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80 - 20, 20 - 80
by Dave
Friday, November 21, 2008
I think most people are familiar with the ole 80-20 rule. That is the generally accepted wisdom that tells us 80% of all our results come from 20% of our efforts. The corollary to this is just as important and that is, the last 20% of results come from 80% of our efforts. The trouble with the 80-20 rule in athletic and many other endeavors is, what we are really after is the final 20%, not the first 80!
Before I get going on this thread, I want to specify that I don't particularly care about the precision of 80-20. It may be that your personal credo is 75-25 or some such. Maybe the truth is 30% of all efforts really yield 70% of all results. But in normal parlance, the phrase is 80-20. And since it is general wisdom, we don't so much need to get the numbers precisely correct. In other words, we are not willing to expend the energy necessary to precisely nail the exact percentages. We are not willing to go that extra 80% - we accept the rule as 80-20 because that only requires 20% of our mental effort.
Yesterday, I received an e-mail newsletter from a source I like a lot, Marc Dagenais, which had the title "How to Easily Get 80% of Batters Out." The substance of the newsletter was "pitch inside and low" and that should get 80% of all batters out. Perhaps that's true. But if you get 80% of the batters out, what is the result? The answer to this quiz is 6 batters are not gotten out and 21 are retired in a regulation 7 inning game. That's pretty much sufficient in most games. But in your typical 1-0 semi-final or championship game, it is just not enough!
Understand that I'm not in any way picking on Marc's advice. I'm really getting at something bigger. Most of us know the ole 80-20 rule. Many of us are lifelong subscribers to it. It is an important principle when, for example, we have way too much on our plate and must prioritize what we can get done or decide what is going to be put on the back burner. And sometimes our hectic lives require that we take care of just the most important 80% via 20% of our efforts and then hope to get to the other stuff later. Yet, what distinguishes most people and things are those final 80%.
Imagine going out for a steak dinner. You could go to Applebees or you could go to some very expensive five star steak house. At Applebees, you'll get real beef and it may be covered with some sauce, 80% of the possible. Your dinner will cost about about $10 or so, assuming you just get the basic meal. At the steak house, you'll have to dig much deeper into your pocket, perhaps paying $50 or more for the basic entree. And what you'll get on your plate should be something which is a bit above the typical Applebees fare. The meat should be a much better cut. It should be cooked to perfection. And the sauce will likely be other-worldly.
It may not always be the case that when you go out on the town and hit the top spot that you get five star quality. But if a restaurant does not repeatedly deliver top notch items, it will quickly go out of business. Top restaurants get top dollar because they command top dollar, they put out the extra 80% to deliver something at least 20% better. Any restaurant that is inconsistent or which charges more while delivering less is likely to lose out to ones which cost less and deliver the same 80% quality. The key to the restaurant business is to decide whether you want to offer 80% or 100% product, then expend the requisite effort to deliver it, and, of course, charge accordingly.
If you, like me, are not well off enough to go out to five star restaurants, you still can relate to the 80-20 rule as it pertains to food. I'm not much of a chef but one thing I can make is a really good tomato sauce. I'm not even a little Italian but I grew up in a town which was about half Italian. Most of my friends grew up enjoying really good tomato "gravies" and sauces. If you live in a place in which you think of the Olive Garden when you want Italian food, I feel sorry for you, but that's not the type of food I'm talking about. If you don't know the difference between "gravies" and sauces, gravies use meat while sauces do not.
In any event, when I was a bachelor, one of my roomates was a genuine Italian fellow who liked to cook. He taught me how to make tomato "gravies." I translated the basic recipe to make tomato sauce and still occassionally make it. I hadn't made a sauce in years but grew weary of the jarred, commercially available variety so I decided to make some of my own. The basic recipe is tomatoes, garlic, onion, fresh basil, salt, pepper, a little sugar to cut the tomatoes' tartness, a little this and that, cook it for a certain length of time and then let it rest. I didn't feel like exceeding the 20% effort threshhold so I used what we had around the house including basil that had been frozen and I didn't cook it nearly as long as I have in the past when I have made really good sauce. The result was far superior to anything you would get at the Olive Garden or out of any jar. But it didn't meet my expectations. So the next time I resolved to expend the full effort. I went out to the store and bought better garlic, the right kind of tomatoes and onions, etc. I even bought a little red wine which always makes a sauce better - that's wine in the sauce. I cooked my sauce quite a bit longer at lower heat and voila, the finished product was one of my better efforts. I expended the remaining 80%, made something at least 20% better, and it was worth it.
Similarly, if you are well healed and purchase a top notch automobile, you may notice something along the same lines. All the other, less expensive, cars can actually get to the same places you can, and usually in about the same amount of time. They perform 80% of the function of your personal transportation and do so at about 20% of the cost. But they don't have leather seats, quite as good of a sound system, or the same kind of environmental controls. They might not have quite the same pickup or handling. Their engines are not as quiet as yours. When you sit behind the wheel of your expensive automobile, you feel good about it. When you get into one of those far cheaper ones, you understand why you spent so much to buy yours.
People are similar in terms of the 80-20 rule. We all know people who are perfectly nice in our neighborhoods. When we see them, they wave or smile a bit before turning away and going on with their lives. We also know a few people who seem to genuinely care about us. They know our kid's names and approximate ages, if not personal interests. They have a sense of what is important to us. They can relate to us on more than a superficial level. We intuitively like such people because we believe they care at least somewhat about us as opposed to the people who simply wave because they don't want us or anyone else to think they are unfriendly. One person seems to be pleasant because they care about us. The other is pleasant, though less so, because they care about themselves. One person puts out 20% effort and the other 100%.
Think about all the dealings you have had in your life with salespeople of various stripes. They are all pretty much apparently friendly and outgoing. A few are not and those people usually end up doing something else for a living - they can't even put out the minimum required 20%! But most (80%?) are only superficially friendly. The rest (20%?) are a peg above that. They do their jobs very well and try to do everything in their power to make you feel as if you are important to them. They go the extra mile - maybe we should say extra 8 tenths of a mile - and that usually makes all the difference. Salespeople may be a dime a dozen but that's no baker's dozen - the 13th salesperson is really good and it is next to impossible to avoid buying whatever he or she is selling!
In academic pursuits, I believe it is possible to achieve average grades (C's and B's), by only putting out a relatively low level of effort. Of course, that belief is outside the realm of real learning disabilities but don't get me going on that subject because I've got more to say than I care to.
Average grades are OK. They'll get you through graduation. They may get you into and through a college which will make you ready to step into the workforce. But they won't provide the opportunity to live an inspired life. You won't get into the college of your dreams. They won't make you excited about learning. You won't be thrilled with your career opportunities. You will be average and there's nothing wrong with that. But the alternative is something more. And it requires much greater effort.
In softball, at first it takes all your efforts just to learn the most basic skills. But before long, we begin to swing the bat better, make accurate and fairly strong throws, field much better. It really takes only so much effort (20%?) to be a serviceable (80%) ballplayer. But serviceable ballplayers often aren't the ones who win the accolades and ovations. They don't win games, especially the big ones. Serviceable ballplayers don't hit the best pitchers or make spectacular plays in the field. Serviceable pitchers don't completely shut down the best hitting teams.
I do understand that the vast majority of us, perhaps 80%, really do not aspire to play for (or have our kids play for) the teams at the women's college world series or to tryout for Team USA. Most of us are content to play well. Yet, it does not escape me that anyone involved in this sport does so precisely because of the thrill of playing it well. We don't want to be 80% ballplayers. We don't want to merely be serviceable. We expend far more than 20% of the possible effort level in order to be something more than 80%.
One of the main benefits of pursuing any athletic endeavor is to learn the value of exceeding 20% effort. We, or our kids, could just go to school, get decent grades, participate in a few sports on the lowest possible level and be happy with all that. When we go out onto the softball diamond, we want to make above average plays, get good hits at important moments, be the dominant pitcher, if only for a short while.
The average batter, 80% of all batters, makes an out - about 80% of all at-bats result in outs. Average fielders do frequently make errors. Average pitchers do get pummeled. We accept that making outs and fielding errors, getting hit hard or having a generally bad pitching outing are all part of the game. But we don't seek out mediocrity or we would do so without the experience of getting struck by pitched or hit balls, without having to face 50-60 mph pitches, 90 mph hit balls, etc. Mediocrity is easy to find and there is absolutely no reason to step onto the field if that's what you seek.
I think it is important to recognize that when we choose to engage in the voluntary activity of fastpitch softball, we do so not merely to play or have fun. Certainly we want to have fun but we are looking for more than mediocrity. We want to be good.
The pathway to being good is to expend the extra 80% of effort. Don't settle for 80% results by expending 20% effort unless that is specifically what you seek. Instead, take a look around and see what else you can do. Identify the players who are really good and observe what they do. You do not have to duplicate their precise actions but take notice of how hard they work, how focused they are, how much overall effort they seem to give to the game. Then understand how much you give. If you want to be better than you are, give more. Lift yourself to higher levels.
The reason I write this today comes from a complex batch of experiences. I have seen a number of people decide to back off the effort of becoming really good ballplayers because they see some team or some kid who are already there. They reason to themselves that they or their kid just does not have that kind of potential. This often happens when folks contemplate the level of ball played in the states which historically have yielded the greatest number of top ballplayers. This also can happen when one travels outside one's comfort zone and just goes to compete at some higher level tournament, maybe out of state, and witnesses girls who put everything they have into the game in order to strive to compete on the highest levels they can possibly attain.
Last night I had a discussion with a head coach of a team one of my kid's used to play for. The details of the discussion are not important but underneath it all was this thread having to do with levels of competition. The terms this fellow used were "A team" vs. B, C, or D teams. He said, "you know, maybe we are really a B, C, or D team but I don't want to play in those tournaments where you find those teams. I'd rather lose every game to really good teams than win a whole tournament against bad ones." He went on to elaborate that sometimes it certainly was good to win even against lower level competition but he did not enjoy those times as much as all the higher level tournaments his team had played.
I reminded the coach about times in which our B, C, or D team had given an A team a run for its money. On a select few occasions, we had done more than that, beating self-described A teams, sometimes quite badly. He remembers those times fondly, far more fondly than those times his team beat bad teams. That's really what this is all about.
A few years back I took charge of a team of under-experienced girls and we played a rough schedule. In the end, our schedule may have been a bit too far above us. Our win-loss record was pretty weak. But on several occasions we beat some really good teams. When I think back to that year, the times we beat good teams stick out in my memory. I don't really think of the times we beat bad teams or got mercied by really good ones. I think about the growing we did that year which allowed us to compete with the best available talent.
In my discussion with the coach of my kid's former team, he kept coming back to issues of personal growth. He remembers games in which far inferior teams lost to us and lamented that the kids didn't really get anything out of those. But even the really bad losses to good teams stood out as positive growth experiences. He concluded that he would continue to seek out the best tournaments he could find regardless of outcome.
Recently, a woman I have not seen on the softball diamond for years took charge of a local "quasi-travel" team. I call the team "quasi-travel" because it is an outgrowth of a rec all-star program which does not play many tournaments and the few they do play do not often draw the best competition. They looked around for a league in which to play fall ball. By pure accident, they happened into a league which draws a bunch of better travel teams and a few "quasi-travel" teams like hers. She was so taken by the apparent talent she saw that she has resolved to bring her team to that level next year even if she has to remake the roster.
This woman has a daughter who plays on her team. The daughter never really made much of travel softball and neither she nor her mother had any knowledge of the world that laid outside the gates of their local area. But the kid always wanted to play at the highest levels possible. They just didn't realize what was out there, not very far from home. The eye-opening fall ball experience completely reshaped their views. Now, the type of ball they have played for several years just isn't good enough.
When I started this writing, I mentioned an article which told of how to get 80% of batters out. I explained why that isn't good enough. I got into a discussion about how almost everything in our lives involes some sort of 80-20 dynamic and when we want something really good, 80% just isn't good enough. I brought this back to the softball world by talking generally about sport and then describing some experiences in which folks have come to realize that playing average softball is not what they want to do. If my roundabout way of describing a pursuit of something more than 80% has bored you to tears, I apologize. I want to drive home the point that merely playing something like softball is probably not enough to maximize one's possibilities, one's enjoyment.
If we sit down and split up the game of softball into skills and qualities needed to succeed, it is pretty easy to come up with several main areas. Obviously one's general physical condition is important, as is strength. One must be able to run. A softball player must be able to athletically retrieve balls hit to their position, as well as run out grounders and basehits. Further, flexibility is important. Also, certain hand-eye skills are unavoidable. One must learn the basic mechanics of fielding, throwing, etc. One must develop a reasonably good swing. There are other skills and qualities but I think you get the basic idea.
Now, if you do absolutely nothing, you get absolutely nothing. And if you do little, you get little. If you put out say a 20% effort, you get something like an 80% outcome. But as you do incrementally more than 20%, your abilities, skills, and qualities improve.
In case you are wondering, there is a theme in all this. And this piece is particularly timely. Right now is just before Thanksgiving. It is November. There are just over three months before high school season gets underway here. For those younger and merely playing spring travel or rec ball, you have a little more time than that. If you look over my posts over the past month, a couple had to do with visualization, one had to do with developing pitches, one had to do with catching skills, some exclusively with batting, and yet others with physical training. For the most part, after the summer tournament season is over, I like to post general topics dealing with the things you can and should work on during the offseason. Sure, sometime I ramble on about almost nothing at all. But essentially I usually come back to something you can do to improve your game.
Now is the time to analyze what your weak points are and decide what you need to do to fix them. You may need to develop the strength or mechanics of your swing. You may need to pitch at a faster speed. You may just need to work on your overall athleticism. Whatever you need to do, all things are possible from this point forward. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
A few years ago I interacted with three particular girls. None could run very well. They all carried a little extra weight and their running mechanics were poor. One girl thought, "I can't run. I never could run and I expect I'll never be able to run." Another girl reasoned, "I can't run but you have to run in softball. I love softball so I better learn how to run." The third girl wasn't quite as motivated but she thought to herself, "I can't run and you have to run on the softball field. I get embarrassed when I run badly and people make fun of me."
As you might imagine, the last two girls worked to learn how to run. They got involved in the sort of physical training which required them to run a lot. Now, two years later, one girl is rather fast. She's trimmed down quite a bit and is very athletic looking. The other girl has not achieved quite that level of success but she is definitely getting much faster and doesn't get laughed at anymore. The first girl, the one who couldn't run and was resigned to that fact, still cannot run. In fact, when one sees her try to run, it is remarkable how slow she is. It seems as if she has actually gotten slower. The two girls whose running improved are enjoying the game of softball quite a bit more than they once did. The girl who did not put out the effort to improve her running is suffering through some more difficult times.
This effort of working on running skills was done with the help of a physical trainer but it doesn't necessarily have to require substantial cost. Girls who aspire to play on the highest levels are probvably well advised to get themselves in a highly structured training class. But the average girl who wants to run better or just get more athletic doesn't need quite that much. Attending a few sessions with someone skilled at teaching running mechanics can do wonders, especially if she continues to run some sort of workout afterwards.
A 4-second-to-first kid is not going to go to three classes and magically start getting down there in 3.1. But if she learns how to run and then runs on her own, I would guess that she wouldn't have any trouble making it in 3.8 inside of three months. By the end of the high school softball season, she'll probably make it in 3.6. By the end of the summer travel season, she will be there in 3.5 which isn't bad. And at the end of two years of consistent effort, when this year's freshman class will be mere juniors, when this year's sixth graders will be eighth graders, that 4 second time likely will be the much more reasonable 3.3, perhaps better. I don't believe you can take some kid who has very limited athletic potential and turn her into a 2.9 but I am absolutely convinced that nearly every human being can be made to run quite a bit faster through an effort and thereby become a much better ballplayer.
The same principle applies to fielding, hitting, or whatever. Any softball player who decides today to start into a regular program of exercises and/or drills in order to make herself into a better player, will see some improvements by spring,more by the end of summer, and within two years should no longer recognize the player she once was.
Please understand that I'm not contemplating a 7 day-per-week / two hour-per-day complete exercise regimen. I'm talking about doing more than you are currently doing, period. If you want to swing the bat better and are taking the winter off, find a place in your house, without furniture or lighting fixtures and take 50 (100?) dry swings 3 times a week. If you are a pitcher with no available place to practice, find a closet, pile up towels or blankets and work hand snaps or partial throws. Get yourself a five dollar, soft, weighted ball at some sporting goods store and snap it outdoors for ten minutes a day - you should not experience frostbite or hypothermia in that period of time. Work your entire motion without a ball, in front of a mirror if you can. If you are a catcher, do quad muscle exercises during commercials of American Idol. Get into your normal position and bounce up to make that throw to second. Do some pushups. Do some of those exercises you learned in gym class. Do some lunges in your bedroom before you take a shower at night. Get something like a very light dumdbell and perform wrist curls to strengthen your wrists for hitting and the myriad other skills needed in softball. Jump, really jump, up and down thirty times. Do some sort of short duration exercise program three or four times a week and your athletic abilities will improve. You will become a better player. Girl jump on it, you know you want it!
In closing, let me say that Marc Dagenais is in no way an advocate for expending 20% effort to realize 80% of your possible game. In fact, his participation in softball is largely teaching the 80% which yields the final 20% results. But his discussion about pitching inside and low just triggered in me the need to discuss the ole 80-20 rule. I understand that many folks don;t have the resources, financial and otherwise to engage in a full, all out assault on athletic training. I also understand that not everyone wants to become a member of Team USA. I suspect that everyone would like to be better than they are now. That is the human condition. So get out and do more than 20%. Do something which will yield some results. It's worth it.Labels: pre-season preparation, work ethic
Permanent Link: 80 - 20, 20 - 80
 
The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
by Dave
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
At the risk of repeating myself, I want to bring up a subject that is near and dear to my heart, visualization. I believe this critical component of athletics is often left completely out of the discussion when it should be a centerpiece. We send our kids off to expensive private and group lessons, somewhat less expensive clinics, and team practices where visualization is barely, if ever, so much as mentioned. Yet this one item, this one technique, can give you everything you really need to be a better competitor.
I wanted to test the hypothesis I proposed a couple weeks ago that every big time athlete practices visualization on some level. I saw my opportunity to check this against an Olympic and professional athlete when, during the course of a clinic, I was able to put the question to Cat Osterman. Cat disappointed me - she said she "never really does 'visualization.'" Then, later, she directly contradicted herself.
The discussion we were engaged in was about pre-game warm-ups. I was curious about whether Cat used visualization before, during or after her workouts and pre-game warm-ups. I would have been willing to bet that she used it at every opportunity. Most pitchers do.
Many baseball pitchers at high levels fill their time watching videotape of hitters, analyzing weaknesses, and crafting strategies to take advantage of those weaknesses. Then, before they ever pitch against the hitter or team, they work through a visualization exercise in which they pitch to those weaknesses, using their imaginations.
Football quarterbacks do something similar. A good deal of time is spent watching videotape of the next opponent's defensive tendencies. Strategies are crafted. The team practices certain plays and play sequences it wants to use. A full game plan is developed. Then players are sent home where they work through things in their heads, they visualize pieces of the game they hope to play. QBs, in particular, run through pass patterns their receivers will use. They run through parts of those patterns where they expect receivers will be somewhat open or possibly completely uncovered by the opposing defense. They visualize themselves making good passes to those receivers at specific points in their patterns.
This technique is not particular to baseball pitchers and football QBs. Any athlete has a set of skills and strategies he or she hopes to implement in games. Track athletes visualize the various mechanics of their particular discipline, then actual races or events, and work through the competition in their heads. Gymnasts work through their very difficult mechanical skills and see themselves doing the thing right before they enter competition or before a specific event. Skaters do it. Swimmers, cyclists, golfers, boxers and whatever other athletes we can come up with do it. I dare say even circus performers, public speakers and dramatic actors do this.
We do loads of in-person, physical practicing to prepare our bodies to execute skills and strategies necessary for success. But if we never do any sort of visualization, we rob ourselves of very important "practice time." We waste our minds and that's a terrible thing.
I was curious if Osterman did any sort of visualization and whether she would clue us in about how, when and why she does it. My hopes, however, were dashed when Cat said, no, in fact, she doesn't really practice visualization - she's not big on that. I thought this strange but rather than cross-examine her, I just sat there disappointed, perhaps crestfallen over the dashing of my hypothesis.
The discussion moved to other subjects and questions from the audience were again requested. Someone asked Cat about her mental state before she throws each pitch. The questioner noticed that she takes a moment to center herself, sometimes closes her eyes, and then lets the pitch fly. The questioner wanted to know if she was emptying her mind at this moment before pitching. He was looking to test his personal hypothesis that top level pitchers empty their heads before actually throwing a pitch. His hopes were soon dashed and mine rejuvenated when Cat replied that no, she wasn't emptying her mind. Instead, she was picturing, in her mind, the pitch she was about to make. She noted that she has always done that. She said she has a unique way of being able to see the pitch and then execute it.
It's too bad she doesn't practice visualization!!!
I don't so much care whether any particular athlete, in an academic lecture, a clinic, or any other setting states unequivocally that what he or she practices before competing involves a technique that has a specific name. I don't care whether he or she describes the technique and explains how it was developed. I don't care that he or she learned something called vizualization and can explain to me or others how, when or why he or she does this. I know instinctively that all athletes do it whether they are aware of it or not. I know it works. And every time I see the topic addressed, I get a better understanding of why it works and how it should be used.
Last night, I was flipping through cable channels looking for anything to hold my interest. There were only a few sporting events on and none of them had the potentential to hold me. There is nothing much for me on TV these days. I've completely outgrown sitcoms. The drama series which dominate TV are horrendous for the most part. So I usually look for a sporting event and when I am disappointed on that front, I start flipping through the Discovery Channel, National Geographic, etc. Last night, there just wasn't much worthwhile on until I happened upon the Science Channel's "Weird Connections."
"Weird Connections" is a show which shows five seemingly unrelated experiments and then extrapolates how the intersection of those experiments is going to alter technology in the future. Last night the focus was on some very interesting mental phenomenon.
The first experiment involved college kids who were all given free beer in a makeshift bar. The kids didn't really know each other before they sat around drinking. As their consumption proceeded, they seemed to loosen up, laugh more readily and do the other things we associate with an intoxicated state caused by consumption of beer. The punch line happened when researchers informed the kids that three quarters of them had not actually received any alcohol at all. They had gotten drunk on non-alcoholic beer! Yet their reactions were identical to kids drinking real beer!! In other words, alcohol was not the cause of changed behavior - it was the kids' expectations, their minds.
The second experiment involved a subject who underwent pain as part of a study of brainwaves. A device was placed on her which applied heat (about 110 degrees Farenheit) to a limited area on her arm. The researcher noted that this was approximately equivalent to holding a very hot cup of coffee. The subject experienced pain from the heat and her brainwaves caused by the pain were recorded. Certain parts of our brains become active when we experience pain. Then a substance was applied to the heated area and she was told that it was a very strong painkiller which should alleviate any pain caused by the heating device. When the device was again activated, the subject felt no pain and, more importantly, the parts of her brain associated with pain remained inactive. The painkiller substance was mere baby oil. It was not responsible for blocking her pain. Her brain did that.
The third experiment involved weight lifting performed by novices. A group of subjects was tested for arm strength via a standard arm curl test. Then half the group did exercises intended to improve those results twice a week, over a six week period. The other half of the group did half as much of these exercises and then spent the other half of their time sitting with the bar in their hands while watching a video of themselves doing curls from a first person perspective. The video shown was as if they were doing the actual curls. They had been coached to visualize while using this video - told to imagine themselves actually making the exercise movement on each video rep but not to move their arms. Then, at the end of six weeks, both groups were again tested for strength. Both groups experienced improved results but the group which did less actual weight lifting plus the visualization improved more than the other group!
The researchers found this surprising and curious. They concluded that, while they certainly would not suggest that anyone looking to get into shape merely visualize exercise, since that does nothing to actually use muscles nor improve cardio-vascular function, perhaps visualization should play a more important part in physical training. They reasoned that perhaps the injured or sick athlete stuck outside of practice and training could glean some benefit from doing visualization.
I'll go these researchers one better. I think that while visualization without exercise is inadvisable, perhaps sports training without visualization is almost as weak an approach.
To explain the results of the experiment, researchers examined the way in which human motors work. Impulses are sent from the brain to the muscles via the neuro-muscular pathways, muscles contract, and athletic movement is accomplished. Muscles get worked repeatedly and become stronger. Apparently so do neurons!
Visualization of an exercise causes the neuro-muscluar pathways to be activated or excited in the same way they are during actual exercise. The electronic pulse goes from our brain to the muscle during visualization the same way it does when we actually make the movement.
When describing athletics, I try to avoid using the all too common phrase "muscle memory." Obviously muscles don't really have memory per se though making a lot of repeated motions with a muscle will cause the particular fibers to become more robust. We've been over that before and I don't want to get into it again right now. Rather than use the term "muscle memory" to describe what happens when complex physical actions are repeated, I prefer "motor memory" because, at least to me, that reflects the more complete package of neuro-muscular interaction.
The question is, of the two pieces of "neuro" and "muscular," which is the more important? I suppose the answer the experiment (an extremely limited one) provides is maybe "neuro" is more important than "muscular." I doubt that either is more important than the other. But you cannot deny the power of the mind.
The reasons I spend so much time on the subject of visualization are precisely because I know its power and because, in the numerous clinics, etc. I have attended, the only reference I have ever heard has come from my own mouth. These clinics have been hosted by top level, very well known coaches, Olympic and professional athletes, etc. Yet nobody has ever spent any real time on visualization. I feel as if it is my responsiblity to share this with you.
I've talked before about how one goes about accomplishing visualization. There's no time to get into that now. But I do want to emphasize that athletic visualization is a first person endeavor. You don't so much watch yourself from some distance making a play or pitch, hitting a basehit or homerun, etc. Instead you watch your body doing it from your own eyes, your personal, first person perspective. You don't see the back of your head. It is not an "out of body" experience. It is an "in body" experience.
Secondly, it is not an experience in which you merely "watch" the results. Visualization is almost a weak way of naming it. You don't simply see, you feel it. You know the way your body feels when you run, go down to field a grounder, reach out to get a linedrive or flyball, swing a bat, hit the ball, make a throw, etc. You know this because you have done it countless times before in practices and games. When you perform "visualization" you experience the entirety of the action. You experience the steps leading up to the play. You live all the right moves and then make the play.
I have to pick some sort of softball action with which to provide you examples. That does not make the examples inapplicable to other aspects of the game. I'm going to choose pitching because it is probably easiest for me to put this into understandable words. But please understand that the same dynamic applies to hitting, fielding, making your moves as a catcher, infielder, outfielder, batter, baserunner, etc. The same exercises I will now discuss for pitchers can be altered to provide "practice" for every player on the field.
The first item I think you should want to have at the ready is some skill including the proper way to accomplish it. In pitching, we talk about good mechanics of the stride forward, arm circle, and wrist snap. A beginner pitcher who is working at perfecting some element of her motion can gain improvement via visualization of that movement, assuming she knows what it is supposed to look like. That requires someone explaining it to her, perhaps demonstrating it, perhaps putting her through numerous repetitions of trying it while observing her.
It occurs to me that I have emphasized many times on this blog that pitchers practice frequently and at length. The idea is to work at accomplishing good mechanics, achieve them, and then repeat. Early on, girls get some instruction and then try to repeat the skill until they get it down. A beginner pitcher might first be instructed on the wrist snap and shown how to do it the right way. Then she tries it and often fails a few times. Finally, she does it right, experiences success and works at repeating it. She might get it right once out of ten times. The idea of practicing this somewhat simple movement is to get it right more frequently than not and then gradually increase the incidence of the correct movement until that is the overwhelming majority of iterations.
Girls who do not practice, usually make repeated mistakes of the same sort and end up making, for example, an incorrect wrist snap, say, 8 out of 10 tries. If the pitching student goes home and works her wrist snaps three or more times per week, she eventually gets a very high incidence of doing it correctly and can move forward with her lessons.
Lessons really involve two elements, the neuro and the muscular. But of the two, the muscular is definitely the easier one. Think of pitching wrist snaps. The movement is not complicated nor does it require real strength, in the sense that it is not particularly taxing on even a very young kid who has never done it before. You flex your arm and snap your wrist. You don't have to lift weights before attempting it! What is difficult, however, is the movement of the electronic message from brain to muscle. What is difficult is telling the right muscle fibers to twitch.
The same principle is true of other parts of the fundamental windmill pitching motion. The individual pieces are not difficult or taxing to accomplish over some minimal number of repetitions. Bringing them together can be more difficult. These individual pieces are absolutely critical to performing the whole. And most often when a pitcher is struggling, it is one piece in particular that is giving her trouble. So presumably, given that visualization causes the message to be sent from brain to muscle, one could improve one's skills by practicing visualization, or put another way, practicing via visualization.
A more advanced pitcher is learning new pitches which involve different kinds of movements, particularly of her wrist. She could foster learning of the new pitch's movements via visualization. You learn the dropball hand-wrist snap and then try to repeat it with a ball in your hand. But once you know it, you can cause the correct neuro fibers to activate whether you have a ball in your hand or not. So my advice to any pitcher trying to learn new tricks is to practice, practice, practice, and do at least some of this while laying down, sitting in a chair or otherwise without a ball in her hand.
Even after a pitcher has the fundamental windmill motion down pretty well, even after she has learned to throw the drop, change, etc., she can still get a ton of benefit from doing visualization. Let's say for the sake of argument that you have all your pitches down pretty well. Your fastball is fast and your movement pitches move. What is the next consideration? Location. That is, you want to be able to put your pitches where you want them.
You no longer look to merely throw a fastball correctly or to throw it very fast. Now you need to put it on or just off the corner. You've done this before. Do it now in your head. Picture yourself throwing the ball right on that corner and the batter taking it for a strike. Picture yourself throwing the pitch three inches off the plate, out of the batters reach, wherever you want to throw it. As I said, don't merely picture yourself doing this in the third person as you might if you were standing at second base, in the outfield, or along the sidelines. See, feel, smell, taste yourself doing it from the moment you, yourself, step on the pitcher's plate. Live the experience in your head.
The very best pitchers I have ever seen share the ability to essentially throw a good pitch, fastball, change of speed, or movement pitch, basically where they want it to go. They throw strikes to get ahead in the count and then deliberately throw balls to get the batter out with unhittable pitches. A pitcher might throw her curveball on the corner, an inch off it, two inches outside, etc. If she gets up 0-2, the next pitch is not going to be a strike. It is going to be a pitch which the batter cannot possibly hope to drive for a basehit unless she gets extremely lucky or the pitch is a mistake. Good pitchers have command. When they practice, they work on controlling exactly where that ball goes. There's no good reason to not use visualization as a training aid once you have become a top level pitcher.
Further to the point, pitchers learn how to identify batters with certain tendencies and then how to pitch to those weaknesses. You can use visualization for either purpose. You've seen perhaps thousands of batters. You've identified their tendencies, got them out pitching to their weaknesses, and suffered big hits when you've made mistakes. You've developed a database of how to get hitters out and what kinds of mistakes they like to hit best. Visualize yourself making good pitches to these batters. Visualize yourself working against those rotational, linear and other hitters. Visualize yourself striking them out or making them hit easy grounders or pop-ups to your teammates.
I hope my pitching example has given you some food for thought. I hope that's true for everyone, not just the pitchers. As I said, the same thing can be accomplished if you are: a hitter looking to hit a particular pitch, pitcher or pitchers generally, an infielder working on making plays to your left or right, an outfielder loooking to grab that ball in the alley and throw the baserunner out at second, or whatever skill it is you wish to accomplish. The first thing you need is the knowledge to do whatever it is you want to do correctly. Then you should want to do the skill physically out at the gym, on the field, or wherever. Then, with the knowedlge of what you want to do, how to do it, and the experience of having done it correctly at least once, use visualization to make it a part of your game.
Visualization can be used in both positive and negative terms. Just to be clear, what I'm getting at here is not that I want you to visualize failure. That's to be avoided at all costs. If a player visualizes striking out, making a bad pitch, etc., she will do that at some point because she has pre-programmed herself to. So don't ever visualize yourself failing. But I want to get at something else. Visualization can be used to picture yourself doing something positive AND it can be sued to picture yourself NOT doing something negative. Actually, it may be easier to use visualization to not do something negative than it is to do something positive.
For example, let's say you are like the little sister in "A League of Their Own." You can't hit high pitches and you can't lay off them. Use visualization to see yourself laying off them. Picture yourself up to bat. Imagine the strike zone as it is for your stance. Now, picture the high pitch, above the strike zone. Take it! Don't swing at it!! If you perform this brief exercise a couple thousand times in your head, I expect you'll never again swing at that pitch above the zone. Try it and see if you can get some results.
The same principle works for almost any part of your game in which you are doing something wrong and you know it but cannot seem to avoid that something. If you are a shortstop who has recently started coming up early on the groundball, visualize yourself staying down longer. If you are a batter who is struggling with the outside curveball and swinging wildly at ones way outside, picture yourself taking it. If you are a catcher who is not staying down on balls in the dirt, picture yourself not coming up.
Finally, I want to get into a more nuanced view of this sometimes very complicated game. Specifically, I want to provide some guidance for batters who are struggling because they are hitting balls right at fielders. I have seen this in numerous cases. Girls who have good swing mechanics, who can hit any pitch known, are getting really frustrated because they are constantly lining out or hitting smashes right into the easy zone for fielders in every field.
The difference between a game winning double and a game ending lineout can be mere inches, perhaps a foot or so. If only you could hit a few of those liners between the fielders instead of right at them, your average would go up and your enjoyment of the game would immeasurably improve. You can do this. You can do this via visualization. The difference between a hit and an out is fractions of inches, on the bat. You hit it in the sweet spot and it goes. A quarter of an inch down or up and you're out. When you visualize, see yourself hitting the ball with the best part of the bat. And visualize experiences when you hit between the fielders.
People who do not have personal experiences in the game, probably do not realize that hitters do actually hit'em where they ain't. It isn't really a conscious thing because there isn't time to say "OK, this is an outside pitch which I'm going to hit to right. Where is that rightfielder? Where is the second baseman? OK, I need to hit it there. That means it has to hit my bat here. Done!" But hitters do learn to hit balls specifically away rom fielders. This is a subliminal, subconscious kind of thing but it does happen. It is an important part of the offensive game. If you never learn this, you won't progress. And the only way I know to learn it is to do visualization.
Further, I alluded to it but let me state that batters need to know when they step up to hit that they can't, for example, pull an outside curveball or hit a pitch at their shoelaces over the fence. Every location just in and just off the strike zone has a proper place where it should be hit. You can take a fastball down the middle about any place you want but you're not going to see much of that. If you never learn to hit pitches where they are, you're going to make a lot of outs. Good hitting coaches teach how to take certain pitches to certain fields. But the rarified lesson setting often is too distinct from the real game experiences. The way to incorporate the advice of hitting coaches is to work at your hitting when you don't have a bat in your hands - via visualization. Hitters more than anyone else, probably because their jobs are so difficult, must use visualization. If you want to lay off bad pitches, swing at zoned ones, take good hacks, hit the ball hard, hit'em where they ain't, you must use visualization.
I'll probably bring this topic up again. Every time I go to a clinic and don't hear anything about the technique, every time I pass a certain amount of time away in the game and fail to hear the technique so much as mentioned, I get anxious. So much can be accomplished in times outside of practice and games, lying awake at night, in quiet moments alone. So much can be accomplished just by using our God given brains. Use your mind. Visualize. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.Labels: Visualization
Permanent Link: The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste
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