn't want to leave but it was kind of like, you know, she's, she's worked really hard throughout her university life to sort of get this qualification which she now can't use. So we made the decision, look, it's, it's only fair, let's go back to England. And then sort of just before I was leaving, I was speaking to one of the higher ups at the Yankees and he said ah, you should have let us know we might have been able to pull some strings and maybe I should have done. I sometimes look back on that conversation and think I'd love to, to still be doing stuff like that. We spoke earlier before we started this and you said do you Miss America? And I was like, I missed the baseball. And that is very true. So that, that failure to sort of inquire about that is maybe something that I sometimes think about, but it's led me to where I am right now. And actually with all that said, I don't know if I would change where I am right now. I absolutely love it here. Really love what I do, really love the life in Australia. So, yeah, that failure, which I do still look back on and think, what if it's led me to at least. [00:39:54] Speaker A: You know, to ask now? I mean, that's the teaching point of that is because if you don't ask, the answer's always no. So it's like, okay, I need to ask this question. It might be awkward and I might get told no, but if you don't ask, then the answer is always no. [00:40:08] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that goes to anyone listening as well. If you're in that similar ish situation, just ask, ask. [00:40:15] Speaker A: And you have openings here for master's PhD students at Latrobe? [00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah, we've got a couple of nice projects, but it's dependent on sort of the right students just because the funding process to get a scholarship, which most students would probably need, it's just so competitive. So we have a couple baseball related projects that if it's the right student, would be, I think, fantastic opportunity. We probably don't need to talk about them now, but I can send you a LinkedIn link and maybe you can put it on the podcast. [00:40:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's why I'm not in your shoes. And I coached baseball because I couldn't get into, I couldn't get into a master's program for psychology. That's true. My green. I maybe should have went to law school because the logic was perfect, but that's why I did not go end up going to psych grad school because it's so competitive to get in and my GRE scores weren't, weren't good enough and I wasn't going to retake it. But that's also, that's a fail forward moment too for me. It's like, okay, I didn't score well enough, but I probably didn't put enough time in to score well enough on it. And that's what pivoted me to doing what I'm doing now, which is what I'm supposed to be doing. That's the, the great. [00:41:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say that's the. [00:41:33] Speaker A: Great thing with life. It's like you think at the time, it's like, oh, I don't know what am I doing? But then you look up, it's like, okay, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. [00:41:41] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. [00:41:43] Speaker A: Have your routines changed at all? Any morning or evening routines changed for you? [00:41:48] Speaker B: No, I'm still very much a morning person. Perhaps even more so now. Actually I go to bed earlier. I think that's just probably an age thing though. I think that's gradually what happens, isn't it? But no, I, I'm. Yeah. [00:42:07] Speaker A: What do you like about the mornings? [00:42:10] Speaker B: I, maybe this is an odd one but I feel like I'm getting ahead of everyone else. If I've done, if I've worked out by 6am I'm one step ahead of everyone else and I like that feeling about it. So maybe that's a little bit competitive of me, a little bit unnecessary. But that's what I quite like about it. [00:42:29] Speaker A: I do too. When I'm up at 4:30 and doing stuff, people are like how I'm like. And I was not a morning person. I was, I was an evening person. Yeah. Yep, yep. It's changed over time but I feel the exact same way. I feel like you, you win the day when you get up and you've gotten stuff knocked out and you've already gotten stuff done. You know 98% of the human population is still in bed. Like it does give you some motivation and it does make you feel good. [00:42:57] Speaker B: Yeah. One thing I will caveat so it doesn't sound like I'm super weird. So I will be up at like you know, between 4am and 5am most days. But I'm a very big napper and I support and endorse napping very much. So I will have a nap many days. So yeah, I'm up super early. I go to bed super early but also have a nap often. [00:43:19] Speaker A: So when do you usually nap? [00:43:24] Speaker B: To be honest, whenever I can fit, Whenever I can fit it in. It sounds bad but 15 minutes. [00:43:29] Speaker A: You go longer than 15 minutes sometimes? [00:43:31] Speaker B: No, I'm not one of those short term nappers. It will be like a 45 minute nap. I think so. Which I don't know if that's best. We have a couple of colleagues who do a lot of sleep research in our department. They'd probably say that's not best for you because you wait, you're in the. [00:43:45] Speaker A: Middle of your different cycles. I think they say like below 30 and 90 because the sleep cycle basically starts I think 30. So I think that in between 30 to 90 minute range is where you Might be a little sluggish. Yeah. But again, that's a human thing. If that works for you, it works for you. Like there. Those are just averages. So you might be, you might be great with, with 45 minutes. [00:44:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Who knows? [00:44:13] Speaker A: Any other books or podcasts you're diving into right now? [00:44:18] Speaker B: Do they have to be baseball related? [00:44:19] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. This, that we have a diverse group, so it could be anything. I think this group actually, this group that listens actually likes the, the different outlier stuff too. It doesn't have to be baseball. [00:44:31] Speaker B: I. I'm very big into podcasts and audiobooks. I've been listening to Stephen Fry. He's. Is he's. He known in America? [00:44:40] Speaker A: I'm not sure. [00:44:42] Speaker B: Okay, so Stephen Fry is sort of a well known figure in England. Sort of a national treasure, I'd probably say. Does acting, does presenting authority, just general sort of polymath, I guess. And he's done a lot of books on sort of Greek mythology. And so like I said, completely random, not baseball related. But I've been listening to those on audiobooks and those are brilliant. So I would recommend, if anyone wants something slightly different, I'd definitely recommend them more related to sport. Good question. Actually. Not sure. I just say I was big into. [00:45:20] Speaker A: Greek and Roman mythology as a kid. I read a lot of Greek and Roman mythology when I was a kid. Stories are phenomenal. [00:45:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I like it. [00:45:32] Speaker A: What else we need to touch on? What do you want to touch on? Anything. [00:45:40] Speaker B: I like? No, I like the talk that we talked about, the VR. That's what I wanted to sort of chat about. Talk about that all day. So I'm glad we done that. I'm good. I'm good. [00:45:49] Speaker A: Okay, perfect. What are some final thoughts before I. [00:45:51] Speaker B: Let you go nap, Stephen Fry, and implement VR into baseball? If you're someone working in baseball, Love it. [00:46:02] Speaker A: Love it. Appreciate you, sir. Thanks again for your time. [00:46:04] Speaker B: No worries. Thanks for having me on. [00:46:08] Speaker A: It's always great to connect with Dr. Wilkins. He's one of the brightest minds we have in the sports industry. I love that he's willing to ask questions and challenge them through the scientific method. Thanks again to John Litchfield, Zach Hale and Matt west and the ABCA office for all the help on the podcast. Feel free to reach out to me via [email protected], twitter, Instagram or TikTok coachbabca or direct message me via the MyBCA app. This is Ryan Brownlee signing off for the American Baseball Coaches Association. Thanks and leave a beta for those. [00:46:36] Speaker B: Behind. [00:46:41] Speaker A: Keeps on turning and your life is not for your name and you know that way Yep. Wait for another day. [00:46:57] Speaker B: And the world will always return as your life never before your name and you know that. [00:47:09] Speaker A: Way Wait for another.