How to Bust out of a Slump

Recently I had a conversation with an athlete about his performance. He was dealing with a scenario where as a sophomore; a freshman was starting at 2B over him. Obviously this in itself was frustrating, but to make it worse, his offensive game was slipping rapidly without the consistent play every day. He asked me what he could change in his swing that would earn him playing time over the freshman. The problem, I explained, was more than just the physical ability of this swing. The problem has infiltrated his mind. This is where I told him we would start.

The main problem for this athlete was his thought process. Because of this we discussed the concept of imagery or visualization. I refer to these concepts as simply a mental video camera in your brain. During times of high emotion (excitement or frustration) your mental video camera records the scenario and replays it in your minds over and over again. This system is destructive when athletes experience extended failures as all of the mental pictures replayed in ones mind are negative in nature. These repeated negative thoughts produce a lack of confidence that will paralyze confidence in many players. The key to solving this problem is to learn how to control and change the images in the mind. This can be accomplished a couple different ways.

The first strategy is before each game spend some time daydreaming or thinking about a previous performance that bring back some good memories. It really doesnt matter what the memory is as long as it is a positive experience in the particular area you are struggling with. Replay this scenario a good ten times or so. What you are doing here is essentially reprogramming your brain to release the negative frustrations associated with your failing at a certain task. Instead, your mind will begin to associate positive memories with specific movement with your body. Over time this will allow you to let poor performances go more easily.

Secondly, use this skill during the game when you experience a failure. Maybe you walk a guy with the bases loaded, or pop out to the pitcher, or strikeout for the 3rd time in a game. Immediately following a negative experience, replay the above positive scenario in your mind. Instead of seeing yourself walk that guy with the bases juiced, you will now begin to see yourself strike out the hitter. Enough of this type of mental practice and you will reduce the amount of slumps youll slip into during the season. This takes some time and some concentration but the advantage is that once you can learn this skill, your mind will begin to do this automatically and therefore prevent itself from dwelling on the failures you experience each game.

Tagged with: Baseball

Filed under: Baseball

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