February 5, 2012

Use Warm-ups to Focus Your Mind

immersive

All good athletes use a warm-up routine one hour before they play. Besides helping you get loose and limber, a warm-up routine has several psychological advantages. The first is that it helps you get focused to play. A warm-up routine helps click in your concentration and put on your game face. It … [Read more...]

Play Aggressively When in the Lead

joey-votto

Being in the lead can present some mental game challenges. Some players, and even teams, try to protect their lead so they don't make mistakes. This can cause you to over control your performance, try too hard, think about the results and play tentatively. Other players become complacent with the … [Read more...]

The Mental Battle: Get Out of Your Own Way

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Your mindset can be an asset or a determent to your performance. If you doubt yourself, lose composure after mistakes or over analyze your performance, your mindset can hurt your performance. You can be your own worst enemy. In these situations, it's hard to bounce back with confidence and composure … [Read more...]

Joe Saunders Stays Positive After Loss

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You can react to losses positively or negatively. You can beat yourself up, become frustrated with your performance and lose confidence, taking a negative approach to your game. You can also take a more positive look at your performance learning from your losses. The Los Angeles Angels fell 0-6 … [Read more...]

Lester Draws Confidence From the Save

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Some baseball players thrive in crunch time, such as when the bases are loaded. They want to be up to pitch or bat in this situation. These players demonstrate their confidence and trust to perform their best in critical moments. Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester is one of those players who thrives in … [Read more...]

Mental Toughness Helps Tigers’ Hang Onto Lead

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Does your seem to relax when they have a big lead? For many teams, maintaining the lead and finishing off the game is hard to do. Finishing a game strongly is primarily mental, not physical. Physical skills can only carry your team so far. A team also needs a strong mental game to allow them to … [Read more...]

Focusing on the Process Key to Winning

“What was I thinking?” you mutter in frustration after you struck out at bat. You lost your focus temporarily and it cost you the at-bat. Most players at times, lose focus, blank-out, get distracted, or are too stressed to concentrate. Even the greatest players in the world have trouble … [Read more...]

Mental Keys to Staying in the Moment

The ability to concentrate is critical to successful performance in all sports, especially in baseball. Each game requires you to turn your concentration on and off several times. When it is time to go to the plate, you have to turn on the concentration. When you’re in the dugout, you can relax … [Read more...]

Refocus When You Get Too Far Ahead

Do distractions cause you to become sidetracked during baseball or softball games? Are you anxious about what the outcome of the game might be? Do you tense up and put more pressure yourself to win? If you said yes, then you focus too much on results and not enough on the process. You … [Read more...]

How to Keep Practice Exciting

Mental Game of Baseball Practice

Keeping practice interesting is a big challenge for professional players that spend as much as eight hours a day practicing and playing ball. It’s also a challenge for amateur players who practice more than two hours at a time. When you are bored with practice, you don’t feel challenged enough. … [Read more...]