Winter Recruiting Must Do's - The Top 4

What's up, team? Alex here. Hey. I want to make sure that you're setting yourself up for success this spring and summer. Right now we're going to go over four things that you should be doing this winter. That's going to help you recruiting now and going into the spring and the summer. Make sure that you do not wait and then until the spring or the summer. Because if you do that, you're just going to be behind the eight ball, especially if you're a sophomore or junior. Especially. Okay? Okay. Make sure you're setting yourselves up again. We're going to go over four things if you're new to this channel. Hey, my name is Alex Swenson. I'm A former Division 1 college coach, scout and recruiter with 11 years of experience. And now I'm here to help you or your son play at the next level. So if you get anything from this video, please smash that thumbs up that like button and subscribe to my channel. I put out a weekly video on how to just get better on and off the field and go into recruiting. Alright, let's dive into it. Alright, guys, number one, it's gonna be a quick video today. I'm gonna hop in all this. Make sure you stay with me all the way to the end because each of these are very, very important. But number one is create or update your school list. Our school list needs to be on point. We want to make sure that we are targeting the right schools. Okay. Schools that are recruiting your position so you give yourself the best chance to play at the next level. You don't want to go after schools that are not recruiting your position. Correct? Right. So, so we want to make sure we're going after schools that are recruiting your position and that fits you, fits you athletically, academically. Hey, geographically, is it in the area that you want to go to school at all of these different things. So if you haven't created your school list, create your school list or continue to update it during these winter months. I'm going to pull up my app here. I have a good resource that I have in my academy. I just want to show you, but it can be hard to get all the information with the schools. Right. So I'm going to pull this up here. You'll see here we have a school list. So this is where you can put all of your schools here that you're interested in. And we want to think big. We think as many as possible, cast a wide net. So we have Harvard, Stanford, Texas and Florida. These are, I just put These in just for examples. Then we have Division 1 schools, Division 2 schools, Division 3 schools. You're going to click on these. You'll be able to open it up. I'll do it here a minute. You can search by conference. You can also search NAIA schools, junior college schools. You're also going to be able to search or browse through cost of schools, field of study, size, acceptance rate, campus settings, just so on and so on. And then, hey, the commitments that the premier athletes academy guys have gone through or have committed or just any kids in the country, because we update these well so you can see who's committing what positions, etc. From there. So I'm going to scroll back up here and I'm just going to select Division 1 to give you guys an example. And the reason I'm showing you this is just so you guys can see where all the school information can be. Okay. Because it can be hard out there as far as just getting all in one place. This feature that we put in, which I really like is the map. So you're able to search from a bird's eye view. You could go in and scroll into Texas and see all these schools that are in Texas or wherever you guys are. You can click on a school, get a little more information there as you go. You can go on and search by Division 1 conference. All the conferences would be here, going from there. So I'm going to go back to the home screen and I'm just going to click on Florida, University of Florida. And so you go to their homepage. Right. And all the information that you're going to need is going to be on this school page and it will be on for all the school pages. You can have baseball go directly to the baseball site, their athletic site, their school site, but I'll have pretty much everything here, coaches, contact information. We also have how big is the school, what's the cost of the school, what's, what's the acceptance rate to the school, what is the environment as far as like in Gainesville? It's kind of a medium sized little town. You go into all of the fields of study and the degrees that you could get there. You have commitments here that you can go into from this standpoint. And there's just a lot of good information. And again, the reason I want you to show this, make sure you have all the information that you need and one want when putting schools on your school list and just continue to update that. So that is number one. Number two is update or create your recruiting video. This is huge. This is one of the most important things that you can be doing in your recruiting process to help yourself and get exposure through. And you want to make sure that you're having the right stuff in your recruiting video. Time frame, the angles, everything they want from your specific position, okay? And then, hey, making sure that you're getting exposed through that and making sure that you're ready, okay, to send that out when you are and update this, because you're going to continue to get better, right? You're going to continue to get better on the field, even in the classroom, because you want to have some academic aspects in the recruiting video. Very short, but you know you're going to want to update coaches, let them know your GPA or maybe you have a really good test score, sat, act. You're going to want to have that in there as well and showing your overall skill set. Think of your recruiting video as your digital resume. Very, very important. That is number two. Number three, check on your spring and summer schedule so college coaches can come watch you play, right? That's very, very important. These guys want to come and see you live. So make sure that you have your spring and summer schedule ready at the helm and so college coaches can come while watch you play. And then number four is development in arm care. So arm care is very important. Stay with me here. Because this is a big problem with baseball and youth in high school is guys coming out of winter throwing too much or too quickly or backing it up too soon. And they're having tendinitis, they're having shoulder problems. I actually did this in high school and even a little bit in college. Got better in college, but I just come back too high to have elbow issues and just had inflammation in my arm, tendonitis, etc. Thank goodness I did not have any Tommy John. But this could be where it starts, right? So we want to make sure we're avoiding that. And the reason I bring this up is arm care. Make sure you're warming yourself up properly and you don't get back. You don't go back too far too soon. So you should be throwing like your first week to two weeks, like 60ft, then that 75ft, 90ft. All right? Week by week, maybe starting two or three times in a week. But before you even throw, you want to make sure that you are adequately warm. Very, very important. I'm going to bring up the J bands here. I just want to show you guys I have this. So if you are interested in this, I can send it to you. This is also in my app as well. But I love J bands. They are fantastic. They are awesome. And it doesn't have to be J bands. They're just a good product. They're relatively cheap. But you can also get bands, cheap bands at a sports authority or an athletic store. You can find those and do these exercises. Okay, these are available again if you want them. I can email them to you and we will go from there. Just drop a ball and I'm back. Okay? But arm care is super important. Make sure that you are warm. You should be sweating, okay? You should be sweating before you throw. Especially, especially in the wintertime when everything's cold, it's a little bit tighter, etc. From there. And then just development overall, we should be in the weight room. We should be swinging. We should be working on our mechanics. If we're a pitcher, you guys can be working on your mechanics all the time. Okay? Because you can work on your leg kick sitting in your leg. Hey, where are you landing? What's the distance of your landing, how are you getting out over your front leg, etc. From there. Development, development, development. Development should be at all times the number one focus in the recruiting process because we need to be getting better to reach the highest level that we possibly can and to reach college baseball. I hope you got something from this video. If you did, smash that like, button and subscribe and I will see you in the next video. Take care.