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Practice Does Not Make Perfect
by Dave
Thursday, July 14, 2005
I don't know if there is another sport where girls practice their craft harder than they do in softball. If you've ever had the chance to attend a National Pro Fastpitch game and arrived there a little early, you probably saw these world class athletes practicing before the game. They drill so hard I would imagine they didn't have a game that day. Many amateur teams hold intense practices even on days when they play double headers. Sometimes they even hold intense practices during the morning hours when they are playing double headers on multiple consecutive days! There is little question that softball and baseball are sports where drilling of fundamentals is important. But drilling alone is not enough to play this sport well.
The diamond is a place where confidence is king. As a good batter approaches the plate, she sees herself drilling the ball for a hit or homerun. If you walk into the box thinking, "I hope I get a hit this time," chances are you are going to dribble the ball harmlessly to the pitcher orf other infielder. Conversely, if you are convinced you are going to hit one in the gap, chances are better that you will. There is no other explanation for extended hitting slumps. There is no other explanation for a guy like Major League Baseballer Chuck Knoblauch not being able to throw the ball from his position at second base to first without making more errors in one year than he did for his entire life prior to losing his confidence. Softball is a tough game where you have to shake off getting hit on the shins by a hard object hit at high speed. But it is also a game where your mental toughness is tested as much as, if not more than, your physical toughness.
I watched the NCAA Women's College World Series a lot this year. I think I missed just a handful of games. What struck me was the confidence that the Michigan team had. Jennie Ritter has a tremendous amount of confidence in the circle. She does not throw as hard as Cat Osterman but she knows she is going to get you out. Similarly, Samantha Findlay has a strange sort of glow around her as she approaches the plate to bat. She just knows she can do it. On the other hand, Anjelica "Jeli" Selden has some problems throwing the ball to first base on balls hit back to her. This is purely a mental thing as even my grandmother can throw a ball that distance without pounding it into the ground the way Jeli did on so many occasions.
Recently there was a fair amount in the media about how Alex (ARod) Rodriquez has been seeing a therapist. Alex has some issues about his father abandoning him and I'm sure that has much to do with him seeking therapy. But I think it is demonstrative of the need for mental health in a game where you have less than 1 second to decide whether a pitched ball is going to be in there, hit you in the head or otherwise miss the strike zone. Likewise, fielders have very little time to do what they do. Baseball and Softball are about confidence and being in the right state of mind.
I once had a conversation with a first year high school manager. She had been a great player and was only a few years removed from her playing days. We were talking about how hard girls practice this sport when she got this funny smile on her face. She told me that she is not the toughest coach around because she spends at least as much time getting into her kids' heads as she does drilling them. Her team would play for a state championship soon thereafter against a team which had been in the national top twenty most of the past two years, having lost only one game during that time. The "mental" coach's team, on the other hand, was not even recognized locally, let alone on the state or national level. Her team had lost to its nationally recognized opponent 3 times that year, each time facing the same pitcher who also happened to be an All-American. They had lost by as many as 10 runs and as few as 5, barely getting a runner on base during all three games. But in the final meeting of the teams, the unheralded, unrecognized underdog soundly defeated the unbeatable team.
So how do you go about creating the right mind set to bring your game to the next level? If you are a coach or parent, how do you get your kids to be confident? I remember a time when I was in college and a mentor asked me how I might improve my grades. I told him that I was working 50 hours a week and taking 12 credits. I was studying every free moment I had while taking only Friday nights off in order to go to bed by 8 PM so I could catch up on my sleep. I thought I might be able to work a little harder but not much. He laughed and told me it had nothing to do with effort. The only way I was going to do better in school was to visualize myself doing better. I had to see myself getting all perfect 4.0s and stop grinding myself into the ground in order to settle with a 3.8 average.
Hitting is sort of like the chicken and the egg. You cannot get a hit unless you know what it feels like to get a hit. Slumping batters often forget what it feels like to hit the ball sharply into the gap. Now everyone gets into a slump every now and again but the way to make yourself a better batter is to remember all the really big hits you have gotten your entire life. It doesn't matter if it was a single in a 10U game or the game winning home run in a high school championship game. Visualizing yourself being the hero, getting the big hit, is the way to build real confidence.
To begin, get in a comfortable, quiet place, close your eyes and visualize yourself in the dugout finding your helmet and bat. You are watching the pitcher throw and the game situation unfold in front of you. You feel that pre-batting anxiousness, that feeling in your stomach that your turn is coming. You really hope somebody can get on base so you have a shot to drive them in. The pitcher seems just a little distracted. She walks the first hitter and you step into the on-deck circle. Your wrists are loose after a couple swings and you take the weight off the bat. The pitcher throws a strike. The batter steps out of the box to take signs from the coach. You swing lightly flexing your wrists, watching the pitcher and your teammate as she steps back into the box. She drills the ball into right sending the first runner over to second. Two on, nobody out, your turn. You walk slowly towards the plate watching your coach who gives you the swing away sign. Everything seems slowed down as you hear yourself breathing and your stomach gets tighter. You step in and take a practice swing. You can even smell your bat as the pitcher throws her first pitch a ball, high and outside. You wonder why that pitch seemed so slow and the ball seemed so big. You step out, check the sign, step back in and swing slowly once. The next pitch is right in your favorite zone and your drill it over the left-centerfield fence. The ball had looked like some giant flattened grapefruit with thick red lines running through it. You could see every turn of the ball as it approached you. Why was it so slow? That girl throws 61 and even her change is in the 50s. Why did the ball appear so big? Who cares, you just hit the game-winning homerun!
We probably drill fielders more than anything else. I can remember as a very young player taking dozens of grounders at third during every practice. Yet I was never able to play the position very well because I completely lacked confidence. Even when I fielded balls cleanly, I had some sort of mental block about throwing to first. Years later I would catch and have no trouble throwing out runners at second. But I just couldn't see myself making the throw to first from third. I always had this mental picture of throwing the ball over the head of the first baseman. While catching, I often practiced visualization without knowing it. I guess I had some early success throwing runners out and this formed a constant picture in my head.
Fielders should practice the same kind of visualization that batters do. The one thing you want to avoid is what captured my thinking - making errors. Kids probably have to be coached through this as much as they need to be coached about technical aspects of playing the sport. Outfielders can focus on some good catch they made or a throw even just to the cutoff man that was quick and accurate. Infielders can focus on the look of the ball as it bounces towards them. Every player can focus on some important mental aspect of defensive play which makes them feel good.
Pitching is perhaps the toughest mental position to play. Young pitchers should focus on what it feels like to throw a strike. If they can conjure up the experience, maybe it was a particularly hard pitch they threw which resulted in a called third strike as the batter backed away in fear. As pitchers get older there is far more to visualize. They need to run through their entire repertoire of pitches and they need to visualize batters' swinging weak spots. Finally pitchers should run through an inning or two in their heads, perhaps visualizing how they plan to pitch the toughest hitters on the opposing team. All big time pitchers practice some sort of visualization. That is why a guy like Roger Clemens doesn't even talk to teamates on days when he is pitching.
Another aspect of the mental game of softball is the winning attitude. I coached a Little League Tournament team once where the girls practiced very hard. I felt they had a good chance to win a few games. But the mental attitude of the team really stunk. Why? The girl on the team who was seen as the star had a poor attitude. The last practice before our first game a conversation started in the dugout. One girl said, "It would really stink to lose two games. We're doing all this practice and then we go out and lose two games. Poof, season over." The star on the team said, "We'll probably lose." I became enraged and said, "Why are we going to lose?! What single reason can you give me that will cause us to lose?" She said, "I don't know" I replied, That is because you're wrong. There is absolutely no reason we are going to lose. We are going to win. If if if, we field the way we are capable of fielding, we hit the ball when strikes are thrown, walk when they are not, and if we run the bases well. There is no reason we should lose. We practiced hard. We deserve to win. We are going to win."
I have often heard that the second most catching disease is enthusiasm. The first? Lack of enthusiasm. You need to remove negative thinking from your team's minds. If you hear something mentioned, even in passing, about losing, nip this in the bud. Ask the person making the comment to explain it for everyone. Why are we going to lose? Give me the specific reasons. If the kid is like most, they will try to squirm away and not answer the question. Don't allow this to happen. Insist on a full explanation and then answer every reason with a good, reasonable answer. If the answer is the other team has a great pitcher, ask if she has ever walked a batter, given up a hit, or lost a game. If the answer is she has been perfect for 5 years, you may be in trouble. But since I cannot find such a pitcher in any record books, I have to imagine that whoever you are facing is beatable. This should be drilled into your kids. Whatever reason you are given, I'm confident that you can and will find a reasonable response to.
It doesn't matter if you are a parent, coach or player. Mental attitude must be worked on. If you are a player reading this, I think you can figure out how to visualize playing well and winning games. If you are a coach, I suggest you begin experimenting with visualization right away. If you are a parent of a young child, this job is likely to be your hardest. You need to have alone time with the kid who plays. This time should probably be at night, maybe right before bed. You will probably need to remind her of some good play or at-bat she had. You should probably talk her through visualization because while children have better imaginations than their adult counterparts, they do not know how to control and manipulate their imaginations. This will be time well spent and will carryover into other aspects of your children's lives. Visualizing successful studying is very important in high school and college when time constraints limit available study time.
In any event, using visualization will probably increase your child's confidence. And while practice alone does not make a perfect softball player, practice of visualization techniques does make you better at them!Labels: Visualization
 
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