194: Rachel Balkovec on High Performance Team Culture, Tough Love and Transitioning From S&C to Hitting Coach in Pro Baseball | Sponsored by SimpliFaster
Just Fly Performance Podcast - Podcast készítő Joel Smith, Just-Fly-Sports.com - Csütörtökök

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. Finally, be sure to support what Rachel is doing from a humanitarian perspective with her Go Fund Me Page (https://www.gofundme.com/f/humans-for-humans-during-covid) for supporting those impacted economically by our current COVID19 crisis. 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.