Some things are easier said than done. Others require complex explanations – and still are easier said than done. The task of teaching a child to use controlled aggression to focus as a power hitter is such a challenge.
A power hitter’s emotional reaction to a pitch should be predictable and controlled. While good mechanics are mandatory, power hitting is more about mental readiness than physical mechanics. A teaching coach must help batters understand that power hitting requires confidence and a willingness to risk failure. The ability to successfully hit the ball with consistency and power is a special talent with special emotional demands.
While some players may display false bravado, few are truly gifted with innate confidence. The manner in which confidence develops and manifests itself will determine whether a player becomes a reliable batter, and whether she will rely on finesse ( a product of discipline), or power ( a product of aggression).
It takes effort for a young athlete to develop emotional control. While you, as coach, may remember that a superb batting average is .4007 children rarely understand that even the best of the best fail far more than they succeed. A child who is overly emotional at the plate will frequently fail, creating serious confidence problems and, inevitably, more hitting difficulty.
A power hitter, approaches the plate encouraged to crush an animated object with a blunt instrument. It is a unique opportunity to have a violent reaction rewarded, and, consequently deviates from the rest of a child’s social training. In this psychologically skewed circumstance, mental control is a prerequisite to give a batter the potential to dominate pitchers. For a power hitter to dominate, she must develop an ATTACK MENTALITY (AM).
Hitting for power involves a complex emotional obstacle course that can be termed the ATHELETIC EMOTIONAL FEEDBACK (AEF). There are three basic components to AEF: chemistry, imagery, and cognition. A child’s body chemistry causes psychophysical change that can be very destructive to her batting skills. A coach must help the batter recognize the misleading signals given by her involuntary chemical inhibitors. A wide array of physiology texts suggest that a child’s body produces neurotransmitters that affect her performance. These performance deterrents are usually associated with fear (or anxiety) and anger (or highly charged emotion).
Fear is associated with increased epinephrine (adrenalin), together with a vasoconstriction of the surface blood vessels (which makes her face turn white and her temperature cool), and a vasodilation of the skeletal blood vessels (which makes her go weak in the knees). Anger is associated with increased nor epinephrine (nor adrenalin), together with a vasodilation of the surface blood vessels (which makes her face turn red and her temperature increase), and a vasoconstriction of the skeletal blood vessels (which makes her rigid). Fear and anger also affect breathing patterns (e.g. hyperventilation) with potential adverse effects. For instance, high oxygen intake can cause vasoconstriction and low oxygen intake may produce vasodilation.
Beyond physical manifestations of her emotional discomfort at the plate, a batter must also deal with negative psychological imagery further impeding success. When a batter experiences either anger of fear, she is frequently overwhelmed by negative thoughts and images which create a personal belief that success is impossible – she assumes something bad will happen.
A fearful batter may anticipate a single negative event as one puzzle piece in a never-ending pattern of defeat. Eventually she is likely to find a single negative detail and concentrate on it, eliminating her ability to concentrate on the task of hitting. Fear (in any form and intensity), and uncontrolled anger, almost always detract from athletic performance. A batter often fears that if her performance isn’t a success all of the time everyone, including herself, will see her as a miserable failure. Anger, without control, may turn to rage or fury (a temper tantrum) which is such a violent energy release that its victims have a loss of mental capacity. A child also has a cognitive aspect to her volatile emotions. This means that she knows (or believes she knows) from her own experience, that she ought to expect fear or anger at the plate, depending on a particular game situation.
How does a coach deal with his batter’s emotions? A coach needs players to develop a positive AEF and to avoid negative AEF. A batter can be emotional, but never fearful.
A positive AEF is usually a controlled anger or a highly charged emotion. Positive AEF helps a batter be alert and heightens hand-eye coordination. When it is positively focused, AEF will usually enhance a batter’s motivation to succeed and energize her to achieve a specific goal – solid contact with the ball.
Negative AEF produces tension, anxiety and stress. Tension detracts from muscle control. Anxiety generates worry and negative feelings. Stress disturbs a players comfort level and can make her even more emotionally unpredictable.
Batting is a complex task that, for skilled batters, requires relatively high AEF to achieve maximum performance. Why? Because skilled players have the capacity to compensate for (or take advantage of ) AEF and can consistently direct the effects of AEF toward a positive hitting result. For them, charged emotion or controlled anger is beneficial; it produces positive results and useful physical enhancement. AEF is focused into aggressive batting. The batter is enthused to attack the ball, to control the plate, the game, and her immediate destiny. She becomes the mental aggressor. In contrast, a weaker batter must have a much lower level of AEF is necessary for best performance. Why? Because most of the AEF she experiences will be negative.
The most difficult aspect to evaluate as a coach is when to encourage more AEF. As a weaker batter’s skills improve, her AEF level can increase and peak performance will eventually be achieved. However, here is a fine line where, if a batter achieves AEF overload, she will start performance loss. When AEF is exactly right for the batter she will be in the “Uzone” – meaning she is in the AEF state that allows for optimal performance. A player who can find the zone can develop an ATTACK MENTALITY (AM). If a batter is never zonal, she will probably never have the aggressive requirements for power hitting.
In evaluating batters, there are a few characteristics of a good Attack Mentality power hitter a coach may look to find, or try to develop in his/her batters.
(1) The AM batter knows when to use AM. This is the most important characteristic for any girl with AM potential. Any AM batter must be able to turn on her AM when she approaches the plate and not carry a bad trip to the plate around like a scar. A good AM batter cannot give into rage, cannot allow herself to pout or sulk, and cannot have a temper tantrum. AM is short lived and task specific. You want your power hitter to have AM at the plate, but you don’t want her to take it home to the dinner table. An AM hitter must enjoy winning, but cannot agonize over losing.
Negative emotions are (2). She wants to hit. Good AM power hitters thrive on the challenge at the plate. For the AM batter, there should never be a circumstance in which she doesn’t want to be THE BATTER on whose shoulders the game depends. Pressure situations should simply help her concentrate. There is a fire of competition that burns brighter the greater the challenge she faces. She never says “I can’t”, and if she can’t, she merely believes she is not able to “yet”.
(3) She is a good contact hitter. AM hitters need to be able to find a reachable ball with the bat wherever it is pitched. AM power hitters foul frequently to protect against a third strike while awaiting a decent pitch to hit. The AM hitter stalks the pitcher’s best offering, relishes pitching mistakes, and pounces on every opportunity.
(4) She can focus. AM power hitters concentrate less on game situations and more on the proper execution that power hitting demands. She has a task to perform and must be able to singularly direct her attention to that task. An AM power hitter will see the opportunity to bat as a contest between her and the pitcher (or her and the ball), and she can tune out any and all extraneous concerns. When she focuses her AM she knows that at the moment the pitch arrives, hitting the ball has to be the most important thing in the world.
(5) She is always aggressive. She must charge the ball with authority. AM power hitters must always be consistently aggressive at the plate – not foolish – aggressive. She cannot be frustrated by the intentional walk, and must create an atmosphere where any pitch close to her reach is in danger of being pounded. She must believe that if it is hittable, she can handle it. AM lets the batter take control of the plate fiercely and aggressively, instead of merely waiting out the pitcher to make a mistake.
(6) The AM power hitter must be a swinger. AM power hitters usually strike out rather than walk. You don’t want her to be stupid about chasing bad balls, but she can’t be afraid to strike out, and she must not want to get even one called strike.
(7) She must be willing to protect the plate. She must know the strike zone. The AM hitter must be willing to defend her strike zone and not let the pitcher sneak a pitch in for a strike. When she encounters an ump with a moving strike zone, or calling knittable strikes, she must not give into frustration and must focus on the hittable pitch. The AM hitter must be able to focus her intensity on the instant of contact – the attack.
(8) She must be willing to practice. An AM hitter must enjoy practicing with and without a ball, with live pitching, and with a machine, to refine the mechanics of the swing.
(9) She must take instruction. AM power hitting requires good hitting technique. One must be willing to correct swing errors without complaint. Conversely, she should also be willing to advise her coach of legitimate concerns regarding swing comfort or loss of control or vision by swing changes. Some aspects of the swing are intimate and only the hitter knows exactly how it feels for her to swing. A proper swing can have many variations without being a bad swing. She should not be fearful of telling her coach what will make her swing more comfortable.
(10) She must care. A good hitter is a team player. She is not a gladiator, contesting alone. A good hitter will use the team as a support base to help her focus better – a mutual goal is incentive to accomplish the individual task.
Not all children can comfortably deal with ATTACK MENTALITY. Children who have the capacity to develop AM will achieve AM at different ages. Others will either never have an AM, or will never make a legitimate attempt to get it. A coach cannot be too quick to judge AM potential, and must remember that a player’s experience with the game and maturity may eventually allow her to reach the AM level.