From Personality to Performance: Matt Swope’s Cutting-Edge Method Is Changing Baseball

Maryland baseball head coach Matt Swope has integrated science into his training and coaching methodologies over the past several years. This approach, known as motor preferences, revolutionizes baseball and inspires personal and athletic development. 

Motor Preferences Experts (MPE) is a sports educational consulting company founded by Swope and his business partner, David Genest. The company assists amateur and professional athletes achieve greater performance by individualizing movement. 

The training style originated in Europe in the 1980s. Swope popularized it in the United States, and now, some of the country's most successful athletes are contacting Swope and his team to maximize their abilities.   

Swope was introduced to motor preferences roughly four years ago as the Terps’ hitting coach and recruiting coordinator. He began studying personality types to better understand how each of his players responded to coaching. Swope became familiar with all 16 personality types to get the most out of his players. However, his discoveries led to something much more significant. 

Swope made a LinkedIn post showcasing his work with former star outfielder LaMonte Wade Jr. Genest gave suggestions to Swope based on Wade’s athletic profile. The pair then hopped on a Zoom call that lasted roughly three hours. Genest is now the director of performance for MPE. 

“Being the type of guy I am, I said, ‘Hey man, I need you to get on a Zoom in three minutes,’” Swope said in a presentation. “He hopped on, and within an hour, it changed my life.”

Genest, nicknamed “The Witch Doctor,” played and coached baseball in France. However, he first used motor preferences with his third son, who was born with a disability. Genest received his nickname from Swope because of his almost supernatural ability to transform an athlete’s performance with minor tweaks using motor preferences. 

“My son's specificities just matched with my observing of baseball, which is weird, but that's exactly what it was,” Genest said. “Everything came together when I watched a TV show on the French women's soccer national team’s trainer. They made a report of him on TV, and he talked about MPs and how they can impact the performance of the player. I don't know why, but it just lit something in my head because it matched what I observed in my baseball career.”

Genest immediately wondered if he could help his son by utilizing motor preferences. After reading books, speaking with scientists and earning several certifications, he was able to help his son manage his ADHD symptoms by understanding his preference for consuming information. Genest also taught his son how to ride a bike using motor preferences, although specialists told him his son would never be able to.

The French native then applied motor preferences to baseball. He has since earned certifications in dozens of areas, including functional anatomy, the nervous system, and muscle function. He has also coached and scouted for dozens of professional teams, club,s and camps, including spending three years as a scout in France for the Atlanta Braves and serving as a consultant to Scott Emerson, the pitching coach for the Oakland Athletics. 

Swope was intrigued by what he heard from the expert on the Zoom call. He says he spent the whole first year studying the new approach to training. The text available was solely in French, so Swope spent hours every day translating it into English with the help of Genest. 

“I could not sleep for six months because all I could think about was all the buckets we put people in, all the traditional training that we do,” Swope said. “Finally, I found something that was coaching the individual.”

Over 20 years of scientific studies have validated the motor preferences approach widely used by European professional teams, especially in France. Motor preferences are the natural, instinctive and efficient ways that people move. This approach proves that the body is asymmetrical and serves as an explanation for most injuries and a way to optimize function.  

“There’s no way that we watch Ted Williams and Randy Johnson move and look at Yu Darvish and Mike Trout and think that they are any remotely close to similar movers,” Swope said. “They’re not even close. We need to understand that there are a lot of different ways to do it. We just need to find the specificity for the individual to train them that way to get the most out of them.”  

Motor preferences respect efficiency, efficacy and energy savings as three laws of training. The first breakdown of each individual looks at terrestrial versus aerial movers. The terrestrial profile is based on a torque system. The lower body initiates the forward movement, and the joints of the lower limbs pull and push as the upper body follows. Terrestrial movers in MLB include Juan Soto, Matt Chapman and Darvish.  

The aerial profile is based on a mass-spring system. The upper body initiates movement, and the lower limbs follow the upper body to maintain balance. Aerial movers who have or currently play in MLB include Derek Jeter, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Blake Snell. Motor preferences suggest workouts specific to each profile.

Once it’s determined whether an athlete is terrestrial or aerial, many other factors enter the equation to specify training further. Other preferences include introversion or extraversion, symmetry or asymmetry and pronation or supination. In all, the preferences equate to millions of possibilities.

“Just identifying an aerial or a terrestrial can change their life,” Swope said ahead of the 2024 Terps baseball season. “We have a kid from Iowa right now that is doing very, very well that was doing things differently. All we did was give him a few unlock buttons.”

The student-athlete Swope spoke about was second baseman Sam Hojnar. He had a career year with the Terps in 2024, starting and playing in all 56 games and earning First Team All-Big Ten honors. Hojnar led the Terrapins in home runs (16), doubles (15) and RBIs (57) while boasting a slash line of .275/.358/.554. 

Hojnar says Swope’s reputation as a hitting coach and utilization of motor preferences were significant factors in his decision to transfer to Maryland and finish his collegiate career as a Terp. 

“Not only Maryland’s reputation as an explosive offense but the idea of maximizing my potential with the help of motor preferences was huge for me,” he said. “As a psychology major, I spent a lot of time learning how the brain works, and this was the first coaching philosophy I discovered that aligned with what I learned about how the brain handles complex tasks. It seemed like something I needed to try and experience, and I’m so thankful I did.”

Motor preferences have lifted Maryland baseball to new heights by coaching every player differently, keeping the individual in mind. Since Swope fully incorporated this approach in 2022, the Terps have averaged 41 wins per season, including a program record of 48 wins in year one. 

Maryland won its first Big Ten Tournament championship in 2023 and back-to-back regular season titles in the conference (2022 and 2023) for the first time in program history. Maryland also produced back-to-back conference player of the year recipients for the first time in program history in Chris “Bubba” Alleyne (2022) and Matt Shaw (2023). 

Furthermore, the Terrapins set program records under Swope in eight statistical batting categories. In 2023, they posted 684 hits, 552 RBIs, 578 runs and 385 walks. In 2022, they recorded 137 home runs, 143 doubles and a .564 slugging percentage. 

The Terps mashed 131 home runs in 2023, a mark that ranked second in the country. After their record-setting 137 homers in 2022, Maryland became the first Division I program to reach 120 or more home runs in consecutive seasons since LSU accomplished the feat between 1996-98.

Swope took the helm as the program’s head baseball coach in 2023. He and the Terps registered 34 wins in his inaugural season in 2024, the most of any first-year head coach in program history. Still, he retained his hitting coach duties. 

“With Coach Swope as our head coach, we can start to turn into a baseball program that can be known as a school that hits,” Elijah Lambros, a 2023 All-Big Ten Third Team outfielder, said ahead of the 2024 season. “With him being such a good hitting coach, that was one of the biggest things me and him had talked about.”

He continued. “I asked to speak with him in the fall just to ask him, ‘Hey, I understand you’re taking on that role as a head coach, but I still need you as a hitting coach. I still need everything you did last year, everything you’ve been doing.’ He was completely like, ‘Yeah, of course. I won’t let that go. That’s my job, I’m the hitting coach.’”

Swope’s hitting expertise and motor preferences training attract professional baseball players nationwide. Many of the athletes he used to coach also continue to train with him and his team of experts.  

He trains MLB players like Nick Ahmed, Tommy Pham, Joshua and Richie Palacios. Kevin Smith, Matt Shaw, Luke Shliger, Nick Lorusso, Nigel Belgrave and Wade are former Terps in the pros who still utilize MPE’s training. 

“I would go to the point where it saved my career,” said Wade, a first baseman for the San Francisco Giants. “The way I was going in 2019 when I made my debut with the Twins, and how I was in the minor leagues, wasn't consistent. It was really up and down. Motor preferences made me more of a consistent hitter, and I really understood myself, my swing and how I needed to move.” 

Wade, described by Genest as a terrestrial mover, wrapped up a career year in late September 2024. He set personal bests in batting average (.260) and on-base percentage (.380).

He was the first athlete Swope trained using motor preferences.

The training isn't limited to baseball. It can be applied to virtually any sport. MPE offers specific training for softball and golf and is expanding to provide instruction for soccer, basketball and football.  

Motor preferences will continue to be a significant aspect of Maryland baseball and Swope’s coaching philosophy, which emphasizes an athlete's physical capacities and natural qualities and puts them in positions to succeed. Regarding the future, Genest believes it will eventually redefine and transform coaching and training in sports at all levels.

“It would be mad not to apply that approach to not only athletes but every single human,” he said. “We have scientific tools, we have data, we have the human side. It would be weird not to be able to understand that. It's going to take over everything in the next 10 years, maybe 20 years. It wouldn’t make sense to keep something that doesn't work in place.”