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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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My "Zen" of Fastpitch Softball
by Dave
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
I know in my soul that there is a place in the Universe from which all Truth springs forth. That is a place from which all goodness, love, peace and harmony is brought forward. I'm sure that all athletics requires the achievement of a centered oneness with this ultimate place of Truth. I have heard that in order to achieve greatness, an athlete must break down Zen barriers, find a place of calm within her soul where all external noises are quieted and where self-fulfillment is the only objective. My confusion comes because, in practice, I have never found this approach to be effective. I'm more base than that. I need somebody I don't like as a competitor. I need to aspire to be better than this person I don't like. I need to channel my strong dislike with an attitude of controlled violence and aggression in order to compete on the sporting field.
When I was just a freshman in high school, I competed in several sports but I think ultimately I gravitated to competitive swimming because it held the greatest personal challenges for me. After that first year in high school, I became my team's butterflyer and was constantly told who my nemesis was. I brought strong dislike of this individual (who later became a good friend!) with me to practice each day. All I could think about was beating him. My times dropped precipitously. I worked like a sled dog and made myself better, all the while focusing on beating this one kid. Finally the day of our big competition arrived and we held our race. It wasn't a race at all. I beat him badly, became self-satisfied, and my training fell off.
The next year I found a couple new nemeses. I trained hard, improved quickly and eventually beat them. But late in my career, I lacked this most basic of motivators and, again, my training waned. I look back now on that brief career and found that I didn't know then what I know now. Had I understood this central truth of sport, I would have found a new nemesis, or several, and been able to channel my energy and anger better through my training regimen.
I can draw a parallel between my competitive swimming experiences and my experiences in baseball. I remember from the very young age of 8 not being very good at baseball. There were other kids who were quite good and bragged endlessly about it in school. I remember one in particular who I will call Joe (because that was his name). He could throw really well and became one of the better pitchers in our 10U rec league. He constantly let me know I wasn't any good but he was. When we reached the age of ten, my skills had dramatically improved but he was still considered to be a good pitcher. I remember the first game of that season like it was yesterday. Joe was pitching and throwing what he imagined was very hard. He threw his first pitch and hit a kid. The next kid up managed to hit the ball to second where the second baseman made an error. Nobody out, two on. The next kid in our batting order stepped up to the plate and I looked around for a batting helmet and my bat. Joe walked that kid and it was finally my turn, nobody out, bases loaded. Joe must have thought he could put the ball by me because he threw a fat fastball right down the middle. I don't think they ever found that ball after I hit. The end result was a 4-0 lead, still nobody out, and Joe had to be led from the field because he was crying too hard to see where he was going. That was the last time I ever saw Joe as my competition on a baseball diamond. Every year after that I found somebody I didn't like who was better than me and used them as motivation.
So, where am I going with this? In my humble opinion, the essence of sport is not some central Universal point of Truth but rather the more dysfunctional approach of channeling strong dislike (perhaps hate) of some nemesis or nemeses. Early on, it might be some rec league superstar who brags about how good they are. Later an athlete will have to look harder to find someone to beat. The essence of motivation in driving the hard work necessary to achieve is less about some religious truth than it is about wanting to be better than someone else, wanting to beat somebody or some team. Sure you want to improve yourself but you can't actually compete against yourself. In swimming, an athlete wants to improve his or her times so in a certain sense, that is a driver. But if he or she looks across the pool and sees someone she really doesn't like, I suggest to you that this is a more powerful force than mere self-improvement.
When you come to the plate against some really tough pitcher who has struck you out far too many times, your objective has to be to get a hit off her, to beat THAT girl. When you face that team which beat you three times this year, you feel a certain strong dislike for your opponent. Maybe they feel the same way about you. And if you are to win, what you need to do is channel that dislike into effective action.
Sports fans often see the manifestation of channeled strong dislike in the arena of prize fighting. Fighters go through incredibly intense training for months before a championship bout. Their trainers often scour the news looking for anything to hang up on a bulletin board which will motivate their fighter to work harder.
The same is true in college and professional baseball and football where some guy from an opposing team saying anything derogatory to the media is immediately put up on a board and referenced constantly in the leadup to a contest. Right now there are a couple of big college football games coming up and the media has been hounding the coaches of these teams for anything they might say which would add to the furor these games already create. Each of the coaches has been completely complimentary to their opponent's football program. It is almost comical to hear these guys talk. They simply refuse to give the other team some reason to dislike them more. They know that this edge may be all their opponent needs to summon that little extra motivation and beat them.
I once knew a really good high school softball coach. She could never shut up about several coaches she couldn't stand. All she wanted to do was beat them. She drove her kids hard and used all sorts of derogatory comments about the other teams to motivate her kids. They ended up playing well above their heads, putting together an incredible winning run and then taking the state championship. She was a "head" coach in the sense that she put the mental aspects of the game well ahead of the physical. She used channeled strong dislike as her primary motivator. And it paid off.
Whether you are a coach, a player or a parent of a player, you can make use of channeled strong dislike to motivate the softball player or team. You need to pick your nemesis well. It has to be someone attainable. If you set your goal on beating one team in particular who is truly head and shoulders above you, you may have to work for years just to beat them once. Instead pick someone more beatable, at least to start, and work towards obtaining complete mastery over them.
In goal setting we often speak of short-term and long-term goals. Long-term goals are fine as a measuring rod but in the shorter term, it does almost no good to have an ultimate goal. Knowing that you want to be able to complete a marathon two years from now doesn't help you fight cramps today as you approach the four mile point, the furthest you have ever run. You need to have that four mile point as your goal today. Once you get past four miles, you can have a mild celebration and then set your next goal of four and a half.
I can remember a few very young athletes speak about their ultimate goals of playing college or high school levels. That's fine but what they really needed to focus on at that time was doing something far smaller. Many of these kids are the ones who later in life talk about wanting to become very wealthy financiers, as they struggle in sociology or economics class their freshman year of college. Most of these folks fail to achieve their heralded long-range goals because there was nothing to motivate them in the shorter run.
So for starters, pick someone, some team who you can beat but maybe haven't in a while. Then work hard to accomplish the short-term goal but keep in mind that as soon as you achieve this, you need to immediately find a new nemesis. The one thing you must always fight is becoming self-satisfied. You want to always feel as if nothing has been accomplished by beating this person or team. If you want to really hold your head high, you need to step it up again and beat this new person or team. Each time you accomplish your short-term goal, look ahead to that longer-term one and decide who your next victim will be. Never cease finding a new opponent.
Along the way, you will undoubtedly face failure. You'll go 0 for 4 against that pitcher you can't stand. You'll get run ruled in a shutout against some team you are targeting. These failures should not cause you to feel as if your process has broken down. Failure should become the new motivation. Failure is about as good a motivator as channeled strong dislike. The two are very much related. When you come up against a competitor, who would you rather face, somebody who always wins or somebody who has suffered a loss and then had time to adjust to what they did wrong? I'd rather face a lioness who has just finished eating her share of the kill than go up against a hungry wounded Grizzly Bear.
Embrace failure by inviting it to sit down to a meal with you and then feed it poison. Stomp on it with your boots. Channel what it feels like to lose into your next practice and beat failure like any other opponent you can't stand. Failure is the ultimate nemesis. Losing to some person or team you really despise should cause you to redouble your efforts.
So that is my particular Zen of competitive sports and fastpitch softball. I don't have much success at trying to achieve self-actualization via lonely self-improvement and achieving personal harmony with the Universe. I have to have a foe. I need to strongly dislike my opponents. I need to have the short-term overwhelming desire of beating someone or some team I can't stand. If you don't need that, more power to you.
Now, perhaps some of you don't believe in my approach to motivation. That's OK. Maybe you'll want to write me and tell me how wrong I am. Maybe reading my words will make you angry and force you to set me straight. All I want to know is why do you feel compelled to tell me the right philosophy about competition? Why do you need to make me understand the real Zen of sport and softball? Are you channeling your anger in order to prove yourself better than me?
Permanent Link: My "Zen" of Fastpitch Softball
 
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