Softball Tips - Attitude and Mental Training

• Dream about what you want to become, achieve and accomplish.  Without dreams, you can’t hope for much. Dreams are what allow us to achieve extraordinary things and that ignite the passion within. Don’t just dream big, dream huge. With dreams and passion, you can become unstoppable!

• Commit to a mission. Once you know why you play softball, what character traits you want to possess and what you want to accomplish, commit to this. Make it the #1 priority in your life.

• Face your weaknesses. What has held you back from reaching your goals? Identify the stumbling blocks will move you a long way toward resolving them. What can you do to get better? Develop a plan to get rid of them. Facing our weaknesses is rarely fun but it is a necessary step toward becoming all you can be. You must attack your weaknesses relentlessly!

• Write your goals down and re-read them often. Passion-driven goals are the best. Writing your goals makes them more real and tangible and represents a form of commitment to them. They go from being wishes to true goals. Re-read them often. Post them where you can see them daily so you stay focus on what is the most important thing to you.

• Have a plan for every workout or practice – the saying goes:  “if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail”. One of the common traits of the most successful people in the world is that they have a plan. They know where they are going. Identify where you want to go, the obstacles you will face to get there and lay down a plan to get overcome the obstacles and get to your final destination as quickly as possible.

• Keep a log or a journal. Writing down what your experience and what you do will keep you focus. It will allow you to revisit on a daily basis what has been going well and what needs work. This daily reflection exercise will go a long way in helping you stay focus and get better. Remember, you are running a marathon, not a sprint and every step you take toward your final destination gets you a step closer to your dreams.

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• Build a success portfolio. Build a portfolio where you will collect all of the evidence of success you have achieved in the past and that you will achieve in the future. This will be a strong reminder of how exceptional and amazing you are when you feel a little down. Even more important, you will build the habit of focusing on the positives rather than the negatives. Focusing on the positives is a powerful confidence builder!

• Build a supportive social network. People that we hang out and live with have a great influence on ourselves. Surrounding yourself with supportive people is crucial. Don’t let any negative influence come around you. Only let in people who are positive, believe in you and most importantly, support you.

• Have a lifestyle that supports your goals. Trying to become an elite athlete requires some sacrifices. Going out, drinking and partying excessively is not very compatible with the lifestyle of an elite softball player. It’s perfectly fine to have fun and enjoy yourself but as you know, it should be in moderation. Always ask yourself, is what I am doing right now bringing me closer to my dreams?

• Quality before quantity. Working hard is important, there is no question there. Most people think that the harder you work, the more successful you are. However, it is not necessarily the case. Working smart is much more important than working hard. It’s better to have 2 excellent workouts or pitching sessions than 5 lousy ones; it’s better to hit or pitch with a totally focused mind for 20 minutes than going through the motions for 60 minutes.  Going through the motions is a sin for the best softball players in the words. They say perfect practice makes perfect, don’t they?

• Become highly self-disciplined. Self-discipline is the magic power that makes you virtually unstoppable. Self-discipline is one of the most common traits of the world’s most successful people. Be your own coach and don’t wait for anybody to tell you what to do. Don’t let temptations or obstacles get in the way of what you have to do. Be relentless about doing what you have to do to achieve your goals.

• Visualize success. Visualization (a.k.a. mental imagery) is one of the most powerful mental skills. If you can visualize yourself being successful and control the thoughts in your head, your confidence will skyrocket and you performance will be much more consistent. Just like any physical skill, visualization takes time to learn, refine, and master. It must be practiced.

• Take control of your little voice. Negative self-talk can be very destructive. It will take time before you take total control of it but it is definitely worth the effort. Try to catch yourself when you have negative self-talk and replace it by positive self-talk. Being positive is a common characteristic of highly successful people.

• Practice absolute punctuality. Some coaches tell their athletes that if they are on time, they are late. Make of not only showing up on time but early to all your meetings, training sessions, workouts and games. Punctuality is a sign of respect but also demonstrate tremendous self-discipline. The top athletes in the world are never late.

• Spend time by yourself to relax. Elite softball players are passionate about softball. They sleep, breath and eat softball every day and that’s that the way it has to be to achieve high level success. However, take time off once in a while to rejuvenate. Do something totally unrelated to softball and enjoy it. Something well-planned little breaks do wonders for elite athletes. They go back to training and competition totally re-energized and fully motivated.

• Use your time wisely. There is only one thing in the world that everybody has the same amount of and it’s time. What you do of your time has a direct link with how successful you are at anything you undertake.  There are exactly 168 hours in a week. Make the best use of them. Don’t waste any and you will get where you want to be faster.

• Overcome fear of failure. Fear of failure might be what is holding you back. Dare to be great by taking risks, chances. Nobody has ever achieved greatness without facing hardship first. Failing is a good thing if you learn from it. Instead of seeing problems or obstacles, see challenges to overcome. The most successful people on the planet are risk-takers. You will never achieve anything by risking nothing.

• Make no excuses and take full responsibility for all your failures and all your successes. The world’s most successful people never make excuses and they hold themselves accountable. Achieving success and making excuses are mutually exclusive, wholly incompatible.

• Accept the fact that you will fail, make a lot of mistakes and learn from them. Failing is a big part of the game. If you succeed only 30% of the time at the plate, it’s excellent. That means that you will be failing more often than you succeed. Failing is part of life and sport in general. You actually learn more by failing than by succeeding. The key point is to look at mistakes and failures as learning opportunities. Ask yourself: “What didn’t go well and how can I do things differently next time to be successful?”

• Use music to energize your workouts. It is a powerful motivator. Get yourself a quality mp3 player or iPod and listen to your favorite music when you workout. Music is motivating and helps you stay focus by blocking outside distractions.

• Focus on the solution more than the problem. Problems and obstacles are inevitable. They are just part of life. Things never go smoothly and there are always things that come up. True champions recognize problems and map out the solutions immediately.

• Focus on the controllable. Realize that you can’t control what happens around you, but you can control your response to it. You must be in control of yourself before you can control your performance. Don’t waste your time on things that you have no control over, focus on the things that you can change or control.

• When you are unmotivated to exercise or practice, begin for 5 minutes, then decide. One of the big stumbling blocks to achieving success is staying motivated. There are days when we don’t feel like working out or practicing. The hardest thing is often just to get started. So, when you don’t feel like working out or practicing, just start doing it for 5 minutes and then decide whether or not you want to continue. You will see, most of the time, you will keep doing it.

• Morning workouts are best. People that working out in the morning tend to be more successful. When you exercise in the morning, you will miss workouts less often and you day will be more productive. 

• Treat workouts and practices like important appointments. Be selfish about your training. If achieving your goals is your number one priority, why do you sometimes relegate it at the end of your to-do list? I suspect it’s because you can’t feel the damage done when we miss one workout or practice. Well, I assure you: your body is keeping score and someday, you’ll have to pay for it. The more often you miss the longer it will take before you achieve your goals. Only miss a workout or a practice if you have absolutely no other choice.

• Buddy up. Our moods, habits and levels of performance naturally gravitate to the people with whom we spend the most time. This is particularly true in elite sport. Cultivate a network of workout buddies who are positive and enjoy pushing themselves. You will work harder, have more fun, be more motivated and miss a lot less.

• Be here, now. Play one pitch at a time, confident and focused on each pitch as it is played with disregard for past or future pitches. Ignore the emotional baggage of scores, innings, and pitch counts; just focus on the next pitch. Playing a full game in the present is to ultimate goal and the best way to ensure that you perform at your best.

• Focus on the process rather than the outcomes. You have much more control over the process than the outcome. For example, when hitting, focus on having a good at bat (proper mental approach to the plate, selecting the right pitches, using your best swing, hitting a line drive, etc.) rather than focusing on getting a hit or not striking out.

• Develop routines to help you get in the zone. The use of routine is one of the most widespread practices among elite softball players. They perform routines before games, between innings and between pitches at the plate and on the field. A routine integrates both the mental and the physical aspects. It is a specific way of doing things to stay focus, block distraction and put you in the ideal mindset. Routines are powerful and you should definitely use them.