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Early Season Struggles

Jan 12, 2023

It’s officially baseball season.

The weather is starting to warm up.

Let's hypothetically say you’ve been working hard all off-season on your game and the first few games, things aren’t going well. 

What do you do? 

 

Breathe

 

Relax 

 

This game is designed for that to happen. 

 

View the season as one long AB.

Otherwise, you’re going to have some long nights taking dry swings in your room at 2:00 AM trying to figure out what’s going on. (guilty!)

 

Nothing is going on. Remember, the game doesn’t have feelings. It doesn’t owe anybody anything. 

 All you can focus on are the things you have control over. 

I had a player this past week come in who had been struggling the first few games. During the session we decided that he was only going to focus on three things for the next game. 

 

  1. Aggressive early in the count 

  2. Swing Hard 

  3. Make someone laugh

 

Those were the only things that I wanted him to focus on. 

Based on his personality, he tends to be passive, and at the high school level you can’t be down in the count and have success. 

So I knew he needed to be aggressive early in the count.
 

 I told him to swing hard so he doesn’t focus on mechanics and can just let it eat.

 I know if he makes someone laugh, he’ll feel better about himself, which increases his chances of having success at the plate. 

How do I know this will work? Well I’ve been able to experiment, on myself.

I just didn’t know it at the time. 

 

In my final year of college baseball I was 23 years and a 5th year senior. I legitimately thought I was going to hit thirty home runs.
 

I had worked so hard and wanted it so bad.

The first few games I started to press to put up numbers, after only a couple games I was in my own head.

My confidence was gone after a couple games, how crazy is that?!

Instead of having a process to focus on, like the example I gave above, those struggles snowballed into an 0-27 slump.

Yikes 

5th year senior on the bench now. 

Not how I drew up my senior year. 
 

So what did I decide to do..everything and anything to get myself back on track. 

 

I would sleep on the ground instead of in my bed in my apartment, I would park on different sides of the street, I would eat at different tables in the cafeteria.

I did this all in hopes of changing my luck at the plate!

Then, finally I pinch hit one game and decided to head up to the plate and tell myself to be so relaxed the bat is barely being held in your hands. 

2B down the RF line. 

Off to the races. 

That was it. 

I was trying too hard. 

I wanted it too bad. 

I decided to not care when I was in the box.

And it freed my body and mind 

I finished the year hitting strong and learned more about myself and hitting that year than any other year of my career. 

Sometimes less is more.  

Especially when it comes to hitting a baseball. 


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Thanks,
PJ