Baseball Coaching: How to Motivate Today’s Player
Straight from the mail bag today:
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Coach Jason writes:
IN THESE DAYS OF ‘EVERYONE GETS A TROPHY’ AND IF YOU DIE IN THE VIDEO GAME YOU GET UNLIMITED LIVES … HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE A KID THAT HAS ABOVE AVERAGE TALENT TO EXCEL AND NOT JUST PLAY AT THE LEVEL THAT IS HIS COMFORT ZONE?
YOU KNOW, HOW DO YOU GET
100%-ALL-OUT-WIN-OR-GO-HOME-WITH-MY-BALL EFFORT?
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TH: First of all, you might not be able to. For a coach or parent, a player’s motivation lies in the land of “I care about it but I can’t control it.”
Understanding what you can and can’t control is a foundational element of the mental game.
Hitters need to realize (“realize” is a whole different ball game from “knowing”) they can’t control getting a hit; pitchers need to realize they can’t control getting a batter out.
Likewise for the coach and parent re: player motivation
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But of course that doesn’t mean you don’t do anything about it. I could go on for book length about this question.
But today I’ll touch on one often overlooked piece: context.
By context I mean the surrounding elements in a player’s physical world which give rise to his all-importnat inner context (beliefs).
Let’s just say by context I mean his environment.
So my answer to Coach Jason’s question is to improve the player’s context.
(The normal approach is to focus on HIM. I’m saying focus on his environment.)
Put him in an environment that inspires him; gives him a taste of a good life that could come from playing good baseball.
For example…
Why is Tampa a baseball hot-bed producing more players than many other similar sized metro areas? There are “cues” in the Tampa environment that suggest a good life if you play good baseball.
And since this Tampa player and that Tampa player and that other Tampa player made it big and you are from Tampa YOU can make it big too, if you work.
A young Tampa player at my son’s Citrus Park field, for example, sees trophies of State Champions that have come before, including last summer’s Little League WS team.
The success is palpable in the environment.
I also felt it the first time I walked onto the Yankee’s minor league complex. The environment elevated performance.
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So my answer is to put this player in situations where success is expected. Hard work is the norm.
And where he can taste success. Taste passion. Taste the fun that comes from really committing and playing full out.
And the “taste” is hugely important.
A great talent can’t just be told about the great fun possible if he works hard, he needs to experience it.
So look for ways to get him that taste. One example is a personal brush with a role model. Another is my Baseball Success Secrets Coaching Program.
www.BaseballSuccessSecrets.com
Each week he’ll get an exercise to do that will give him the FEELING of great success. Feel success enough and you start to want more.
It’s like a drug. So maybe think of yourself as a “success pusher” — giving a player samples of the success feeling until he gets hooked.
Of course, just like a hitter, you can do everything right and still strike out. (but it’s not very smart to focus much on that…)
Dr. Tom
Tom Hanson, Ph.D.
p.s. Re-formatting my dissertation has taken a lot longer than I anticipated and I apologize to BSSCP members, but I’ll be done in the next few days.
Part of the delay is I’m re-experiencing it for really the first time since I set it aside in 1992.
Reading the words of Oliva, Musial, Aaron, Carew and Yaz has really been inspiring to me. The info in these 335 pages is staggering.
And my colleagues are wondering what I’m thinking giving it as a bonus for a $4.95 investment.
So once I get it done and do the “FAST START” bonus teleseminar Thursday night I will re-evaluate whether I will let it out for gratis.
So if you haven’t yet got the CD “The 7 Success Secrets of Baseball’s All-time Best” and the 2 weeks in my coaching program (with exercises that let you taste success) and my “Confidence Conditioning for Baseball” program and my doctoral dissertation (“The Mental Aspects of Hitting) for just the shipping cost, please do so now before I re-evaluate my bonus offer and start selling my
dissertation:
www.BaseballSuccessSecrets.com
p.p.s And please tweet this.
p.p.s. Last second thought: Coach or parent, YOU are a major part of his context. So you can upgrade his context by upgrading yourself. THAT is what my program does for you.
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