Part 2: Winning at Youth Baseball and Softball
I got a great response to yesterday’s email (see www.BaseballConfidence.com/blog)
It’s exciting for me to see such commitment to providing youth baseball and youth softball players with the best possible experience.
I accidentally failed to complete a sentence yesterday (and got a lot of questions about it, so today I’ll fill it in…
I’ll start with quick review…
——-
[I miss "24" -- such a great show. So in your best Jack Bauer voice say to yourself...]
Previously on www.BaseballConfidence.com…
——-
“Coaches and parents, your top job is to create an emotional context that maximizes the likelihood of each child making empowering interpretations of their experiences.
You might want to read that again while I think of how to say it simpler…
If the team and league emotional context (prevailing mood, attitude, energy, focus,) is fear (kids get yelled at when they screw up), that will lead a player to very different interpretations about themselves [and what happens to them] than if the prevailing emotional context is love (kids are supported unconditionally).
(Now unconditional support doesn’t mean you let them do whatever they want, it means…
——————-
[new stuff now]
…you support them unconditionally.
Look at that one more closely: *you support them
unconditionally.*
That means the focus is on them and their development, not you and your ego.
Here’s a good one — it neatly solved a question for me when I heard Tim Gallwey say it.
Why are some “hard-a**” coaches loved, while others are hated?
When you were in school, looking back, weren’t your best teachers amongst your hardest?
Didn’t they challenge you a lot? Push you hard?
You had some cool ones that you liked at the time, but they didn’t really challenge you, so looking back you see that wasn’t the best route for them to take.
The tough but fair ones are the ones you’d go back to visit and thank.
But weren’t there tough ones you didn’t like then and still don’t respect now?
What is the difference between a “tough” one you love and a “tough” one you despise?
The answer (the thing I got from Gallwey): you love the ones that challenge you because you get that they really care about YOU.
That they are challenging you out of love for you.
The ones you despise (still) had something else going on.
They may push you because Bobby Knight yells and screams, as do many coaches they see on TV.
So that’s their role models for how to coach.
As a youth sport coach or parent they are covering their ego’s butt — “if they don’t win it won’t be because I didn’t work them hard.”
Or they get a buzz out of the control they have to make kids do stuff — like run or repeat a drill.
Or it feels good to yell.
Or the best way they have to feel good about themselves is to put someone else down.
It can be any number of things, all ego and fear based.
Force is the easiest way to go. It is the least complicated.
Power is something else (as I define it).
A great coach/parent is powerful, but not forceful. (More on that later, that’s one of my favorite distinctions.)
The key is supporting them unconditionally.
That doesn’t mean you never yell. It means when you do yell you are coming from care and contribution to them rather than your own self-interests.
It can be very hard to distinguish those two. The place to start is with the awareness of this distinction.
So anyway, that’s a long end to the sentence I forgot to finish yesterday.
My offer of $20 off is still good (but only through tomorrow — or if we sell out) my best selling program “Winning the Mental Game of Youth Baseball: How to Coach, Parent, and Play with COnfidence, Focus, Consistency and Emotional Control.”
You get a 1:20 minute DVD of me teaching fundamentals of the mental game to a 12 year old team, and step-by-step instructions on how to teach your team or child the same skills.
It’s really the same stuff I teach older players, just formatted for youth players.
(Simple wins at all levels.)
Parents, if you want to know that you are following an excellent system for “creating an emotional context that maximizes the likelihood of each child making empowering interpretations of their experiences,” this is the way to go.
Click here now to get it and claim your $20 (enter the coupon code “youth” as you check out).
http://www.baseballconfidence.com/youth.html
ENTER COUPON CODE: youth
If you aren’t happy with it, I’ll refund your money plus your return postage.
You’ll be surprised how the complexities of managing the minds and emotions of young players can be reduced to two simple ideas.
(and I’ll coach you step-by-step on how to implement those two ideas.)
You’ll have a simple idea for your whole team to focus on.
And a simple idea for each player to focus on each pitch.
Thank you,
Tom
Dr. Tom Hanson
p.s. The clock is ticking on the offer — the coupon “youth” will expire at midnight Sunday — unless we sell out before then.
http://www.baseballconfidence.com/youth.html
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!