There is no room in baseball for people who struggle to deal with defeat or failure. Failure is baseball: YOU WILL FAIL MORE THAN YOU SUCCEED. Because great hitting, as a general analysis, can be viewed as ‘someone who fails the least’, important psychological issues become present and can affect a hitter’s performance. Fear is a fungus that spreads through one’s body, making it almost impossible to perform at optimal level.
Why is fear so bad for a hitter in baseball?
Fear leads to negative self-talk and over-thinking, two things that a hitter cannot afford to be doing. Hitting a ball that is coming at 90 m/hr from just over 60 feet needs to be a reflex action without a lot of thought and fear crowds a hitter’s mind. If we fear failure we are not picturing a positive outcome for the situation. Fear of failure leads to the athlete being motivated not to succeed, but instead to try to ‘avoid the agony of defeat’ (Weinberg
& Gould, 2003). This makes it much harder to succeed
and results in a heightened feeling of loss when our
negative imaging becomes reality. Baseball is a sport
that is based heavily on statistics and possibly the
most negative thought involves a player’s game
stats. A fearful player who usually bats at .333 who
has had two at bats without a hit, will already be
thinking that he needs a hit this at bat just to bat their average. That’s a lot of pressure to put on one at bat.
Sports Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) often contributes to failure, leading to batting ‘slumps’. Symptoms of this disorder originate from a specific event where the athlete performs poorly, such as choking in an important hitting situation or making an error (Dr. Alan Goldberg. Breakthroughs in Slump Busting and Peak Performance). This poor performance stays with the player as psychological ‘baggage’ and the following effects can be observed:
Ø Increased anxiety
Ø Decreased reaction time
Ø Mistiming
Ø Tight muscles leading to stiff movements (muscle tension has been described as “public enemy #1 to peak performance”)
This traumatic experience is ‘looped’ or played over and over again by the player and obviously performance is highly affected.
It is important that you are aware that Sports PTSD
is common amongst players. In order to over-power
this fear of failure, you need to instil a sense of confidence
in every one of your ball players. We have mentioned a
list of negatives that arise through a player feeling fear
at the plate, but you can erase ALL of these thoughts/
feelings with confidence.
How will confidence help a hitter?
If a player is confident they won’t use negative self-talk. This eliminates the athlete doubting their abilities to succeed. The difference is that the player consumed by fear thinks of their statistics and therefore over-thinks at the plate while the confident player approaches each at bat separate from previously failed attempts.
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An experiment was conducted by Scott Clare at Garces Memorial High School, California in December 2004 to test the anxiety levels of players in team’s line-ups. Results showed that players in the second half of the batting line-up, which as you know are generally less skilled than the first half, experienced a consistently higher level of anxiety than those players in the first half of the order.
So we can conclude by saying…
Increase Confidence = Decrease Anxiety = Improved Performance
