I was in conversation recently with a player about his struggling performance at the plate. The situation had it that as a sophomore, a freshman was starting at 2B over him. Obviously he was frustrated about this, and to make matters worse, his offensive output was way below what he was used to. Our discussion was regarding what he could do to get his bat going again that would allow him to start over the freshman. I explained to him that while Im sure there were some issues with his swing, it was his mental game that needed attending to first and foremost.
My recommendation to him was to learn and utilize the concept of imagery or visualization. I like to refer to these terms as your mental replay system in your mind. When an athlete fails or has a string of failures, his replay system will play the poor performance over and over again in the mind. This has paralyzing negative effects on performance. The trick is then to learn how to manipulate the images of yourself that you allow to be play on loop in your brain. This can be accomplished in two ways.
First, before each game spend some time daydreaming or thinking about a past performance that brings a good memory. I could be a double in the gap, a strikeout of an opposing hitter, a stolen base in a crucial situation. It doesnt matter as long as it has to do with the area that you are experiencing some frustration in. Replay this positive experience in your mind ten times or so. What you are doing is reprogramming your mind to communicate confidence to your body. The more you do this, the better you will get. It will be strange at first, but will make more sense and will become easier after a week or so.
Another appropriate place to use this skill is during the game is directly after you experience failure. This could be when you walk someone with the bases loaded, strike out looking, or even make an error in the field. Immediately after this failure occurs use an abbreviated replay process from above. Instead of seeing yourself failing in your mind, replay the mistake with a positive ending. The walk becomes a pop out to the infield, your strike out become a base hit up the middle, or your error become a nice backhanded play where you throw the runner out at first. If you dont let your mental video camera run wild and create negative images, they wont take hold of your game. This strategy once learned will save you countless hours of frustration and boost your productivity long term.
About the Author:
Nate Barnett is owner of the The Pitching Academy, a pitching information website designed to improve your on the mound performance as a pitcher. The Pitching Academy contains information, products, training, free articles, and more on baseball pitching, how to throw a baseball, pitching mechanics, and much more.
Get all the information and photos:: http://coringa.info/sports/how-to-bust-out-of-a-slump
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