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| SOFTBALL LINKS |
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Limitations
by Dave
Thursday, March 01, 2007
I had an e-mail exchange with a 14 year old softball player yesterday which raised an issue I would like to address here because I think it is relevant not just to softball, but also to every other aspect of our lives. The issue involves the artificial limitations we place on ourselves. There are, of course, natural limitations which can never be overcome no matter how hard we try. But most often it is the artificial limitations which have the biggest impact and ultimately determine our success or failure.
The girl who wrote to me wants to become a pitcher and she said she needed advice. Her parents suggested to her that maybe she ought to think about another position. She wants to defy her parents' advice and prove to all the "sporty girls" that she is good enough to be a pitcher. There are some slight catches, however. Tryouts are in less than a month, she's never pitched before, and she won't ask for any help from those "sporty girls" because she isn't really friends with them.
I suggested to this player that she can do anything she sets her mind to, but perhaps expecting to convert oneself into a pitcher in 30 days was a recipe for failure. I told her that if she wanted to become a pitcher, she could do it but that a longer time frame was probably more reasonable. I then went on to explain the steps I think she needed to take in order to accomplish the task. I broke down the motion as best I could with the natural limitations of words. I suggested she practice like a demon and throw as often as possible. She replied back to me that what I had to say was all fine and good but that it is extremely difficult to learn windmill motion from an e-mail and all the other girls who pitch are "like really excellent." She is defeated before she even starts.
I totally agree that one cannot learn to do something as complicated as the windmill motion by merely reading written words. One of my most realistic thoughts on pitching coaches is you pay them for their eyes as much as their knowledge. They can tell you how to pitch in a fundamental, step-by-step way but after you have the basics down, you still go back to them so they can pick out flaws in your motion.
The same dynamic is probably true in every other aspect of sport and life. You think you know how to do something but you hit some sort of a slump in which you just cannot figure out what you're doing wrong. Maybe you are a salesperson who just cannot seem to close a sale. Maybe you are a parent who just cannot get through to your kid. Or maybe you are a teacher whose kids just will not, cannot learn the concept you are teaching. So you seek out the advice of some sort of "coach" who observes you and tells you what you already know. But without that coach, you wouldn't recognize what it is you are doing wrong. This is the reason psychologists, self-help books, and "life coaches" are so popular in our culture. We recognize that sometimes we need outside input to help us do what we already know how to do.
A while ago, I read a comment on a softball forum which suggested that once you know how to pitch, you only sought the advice of a coach in order to avoid injury. The notion was you learn how to do something and then you own that skill. Tell that one to a top level softball or baseball player who is mired in a batting slump! And if that were really the case, why do all these college teams have coaches for various functions like pitching, batting, etc.? And why do they even bother to practice at all? If softball functioned this way, coaching a team would just involve finding top level recruits and then arranging games for them. That's not the way things work.
Still, I am reminded that seeking out the absolute best coaches is not the only way to skin the cat. The list of top level pitchers is not filled with girls whose parents had all the money in the world and could afford to place them in sophisticated and expensive lessons. There's both more and less to it than that. And this piece is not about obtaining professional coaching help. Rather, it is about the artificial limitations we place on ourselves.
There are natural limitations on what a person can do in any aspect of life. You don't have wings so you cannot fly without the aid of some sort of mechanical device. No human being can possibly run 60 miles per hour. No matter how hard you work, you will never be able to outswim a dolphin. But if a thing is possible for a human being to accomplish, then any of us can at least aspire to doing it. Aspirations, however, are not enough. We need to take logical steps and then we still have to overcome the artificial limitations we create for ourselves.
We place limitations on ourselves in a number of different ways. Part of the trick to successful living is distinguishing between natural and artificial limitations and finding ways to overcome the artificial barriers while still acknowledging the natural ones.
We place artificial barriers on ourselves through a number of techniques or methods. One way is to decide either consciously or subconsciously that we just can't do something. Another way is to give external factors and variables undeserved power. Finally, we shackle ourselves when we set unreasonable expectations. As you might guess, it is tricky business to distinguish between natural and artificial limitations but that is the game we play, the life we live.
Sometimes a coach or teacher hears the most displeasing sound in the universe coming from their student. The phrase "I just can't do it" usually indicates frustration as much as anything else. But if you "just can't do it," why are you trying to do it? Why waste your time and effort trying to do something that is not possible for you?
The "I just can't do it" syndrome is what we usually call defeatism. It is the most obvious form of artificial limitation we place on ourselves. It is a conscious decision that something is not possible for us. If you really, honestly do not believe you can do something, then most likely you can't. Believing that something is not possible will most likely lead to failure.
But there are other more subconscious ways in which we get convinced that we can't do something. Sometimes you see a pitcher who cannot get the ball over or execute a particular pitch. She can't seem to get her body to do what she wants to do. A good coach recognizes when a pitcher or any player has reached the point of subconscious limitation and usually he or she will remove the person from that situation so as not to reinforce the defeatist notion.
The very idea of subconscious defeatism is why sports teams heckle one another. In basketball, players try to intimidate each other into believing that it is just not possible to win this game or perform in the manner one is accustomed to, at least not today. A player might say something in passing like, "I thought you were better than this," "I guess you have your bad days like everybody else," or "you thought you were good before you played against me." They try to "get into each others' heads" and plant the idea that "you just can't do it."
The way in which to combat subliminal or subconscious defeatism in competitive situations is preparation. Pitchers who practice a lot usually don't worry much about getting the ball over because they have done exactly that perhaps tens of thousands of times before. They don't worry about executing a pitch because they recognize that if they have trouble doing it this time, they won't another time because they've been through this before. This is part of what we call mental toughness and that's a subject for another day. But suffice it to say that the belief that we can do something is a necessary part of performing in any sport.
Similar to subconscious limitation caused by opponents deliberately "getting into our heads" is something I like to think of as "failure indoctrination" or pushing of "failure buttons." As little children, we come to rely on our parents to tell us what we can and cannot do. They scream at us when we try to put our fingers into electrical sockets. They cheer for us when we take our first steps. There are thousands and thousands of little behaviors we perform which receive positive and negative reinforcement. Parents punish their kids when they fight. They give them rewards when they come home from school with good grades. But as life moves along, there are literally thousands of positive and negative reinforcements and some of these occur without parent or child being consciously aware of them.
Parents often refer to the process by which they gain control over their children's behavior as the installation of "buttons." Parents learn to push "their kids' buttons" and make them do what they want while avoiding the kinds of behaviors which they believe will damage them. The process is hardly a complete one as most parents will acknowledge that their children often do exactly what they don't want them to do. But parents also successfully install other kinds of buttons, some of which can lead to subconscious defeatism.
Subconscious button pushing is too sophisticated to explain in any detail here. Let's just say that it occurs in ways that are often not intended. Our 14 year old want-to-be pitcher, for example, noted to me that her father says she ought to play something else and not aspire to become a pitcher. My first thought upon hearing this was this girl's parents have triggered the failure button. I can't be a judge of that though when I really don't know the people involved. But my first piece of advice to her was to not listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do something. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest to this kid or any other that their parents don't have their best interests at heart. They most likely do. But they should at least be made aware that they have told this kid she can't do something which very likely she can.
I witnessed a more insidious version of this subconscious defeatism about two years ago. My youngest kid was taking pitching lessons in a clinic setting. There were 9 other girls in this clinic, one of which was a friend from our little village. The kid pitched in rec league for several years with some success. The parents put her into this clinic to see if she would develop into something more than a rec league pitcher. My kid and the other one were going to play for the same travel team and just who was going to be a pitcher was up in the air. We progressed to private lessons and practiced four times a week in the basement. By the time spring rolled around, my kid had become quite a good little pitcher and there was no doubt who was going to pitch. Once they saw this, the parents of the other kid completely gave up on pitching and discouraged her from even trying to practice. They taught her to be resigned to the fact that this other kid was better than she could ever be. That;s extremely sad. They have installed a button in their kid which, when invoked, tells her that when she encounters somebody good at something, she shouldn't aspire to be even better than that.
There are two other forms of defeatism which I despise more than the conscious and subconscious variety. These are learned failure through reliance on past personal success and through reliance on short-cuts. They are inter-related and that's why I look at them together here.
In my town it became common to talk about a kid who was a good softball player in the town rec league from the age of about 8 or 9 years old in a certain way. The phrase, "well, she's a really gifted athlete" was more common than it should have been. The notion was that success at this age indicated who was going to be good 10 years hence. Certain girls were gifted athletes so they would, of course, be the ones who were recognized as gifted during their high school years. My guess is these are the kids who our 14 year old aspiring pitcher refers to as "sporty girls." They are the kids who everyone knows are good athletes.
If only good athletes at age 8 or 9 became the really good athletes we recognized in high school or the truly great ones we see in high level college competition, there would be a geographical and cultural dispersion of them which roughly mirrored other demographics. To put that into English, if all it took to be a good softball player were good genetics, Southern California would not be the place which produced so many of the top players in the world. Instead they would come from all over. But Southern California does produce most of the best players in the world. And the reasons are varied.
First of all, everyone recognizes that SoCal has great weather for playing the game. But then again, so does Florida. Last year I heard a TV commentator say that ten years ago Florida colleges could not field a single team from the talent found at in-state high schools. But the state developed its youth leagues to such an extent that they do that today while also fielding teams that are competitive on a national level. So weather is not the only variable. And the bigger point is genetics has little to do with it. It isn't just the best "natural athletes" who make the best softball players. You do need some cooperative weather and, apparently, you also need the system which gives them an opportunity to hone their skills.
If natural gifts don't necessarily make the softball player, what does and does this really have any bearing on whether the so-called "sporty girls" who are considered good athletes at age 8 will be good softball players when they are 16? The overall point here is that in order to become a good softball player, you should worry more about the kinds of instruction received, the amounts of practice and playing time, and the level of competition faced, than you should about whether you live in SoCal or whether the kid is any good at 8.
Related to this aspect is the saga of the ten year old wonderkind. I can't tell you how many kids I have seen who were really excellent ball players at age 8, 9 or even 10 and who failed to progress. The reasons for this failure are also varied but there is one which sticks out to me. This involves the kid who could throw the ball past anyone at age 10. She is so enamored with her youthful success that she stops practicing as hard as what got her where she is. I've seen this with 11 year olds making the leap to 12U. I've seen this with high school age kids who had great success in 14U ball. Even the parents are appalled when that success is not duplicated as the kid moves up. I;ve talked with a lot of them and they believe progress will come automatically because of past success. When it doesn't heartache ensues. Eventually the kid quite the game because she cannot deal with this new thing called failure. Yet she brought it on herself.
The issue of failure learned via always seeking out shortcuts is a close cousin to the one of reliance on past success. The reason is anyone who has experienced success via shortcuts, believes they can always find a way to shortcircuit tedious hard work. perhaps our successful 10 year old pitcher became a monster flamethrower via some intense practice early on. Then she slacked off and enjoyed the fruits of her early labor while never realizing that she wasn't making consistent forward progress. Other kids who were neither intimidated by her early success nor learned defeat through slacking off continued to advance through hard work. Eventually they surpassed the wonderkind and now make quick work of her.
I have seen any number of people try to take shortcuts through whatever means they could find. There comes a point when such a person actually is willing to use more energy to locate the shortcut than he or she is to take the common sense, consistent-effort-intensive way. In one of my early pitching clinic experiences, I met a fellow whose daughter was one of those "truly gifted athletes" who has found a lot of success early on. That's probably because she is bigger and stronger than most kids her age. She will most likely be one of those "sporty girls" who everyone knows is a gifted athlete. She worked hard her first year but her parents also got her some instruction because they recognized they didn't know a lot about pitching. So, rather than spending a lot of money on that personal coach thing, they took the shortcut. They enrolled the kid in clinics and then videotaped it so they could refer back to the tapes in future years when they needed to work out kinks in her motion. It never occurred to them that what was being learned was merely rudimentary mechanics and there is far more to pitching than that. They were content to take the most obvious shortcut. We'll see how that one turns out.
I want to refocus back on the 14 year old girl who wants to be a pitcher. She has only given herself about 30 days to do what for many takes years. She's looking for a shortcut where I don't think one can be found. The e-mail exchange I had with her reminded me of other kids who failed because:
1) they just knew they couldn't;
2) others told them they couldn't;
3) parents made them believe their potential was limited;
3) they didn't receive proper instruction;
4) they relied on past successes which caused them to work less hard for future ones;
5) they believed they were such naturally gifted athletes that they didn't have to work for things; or
6) they spent all their time looking for shortcuts.
The bottom line here is just about anyone can make themselves into a good player at any position including pitcher. Don't let anyone tell you that you cannot do something and don't believe it yourself. Be prepared to take the right and logical steps to achieve the success you desire. Be prepared to put your muscle where your brain is. It will probably take more than 30 days for this girl to pitch but if she really wants to do it, she certainly can.
There is nothing worse than someone who talks about their personal failure and then explains why they failed when they hindered themselves or were unwilling to take the steps needed for success. There is nothing I dislike quite as much as watching failure in motion. Our 14 year old girl wants to become a pitcher. That is certainly possible with a lot of hard work and dedication. But without that hard work, dedication and a belief that achievement is possible, there is very little hope of anything more than accidental success. Playing the lottery has better odds.Labels: coaching, parents, players
 
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