Baseball and Hypnosis

With Baseball season here and present, I decided to bring back a blog post I wrote for Tom Nicoli’s website last year. Enjoy!

With baseball season coming up, I have thoughts of playing in another weekend league.37 years of age and still playing baseball with the young-ins. I must be doing something right. I even made my way on the pitcher’s mound last year and did pretty darn good. And while on the pitcher’s mound I noticed some keen observations about baseball and hypnosis. Below is an email I wrote to my teammates to pump us up half way through the Winter League Season. After all, we needed pumping up as we were in dead last!

Matt Sison - Baseball and Hypnosis

To my teammates: Ok, I have some keen observations while being on that mound yesterday.

This will show some things we can do as a team to keep our level of focus on following through with execution throughout the game. .

First some very quick background on something called hypnosis:

When someone is in a state of focus, we'll have what hypnotists like to call "trance,” and you can have trance in a fully alert state. In fact that's actually what trance is, a more "alert" state of awareness. As you can sense, hypnosis is a completely natural state of being and not necessarily what you may see on stage hypnosis shows or movies with a subject in a very "relaxed" state.

Some examples of a "trance" state as it relates to the baseball: 1) A pitcher on the pitching mound completely involved on his next pitch, 2) a batter in the batter's box completely involved in the moment and focused on the next pitch, 3) a fielder on the field waiting for the next pitch wondering what the batter will do with the next pitch.

Now as you can sense, these 3 examples involve being present to the moment and anticipating what may happen next. When you can have someone so completely involved in the moment you'll have trance. This state alone leaves a player open to suggestions from outside himself. Now, if you can have this state in someone, plus have them anticipating what you're going to say or do next, this increases their state of suggestibility, and the right or wrong suggestions can make the player stronger or weaker at that particular moment (more on this last portion later)

So how do we use this to our advantage?

Let's take a batter who just swung and missed. Keep in mind he is in trance … nothing matters more to him then hitting that round ball. He's not worried about yesterday or tomorrow. He's involved in this particular present moment. However, upon missing the ball, everybody on the team noticed he pulled his head away. So what does someone on the team yell? "You pulled your head away keep your head in!”

Now, I know whoever may have yelled this suggestion out would have only the thought of reminding the batter to keep his head in. But take a closer look at the suggestion… "you pulled your head away…" This first suggestion has now got the batter to imprint a visualization of him pulling his head away from the ball and many times, in a trance like state, the first suggestion will pull to it similar thoughts and ideas before he can re-focus on the intended purpose of the suggestion: "Keep your head in.” Moreover, sometimes, the batter may never get re-focused on “keep your head in” because he’s overpowered by the first suggestion.

A better suggestion would have been something to the effect of "keep your head in and hit the ball hard.” Notice how I deleted "you pulled your head away."

Studies have shown that we play better individually and as a team when we have relaxed focused as opposed to nervous focus. Relaxed focus keeps our muscles loose so we can react more effectively to possible scenarios as opposed to muscles that are tense. When I say relaxed focused, I don't mean someone who's in a Zen-like state on the field chanting OM. You can still be angry on the field but still have a relaxed focus. An athlete that reminds me of this before he lost it is Mike Tyson

Think back to when he was first on the scene. We all knew he was angry even back then, but he had a relaxed focus that was unshakeable. His punches were crisp, quick and powerful. Now, think about him toward the end of his career: He was still angry (possibly more so) yet, he lost that relaxed focus. It turned into a muscularly tight focus where he was pushing his punches and trying to muscle his wins rather then go back to what worked better for him.

So let’s remember that words are more then just words. They hold power. So as a team, let’s do the best we can to keep our players relaxed and focused. It’ll serve us better.

(End of email to teammates)

Oh, and by the way, you may be wondering how our team did after this email I sent to them. Although, we didn’t make it to first place, at least we got out of the “cellar” and even ended up with surprising victories over the 1st and 2nd place team.

Matt Sison, CH

www.Mattsison.com
www.regression-hypnotherapy.com