It is January–Time for Baseball Sign-ups

I love January. It’s the month before February and February in Southern California, even though it is the rainy season, is when Little League teams are drafted and the first practices of the season are held.   Regardless of calendar declarations to the contrary, that first practice is the real official first  day of Spring.  In the field strawberries are turning red and in the evenings baseball teams practice in  every park.  The rest of the nation may be moribund in winter snow but the grass is green in Ventura, California.

Baseball is a rite of Spring.  It is a rite of passage for every boy and girl. Bubblegum,  sunflower seeds and base hits are what life is all about.  It doesn’t matter whether you are a participant or a proud parent cheering from thirty year old, rusty, rickety stands.  For many those stands supported  your grandparents who long ago  cheered for your mom or dad.

Where should your son or daughter be on March 1, or April 1 if you live in the Northern States?  Baseball practice.   And afterwards?   It’s hot dogs, mustard, and relish and for dessert it’s McDonalds for those soft ice cream cups with nuts, whipped cream, and a spoon.  It is the rite of Spring.  So sign up.  If money is a problem in these recessionary times every little league has scholarship programs.  Just ask.  Baseball is what we live for and remember forever.  It’s spring.  It’s baseball and nothing could be better.

The Mental Side of a Winning Athlete

The Mental Side Of Winning

The most forgotten side of coaching athletics is mental.  Yet the mental side of coaching will yield the most positive results of any coaching you will do.  It will give positive results quicker with less coaching than any other single set of techniques.   Despite its great value, it is forgotten, often disregarded, not to mention lost and hidden behind teaching physical skills.

At its very foundation the mental side of any sport is being and thinking positive.  A word of warning: Beware of this simplistic definition because the negative often camouflages the positive.  Here is an example: In shooting free throws the athlete often approaches the task saying to himself, “I gotta make this shot” and he or she’s very positive in this affirmation.  This is, however, a negative, and is counter productive.  The chances are increased that the shot will be missed.  Instead of relaxing and letting the shot just happen, the muscles will invariably tense up and the difficulty of the exercise will increase.  “I gotta, I have to, If I don’t make this shot I’ll just die . . . “, are all negatives and are to be avoided.

On the positive side, the athlete will approach the foul line, receive the ball from the referee, then begin his or her ritual, by bouncing the ball a proscribed number of times or none at all, eye the basket, indeed, eye a particular part of the basket.  During this ritual, he will be reviewing in his mind exactly how he makes this shot, remembering successful feelings of making the shot, mentally saying “this is how I take this shot.”   He should then release the ball to the basket without allowing another thought to enter the mind.   The statistical probability of making the shot will increase dramatically depending in part on the particular skill level of the athlete.  Note, the mental side is taught.  It doesn’t just happen.  It, like all muscle memory exercises, must be repeated as often as possible.

The same mental preparedness is true of a soccer player about to kick a penalty shot or a batsman about to address a sixty-mile-an-hour curve ball.  The simple mental preparation is accomplished as the athlete reviews how he performs the task successfully.  This mental preparation in conjunction with physical repetition, i.e., doing a task perfectly, yields fantastic results.

The second and equally important portion of mental preparedness comes directly from the coach himself.  Praise profusely and loudly and do it sincerely.   Your athletes need to know you approve of them.  Every athlete has something to praise, even if it is merely showing up.  Find it, praise it loudly, and reap the results.  Athletes tend to perform up to or down to the coach’s announced expectations.