Posts Tagged ‘Confidence in Baseball’
Breaking Slumps in Baseball
No doubt, if you have an athlete involved in youth baseball today, he has experienced some disappointment. Thats ok, its part of athletics; it builds character. The problem I want to dissect here is how and why these game to game disappointments sometimes turn into prolonged slumps, or long-term struggles.
The game to game disappointments athletes often experience are usually the result from a particular skill that isnt developed as well as it could be. Long-term slumps on the other hand, are caused by much more complex issues. Long-term struggles are generally caused from a combination of physical skill inabilities as well as confidence problems and self-doubt. Those two problems (physical and mental) occurring at the same time can be devastating to a players game.
Before I talk about how to solve a long-term slump, its important to understand how small game-to-game failures grow into full blown long-term slumps. Its really a simple concept to understand. Your mind records images of your performances, especially if the performance is accompanied by a strong emotion. If the performance is poor, the mind will save the image of your poor performance in your short-term memory allowing you to review it over and over again. The problem gets tough when the amount of negative images pile up in the short-term memory.
When a collection of small negative images flood the minds eye, it caused extreme emotions in the athlete. The longer the player experiences these emotions, the greater chance there is for a long-term slump to occur. There are a couple ways to tackle this problem. One is physical practice, and the other is mental practice. For now, Ill give you the mental skill set you need to avoid slumps.
The solution to fixing a struggling mental game is to change the mental image your mind has stored. Instead of seeing the failure or series of failures, begin to see those failures turn into successes. Rather than seeing yourself strike out looking at bat, see yourself hit the pitch into the left-center gap for a double. Rather than seeing yourself make an error in the infield, see yourself backhand the ball and throw out the runner at first base. This skill is a bit tricky and strange at first since you are essentially lying to your brain. But, with time and frequent practice, youll be able to lessen the impact of failures and experience continued growth as an athlete.