“Practice makes perfect,” is a universal phrase that has been in existence for a long time. Throughout their lives, athletes practice the art of repetition in hopes of eventually achieving perfection.

In softball and baseball, both which have been called a game of errors, true perfection is near impossible to achieve. You can have a great game, but when it comes to the end of the season and you are looking at your stats, none end up perfect.

Practice does not make perfection, instead it makes permanent. If you take 100 swings off a tee and 90 of them are with bad form, that form is going to be what you remember and what you use.

Muscle memory haunts every ball player at least once in their career. Bad form, whether for batting or throwing, sticks when you do it enough times. However, the bright side is that good form is the same way.

Muscle memory is hard to beat but if you continue with repetitions, it is conquerable. When you think about it, Major League baseball players practice repetitions every day but even that’s not enough to make them play perfectly. They still make the same errors that high school students do, the only difference is that they make less of them.

While some say that “practice makes perfect”, the simple truth of the matter is that “practice makes permanent”.