Author Archive
May 25, 2011 | 
Author An athlete’s state of mind when in competition greatly affects how he or she performs in sport. Those who enter competition fearing defeat and negative outcomes welcome just that – defeat.
To the aggressor go the spoils. In all sports, the dynamic of the game is largely and decisively influenced by the confidence and aggressiveness of competitors. Those who believe, TRULY believe, that they cannot be beaten, steer their bodies with such a swagger. They instill fear and timid action into their opponents while breeding courage and strength.
Ask any sports psychologist about the power of positive thought, and he or she will tell you that it is utterly essential. Creating images of victory in the mind allows an athlete to see success and know success is not just possible, but probable. Yet, these thoughts must be truly believed for them to take root and grow into on-field confidence.
“Psyching” oneself up for competition is a common practice of athletes, especially in the modern days of the iPod. Heavy Metal and the aggressive beats of many genres of music are absorbed prior to games in an attempt to boil the blood before battle. Does this practice work? Is this as far as is necessary for one to go to ensure he is full of mettle by time gameday arrives?
I believe that creating permanent changes in on-field behavior start with positive thought and visualization in an athlete’s downtime. These thoughts must be realistic, take into account the athlete’s specific skillset, and be frequent and intense enough to elicit a legitimate physiological response.
If you don’t feel flustered, angry, hormonal and aggressive after visualizing your performance, then you’re not sufficiently setting yourself into the experience, and it won’t overtake you when you enter competition. You’ve got to use some of the behaviors that your body already instinctively uses when in peril. Let’s explore some of these things that you can do, while sitting around, to legitimately increase your physical performance via a confident, aggressive mind.
You Don’t Want to Be: Dr. Jekyll
You DO Want to Be: Mr. Hyde
I made the analogy of colored dye to a young pitcher the other day when discussing his practice habits. If his old habits represented red dye, and his new mechanical adjustment represented blue dye, and he had a cup of red and a drop of blue to add to a bucket of water, what color would the bucket turn?
He answered red, to which I told him that he had to dilute the old by practicing the new mechanics as much as he could, until, over time, his mechanics changed. The more you practice, the more the new overtakes the old.
That being said, I got some photographical confirmation that I had improved my mechanics via the energy angle, but not quite to the degree that I had hoped. While the change is clearly visible, I more or less diluted my old mechanics with new, averaging the two together and finding myself in the middle. Yet, I’m ok with this, and it represented the best I could do given 4 months of practice and thousands of throws doing it. Check out the photos and see for yourself where I ended up.
A snapshot of the old…
Chances are, you’re wasting your time with bench press and it’s variations. In my gym, we use push up variations for upwards of 90% of our “pushing” exercises.Why? Because I’m not going to bother using external weight with a trainee who hasn’t yet mastered his own bodyweight. Thing is, push ups are so versatile and effective at building upper body strength that I find little reason to ever go away from them – and I nary find anybody who has mastered all that the push up has to offer.
I’m going to break this article into two sections – the “progression” section and the “cool versions of the push up” section. Read on!
Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs; Cadbury Creme Eggs; Peeps. What do all of these have in common? Easter Candy.
Why we revel in consuming chocolate effigies of garden-dwelling rodents and the candy-coated unhatched offspring of Cinderella’s little friends (why else would eggs be blue?), I will never know. But, I do know this:
They are delicious.
“Honey, the eggs were right in the basket last night where I put them…”
The deadlift is awesome. If you’re not using it in your strength training routine, well, then shame on you.
Does your trainer at home know the little exercise tweaks that can make an exercise safe or unsafe for a baseball player?
We do wayyyyy too many blackburns in my gym. But you know what? I think they have as much bang for the buck as any set of exercises out there. For an overhead athlete like baseball, softball, volleyball and tennis players, it’s really hard to beat them.
Here is a real-life example of a baseball player who has the signs of S.I.C.K scapula, which can leave the shoulder and elbow in ruins if not treated.
Morgan before: (Look at right shoulder – DRASTICALLY lower than his left)
And here is Morgan again, after I showed him this picture and told him that he needed to d0 the full Blackburn circuit 2x per day, every single day. He’s a hard worker, so he did…
Pretty big difference. He isn’t perfectly symmetrical yet, but has gotten pretty close with just an additional 12 minutes of rehab/prehab per day. Blackburns are the one thing I wouldn’t live without as a baseball player. They perform miracles…
I’ve recently started a group of female volleyball players from Ilini Elite, and I’ve been talking with parents about what special needs they have to meet the demands of their sport. Let’s discuss:
The Female Athlete In General…
Needs more attention paid to the hips and thighs. Why? ACL tear prevention.
Women have wider hips than their male counterparts, which makes the angle from the hips to the knees, the Q-Angle, sharper than that of men. This means that as legs come down from jumps, sprints, pivots, etc., the knees have a higher likelihood of caving inward, which often results in knee-ligament damage. Read the rest of this entry »
The season has been starting for high school baseball, and college ball is now well underway. With the youth and pro seasons looming, every ballplayer will soon be feeling the early-season jitters, whether on the mound or at the plate. I pitched in front of some big crowds (for me) last year, and coping with it was a completely new experience. The more you find yourself in those situations, the better you’re able to deal with it, but it all comes down to your mindset, focus, and ability to calm yourself when things get out of control… Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t know why, exactly, but I felt great today. I had a really crappy night with a person very close to me but with a beautiful, warm day in my new hometown, things just melted back to being very, very good.
Having a long, cold winter really does change you, and it’s hard to step back and appreciate how the sun and some warmth can alter your perspective, or at least shine light (pardon the pun) on the good things you do have.
The bottom line is that I’ve been making a comfortable living in a new town filled with awesome people. I’ve met new people who have been receptive to me seemingly each week, and it turns out that they give me as much as I try to give to them via my training. Read the rest of this entry »
Had a great time eating Italian Beef and talking baseball with Tom & Jack of Corn Belt Baseball. Check out the conversation here.
Using curse words is, to the baseball player, about as traditional as The Star-Spangled Banner, hot dogs and sunflower seeds. What would our beloved pastime be if our heroes weren’t yelling expletives, audible even to the upper deck, after beating a very hittable pitch straight into the ground? Who would we be as ballplayers if we didn’t randomly insert F-Bombs into even the most pedestrian of sentences?
Who the f**k knows? (oops – sorry) Read the rest of this entry »