Is there another sport

Balance and confidence are key.

Just came back from a college hitting and pitching weekend camp and one of the daily stations was the psychological station.

Head BB Coach has a Ph.D. in psychology and knows the importance of the mental aspect of the game. He has his players go through a series of breathing relaxation techniques before every game and has them listen to a postive mental image audio tape. Campers got to go through the 45 minute series. This was relatively new unchartered territory for my HS Junior son.

The college Coach also has his players take a course which has a combination of lectures, group discussions, written exercises, and relaxation imagery exercises that are utilized to develop the "mental/psychological" side of the athlete. Topics such as self-awareness, motivation, commitment, goal setting, constructive thinking, and stress management are included in the class format.

The focus is to improve the athlete's ability:

* To maintain a mental calm, even in highly stressful situations.

* To develop a proper focus of attention.

* To banish negative thoughts and images, in favor of those that lead to confidence and aggressiveness.

* To balance rational thinking with intuitive thinking.

* To become more self-aware of physiological/psychological processes.

His philosophey is " live in the moment ".
Leave a bad at-bat in the past. Dont get angry or even. Leave it and start fresh.

Go up to the plate thinking with a can-do attitude.
Visualize success.
Be mentally prepared to waken yourself up if you are flat,... be able to calm yourself down if you are too pumped up.
It was all about being in charge of your own emotions and being able to strive for complete mental balance.

Not an easy achievement.

Takes maturity, repitition, and practice.

Perhaps an aspect of the game that many of us forget to actually work on daily along with our physical training.

Very interesting topic and one that I think could be applicable and helpful in others areas of life, as well.

catcher09,

Hey, great topic!

Baseball is such a tough game, I think, because of the mental aspect. Think about it: How many times, in the course of the game, is the ball hit to, say, the Third Baseman? Two, three, four times?

Baseball players are made in practice, not the games, which makes it a particulary unappealing sport for those seeking action, now!

Basketball may be the most physically demanding sport, but is it as much a thinking-man's sport as baseball? I doubt it. Football has its skilled positions but for the most part your physical power trumps skill. Golf is like baseball in its emphasis on individual skill, but it's not a team sport so axe that one.

Which leaves baseball, the most mentally-demanding team sport.

Baseball is more like chess than any other sport. A combination of pieces, parlayed by the manager with single moves, in baseball's case a player whose own worth (or power) statistically may be less than his teammates but in any given game the key piece that realizes checkmate for the benefit of his side.

ssmom, great post

bum, I like the analogy to chess

I love baseball above all other sports, but each one has similar highs and lows and requires balance for sustained success. A loss in football, for instance, is far more crushing than a loss in baseball simply because there are fewer games. And as for power over skill in football, Bum, you clearly did not watch Joe Montana or Tom Brady or Jerry Rice or Deion Sanders and others very often. Even along the offensive line, a strong but smaller player can often win the battle simply by outsmarting his opponent. It happens all the time.

In what other sports is a 70% failure rate the yard-stick for success?

JT ...

quote:

In what other sports is a 70% failure rate the yard-stick for success?

...unless you are a pitcher in which case they take the ball out of your hands ... well, they used to but now they give you a multi-million dollar multi-year contract

Just told my husband last night at the dinner table, as I was reading the sports section and updates on our local teams, that I love this time of year as we get ready for baseball season to start ... gives me something to look forward to as it does our entire family.