10-time MLB champion Yogi Berra once famously said, “Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical.” While his math may be off, his point is tried and true. In baseball, a sport that is slow-moving and strategic, a good mindset is the key to success. However, a bad mindset can mean failure.
10-time MLB champion Yogi Berra once famously said, “Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical.” While his math may be off, his point is tried and true. In baseball, a sport that is slow-moving and strategic, a good mindset is the key to success. However, a bad mindset can mean failure.
But baseball isn’t the only sport where a proper mentality is key: it’s apparent in all other sports. The reason why basketball players like Allen Iverson and Isaiah Thomas succeed despite their heights (listed as 6 feet tall and 5 foot 9, respectively) is because they believe at all times that they are the best players on the court. No moment can bother them because they have prepared themselves mentally to the point where they are confident in whatever they do.
However, the pressure brought on by high-leverage situations can prove to be too much for certain players. For example, in the Game One of the 1995 NBA Finals between the Orlando Magic and the Houston Rockets, the Magic were up by 3 with 10 seconds left, and just one made free throw by Nick Anderson would’ve put the game out of reach. However, Anderson missed the 2 free throws, but grabbed the rebound and was fouled again. He proceeded to miss another 2 free throws, then the Rockets came down and Kenny Smith hit a 3-pointer to tie the game, a game and Finals series the Rockets would eventually win. These free throws destroyed Anderson, mentally. Anderson reflected that it affected both how he played and how he lived, and showed in his performance, as after the 1995 finals, Anderson dropped from a 69.2% free throw shooter in 1995-96 to a 40.4% free throw shooter in 1996-97.
For context: Andre Drummond is the worst statistical free throw shooter in history, shooting at 38.1%. Notables to shoot better in a career than Anderson did in a season include notorious poor free throw shooters like Shaquille O’Neal and Wilt Chamberlain.
Emotions and anxiety have been psychologically proven to affect the body and thus, performance. Jim Taylor, Ph.D of Psychologytoday.com, writes that negative emotions can cause frustration, leading to “muscle tension, breathing difficulties, and a loss of coordination.” It also affects your stamina, as the body tires out quicker.
Taylor continued to write that negative emotions will cause you to tell yourself that you’re not confident enough to complete the task at hand. The emotions cause a drop in confidence, toppling negative thoughts on negative emotions.
While these nerves shine brightest on professional sports’ biggest stages, they occur at all ages: from Little League to the Bigs. Sian Beilock, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago wrote in Performance Anxiety that she “had one of the worst soccer games of [her] life playing in front of college recruiters.” The pressure of being judged is the root of many performance anxiety-based issues, along with the pressure of a high-leverage situation. The same article noted that the mind can be full, both in trying to convert thoughts into actions and imagining the situation. This creates anxiety, which in all stretches of sports, can turn a professional into nothing more than a novice.
While there may be reasons for the anxiety that causes dips in performance, sometimes it’s just something that clicks in the athlete’s mind. Coventry High School Junior and tennis player Courtney James said that her issues with nerves and emotions have caused her to lose matches and have only started during her high school seasons. Though they have a clear start, James said that there is no specific reason as to why her anxiety started. “I guess I just get too much in my head.”
Christopher Lopes, a long tenured coach who has helped teams to multiple Rhode Island State Championships and a 3rd place finish in the 2013 Babe Ruth World Series has had plenty of experience with players whose anxiety gets the best of them. Despite seeing players get nervous in high-leverage situations in every game, Lopes says that there’s no true way as a coach to prepare for dealing with the situations ahead of time. “Sports are so random that you can’t do that. You just try to reinforce a positive environment for them, for all your players, and hope that you can help them deal with situations that may come up in a game.”
Though he recognizes that the nature of a game can change within seconds, he advises future generations to remember that the game is simply that: a game. “you start playing a game because you love to play a game and you should always love to play a game.”
In theory, sports are simple: you have a certain goal that you want to achieve and there is another group of people out to achieve the same goal that will do anything to stop you. It’s a concept rooted deep in history. But yet, the human mind is incredibly complex, and can turn this simple concept into a struggle.
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