Archive for April, 2007

Apr 15 2007

Enlightened Golf for Baseball Players

Published by Pete Koerner under Uncategorized

Enlightened Golf is the name of a Mental Skills / Peak Sports Performance program developed by the performance consultants at Power From Within. Golf was the initial object of focus because of the vast reservoir of research and information on the mental aspects of this sport.

Yet, just as Jack Nicklaus said, “Golf is Ninety-percent mental,” baseball legend Yogi Berra said essentially the same thing about baseball years earlier; and there is still very little attention given to mental skills coaching in the baseball world — and practically none at the developmental level where it is most critical: “Develop-Mental” is often misinterpreted as “Practice-physical.”

This mistake is easy to make — especially by people who grew up playing baseball and just don’t keep up with the latest developments in Psychology, Quantum Physics, and the applications of these developments in the sports world. Nonetheless, this is still a HUGE mistake that keeps baseball players on an level playing field across the board; but that level is well below where it could be. Games are won and lost on mental mistakes, or on the lack of mental preparation, discipline, and control — all of which can be mastered with relative ease.

An athlete who has spent a lifetime honing physical skills usually needs only a few hours of mental skills coaching before major improvements become visible. For instance, once a player knows how to throw a strike, that player can “conceivably” recall that program anytime they wish to throw “that pitch” again. The problem is all of the resistance (thinking, negative self-talk, stress, worry, etc…) that enters in at just the wrong time and slows down your “computer” just like computer viruses slow down the way your p.c. processes information and performs the tasks you ask of it.

No matter who you are, you can fine-tune your programming and approach to produce more of what you want and less of what you don’t want. Mental skills, in other words, can have a profound affect on your performance — even when you don’t really have the physical skills and experience some of your competition may have. Mental skills will raise your level of performance dramatically, and are often THE trump card you need to win.

Jake’s Story:

Shortly after developing the Enlightened Golf program, our then-fourteen-year-old son decided he wanted to tryout for the middle-school baseball team — and tryouts were only a week away! In fourteen years, he had played one other year of baseball two-years earlier (on a team whose record was 0-9). My initial reaction was, “Oh no… school baseball is not like recreational league baseball; this kid hasn’t played baseball before and he will be trying-out and competing with kids who have been playing rec. ball and travel baseball for eight or nine years.” Any baseball player understands the odds this kid was facing. Thankfully, he didn’t.

I quickly shifted out of my unconscious negative response and spent the next several evenings using the tools I use with adult athletes, and talking to him about baseball, in visual terms, as he went to sleep at night. We also went to the ball field three times that week and as he fielded and hit, I didn’t comment on his mistakes, but reinforced the proper way of thinking in that situation, “Hands up… Head up… Balance… Eyes on the ball… Tell me where you are going with the ball if it comes to you hard…soft…in the air…on the ground…etc…”

Essentially, this kid had one week of mental skills coaching, and about five-hours of actual on-field practice before tryouts started. At tryouts, Jake made the team with a screaming, line-drive double that audibly rattled the center field fence. Of all the “veterans” who tried out for that team (about 25 kids…) only two touched the ball with the bat; and Jake’s was the only hit.

Of course, these kids are all exceptional ball players; but they were also all trying out for a school baseball team. Pressure is pressure no matter who you are; Jake simply didn’t feel it the same way because of the way he prepared for the tryout — and it certainly didn’t affect him in the same way it affected some of the others. As the season progressed, Jake’s lack of baseball knowledge was evident; but it didn’t slow down his progress or development.

Immediately after the school baseball season ended, Jake played a season of rec. ball (little league) where he continued to develop his physical skills and mental focus. Before that season ended, Jake had an opportunity to tryout for the Summer team at the High School he would be attending as a ninth-grader the following year. He said he wanted to tryout; so we did more of the same preparations that helped him make the middle school team.

When tryouts came, I think Jake was somewhat intimidated by the fact that the tryouts were run by the entire High School Varsity Baseball coaching staff, and the tryouts involved everyone from incoming eighth-graders up to Junior Varsity players from the past season trying out for the JV team. After tryouts, the coaches decided against a Ninth-grade summer team; and Jake simply didn’t measure up to JV standards. But that didn’t stop Jake.

The following week — days before the JV practices began — Jake signed up for a skills camp which was also run by the High School baseball coaches. The camp had mostly little kids, but there were four kids Jake’s age at the camp (13-14 years-old). In this environment, Jake was much less distracted and intimidated; and what he showed the coaches in those three days got him invited to join the Junior Varsity summer baseball team!

As you can imagine, this level of baseball is completely different from anything Jake had even heard of before; but he did it — and continued to learn and grow. Before the season was over, he started a game on the mound. The first inning he got hit pretty hard, but only gave up two runs. As he walked off the field, I simply winked at him and gave him the palms-down signal reminding him to relax and focus. He did; and he came back with a three-up, three-down inning as an eighth-grader facing J.V. ball players.

Jake works like everyone else; but he used mental skills training to overcome an experience barrier and win positions on teams even though he didn’t have a lifetime of playing baseball under his belt. When I saw Jake standing on that mound, I realized that he and I were the only two people in the stadium who knew the true Secret of peak performance. Of course all the other “Baseball dads” knew how to turn their kids into baseball players — these are really good baseball teams. The point here is that Jake was on the same teams, but not because of spending eight or nine years working hard — but because he spent a few weeks working smart.

Sure, experience is helpful and important; and Jake is gaining experience even as we speak. But regardless of experience, mental skills are still the key to true, lasting success. If you truly want to succeed at something in life — NO MATTER WHAT IT IS — keep that vision in the front of your Mind; and learn how to program yourself for performance success.

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Apr 15 2007

A Swing is a swing; and Pressure is Pressure

Published by Pete Koerner under Uncategorized

The Enlightened Golf program is indeed an amazing leap forward for golfers. In a sport which is mostly a “mental game,” peak performance skills are the difference between winners and losers; and at higher levels of competition, these mental skills separate the professionals from those destined for the Hall of Fame.

Yet golf is not the only sport which is primarily played in the mind — ALL sports fit this description if you ask those who excel in each of those sports. More specifically, sports involving targets — both moving and stationary — such as balls which must be struck with some sort of stick, club, or racket, or fixed targets, such as a goal, hole, or mitt, ALL require specific mental skills to dependably hit the target.

Furthermore, the mental and physical mechanisms involved in all of these endeavors are exactly the same. Throwing an object at a target (a dart, ball, etc…) requires a specific set of programs; we’ve all heard the phrase, “You throw like a girl!” Typically, girls just don’t throw balls when they are growing up; as a result, they have not acquired the programming to do it smoothly and effectively. When people use that phrase, what they are truly saying is, “You throw like someone who wasn’t programmed to throw very well.” Trust me, if you have ever watched college softball, you know that a girl who has been properly programmed to throw can throw much faster than a man in certain situations.

Swinging a stick in a trajectory designed to intercept and redirect a smaller object, or catching a moving object with a glove or some other device, all require a tremendous amount of programming. But this is just the first step; these programs, to be effective, must be able to run under pressure in order to generate the desired results.

Pressure is the kind of stress athletes typically feel — the pressure to succeed, the pressure to perform, the pressure of getting in and out of tight spots, etc… Pressure is also programmed into us from early childhood; and it typically increases as the “stakes” are raised — but it is still pressure. All such stress can impede your performance programming until it is neutralized or removed. Some athletes are naturally able to redirect the energy of stress into performance modalities. Such people are called, “Naturals,” or are said to “handle the pressure well,” or do well “under pressure.”

Still there are others who learn these skills — all of which are mental, and all of which can be learned. In the end, the only difference between a “Natural,” and someone who has been trained with peak performance mental skills, is that the “Natural” probably can’t explain why they do so well — and the person who learned these skills can probably teach these skills to others pretty well having recently learned the process by which all sports skills unfold.

We commonly work with baseball players, football players, tennis players, and golfers — as well as Olympic and Pan Am athletes in various endurance sports. All of these individuals are target-oriented, goal-oriented, and driven to succeed; and all of these individuals must master their own mind if they are to perform at peak levels. Even endurance is a mental skill; the ability to focus on something other than pain, for instance, is critical in the fight to KEEP GOING!

Whether you use mental skills training, or not, you still must use mental skills in order to succeed in sports. How honed those skills are will determine how far you go in your own sport. So, here are a few tips to help you along your way:

1. Focus on your desired outcome — not what you have been told is likely to happen, not on statistics, not on what you are afraid might happen, etc. Keep your eye on the prize.

2. Breathe in deeply through your nose — filling your belly — and out forcefully through your mouth. Repeat this until you feel relaxed; and then re-establish your focus on your goal.

3. You can only take one swing at a time, or throw one pitch at a time; so get completely into the moment. This swing, this pitch, are the only ones you can affect in this moment.

4. Before going to sleep, and immediately upon waking, mentally rehearse your performance as if it were a prayer to live this “dreamed of” victory in your physical reality — it is and this works!

5. Relaxation is critical to peak performance; and visualization is essential in creating specific outcomes.

6. Don’t think about, or comment on, problems — or current realities that you don’t want to maintain. Keep your mind open to creative solutions; it can’t be if it is full of the problem.

7. Never, Never, Never speak negatively about your body, skills, abilities, luck, or possible future outcomes; all of our words have power to alter our subconscious perception of ourselves and our situations in such a way that our greatest fears often come upon us.

Life is a game. Play.

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