Total concentration is the ability to immerse yourself in a task without becoming distracted or pulled off task. Great players talk about concentration as being “in a bubble,” or “in a cocoon” during which nothing can penetrate their focus. Concentration involves several elements.

These include (1) knowing what cues to focus on; (2) staying focused on those relevant cues; (3) keeping a narrow and external focus; (4) the ability to shift attention when needed; (5) the ability to refocus when distracted; and (6) controlling your thought process. In this article, I discuss specific methods for sticking to the process and improving your focus.

(1) Stay Present Focused. You must keep your mind in the present moment on what’s important to play your best. This is easier said than done. It is easy to think about the last strike out you had or think ahead about the results of striking out. Know the task-specific cues you should focus on and be aware when you are not on task. Stop and refocus your mind on the task or on what you should think about to execute well.

(2) Think One At-Bat at a Time. Think about only the one pitch at a time to help you stay focused on execution. Separate each pitch from the rest and don’t think about the consequences of getting a hit. You don’t want to be thinking about the last inning when you are at the plate in the middle of the game.

(3) Don’t Think Results. If you think about what you don’t want to do, you’ll tighten up and make a controlled swing. When you think about results, you’ll create tension and indecision. Focusing on execution will help you get good results. In an earlier article, I discussed how your at-bat routine should help you focus on specific cues to follow as you prepare for each at-bat. If you don’t have a routine, the mind is free to wander aimlessly as you prepare for each pitch.

(4) Cue Yourself to Concentrate. Sometimes it’s hard to refocus when the last at-bat was 30 minutes ago. Lock in your concentration once it is your turn to at the plate. To help you click in, try using a physical trigger to focus your mind, such as tightening the Velcro on your glove before start. You want to turn your attention to preparation and execution for the first pitch, and if anything else enters your mind, let it pass through your mind.

(5) Relax Your Focus While You Wait. Not too many players can focus continuously for two to three hours. When you are up to bat it’s important to be ready, but you don’t want to grind and overanalyze the entire game. After each inning, relax your focus and save your concentration for the next time at-bat. This will help you be “fresher” for the end of the game.

(6) Rehearse While You Wait. Rehearse your at-bat before you’re up to play if you have trouble focusing after a long delay. For example, while on deck, imagine that you are at the plate taking pitches. Time your swing with the pitcher and “see” yourself make solid contact. When it’s your turn, you will be prepared to click in the focus because your have already rehearsed your at-bat routine.

Soon with a lot of practice, your swing becomes instinctive, natural, and feels effortless to do (you reach a state of over-learning). An effortless reactive swing is essential for superior performance for all skill levels. Most players don’t allow their swing to be reflexive. They focus too much on technique or controlling the path of the bat instead of reacting to the ball.

It gets even worse for many players in big games. Their tendency is to tighten up and not trust the swing in pressure situations. When you focus too much on how to make a good swing, you guide the bat and consciously try to force a hit. Over control causes poor timing and throws off your natural rhythm. The purpose of practice is to build motor memory–that you can rely on in games. When you play, let your instincts take over.

Some baseball players can trust their hitting better than others. When you trust in your swing, you forget about the mechanics of the swing. Let your creative mind take over during competition. Once at the plate, you should react to the pitch. If you think too much about how to make a good swing, the ball will pass you before you had a chance to even make a cut at the ball. Less thinking is better. React to the ball and let your body do what it knows how to do. I call this reacting to what you see and skipping the mental gymnastics.

“Hope & Pray” Hitting
The moment the pitcher releases the ball, you just pray you can make contact with the ball. If you’re a hope hitter, you stand at the plate and strike out in your mind even before the ball crosses the plate for the first pitch. Even worse than that, you hope that you won’t have to hit again in the same inning! If you hope and pray to get a hit, you have trouble trusting your swing because you are so unsure of the outcome.

“Do or Die” Hitting
A do or die hitter focuses too much about not getting a hit and make it a dire need. If this is how you think, you worry too much about results. You always know what your batting percentage is during a game: 0-1, 1-1, 02, etc. You say to yourself “I need to get a hit.” As you focus on trying to avoid getting thrown out or popping out, this causes you to forget about execution and lose sight of what it takes to actually get a hit.

“Wishy-Washy” Hitting
If you engage in wishy-washy hitting, you have trouble making decisions at the plate. You change your mind often about your plan when at the plate. You may decide on a strategy, but then at the last minute change your mind as you settle into the batter’s box. You have two plans in your mind, which causes doubt. Indecision and doubt kill a smooth swing, which are a hitter’s worst enemy.

“Panicked” Hitting
If you engage in panicked hitting, you are too scared to start your swing. You panic because hitting is the weakest part of your game and you know it. You need to get a hit in order to play well. Visions of poor hitting days and strikeouts have you bewildered. Even if you gather yourself enough to take a cut at it, your muscles are too tense to make a smooth swing.

“Pessimistic” Hitting
If you are a pessimistic hitter, you are streaky and rely on momentum. If you get a hit in your first at bat, you’re OK and you can play well that day. You might “run the table” if you get hot early. But if you strike out or pop out early, your game is shot. You become pessimistic and say to yourself: “I’m going to play poorly today.” You generalize based on the first at bat that you just can’t play well today and become more pessimistic.

“Synthetic” Hitting
If you are a synthetic hitter, you think too much about mechanics while you play. Your left brain, the analytical side of your mind, has you under its spell. Your hitting does not feel natural or smooth because you think too much about HOW TO swing the bat. You try to make adjustments during your swing but this only makes matters. You are so consumed with making perfect swings that you loose feel and forget about making contact with the ball.

Baseball confidence

When you have fragile baseball confidence, you tend to doubt your ability when things don’t go as planned. You might question your ability to pitch a fast ball in the strike zone. Or, you might wonder if you can beat the opposing team.

Fragile self-confidence isn’t real self-confidence. Real self-confidence is stable and doesn’t change from moment to moment depending on the game situation. When you have real baseball confidence, you aren’t questioning your ability after making mistakes or losing a game. You believe in your ability to execute the task despite previous results.

Jason Marquis, Colorado Rockies pitcher, commented on fragile self-confidence.

“When you start struggling, you doubt yourself a little bit. That’s not a good thing. You’re out on the mound not trusting your stuff, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, instead of going out there and grabbing the bull by the horns and going after them,” Jason Marquis said.

Marquis suggests that you have to take control of your confidence. This means that you are responsible for your confidence. One way to take control of your confidence is to develop your confidence from practice instead of your immediate performance.

Many baseball players gain confidence from their immediate performance such as getting a hit or making a play. Your immediate performance should not be the only way you develop confidence. You won’t always play perfectly or win every game. If you base your confidence only on your immediate performance, you’ll be more likely to lose confidence after a poor performance. To help you develop a stable level of confidence, you’ll want to develop your confidence from years of practice and play.

Your baseball psychology tip is to base confidence on long-term success, not immediate results in a game. For example, you should base confidence on your practice and preparation instead and years of experience in baseball.

You can lose their composure for several reasons. You might lose your composure after making stupid errors, not meeting your expectations or feeling angry or frustrated with your performance. Milton Bradley of the Chicago Cubs shows his anger by throwing temper tantrums on the field.

Recently, Bradley threw his helmet and a water cooler in the dugout after a fly out in the sixth inning against the White Sox. Bradley struck out two innings prior to the incident. Manager Lou Pinella was tired of Bradley’s behavior and removed him from the game.

A loss of composure can also result in more mistakes. Rick Porcello, Detroit Tigers pitcher, lost his composure after the Minnesota Twins got a few hits recently. The Twins hit two runs, a single and home run, rattling the rookie pitcher. Porcello then gave up a combination of hits and walks to send eight batters to first base.

These are just a few examples of what can happen when players lose composure. Even professional baseball players get frustrated and angry sometimes. Frustration can happen at any time during the game. When players are angry, they can forget about the rules of the game.

No one can feel frustrated but yourself. Composed baseball players don’t let strike outs or other mistakes ruin their mindset for the rest of the game. Composed baseball players approach can let go of their mistakes because they know that frustration can harm their performance.

First, you must be able to identify what situations cause you to feel frustrated. Do you feel frustrated after you’re down in the count? Do you get upset when your teammate makes a scoring error? You’ll want to know which situations cause you to become frustrated so that you can respond more effectively.

Then, you’ll want to use positive self-talk to help you manage your emotions. For example, after a strike, you might take an extra check swing and tell yourself to focus on the ball.

Your baseball psychology tip is to respond more effectively to your mistakes. Mistakes are part of sports. You’ll want to keep your cool by using positive self-talk or taking an extra few seconds to regroup.

Your negative inner chatter includes any thoughts that do not help you perform in the moment. You might be thinking about the score of the game as you get up to bat. You might be worried about what your hitting coach thinks about your last swing. No matter what you are thinking, these internal thoughts can get in the way of your performance.

Many baseball players focus too much on the outcome of the game. They might be thinking about how many outs their team has. A hitter might be thinking about his game stats at the plate during his at-bat. The outcome of the game may be important, but it doesn’t help you perform your best at the current moment.

Most athletes have trained themselves to focus when needed, but sometimes their own inner chatter or internal, self-induced distractions prevent them from performing up to their potential.

The best ball players in the world, such as Ken Griffey Jr., Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez realize the importance of staying in the present. When you stay in the present, you are thinking about what you have to do to execute a certain task. If you’re a hitter, you might focus on making solid contact with the ball. If you’re a pitcher, you might focus on your strategy for the upcoming hitter. If you can stay focused on the current play or pitch, the results of the game will come.

You’ll also want to focus one game at a time instead of thinking about your score in the series, like Derek Jeter.

“Our focus is one game at a time,” Derek Jeter said. “That’s been our focus since early in the first half. Seriously, I don’t sit around and think about the Wild Card, the division, anything like that. It’s like I said two months ago — if we go out and win our games, at the end of the year, we’ll be where we want to be.”

The bottom line is to control your inner chatter on the field. When you notice your attention shifting to what’s not important, such as doubts or outcome of the game, tell yourself to refocus on the current pitch. Think about what you need to do to execute the task successfully, such as picking a target or committing to your strategy.

Here is my conclusion after working with 1000’s of athletes: Strict or high expectations can undermine and suck the life out of confidence!

Expectations can be tricky. You might think that setting high expectations is good for your performance. But, in reality, expectations can put unnecessary pressure on yourself. You set your expectations so high, they are almost impossible to reach. If you’re not performing up to your expectations, you become frustrated and lose confidence in your game.

I’ve worked with baseball players who expect to throw a no hitter. Only a handful of professional athletes have thrown a no-hitter in their career. In 2008, only two professional baseball players have thrown a no-hitter, Carlos Zambrano and Jon Lester. Think about how many games these teams play a year and only two players, in two different games have thrown a no-hitter. Therefore, no matter how good you are, pitching a no-hitter is not likely.

Doubts can also hurt your confidence. Doubt is the opposite of baseball confidence. When you doubt yourself, you question your ability. You might wonder if you can beat the opposing team. You might wonder if you can hit a ball to left field. Most baseball players doubt themselves after making a mistake or performing poorly.

You’ll want to turn those doubts into statements of confidence. To do that, you want to take a positive outlook on the situation. If you doubt your ability to get a hit, you might tell yourself that you’ve hit millions of pitches before and today is no different.

Besides, doubts are just about your perception of the situation. According to Carlos Pena, of the Tampa Bay Rays, you don’t think about the doubts and just play baseball.

“We’re not intimidated at all (of the Boston Red Sox),” Carlos Pena said. “Remember this: intimidation, worry, fear, doubt is all a product of perception. It depends on how you perceive things. Our point of view is, we’ve got a ball game to play, OK? That’s it. Let’s play baseball, period.”

Your baseball mental game tip for today is to let go of expectations and doubts, which undermine your baseball confidence. Take positive stance about the areas of your game and your ability to perform well. Think about what you need to do in the moment, instead of setting high expectations, such as making solid contact with the ball.

He had a rational side that knew you can’t get a hit every time and he didn’t let a ground out or pop out effect his hitting confidence or other parts of his game. Good hitting helped him relax, which improved the rest of the game. He hit great and didn’t worry about mistakes because he knew that mistakes were only temporary. In the end, Soft Hands won games.

I also knew a hitter called Death Grip. Death Grip was not a great hitter like Soft Hands. When Death Grip strikes out early in the game, he talked himself into hitting poorly all day. His grip got even tighter. He became more anxious and hit worse. He lost his confidence, touch, and had negative momentum on his side. Death Grip, unlike Soft Hands, had an irrational side to him. When he popped out early he would say to himself: “Here we go again, hitting poorly again”.

He would reinforce this thinking by maintaining irrational thoughts like: “It’s so awful that I can’t hit well all the time, I’ll never be a great hitter.” Death Grip’s frustration with hitting made him make poor decisions, get tense the whole day, and not enjoy baseball. His frustration filtered into the rest of his game and made him make errors on defense, which further eroded confidence. He was angry at baseball. In the end Death Grip’s hitting caused him to burnout, be depressed, and not enjoy the game he loved to play.

The ironic part of the story is that Soft Hands and Death Grip were the same person living in conflict together, and battling for supremacy. The moral of the story is that humans have two sides to their personality. To be successful and be happy in life, the rational side must prevail.