Fighting the Forgetting Curve: Creating a Season-Long Focus for Players
One thing I tried to improve last season while leading our fundamental meetings in Norfolk was building a process to direct players’ attention toward situational goals throughout the season. Initially, I anticipated that we’d cover many subjects and would need to reteach them over time, but I lacked a way to monitor when we might need to revisit or refocus on a given topic. I wanted to be able to track the “teaching decay” that players experienced. When a coach or teacher covers a topic, it initially registers in players’ minds as something critical and urgent for their development. However, as time passes, players naturally become less aware of what was covered and may even lose the urgency they initially felt. This decay of learning over time is known as the “forgetting curve.”
The forgetting curve is a simple concept but one that I think doesn’t get enough focus from coaches and teachers. It shows how memory retention declines over time without review or reinforcement. Without regular review, memory fades quickly; however, repeated review or active recall can strengthen memory and flatten the curve, making information last longer in our minds. This concept highlights the importance of spaced repetition and reinforcement to improve long-term retention.
The forgetting curve is from educational psychology that explains how people tend to forget information over time if they don’t actively review or reinforce it. For example, after a coach teaches a skill, players may initially feel the importance of it, but as days and weeks pass, they may forget the finer points of what they were taught. This natural decline in memory retention can lead to players slipping back into old habits unless the concepts are revisited periodically. In the context of baseball, this means that key situational skills — like the proper lead at second base — could lose their emphasis unless we actively work to reinforce them.
This was precisely the issue that coaches face with players over the course of the season. For example, we might cover a topic like leads at second base, and the focus on it would initially increase the amount of work players put into improving their leads. But over a few weeks, players would often revert to their previous habits. I wanted to introduce something into our coaching that would remind players of this focus without requiring constant reteaching. I was looking for a way to reinforce the importance of getting bigger leads at second base without dedicating significant teaching time to review. I understood that we’d eventually need to revisit the topic, but I wanted a method to track our progress over time without having to dedicate an entire meeting to a topic we’d already covered. I wanted to build out some feedback loops that would help me to understand where players where and when we would need to go back as a full team to reteach the topic.
With about 26 weeks in a season, I knew that each week could spotlight a different Point of Emphasis, giving players a clear focus and allowing us to build out feedback loops for the team. The basic structure would begin the weekend before each upcoming series, when we’d decide what to focus on. Whether it was lead size, cuts and relays, reads for going from first to third, or any other situational skill we anticipated would be valuable, we needed to plan by Friday, assessing which areas I was noticing in games that needed attention.
Saturday and Sunday would be dedicated to gathering examples from film that illustrated our objectives, paired with MLB leaderboards highlighting the best in the league. This way, we could share not only what we wanted to see but also specific standards and steps to get there, painting a clear picture for players.
Ideally, we would also display where our players currently stood for that specific skill or metric. While we couldn’t always find a precise metric to back up our focus, we aimed to provide enough guidance to help them through the week.Finally, we’d develop a report highlighting that week’s focal point, aimed at helping players monitor their progress and receive feedback on what we covered. Ideally, this would happen through in-game insights or questions using the MLB Research Tool. Our goal with these visuals was ultimately to make them more of a reminder — a cue for players to recognize if their focus on the topic had slipped or if it was exactly where it needed to be.
With 26 weeks to focus on Points of Emphasis, this structure allowed us to identify the most crucial situational metrics and break down exactly what we wanted from our players. It gave us a clear roadmap to determine the 10–20 most important situational skills, those we could build metrics around to keep our athletes focused and intentional in their development. This approach helped us boil down our priorities, clarifying our coaching focus and making sure we weren’t chasing multiple goals without effectively addressing any.
Without a structured process for Points of Emphasis across the season, it would have been challenging to maintain focus on what we considered most essential. Instead, this system gave us a way to monitor, reinforce, and refine the core areas of situational awareness, keeping both coaches and players aligned on our key objectives. In short, it kept us from “chasing ten rabbits and catching none” by driving our efforts toward meaningful, measurable growth.
In the end, this process of focusing on weekly Points of Emphasis not only helped us maintain clarity and direction throughout the season, but it also created a culture of continuous improvement. By consistently reinforcing key situational skills and providing measurable feedback, we were able to ensure that players retained critical concepts and applied them when it mattered most. This framework not only kept us on track but also fostered a deeper understanding of the game for our players, encouraging them to take ownership of their development. Looking ahead, this approach will continue to evolve, ensuring that we’re always adapting and improving, both as a team and as individuals.
