Week of October 5, 1998Top athletes, sports writers and sports psychologists all agree that athletic performance is as much mental as it is physical. The proper mood, motivation, and focus are as vital as physical training, and often provide the edge that makes winning possible. Personality seems to influence the sports people choose, and mental health experts recognize that participation in sports or some physical activity supports the health of the mind as well as the body.
Kelly Larson, who works in public health in New York, is a serious amateur athlete. She plays basketball and runs marathons, which she feels is very much a question of mind over matter.
Dr. Chris Carr is a sports psychologist for the Ohio State University football team and the U.S. Men's Alpine Ski Team, and is himself is a former college football player. He's worked with individuals and sports teams ranging from the U.S. Olympic diving and shooting teams, to the U.S. Figure Skating Association, to the National Football League.
To build confidence and focus subconsciously, well before competition, Dr. Carr teaches athletes to repeatedly visualize successful performance. First, his athletes practice relaxation with breathing exercises, and by alternately tensing and releasing their muscles. Then, they imagine as vividly as possible not only how their performance will look visually, but kinesthetically, how their body will feel and move. Positive self talk in the face of a challenge can counter the subconscious doubt that can interfere with body mechanics, and focusing on a final outcome, such as winning a championship, is the wrong strategy. It's both more effective, and more existentially satisfying, to focus on moment to moment awareness of the sport itself, such as making a perfect catch or throw.
A caller who has been a top ranked local bowler for decades asks about sustaining her motivation. Carr notes that for some athletes, when they no longer love their sport, it may be time to move on. It may help to identify personal goals for the season, or roadblocks within the sport or from other aspects of life. Some tips on triggering a player's ability to concentrate or relax with key words: instead of giving them a word to memorize, let players think of a word that reminds them of how they felt after a successful drill, and use that instead.
Dr. Carr tells a caller working on his baseball game to write down in detail how it feels to make several really good catches and throws, so it can be visualized it once a night. Let go of the tension surrounding a bad throw before the next batter comes up by imagining that you're kicking the bad throw away, when you kick the dirt. You can reach Dr. Chris Carr at the Ohio State Sports Medicine Center, 2050 Kenny Road, Columbus, Ohio 43221.
George Plimpton is a journalist who founded and edits The Paris Review. As an amateur athlete among professionals, he's been a quarterback with the Detroit Lions, a goalie with the Boston Bruins, and he's played basketball with the Boston Celtics. His most recent book, The X Factor, published by W. W. Norton, describes his search for that elusive quality that makes great athletes great.
Plimpton says that great athletes all talk about developing the ability to focus intensely, and describes various mental exercises they used. Before a match, tennis champion Ivan Lendl would pick up an ordinary object, like a dime, and concentrate on it until all other objects in the room disappeared. Bill Russell, a basketball player with the Celtics, would retire to his hotel room and immerse himself in Western movie daydreams about himself riding into town, and cleaning out all the bad guys -- members of the other team. When Russell would throw up in the locker room before a game, his teammates knew he was at his competitive best. Boxer Sonny Liston would imagine that all that stood between him and a date with Lena Horne was the guy on the other side of the ring. As a teenager, Muhammad Ali's bike was stolen. As a fighter, he would imagine that his opponent was the one who stole it. Plimpton strongly prefers winning to losing, but finds that simply playing is the best thing, in any sport.
Dr. Jack Raglin, an associate professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, researches the psychology of sports and exercise. Some athletes do better under the pressure of pre-competition anxiety, others thrive when relaxed. Overtraining is a major problem with athletes in many sports, and can lead to a chronic drop in performance for weeks or months, even clinical depression and medical disturbances. New brain imaging studies show that merely thinking about movement increases activity in the motor cortex, suggesting that mental practice can be a useful supplement for physical training. You can reach Dr. Jack Raglin in the Department of Kinesiology at Indiana University, Bloomington, Ohio, 47405.
It's often been said that the toughest thing in sports is hitting a 95 mile an hour fast ball. To find out what it takes to do it consistently, The Infinite Mind's Bill Lichtenstein went to the visitor's dugout of Yankee Stadium to interview Wade Boggs of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, one of the greatest hitters of all time. The five-time American League batting champion is the only player in this century to have seven straight 200 hit seasons. Boggs confirms Yogi Berra's famous saying that 'half of hitting is 90% mental.' His own negative thoughts can be as much a factor as the pitcher trying to strike him out. Being able to visualize many of the pitchers that have faced him before helps him, as does spending all day in mental preparation before a game. To increase confidence and reduce anxiety, Boggs will ritually perform as many as "eighty or eighty five" practices, from getting up, showering, eating and leaving for the park at exactly the same time, putting his socks on left first, right second, to eating chicken every game day. Notwithstanding his preparations, Boggs finds that every day, every pitch is a unique scenario.
And finally, weekly commentator John Hockenberry looks at this year's historical rewriting of the annual home run. How did McGwire and Sosa hit so many homers? To the hitters themselves, it's a mystery.
