Going To Bat With Bases Loaded: Best Sport Psychology Practices
Baseball has few moments more intense than going to bat with bases loaded.
This high-stakes moment allows a player to show off the strength - or lack - of their mental game.
This article encapsulates one of my podcast episode's most valuable information and best practices. To listen to the full conversation with Austin Byler, former MLB player and now mindset/leadership coach, click the link below!
The Sport Psychology Of: Going To Bat With Bases Loaded | Austin Byler
First, let’s go over the numerous mental obstacles a batter may face as they step up to the plate. Increasing awareness around these obstacles is important, as it empowers athletes and coaches to employ mental skills to subsequently knock those obstacles down.
Obstacle 1: Judgment
Focusing on judgment from others can boost your confidence when things are going well, imagining others judging you in a positive light. But when things are going poorly - or might go poorly - it can derail your mental game.
Judgment from the crowd, teammates, coaches, parents, and friends all might pop into your head as you step up to the plate. Wishful thinking, like imagining the praise you’ll get from everyone could turn into anxiety at the thought of a wasted opportunity.
Dread over the judgment you’ll receive from others by striking out is enough to skyrocket your stress response. When the stress response is in overdrive, you won’t be focused as effectively and your muscle tension will be less optimal, damaging muscle coordination and your performance. More on this later!
Obstacle 2: Pressure
Pressure comes from many sources.
For one, coach is trusting you to go out there and make a big play. You want to prove them right in sending you out there.
At the same time, there’s pressure to make a big play given the opportunity and increase your team’s chances of winning. Pressure, similarly to judgment, heightens your stress response, leading to those performance damaging symptoms again.
Defaulting to your physical training and trusting in your abilities is more difficult with the weight of the world on your shoulders.
Obstacle 3: Overthinking
When the stress response kicks into overdrive, your thoughts become less optimal.
Not only in the quality of them, but also quantity. In other words, not only are you having more thoughts, but they’re likely to damage your mental game by inflating self-doubt.
Thoughts might be all over the place, jumping back and forth between judgment from the crowd, strategizing against this pitcher, worried about what coach will say if you strike out, the strikeouts you’ve had this game, and so on!
Overthinking is a common symptom of high pressure, stressful situations.
These obstacles have a common thread, as you can see. They trigger the same bodily response in the brain that increases the stress you feel.
Knowing this information, it empowers us to find an effective solution. In this case, effective solutions manage your stress response and improve the quality of your thoughts.
Solution 1: Breathe
While some mental skills are an indirect path to managing stress, breathing is a tool that has a direct impact on your body’s stress levels.
By focusing on a longer exhale than your inhale and combining it with belly breathing, you’re neutralizing the stress response. You’re not necessarily getting rid of all stress, but it’s coming down to a level where you can feel more confident and swing your bat more smoothly. Read about my quick tips for breathing here.
Solution 2: Awareness
Without being aware of your performance damaging thoughts, you won’t do anything about them.
Just as awareness of mental obstacles empowers athletes, awareness is an essential step in optimizing your mental game.
In your pre-bat routine, while you’re on deck or as you walk to the plate, check-in with your thoughts. Catch them before they snowball. If you check-in, and you don’t like what you find (irrelevant thoughts, overthinking, feeling excessive stress), you’re giving yourself a chance to improve them. You can choose to focus on your breath instead of those thoughts, or you can replace those thoughts with helpful ones, outlined below.
Solution 3: Optimize Self-talk
There are many ways to optimize your self-talk. One method that Austin shares hinges on the acronym A.I.R.
A: acknowledge. Don’t try and ignore performance damaging thoughts, they’ll only grow as a result.
I: intercept. Once you’ve acknowledged them, take a stance by intercepting those thoughts you don’t want. Imagine a football team throwing a deep ball into your end zone, representing thoughts snowballing into non-optimal ones, just before you intercept the pass and put your negative mindset to bed.
R: replace. This is the action step where you deliberately change and improve your mental game. The two replacement strategies below are some of the most common ones sport psychology coaches offer.
Present-minded thinking: lock yourself in the present where there is little to no emotion and judgment, just reacting. To do this, focus intently on a sense, like the feel of your bat and cleats on the dirt. As you focus on a sense, the brain doesn’t have the ability to focus on non-optimal thoughts. You might find yourself jumping back and forth between a sense and ineffective thoughts, but this is a skill that will become easier with time.
Mantra: sometimes it’s easier for athletes to anchor their attention to a specific word or phrase, otherwise known as a mantra. Mantras can capture many different elements of optimal focus with very few words, making this an efficient tool. Some different examples are below
“I have no future or past, just the moment, and I’m going to make it last”
“Eyes ahead, focus on the ball, engage the core”
“I’m grateful to have this opportunity”
Ultimately, when you go up to bat with bases loaded, your brain may start to panic as you understand the high stakes and exciting opportunity. Having the awareness to catch your brain working against you through overthinking and self-doubt, you can then optimize your thoughts to allow your physical training to take over.
A few tools were mentioned in this article, and even more in the podcast. But, in the end, it’s up to you to try out different mental skills to determine which one(s) are most effective in enhancing your mental game.
If you’re interested in having your own sport psychology coach for individualized training, click the button below to schedule a free call with me to discuss your obstacles to success, learn about how I can help you, and determine if we’d be a good fit to move forward.
