We’ve all been there. We have a player who turns out to be great, or we watch what great players do, and we study them intensely to figure out what they’re doing so we can replicate it with all our other players.

But then when we try to apply what we’ve learned we find it works really well for some, pretty well for others, and little or not at all for the rest. Some even see their performance level go down or even get hurt trying to implement what we’re telling them.

How can that be? we wonder. We did our due diligence and we know what we’re saying works. We’ve seen it work. So why isn’t it working here?

The answer is very likely to be related to something called “motor preferences^®,” which can be simply defined as working with the way each body is designed to move from birth.

This is a concept I have been dabbling with for the last few months since learning about it from my friend and colleague Linda Lensch over at Greased Lightning Fastpitch. (If you’re in the Jersey Shore area she’s definitely the person to see about fastpitch pitching.)

I had previously taken an online course offered by Volodalen, a French organization that has performed 20 years of research into motor preferences and how they help athletes in all sports perform at a higher level while reducing injuries. But last weekend I had the opportunity to join a couple dozen of the best pitching coaches in the country for a two-day, in-depth, in-person training clinic hosted by James Clarke at United Pitching Academy in Centerville, Indiana. (Again, James is the guy to see in that area.)

The clinic was led by David Genest of Motor Preferences Experts, the only organization in North America authorized by Volodalen to teach how to identify and take advantage of motor preferences in this part of the world. To say it was mind-blowing and potentially game-changing is still greatly understating the impact that understanding your players’ motor preferences can have.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here, but I’m going to share some of these concepts to help you get a better feel for how learning about your players’ motor preferences can help you train them better.

One of the core concepts is that athletes can be classified into one of two groups: aerials and terrestrials. These are not black and white classifications but, as David told us, more 50 shades of gray.

So while some players may be totally aerial or terrestrial, most will fall somewhere along a spectrum in-between those two extremes.

Aerials tend to move rather light and bouncy, especially when they run. They like being up in the air, with their center of balance leaned more forward. Think of a kangaroo.

Terrestrials, as the name implies, tend to be more earthbound. Their center of balance tends to sit further back, and they pull themselves forward rather than bound forward. Think more like an elephant.

Those are two very different movement patterns. So you can see why, if you tell an aerial to spring forward when they move you’ll get great results, while telling a terrestrial to spring forward will probably not get the success you’re looking for. One is designed to do it, the other is not.

Another key factor is which side of the body favors being in extension and which side favors being in flexion. All of us have one of each, and it’s built into our DNA.

So if you have, say, a catcher who can block well to her right but struggles to get to her left, it could be her left leg is her extension leg, which is good at pushing/extending, while the right flexion leg is not so much.

There are many other motor preferences, such as a preference for red or blue, that need to be taken into consideration to develop a complete, individualized profile of a player, but you get the idea. The more you understand how their body is designed from birth to move, the better you can train them to take advantage of what they can do easily while avoiding what will be more difficult for them to do..

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert in motor preferences. While I am now certified in motor preferences use by MPE as well as Volodalen, I am still very early in this journey.

But I have already seen results within a single lesson after testing a few students and making suggestions based on the outcomes. For example, a hitter who hitting pop flies on front toss suddenly started hitting bombs after we adjusted her swing to use her motor shoulder more effectively.

I’ve also seen a pitcher improve her stability and pick up a couple of mph in a lesson after changing how she launches. Several pitching coach friends who were at the clinic are reporting similar improvements just through understanding their students’ motor preferences better.

If you are serious about helping your players become the best they can be – whatever that ceiling is – I highly recommend signing up for a Motor Preferences Experts clinic. You can find a list the upcoming dates and locations here.

I will tell you it’s not cheap. Attending a clinic is a $900 investment, although you can then attend additional clinics for a refresher at no charge, at least as of this writing. But in my opinion it is well worth the expense, especially if you plan to keep coaching or teaching for a while.

If you want to get started but can’t make it to a live clinic right now you can also do the Volodalen online course as I did. That will be a $990 cost (which cannot be applied to the cost of live clinics in case you were wondering because they are offered by separate organizations). It is not as complete as the live training, nor as valuable in practical application in my opinion, but you do get videos you can refer back to again and again.

Either way you go, however, spread that cost out over a few years, and compare it to the benefits you and your players will receive, both in terms of improving their performance and helping them prevent unnecessary injuries, and I think you’ll find as I did that it is an incredible bargain.

And you’ll better understand not only why things that work with some players don’t work with others but also how to change what you’re teaching to what WILL for those players. You can’t put a price on that.