Geoff Miller

Archive for January, 2010|Monthly archive page

, , , , , , ,

Case Study: Stressed Out Athletes

In Case Studies using TAIS on January 30, 2010 at 7:07 pm

I’ve posted a case study at www.sandiegosportspsychology.com and I wanted to share it with my baseball readers.  This case study is about a Division I College football player, but the profile and my summary would be similar regardless of the sport this athlete played.  The combination of level of stress and introverted, quiet personality style made this case interesting to me and I’ve written it up to call attention to the “quiet athlete”.  Quiet athletes won’t just volunteer information on how they are doing, especially when they are worried or stressed.  And talking about their worries can be more worrisome than the worries themselves, which is why stress levels can build quickly when these athletes feel pressure.  Here’s a link to the case study:

Click Here to read about this stressed out athlete.

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information on using TAIS with your players, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

, , , , , , , , ,

Mental Skills Manual Part VII: The Role of Luck

In Tips for Improving Performance on January 21, 2010 at 12:05 pm

The mental skills manual series continues with a discussion of luck.  This is another concept that falls under the “dealing with failure” portion of the manual, so it’s another way to help you know what to do when you don’t get what you want.  Remember that we base good luck and bad luck on how things have turned out so determining your luck is a results-oriented approach.

Luck

Luck = Hard Work + Opportunity + Randomness

Luck and failure have more to do with each other than you might think.  If you are going to be good at dealing with failure, you’ve got to understand the role that luck plays in performance and have the right perspective on how to get more of it.

How many times have you overheard a player in a slump say something about not having any luck or not being able to buy a break?  Every hard hit ball is right at someone.  Every call is going against him.  Every time he gets the double play ball he needs, an infielder mishandles the throw.  But you don’t hear a lot of players talk about how lucky they’ve been when they are playing well, unless it’s in the name of trying to be humble.

If you view luck using the formula listed at the top of this section, then you can eliminate the negative thinking and helplessness that keeps people down when things are going bad.

Components of Luck

Hard Work: The harder you work, the more prepared you are to put yourself in a position to have something lucky happen to you.  This gives you more opportunities to be lucky and it removes the feeling that you have to wait around for your luck to change.

Opportunity: What we are talking about here are the odds.  There is an element of luck possible in every play, but a much greater chance that you will succeed on your own merit if you just give yourself the opportunity to execute your skills.

Randomness:  There is an entire section of social psychology devoted to the study of people finding patterns in random occurrences.  Your perception of how you are affected by luck can help you sort through your failures. There will always be lucky plays in all sports, and baseball is no exception. Balls land on the line instead of just foul, they bounce just over the low part of the fence when there is a runner on first who would have scored easily had the ball stayed on the field.  You can decide that those are simply random occurrences that have nothing to do with your involvement in the plays and you can change your luck instantly.

Making a commitment to believe that your hard work creates opportunities and knowing that random acts can keep you from getting the results you wanted even if you do everything right is the key to using luck to your advantage instead of letting it keep you from succeeding.  And this is why it’s so important to stay focused on process goals to achieve your outcome goals.

Good Play vs. Good Luck

Good play: Process was correct and outcome was successful.
Good luck: Process was incorrect and outcome was successful.
Bad luck: Process was correct and outcome was unsuccessful.
Bad play: Process was incorrect and outcome was unsuccessful.

How successful do you think you’d be with good luck and bad processes?  Stick to the process and aim for good play instead of good luck.

Click Here for Part I of the Manual, which offers an Introduction.

Click Here for Part II of the Manual, which begins the unit on self-knowledge.

Click Here for Part III of the Manual, which discusses Comfort Zones, Confidence, and Keeping it Simple.

Click Here for Part IV, introduction to goal setting.

Click Here for Part V, goal setting continued.

Click Here for Part VI, Dealing with Failure.

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

, , ,

San Diego Sports Psychology

In Uncategorized on January 18, 2010 at 12:03 pm

Winning Mind, LLC has launched a new site at www.SanDiegoSportsPsychology.com.  This new site is meant to be a resource to athletes, coaches, and parents in San Diego and the Southern California region.  Our work at Winning Mind takes us around the globe, but it is important to us to support the athletes in our local communities.  To that end, we are offering free workshops on building mental toughness to high schools and clubs in San Diego County.  If you are a parent, coach, or athlete in San Diego and you are interested in learning more about our free workshops, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.  If you are interested in scheduling a workshop, but not located in San Diego County, please contact us anyway and we can discuss cost-effective arrangements to support your athletes.

Check out the new site at www.SanDiegoSportsPsychology.com

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

, , , , , , ,

Case Study: Paralysis by Analysis

In Case Studies using TAIS on January 13, 2010 at 1:45 pm

From time to time, I will be posting case studies that include sample data from our TAIS inventory.  TAIS stands for The Attentional and Interpersonal Style inventory and we use it with all of our coaching clients in corporate, sport, and military settings.  In my work with professional baseball players and teams, I use TAIS to help players in the majors and minors identify their mental game strengths and weaknesses, then use TAIS data to help them shape performance improvement plans.  On the scouting side, I use TAIS to evaluate potential draft picks, which are not used in a “thumbs up, thumbs down” fashion, but more to help provide another level of detail on who the player is on and off the field, how he will handle failure and pressure, and the best ways to help each player develop skills and learn the game.

This case study is on a pitcher who thinks too much when he gets into jams and makes things more complicated for himself.  I’m including only a sampling of TAIS scales (there are twenty factors that are measured when someone takes TAIS and a brief description on each so you can understand the context of the case.  Learning a bit about this player may help you if you have players like the one I’m profiling here.

Case Study:  C
Position:  Right-Handed Pitcher
Biggest Derailer:  Paralysis by Analysis
Comparison Group: World Champions

Favorite Channel

The first factors I look at when reviewing a TAIS profile are the attentional factors.  I want to know what the player’s “favorite channel” is so I can know how he will pay attention under pressure.  Player C’s favorite channel between Awareness, Analysis, and Narrow Focus (which we call Action) is Analysis.  This tells me that Player C is someone who figures things out.  He is most comfortable when he is out-thinking his opponents and probably does a great job game-planning before a start, knowing exactly how is going to set up and finish off each hitter in the line up.  He is above average at staying focused and blocking out distractions and he has an average feel for the game and gut instinct.  But when he feels pressure, his thought process gets going and he has trouble sticking to a simple plan.  In the big picture, this pitcher should be very successful, but in the moment, he will find himself thinking too much instead of just going after hitters.

Confidence and Self-Criticism

The next score that really jumps out at me is Player C’s confidence score.  He has rated himself as more confident than 99% of other World Class athletes, but unlike the typical over-confident athlete, he hasn’t exaggerated his abilities and his other scores aren’t all that extreme.  As another indicator that Player C is confident and well-adjusted, I notice that his Self-Criticism score is 7%.  That’s a very low score and it tells me that Player C is resilient and doesn’t let negative performance get to him very often.  But the score is high enough to tell me that he is thinking about ways that he can improve as a pitcher.  He is willing to evaluate his performance.  I like this profile as a case study because it shows how connections can be made using TAIS scores to understand players from a number of different perspectives.  Player C’s confidence and self-criticism tell me that evaluation is important to him, which is another place that his analytical nature creeps in.  Which brings me to learning style…

Learning Style

Continuing on our theme of an athlete who engages in too much thinking, we see that Player C’s Information Processing score is 85%, which is higher than most top draft picks.  This player wants to multitask, he likes to have a lot of information and enjoys having a lot going on in his world.  He gets bored easily and will need to have some variety in his routines and practice plans.

For Decision Making Style, Player C scores 3%.  Remember that Decision Making Style tells how quickly a person commits to a decision, with low scores being quick to commit and high scores needing more time to come to a decision.  Player C makes up his mind quickly and doesn’t second-guess his decisions.  He picks up on things faster than others might and he doesn’t worry about the details.  This is a fast learning, information-seeking player who can be challenged intellectually, but needs to learn some patience and pay better attention to detail.

Summary

Player C’s profile looks like that of the classic smart athlete.  While most elite athletes pay attention in a narrow-focused style under pressure, Player C prefers to think himself out of a jam.  This style is a mismatch in athletic settings and while it’s not alarming in a “flagging” kind of way, it is still much more rare that athletes with analytical styles will maximize their physical talents because of the “paralysis by analysis” effect.  This player’s strengths are big-picture thinking, a strong learning capacity, and the ability to take information and quickly translate it into on-field behaviors. He is confident, social, eloquent, optimistic, and has just enough constructive criticism of himself to push himself to be great.  He’s focused, has a strong work ethic, and average awareness of himself.  Player C’s biggest challenges will be quieting his mind and being patient enough to see some results of his hard work before starting over and figuring out a new plan. He’s so quick to make up his mind that he needs a fast-paced, constantly challenging environment.  He may overcomplicate his life and his pitching just so he has more things to figure out and keep multi-tasked.  And he might speed up the game just to match his processing speed only to find that he can’t slow it down again.

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information on using TAIS with your players, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

, , , , , , , , , ,

Winter Ball in Venezuela: Interview with Derek Hankins

In Interviews on January 8, 2010 at 4:27 pm

From Luis Aparicio to Jose Reyes, from Roberto Clemente to Vladimir Guerrero, from Juan Marichal to Johan Santana, Latin American players have had a huge influence on the game of baseball and its history.  Players from the Dominican Republic and Venezuela don’t just face long odds to get to the big leagues, they face challenges of having to learn English, coming from places of extreme poverty, poor nutrition, and sometimes with little or no educational foundation.  It isn’t easy for American players to understand the hardships their teammates are enduring, the burden of financial responsibility they feel for their families, or the consequences and lack of opportunities that await them at home if they don’t make it to the big leagues.

I interviewed Derek Hankins, a minor league pitcher in the Pirates organization, because I wanted to know what he experienced when he played Winter Ball in Venezuela this off-season.  I’ve known Derek for a while now, and if there was ever anyone I would expect to understand and appreciate every life lesson and experience his time in Venezuela offered him, it would be Derek.  As you’ll read in this interview, the experience in baseball and in culture was not lost on Derek.  He has played the last two seasons in AA Altoona and has played in the Arizona Fall League as well.  Here’s hoping that Derek uses the lessons he learned this winter to have a great Spring Training and that his road to the big leagues continues.  And here’s hoping that you learn something from Derek’s experience and that you keep your eye on the box scores so you can cheer him when he eventually makes his big league debut.

Geoff Miller: What was it like playing in another country where you were the foreigner?

Derek Hankins: I got to experience a true role reversal.  A lot of us Americans don’t really understand the sacrifices that our Latin teammates make, what they go through, and where they are coming from. I was amazed by the poverty level in Venezuela and by the passion Venezuelan players have for the game. They play the game over there as adults like we used to play in Little League.  I loved that.

I also got a great perspective going down there. Those guys come to America and leave their families behind and they have nothing else but playing the game when they are here.  For a couple of months, I had to put everything else out of my mind and be there to play baseball and leave my family behind.

I also realized that nobody owes me anything and I’m getting so many opportunities. We as Americans sometimes don’t see it that way because there is so much entitlement.  Those guys give it everything they have because this is their only shot at making it big.  Americans think that because they were drafted in a certain round or they come from a certain program that they are going to get more chances even if they don’t play their best.

GM: What was it like having to understand another language to survive?

DH: I did pick up on a lot, but I wish I had taken Spanish instead of French in high school. I really tried to learn as much as I could while I was down there, but being around lots of great Venezuelan guys in the minors helped me learn some Spanish before I got there.  I had to ask people to repeat things a few times and I understand it better than I speak it.  Jamie Navarro was our pitching coach and he would take me out to dinner and make me order so I could learn enough basic living skills to survive.

I thought that the Venezuelan players welcomed me and the other American players better than we welcome Latin players in the US.  That’s something I’m going to remember and try to do better this season.

GM: Compare your experiences between playing in the Arizona Fall League and in Venezuela.

DH: I would say that the Fall League is more about development and lots of individual achievement, and really feels like we are being scouted, a lot like it feels in college before being drafted.  In Venezuela, it’s “game time.” It’s like a soccer match…23,000 people screaming at every game and they are all intensely involved.  It’s like a big party from the first pitch to the last pitch and it really taught me how to control my emotions.  I was down there to get the job done or I was going home.  I wasn’t there to work on anything developmentally.

GM: Do you feel more confident now that you can get to the big leagues and compete?

DH: Absolutely.  I had a chance to experience how much one mistake can make the difference between winning and losing.  That was my first real opportunity to experience the way those big league hitters just waited for me to make that mistake and now I know how to avoid them and to locate all my pitches better.  It also helped to have an ex-pitcher like Jamie Navarro tell me that I don’t need to throw harder to be a big leaguer.

GM: What would you tell a teammate who had never been to play Winter Ball?

DH: Make sure that you are prepared.  The game down there moves at a quick pace, especially if you let the crowds and atmosphere swallow you up.  Just go down there and throw every pitch like you know you can, don’t reinvent yourself.  But the way that hitters and pitchers adjust down there is incredible.  Those guys don’t seem to care if things don’t go right for them on one pitch or one AB, but they are ready for the next pitch.  It is still baseball, but when you’re at the field, it is a big league environment.  The way the players carry themselves and execute is just the same because most of the players there are big leaguers or have been big leaguers.

GM: What is the most important mental game lesson you have learned in your career?

DH: When I first got drafted, I really had to learn to control my emotions.  There are times when your emotions are going to take over, but it seems like the guys that are most successful are the ones that don’t get too high or too low on the field.  They don’t change in the way they carry themselves, when things get out of whack it doesn’t seem like a big deal.  No matter what is happening, things shouldn’t change.  And I think that’s where winners come from…people that know who they are as people and as players.

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

, , , , , , ,

Case Study: Over-Confidence

In Case Studies using TAIS on January 3, 2010 at 9:15 am

From time to time, I will be posting case studies that include sample data from our TAIS inventory.  TAIS stands for The Attentional and Interpersonal Style inventory and we use it with all of our coaching clients in corporate, sport, and military settings.  In my work with professional baseball players and teams, I use TAIS to help players in the majors and minors identify their mental game strengths and weaknesses, then use TAIS data to help them shape performance improvement plans.  On the scouting side, I use TAIS to evaluate potential draft picks, which are not used in a “thumbs up, thumbs down” fashion, but more to help provide another level of detail on who the player is on and off the field, how he will handle failure and pressure, and the best ways to help each player develop skills and learn the game.

This case study is on a hitter who is smart and capable, but masking insecurity with extreme overconfidence.  I’m including only a sampling of TAIS scales (there are twenty factors that are measured when someone takes TAIS and a brief description on each so you can understand the context of the case.  Learning a bit about this player may help you if you have players like the one I’m profiling here.

For more information on TAIS, please visit www.taisinventory.com.

Case Study:  B

Position:  Infield/Outfield

Biggest Derailer:  Over-Confidence

Comparison Group: World Champions

Favorite Channel

The first factors I look at when reviewing a TAIS profile are the attentional factors.  I want to know what the player’s “favorite channel” is so I can know how he will pay attention under pressure.  Player B’s favorite channel between Awareness, Analysis, and Narrow Focus (which we call Action) is Analysis, although his scores on these three scales are all high and relatively balanced.  This tells me that Player B is confident in his strategic thinking, but that he is also very confident in having good feel for the game and in staying focused when he needs to block out his thoughts.  However, when he feels pressure, his first instinct is going to be to over-think the situation and it will be difficult to keep it simple.

Confidence and Self-Criticism

These scores are the real key to Player B’s profile and they help me understand how he rates himself on every other scale.  Player B has rated himself more confident than 99% of other World Class athletes and is less critical of himself than 99% of those athletes as well.  Player B is telling me that he is as confident as can be and that he doesn’t see any room for improvement in his game.  As I see this pattern of scores, I know that dealing with failure is going to be an issue for this player and that he will likely have a list of reasons why others are to blame for his failure instead of reflecting on his own shortcomings.

Learning Style

Next, I’m going to look at a combination of scores to get an understanding of the best way for this player to learn. Player B scores 96% on Information Processing, so he loves to multitask.  He wants as much information as he can get on as many channels as possible.  He gets bored easily and will need some diversity in his routines and practice plans.  The same thing every day will get old for Player B.

For Decision Making Style, Player B scores 3%.  Remember that Decision Making Style tells how quickly a person commits to a decision, with low scores being quick to commit and high scores needing more time to come to a decision.  Player B makes up his mind quickly and doesn’t second-guess his decisions.  He picks up on things faster than others might and he doesn’t worry about the details.  This is a fast learning, information-seeking player who can be challenged intellectually, but needs to learn some patience and pay better attention to detail.

Expression of Ideas

I look at expression scores in the same way I look at Attention Scores, seeking out the player’s highest score between three categories to understand how each player communicates best.  By “communicate” I mean how he will speak with me and also how he would prefer to be spoken to, as well.  The three communication styles that each person uses are Expression of Ideas, Expression of Criticism and Anger, and Expression of Support and Affection.  Player B scores a whopping 90% on Expression of Ideas, which tells me that he is someone who has a lot to say and isn’t going to be shy about saying it.  His communication style matches his favorite channel and his learning style, and this player prides himself on his abilities to express ideas.  If you ask a simple question like “How are you today?” you can expect to get a long, complicated answer with lots of information.  This player isn’t going to just answer “fine” and be on his way.

Summary

Player B’s profile can be summed up by his confidence.  He believes he is as good or better than anyone else on physical and intellectual levels.  He turns his greatest strength into his greatest weakness often.  He overuses his confidence and refuses to take accountability for mistakes.  The most effective way to get Player B to make improvements to his game will be to find a way to get him to come up with his own ideas for change.  But telling him where he went wrong will only get resistance and lots of answers from him on how your assessment is faulty.  If he spent as much energy working on improving himself as he does in resistance, he’d be as good as he thinks he is.

If you would like to receive new posts from The Winning Mind in Baseball by email, please CLICK HERE.

For more information on using TAIS with your players, please contact Geoff Miller at miller@thewinningmind.com.

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.