Have you even standing up at the plate staring out at the pitcher, or on the mound nervously looking at your catcher for a sign and wanted to hide?  Just maybe crawl under the plate, or peel back the pitching rubber and slip underneath for a bit and let someone else deal with the situation? 

There is a slight smile on my face while I'm writing this because I can't tell you how many times those thoughts had occurred to me while playing through college and professionally.  But, for every one of those quick moments of despair, confusion, uncertainty, or dread, I've had dozens of high quality confident thoughts.  And this is the key and the topic of this article.  The ratio of high quality to low quality thoughts needs to be significantly greater if you are looking to maximize your talent.

It’s quite simply actually when you step back from a situation and analyze it.  An athlete can only have one of two different kinds of thoughts while in a performance.  They are either high quality thoughts or low quality thoughts.  Let me define both.

High quality thoughts: These are positive and forward thinking thoughts that are designed to build confidence and positive expectedness.  High quality thoughts usually remain in the present tense (while in a performance) and help an athlete rise to a challenge.  For example, "I will hit (present tense) this pitcher for a double in the gap", or "There is no chance this batter hits me now (present tense)".  It’s important to always control your thinking in the present.  Future and past thinking is where low quality will thrive.

Low quality thoughts: These thoughts are negative in nature and do absolutely nothing to help  an athlete succeed.  Unfortunately, the more an athlete is struggling, the more prevalent low quality thoughts can be found circulating in this mind.  These thoughts are disease ridden and can affect a performance tremendously.  Examples of low quality thoughts include, "I hope I don't strike out (future tense)", or "I really can't believe I walked that guy (past tense)."

Now that I have defined these term and you now have an awareness of the two types of thinking, the question is how to add it to your game.

1. Prevent any speech that has anything negative in nature about a performance. Negative talk can be directed towards oneself, others, the game, the length of practice, conditioning, or a myriad of any other situations or things.  Effectively eliminating this type of low quality speech will reduce the amount of time the mind will choose to access these poor thoughts when in tough situations that are high pressure. 

2. Use focus points. When the mind is fully focused on any given object, there is no ability for additional thoughts to pass through the mind.  Therefore, training should be given to hitters to have them focus on a piece of the plate for a second as they step up to the plate.   A pitcher may pause briefly before the wind up on the stare at a place in this glove or a seam on the baseball. This brief moment of 100% focus will dismiss any poor thinking occurring within the athlete and allow him to train his focus to the present tense and the task at hand.