Pull Your Head Out: Baseball Training for The Mind
“I’m pulling my shoulder out.”
That’s the way the baseball coaching session started.
A conversation that left me laughing.
I’d just asked the player why he felt he wasn’t hitting the way he wanted.
He’d been working with my Confidence Conditioning baseball training techniques and said he was very confident each AB and was getting better results, but that things “hadn’t really fully come around yet.”
Normal coaching here would be: “Keep your shoulder in.”
“Keep your head down.”
“Drive through the ball.”
“Think line drive the other way.” (my favorite choice of these).
But I said: “Why?”
“I dunno, I’m just lifting it out, like I’m trying to generate power with my shoulders.”
“Why are you trying to generate power with your shoulders?”
“I’m trying to hit it hard.”
“Why?”
“I guess I’m feeling pressure to perform.”
“From who?”
“Myself.”
“Like ‘I must succeed?’”
“Yes.”
As we dug deeper he revealed that he must succeed in order to feel he deserved to be on the team, and that he must succeed or all the time and money spent on his baseball would be a waste.
And he has an older sibling that was a successful player — it did lurk in the back of his mind that he needed to live up to that…
And he said it just want’ right to enjoy playing unless you are successful.
So he should be perfect.
Sheesh.
He was putting pressure on himself because he had his self-worth tied to his performance.
Perform perfectly = I’m worthy of continuing on the planet.
Perform less than perfectly = I’m not worthy of continuing on the planet.
Note: He didn’t think these things consciously. But those were the underlying mechanisms to his…..
…. pulling his shoulder.
So we tapped to clear these thoughts and free him to have fun. Then we tapped on the shoulder and his hips to get him using them more.
We’ll see how the results come out, but he sure felt worlds better after the call.
I laughed all the way through this conversation (writing it down like this does it no justice), not because I thought his thinking was funny, but because humans are so funny.
His thinking made perfect sense — from his unconscious perspective.
It just cracks me up that we get stuck on silly thoughts and they run our lives without our knowing it.
“I don’t deserve to have fun unless I’m highly successful.”
That’s ridiculous.
Rest assured you too, like me and this player, have silly thoughts running our lives.
Left unexamined, we will continue to get the results we are currently getting.
You can work your strength and conditioning and technique all you want, but you will not out perform the beliefs you have in your head about yourself.
And finally, I need to hammer the fact that the shoulder pulling was an effect, not a cause.
It was a symptom, not the disease.
Telling him to “Keep your shoulder in” would feed the fire already burning in his mind.
Tom
Dr. Tom Hanson
www.HansonsGym.com
p.s. My Breakthrough! Program takes you through a process to uncover and replace the beliefs now holding you back.
Erase and replace.
Click here now to upgrade your beliefs:
http://www.hansonsgym.com/site.php/subs/subscription_plans
See also: www.BaseballConfidence.com/Products.html
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