Research-grounded articles for coaches from t-ball through college. Four developmental stages. Plain language. No fluff. Just the best available science translated into practice.
Every category addresses a specific layer of how young athletes actually develop skill — from the fundamentals of motor learning to position-specific coaching tools.
The articles coaches find most immediately applicable. Full research citations included.
Whether you volunteer coach a rec league team of 8-year-olds or run a travel program — the science applies to your dugout right now. The methods here are not about having a sport science staff. They are about making better decisions with the time and equipment you already have.
The 5-minute intro for coaches who are new to this site. No prior science background required. Written for the dad who has practice in two days and wants to know what to actually do differently.
Most youth coaches were taught to teach the same way they were taught. Repeat the skill. Correct the errors. Add complexity when the basics look clean. This is logical and it is also, in important ways, at odds with what 40 years of motor learning science shows about how children actually build durable, game-ready skills.
The gap between what the research shows and what happens in most youth dugouts is enormous. This site exists to close that gap in plain language, with real citations, for coaches who do not have a sport science staff and a $50,000 training budget.
The methods here are not about abandoning drills. They are about designing practice environments where the right skills actually emerge — and transfer to Saturday's game.
Your players can look great at Tuesday's practice and fall apart in Saturday's game — and it is often a direct result of how the practice was designed. Understanding this one distinction changes how you run every session. Start with this article.
"Keep your elbow up." "Squish the bug." "Hands inside the ball." These cues feel specific and helpful. Research shows they often produce exactly the movement problem you are trying to fix. This is the most immediately actionable article on the site.
It predicts higher injury rates and higher dropout rates. The research on early specialization is one of the most consistent findings in long-term athlete development. This article is also the one to send to parents.
They are, according to the research, among the most efficient teaching environments available — because they preserve the perceptual information that governs skill in a real game. This article explains why.
The most powerful thing a coach can do is design a practice environment that makes the right skill more likely to emerge — rather than standing next to a player and telling them what to do. The Practice Design category is where to go next.
81 articles across 4 developmental stages. Filter by stage, then by category.
81 articles across 10 content categories and 4 developmental stages.
Foundational peer-reviewed publications from 11 researchers whose work anchors this site. Every article on Dugout Lab cites only from this canon.
Independent Educational Resource
Dugout Lab is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to any researcher listed here. All papers cited are publicly available peer-reviewed work, selected independently for their relevance to youth baseball coaching. Researcher names appear solely as attribution for published academic work. If you are a listed researcher and have a concern, contact us at info@gamedayhelpers.com.
Ten evidence-backed articles explaining the science behind how we coach. Written for skeptical parents who want to understand — not just trust. Share freely.
These articles do not ask parents to stop caring about their child's development. They ask them to direct that care toward the variables that research shows actually matter.
Complete practices you can run as-is or modify. Every drill, every constraint, every cue, every minute. Filter by your players' age and developmental stage.
Baseball development isn't one-size-fits-all. What a 7-year-old needs from coaching is fundamentally different from what a 15-year-old needs. These four stages come from Jean Côté's research on long-term athlete development — one of the most replicated frameworks in sport science.
Most youth coaches apply the same model across all ages. The research consistently shows this is wrong — and that it costs players in the long run. Understanding which stage your players are in is the single most useful thing you can do before designing a practice.
Not sure which stage applies to your team?
Most rec league teams ages 7–12 are in the Sampling stage whether they know it or not. Start there.
A 60-minute live clinic translating motor learning research into drills you can run next week. Practical, plain-language, and built for coaches at any level.
We need 100 coaches to commit before we announce the date. Share this with one coach you know who runs youth baseball practice.
Copied!1. Click Reserve My Spot and send $25 via Venmo to @John-Baker-CA with the note "DugoutLab Clinic."
2. Once we hit 100 coaches, we announce the date and send the Zoom link. Recording goes to everyone.
Questions? info@gamedayhelpers.com
Dugout Lab coaching programs are led by John Baker, M.A. — a former Major League catcher with a graduate degree in performance psychology and years of applied mental skills work inside professional baseball. This is not a personal brand project. It is a professional coaching service built on the same evidence-based principles that drive everything on this site.
This is training, not therapy. This is development, not motivation.
Mental skills are trained the same way physical skills are trained — through deliberate practice, structured repetition, and progressive challenge over time. Behavioral and mindset change typically requires three to four weeks to build a foundation and considerably longer to stabilize under competition pressure. Every program below is built around that reality.
Not a sales call. John uses the first conversation to understand the athlete and whether this is the right fit. No commitment required.
Select a program, fill in your details, and send payment via Venmo. John will receive your enrollment information and reach out within one business day to schedule your first session.
Mindset change typically requires three to four weeks to build a foundation and considerably longer to stabilize under competition pressure. One conversation rarely changes a pattern. A structured program can.
Confidence develops through repeated competent action. It cannot be talked into existence. It has to be earned.
The ability to reset after errors and regulate under pressure is a trainable skill with a real learning curve — not a personality trait.
Athletes who develop fastest take ownership of their process, problem-solve between sessions, and treat development as something they are doing — not something being done to them.
Not sure which program is right?
Schedule a free 30-minute call with John. He will tell you honestly what would serve the athlete best — including whether any program is the right fit at all.
Schedule a Free CallPlease read before using any content from Dugout Lab.
Dugout Lab is a free educational reference site. Nothing on this site constitutes medical advice, professional coaching certification, or individualized instruction. All content should be evaluated critically and applied only with appropriate professional oversight.
This site summarizes peer-reviewed research in motor learning, sport psychology, and youth athlete development as it relates to baseball and softball coaching. Articles are written to help coaches understand the evidence base behind coaching practices — not to replace qualified instruction, certified coaching programs, or professional judgment.
The information presented here is general in nature. Individual athletes vary significantly in their development, physical capacity, learning needs, and readiness. What is appropriate for one player may not be appropriate for another. Coaches should exercise their own professional judgment and seek qualified guidance when applying any concept described on this site.
Dugout Lab does not provide medical advice of any kind. Any content that references physical development, injury prevention, or athletic maturation is strictly educational — summarizing what published research says — and should not be treated as clinical guidance. For any health, injury, or physical development concern related to a young athlete, consult a licensed medical professional.
All citations on this site reference real, published peer-reviewed research. We include only citations rated as high confidence — meaning the paper exists and the attributed finding accurately represents the research. However:
Content on this site was developed with the assistance of AI language models, specifically Anthropic's Claude. AI was used to help structure, draft, and organize content. All research citations reference real published work, but AI-generated content can contain errors, omissions, and misrepresentations. Nothing on this site should be treated as authoritative without independent verification of the underlying sources.
The use of AI in creating this site does not transfer liability to any AI developer. The site operator takes full responsibility for all published content.
Researchers cited on this site have not reviewed, endorsed, or approved of any content published here. The presence of a researcher's name or work does not imply their involvement with or approval of this site. All citations are attributed to publicly available peer-reviewed publications.
Dugout Lab and its operator make no warranties, expressed or implied, about the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for purpose of any content on this site. By using this site, you agree that:
Dugout Lab is a free educational resource built by a founding group of practitioners — former athletes, youth coaches, fathers, and performance educators — motivated by the persistent gap between what peer-reviewed research shows about skill development and what most youth baseball programs actually practice. It is non-commercial, carries no advertising, and has no affiliate relationships of any kind.
The goal is to make evidence-based coaching concepts accessible to the volunteer coach, the involved parent, and the development-minded program director — in plain language, for free.
If you find an error, a misrepresented citation, or content that should be removed, please report it. The integrity of this resource depends on getting things right.
Dugout Lab is an independent, practitioner-founded educational resource. We are not a company, a coaching franchise, or a personal brand. We are a group of people who believe youth baseball coaching practice should reflect what the science actually says.
Our founding premise
The research on how children acquire motor skills, build game intelligence, and sustain long-term development has existed for decades. Most of it sits in academic journals that volunteer coaches and involved parents will never read. Dugout Lab exists to close that gap — not by simplifying the science, but by translating it faithfully into language and tools that practitioners can use on the field this weekend.
Dugout Lab was founded by a group of practitioners who arrived at the same frustration from different directions: former professional and collegiate athletes who had experienced the cost of early specialization firsthand; youth coaches who recognized that the drills they had inherited were not producing the players the research suggested they should; fathers watching their children lose interest in a sport they loved because practice felt punishing rather than purposeful; and performance educators who had spent years studying motor learning and long-term athlete development.
No single perspective was sufficient on its own. The founding group brought them together and built a shared resource that none of them could have built alone.
The founding group provides vision, editorial standards, and governance for Dugout Lab. Day-to-day operations — content development, site maintenance, practitioner outreach, and community programs — are handled by a leadership and program team that includes coaches, educators, and researchers active in youth baseball development.
Dugout Lab does not spotlight individual contributors. The work is the credential.
Not a coaching certification program. We do not certify coaches, award credentials, or endorse any individual's coaching practice. We provide educational content that practitioners use at their own professional discretion.
Not affiliated with any researcher. Researchers cited on this site have not reviewed, endorsed, or approved any content published here. Their names appear solely as attribution for publicly available peer-reviewed work.
Not a commercial entity. No advertising, no affiliate revenue, no investor relationships. We offer paid programs — clinics and private consultations — to support operations. The educational content remains free and will stay that way.
Not a personal brand. We do not build or promote the profile of any individual associated with this site. Coaches, educators, and contributors are named only where professional attribution is relevant and consented to.
Every claim on this site is tied to a specific peer-reviewed publication. We cite only high-confidence sources — papers whose existence, authorship, and attributed findings have been verified. Where findings are contested, replicated inconsistently, or actively debated in the literature, we say so.
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Contact UsThe ten minutes after a game can shape how your child feels about the sport more than the ninety minutes that preceded them. Research on sports parenting consistently shows that what parents say — and what they do not say — in the car has lasting effects on enjoyment, motivation, and long-term participation.
Why this matters: Jean Côté's research on long-term athlete development found that athletes who described their childhood sport environments as enjoyable and their parents as supportive showed significantly higher long-term development and participation rates — regardless of early performance. The car ride home is not a minor detail. For many children, it is the emotional summary of the experience.
These are not magic phrases. They are questions that signal to your child that their experience — not their performance — is what matters to you. Ask one. Listen fully. Do not add a coaching observation after they answer.
"Did you have fun today?"
Simple, open, and genuinely curious. If the answer is yes, ask what the best part was. If the answer is no, ask what would have made it better. Either answer is useful information — and both signal that their enjoyment is the point.
"What was one thing you figured out today — even if it did not go perfectly?"
This reframes the game around learning rather than outcome. It does not deny that things went wrong. It asks the child to find the piece that moved them forward. Research on growth mindset in youth sport shows that framing difficulty as information rather than failure predicts better long-term development.
"What do you think you did differently today compared to last week?"
Good games are an opportunity to build self-awareness, not just confidence. This question asks the child to connect their effort and approach to their outcome — which is exactly the attribution pattern that predicts resilience when things go poorly later.
"I love watching you play."
No question required. No follow-up needed. Amanda Visek's research on fun in youth sport found that feeling supported by parents was one of the strongest predictors of sustained participation. This statement communicates exactly that — with no performance condition attached.
These are not bad intentions. They are natural parental responses that research consistently shows produce the opposite of what parents want for their children.
"You should have swung at that pitch."
Technical instruction after a game, delivered by a parent rather than a coach, creates conflicting authority and performance anxiety. Your child's nervous system is still processing what happened. Adding an external evaluation compounds the stress rather than resolving it.
Better: say nothing about mechanics. If they ask what you thought, ask them what they thought first.
"The coach should have played you more."
This teaches children to attribute playing time to external unfairness rather than to things within their control. It also puts them in a loyalty conflict between their parent and their coach — a situation that research shows elevates dropout rates significantly.
Better: "How are you feeling about your role on the team right now? Is there anything you want to work on?"
"You played great!" — immediately after a rough game
Children know when they played poorly. Empty praise after a hard game teaches them that you are not paying honest attention — or that performance is so important that you will lie to protect them from it. Neither message is useful.
Better: "That looked like a tough one. How are you feeling?" Then listen without fixing.
Replaying the game in detail on the drive home
A full play-by-play debrief from a parent extends performance evaluation into the child's recovery time. The car ride home is where the emotional weight of the game gets either released or reinforced. Detailed game recaps, even positive ones, keep children in evaluation mode rather than letting the experience settle.
Better: one question, then follow their lead. If they want to talk through every play, they will. If they want to be quiet, let them.
"If you keep playing like that, you're not going to make the team."
Conditional love attached to athletic performance is one of the most reliable predictors of early dropout in youth sport research. Children who believe parental approval depends on their performance develop anxiety responses that impair the learning the parent is trying to motivate.
Better: nothing. If persistent performance concerns exist, raise them with the coach — not in the car, not with your child present.
Not every car ride requires a conversation about the game. Sometimes the best thing a parent can do is put on music the child likes, ask if they want to stop for food, and let the experience be exactly what it was — without summary, evaluation, or improvement plan. Children who are not required to process their sport experience on a parent's timeline report higher enjoyment and lower performance anxiety in youth sport research.
Want the full parent education series? Ten articles written specifically for baseball parents.
Explicit behaviors — for coaches and parents — that research identifies as harmful to youth athlete development. Each one comes with a brief explanation and a practical alternative.
These behaviors are not signs of bad character. Most of them are what youth coaches were taught, and what the culture of the sport still expects. The research points in a different direction.
These behaviors come from love. They also consistently produce outcomes that are the opposite of what parents intend.
Want the full script for the car ride home? See the conversation guide built specifically for that moment.