Why do Professional Baseball Players have batting practice?

[SteveCS]

...
If you want to believe that it's all "luck", OK, but then I'll say that the harder you work at it, and the nicer you are to everyone, the "luckier" you will be.

Totally, and I never said it was all luck - far too long in the tooth to believe that!

 

[Bass4Gsus]

They're professionals. They know how to hit! Why have batting practice? Why do professional basketball teams have walk throughs and go over play and have shooting practice? Don't they already know how to shoot?

Should pro and semi-pro or dad bands have band practice?

I doubt in the major league forum there is six pages or more of batting practice discussion.

 

[five7]

Been practicing forever. Isn't it something you keep doing.

 

[LBS-bass]

the difficult part for most players of most genres of music isn’t typically that they need to be on the bleeding edge of their abilities.. for the guys that do, like jazz guys or dudes holding down a dozen different gigs in the city, they’re getting their practice in anyway, and the hard part is the scheduling and lifestyle, frankly. For touring bands where you’re playing the same songs endlessly, you also probably don’t need to be adding practice to an album you wrote two years ago and play 3 nights a week

I was in regional touring bands for twelve years. Maybe this is part of my bias. We played anywhere from three to five nights a week, every week. We didn't add music all that frequently but when we were in a learning phase to add a few more songs, we would schedule a few rehearsals. The vast majority of the time, our live shows were the only rehearsal we ever got. With new stuff we'd learn it on Monday and Tuesday, take it to the stage that week, mess it up, clean it up, and by Saturday night it was flawless and we never rehearsed it again.

When you're playing a lot, you don't need all that extra time, because it's baked into your schedule already.

Nowadays, it's more a matter of practice routine, because I don't perform that much anymore. That requires a different kind of discipline because I have to self-motivate to play so much outside of a performance opportunity. I think a lot of players have pretty busy lives (I'm retired) and just don't have the time to put into this. So scheduling a rehearsal with others might be the only discipline they can get.

 

[Bass-ball]

Are you confusing "base" with "bass"? Because if there was a way to mix the two, I'm all in.

 

[LBS-bass]

Are you confusing "base" with "bass"? Because if there was a way to mix the two, I'm all in.

 

[oldfretless]

Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. If you practice incorrectly, you are making bad habits permanent. I'm told there are a million people trying to refine a bad golf swing.

 

[Bass-ball]

Funny, but your post assumes that players on the Reds actually reach the bases LOL

 

[higain617]

Those Pro-Dad bands that don't practice likely aren't very tight. On the other hand, practicing weekly when you play two gigs per year kinda sucks.

 

[zenrad]

Pablo Casals, at age 83 was asked one day why he continued to practice four and five hours a day. Casals answered, “Because I think I am making progress.”

 

[db59]

Apologies if this has been posted....didn't make it through the 7 pages........

 

[Moe Hickey]

Same apology.

 

[31HZ]

Apologies if this has been posted....didn't make it through the 7 pages........

Twelve times, but who's counting?

 

[kevindahl]

I guess the same reason pro golfers practice their swing.

 

[timmus]

My violin teacher used to say “if I miss a day I know and if I miss 2 days the audience knows”. She was a jerk and probably stole that line from someone but I don’t know who.

My piano teacher used to say "Practice makes permanent". I guess I didn't practice enough

 

[fdeck]

Amateur musicians, particularly those who don't live in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, etc., always seem to find it puzzling that pro musicians mostly play with other pro musicians and thus have no need of full-band rehearsals.

Pro musicians rehearse. They're just much more strategic, selective, and efficient about it. I'm not a pro, but I have relatives who are. The major classical ensembles rehearse. In fact rehearsal pay is written into their contracts.

It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

 

[noahw1]

Dude

 

[51PRI]

Why don’t mechanics have bolt turning practice?....

Maybe bolt turning is something that one cannot improve on in the same way that a pianist can improve by daily practice, or a band can improve by tightening parts up on a regular basis?

...rehearsing does make things better if they are constructive.

I agree.

I was in regional touring bands for twelve years. Maybe this is part of my bias. We played anywhere from three to five nights a week, every week. We didn't add music all that frequently but when we were in a learning phase to add a few more songs, we would schedule a few rehearsals. The vast majority of the time, our live shows were the only rehearsal we ever got. With new stuff we'd learn it on Monday and Tuesday, take it to the stage that week, mess it up, clean it up, and by Saturday night it was flawless and we never rehearsed it again.

When you're playing a lot, you don't need all that extra time, because it's baked into your schedule already....

I was in a band playing a house gig 6 nights a week. We went down to the club and rehearsed every day in the afternoon.

 

[JRA]

I don't think I brag about it, but I do advocate exploring this as a possibility to avoid the kind of rehearsal burnout I was running into a couple of years ago....

you're not in that group at all --- you're an experienced pro musician --- when you've backed off of rehearsals with multiple bands: it's called "pacing yourself."

 

[djmay]

Many years ago, from the age of 17-21, I was a house musician at a first-run professional theatre. We were paid for rehearsals; usually one each production.