WebBall.com - Challenge Essay #3: "OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE
THE CENTRAL ISSUE OF INSTRUCTION
- Steve Englishbey, EnglishbeyHitting.com
It seems to me that the central issue is this: How does one go about creating optimum of near optimum performance in actual game conditions, and do this consistently? How does one go about practicing in ways that ways that would facilitate this? And what is it that one needs to take into game conditions that would facilitate retaining that which you have been practicing?
Within this central question are really two questions:
1. Are you in fact actually practicing in ways that would best help to facilitate the enhancement of performance in game conditions?
2. Assuming that this is indeed the case, why is this not 'showing up' in the actual game conditions?
The first question really has to do with things having to do with understanding the actual biomechanics involved that allow for optimal or near optimal performance. Simply put, whatever inefficiencies that you have that will impede your ability to hit the best pitching that you might face at whatever level that you are playing at, will not really be revealed when you are in the cage hitting against batting practice pitching.
Thus, I would argue that if you are not practicing in ways that promote the kinds of mechanical efficiency that you will most likely need against the top pitching you will face at your level, you are not practicing in ways that will best facilitate optimal or near optimal performance in game conditions.
But, for this article, I want to leave out the issues surrounding this question, and instead focus on the second question - why are my good swings that I have in practice not showing up in games?
About eight years ago, I was working as a part-time select team coach, and there was a particular hitter that really hit well in practice, and he practiced a lot, and took lessons regularly, and was very serious about trying to become a better hitter.
But......none of this tended to translate into his game performance.
My advice to him? Did I give him a long explanation as to why his mechanics were breaking down in a game?
No. I said this: 'When you go up to the plate I want you to think - seriously think - I DON'T GIVE A S*** ABOUT WHETHER I HIT WELL OR NOT.'
This seemingly counter-intuitive 'instruction' was given for a very simple reason: He had become OVERFOCUSED on what has been described by motor learning experts as 'outcome orientation'.
As opposed to having a 'process orientation'.
In batting practice, he was very much ' process ' oriented. Meaning he was all about trying to develop a ' sense of feel ' about what his mind and body were doing or not doing as he swung the bat in batting practice. The focus was on the kinds of feelings involved in creating good movement, and not so good movement. And the focus involved the kind of mental outlook, levels of arousal, concentration, etc involved in ' feeling ' this process by which he was thinking and acting as he swung the bat. (And I do mean to suggest that all of this kind of focus is of an explicit nature. No. Its both implicit and explicit, or conscious, and subconscious respectively.)
In batting practice then, the focus was on the process' by which he went about thinking thru the experience of 'being in the moment', i.e. the thinking involved in having an exclusive and concentrated focus on the mind/body engagement involved in 'feeling the process'.
In this situation 'outcome' is part of the process of course, i.e. there is feedback as to where the balls are going, if he was 'early or late', etc.
But, this was not the main or exclusive focus. The real focus was on body awareness and the kind of focus necessary to create this kind of 'getting inside' the swing process.
PROCESS ORIENTATION ABSENT
In game conditions this process orientation was nearly completely absent. In games it suddenly became an kind of anxiety ridden outlook that could be distilled into 'I need to perform now, I need to hit well, I've got to perform well.' etc., etc., etc.
This kind of thinking - thinking about the future, thinking about the performance, thinking about the outcome - was not at all how he was thinking when he hit well in the cage.
And I have known quite a few athletes that tend to suffer from this kind of over focus on the outcome when game time comes.
As opposed to taking the mind /body focus that they have when practicing ---the kind of mind/body experience that allows and facilitates the optimum or near optimum levels of focus, arousal, and engagement physical and mental processes that best allow one to eliminate or better control all the many external factors and distractions that have little to do with the kinds of internal processes that are really driving the process of good performance in games.
FOCUS BECOMES A HINDRANCE
This kind of over-focus on outcome can take the 'psycho-physical ' characteristics of what motor learning specialist Richard Schmidt referred to in his book Motor Learning and Performance as 'hyper-vigilance'.
This is a kind of mental and physical condition wherein the athlete has gone beyond his optimal level of arousal. Simply put, an optimal level of arousal and focus 'would be one that produces an 'attentional' focus narrow enough to exclude many irrelevant cues, yet broad enough to pick up the most relevant ones.'
By focusing too exclusively on the outcome of performance - that which is external to the process of getting into the 'here and now', the level of arousal and focus becomes a hindrance to performance. Which then leads to a kind of 'freezing up' of the mind/body.
As Schmidt writes 'They freeze because the decision-making ability of people in a hyper-vigilant state is severely limited do to an extreme perceptual narrowing and several other factors. Such a condition also degrades the physical control of movements, causing actions that are normally performed in a smooth and flowing manner under more relaxed circumstances to be stiff and halting.'
My experience - both as one who has actually 'been in the arena', as well as someone who works with a variety of hitters - is that aspects of the above, i.e. an over-focus on performance at game time can lead to subtle and not so subtle versions of this kind of 'hyper-vigilance.'
MITIGATING HYPER-VIGILANCE
How does one try to help mitigate against this kind of over aroused and 'out of focus' kind of mental state at game time?
One of the things that I try to do as an instructor is to try to get young hitters to understand certain fundamental components of the swing, i.e. things which I think underlie all good swings. The goal is to find ways to practice these components in ways that leads to both a greater cognitive and kinesthetic awareness of what these components are and what they 'feel like'. This is a process that is largely an intrinsic and internal affair ,which over time begins to operate as a kind of 'internalized coach' if you will. Over time and with this kind of practice and focus ,you are able to better understand what it is you are doing to create your best swings versus your less than optimal swings.
In developing an ability to take what you have been practicing into a game, you have to be able to take this 'internalized coach' into a game setting. And you have to practice in ways that best facilitate this kind of mental and physical focus, emphasis ,and concentration. This is not something wherein you are 'thinking too much' or overanalyzing the swing. To the contrary, it is much more 'emotionally neutral' and is much more along the lines of coming to understand better the mental and physical factors that are involved in your 'good swing'.
And the trick is to ONLY think about those factors in game conditions. And to be able to know how to control your mental and physical state in game that keep you within these parameters.
Exactly what these components are ,and how one would go about working thru this may be beyond the scope of this article. But one quick example would be a player who I worked with 'gave up' thinking about performance in the traditional sense, and instead concentrated on simply trying to swing the bat the in a game like he had been practicing and doing in batting practice. And 'think about the process' in a very similar fashion. By thinking about the process involved in getting off a good swing his performance actually improved.
In terms of development and in terms of transfer from practice to actual performance - this kind of 'giving up performance' can potentially be very beneficial to those who tend to be '5:30 hitters' instead of game-time hitters."
