BREAKTHROUGHS IN SLUMP BUSTING AND PEAK PERFORMANCE!

Billy is uncharacteristically tentative up at the plate. He sets up way too far outside the batter’s box and his weight is always back on his heels. He looks at pitches that, in the past, he would have jumped all over and when he does swing, he’s either too tentative or much too rushed. Those who know him say he looks as though he’s batting scared. He rarely makes good contact these days and when he does, he can barely get the ball out of the infield. Perhaps all this explains why he’s batting a tepid .183!
Last year the kid was an entirely different story. He was a confident and aggressive hitter who used to strike fear into the hearts of the hurlers he faced. He was, what one pitcher who regularly faced him called “a real pain in the butt up there. He’s just an impossible out!” Billy was patient, focused and the kind of hitter who overworked the pitcher. He made you throw to him and if you made a mistake, he always seemed to make you pay for it. Before he got smacked by that pitch during the second game of the playoffs, he was batting close to .430 and leading his team and the league in RBI’s, slugging percentage and extra base hits!

Isn’t it interesting how one errant throw or bad bounce can change everything! The same thing happened to Chicago Cub’s slugger Sammy Sosa early in the 2003 season. Off to a solid start, Sosa was hit in the head on April 20th by a pitch that cracked his batting helmet. The beaning triggered a prolonged and frustrating batting slump that lasted a month and one half, sent his batting average down almost one hundred points, and virtually put a stop to his legendary homerun production.
The second playoff game was going extremely well for the high school junior. Billy had gone 3 for 4 in the first game and had already hit a double and knocked in two runs when he stepped up to the plate for his third at-bat. With runners on the corners and a commanding lead, Billy’s team was a lock for the next round of the playoffs. He worked the count to 2 and 0. The third pitch seemed like his kind of pitch, a hard fastball right down the middle of the plate. However, just as Billy turned into it, the ball turned in on him, smashing into the lower knuckles of his right hand and the upper knuckles of his left. Both hands instantly went numb and then began to swell uncontrollably. They sent in a pinch runner for him. As he sat down on the bench icing his hands, the pain just wouldn’t quit. The lower two knuckles of his right hand were interestingly deformed and his left hand was a striking contrast of black and blue.

In between innings Billy tried picking up a bat, but the pain that instantly shot through both hands left him in tears and made it impossible to close his hands around the bat. His trip to the ER confirmed the obvious. He had broken two knuckles of his right hand and badly bruised his left hand. He was out for the rest of the season and he could kiss summer ball goodbye as well.

Being a serious athlete with D-I college scholarship aspirations, Billy did everything he could to help himself heal. He carefully listened to the doctors, didn’t miss a single session of physical therapy and religiously did his rehab exercises. He was determined to come back stronger and better than ever for his senior year. In fact, when early spring rolled around of the next season, he was definitely ready. He had worked himself into great shape. He was physically stronger than he had ever been and his swing in the batting cage felt great. And then the first game came…

Suddenly he was gun shy up at the plate. Inexplicably he had lost his trademark confidence. He was tentative. He was over-thinking and too focused on the pitcher, trying to anticipate what was going to be thrown next. Interesting enough, he knew that he shouldn’t be thinking up at the plate. He knew that he hit his best when he was relaxed, “mindless” and focused only on the ball, one pitch at a time. However, no matter how many times he told himself, “relax” and “don’t think,” he till couldn’t get himself to shut off his mind and get comfortable up at the plate. Somewhere in the back of his head he was distracted by the possibility of getting hit again.

It wasn’t as if this thought was something that he was even conscious of. But somehow, Billy was apprehensive up at the plate and despite how aggressive he might have been before his injury he just couldn’t get himself to respond in that same way anymore. Truth be told, the thought of getting hit was in both the back of his mind as well as in his body or muscle memory, and no amount of cajoling, conscious self-assurance or threats could get it out of there.

SPORTS PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

Billy, like many ball players was suffering from Sports PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), a very common physical and emotional problem that lays waste to the careers of many talented ball players across all levels of the game. Only rarely will an athlete successfully work this kind of problem through all by himself. More often than not, Sports PTSD will continually sabotage an athlete’s performance, erode his self-confidence and ultimately drive him right out of the sport.

What is Sports Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? It’s a phrase coined by Dr. David Grand, a psychologist who is currently doing pioneering work in the field of sports and performance psychology. Sports PTSD refers to the physical and mental after-effects of a trauma suffered by the athlete on that athlete’s subsequent performances. The trauma can be a physical injury incurred while playing the sport like getting beaned or breaking a bone. The trauma can be more emotional like committing an error that costs your team an important game, choking away a big performance opportunity, getting cut from the team or being screamed at and humiliated by your coach in front of your teammates and fans.

Unlike their less emotionally charged counterparts, these traumatic experiences don’t simply just go away with time. While the details of the painful experience may actually seem to fade in the ball player’s conscious memory, the images, emotions and physical feelings in the athlete’s unconscious mind and body do not. In fact, you could say that the physical and mental components of the trauma remain in an “undigested” form in the athlete’s neurology and physiology. In many cases the athlete is left with a residue of anxiety and worry that seems to kick up in various performance situations, i.e. having to pitch with a runner on base, batting with the tying run in scoring position, playing in a big game, having to face a particular kind of pitcher, playing again on the same field where the trauma first occurred, etc.

Frequently the anxiety and worry that plagues the athlete is present whenever the ball player simply steps onto the field and hears the umpire’s call to “play ball!” On a more superficial level, the mental effects of a past emotional or physical trauma or injury on an athlete’s present performances are relatively straightforward. For example, if I’m worried about re-injury, failure or getting yelled at and embarrassed by my coach again, then my pre- and during performance self-talk and concentration will focus on all these wrong things. Because my concentration is off, I will unknowingly begin to undermine my self-confidence and send my anxiety level soaring through the roof. As I get more and more nervous, my muscles will automatically tighten, making it impossible for me to execute smoothly and effectively. Tight muscles always lead to stiff, mechanical and shorter movements, slowed down reflexes and reaction time, slower foot speed and body movement, mistiming, and sub-par execution.

So on a more conscious mind-body level, worry about the trauma or failing again will completely disrupt my attempts to return my performance to normal. The visible end product of all of this may be a ball player’s batting slump, uncharacteristic wildness for a pitcher, or a repetitive throwing problem like the ones suffered by catcher Mackie Sasser and former Yankee’s second baseman, Chuck Knobloch.
Unfortunately, this is not all that the blocked and fearful athlete is dealing with. More subtle mental and physical after-effects of the trauma are also operating within his body, just outside of the athlete’s awareness. Let me explain:

All traumas produce an instinctive, physiological fear reaction within us. For example, when an individual is confronted by an attacker, he automatically responds defensively by either pulling his arms in to protect himself from a blow or holding his arms straight out in a defensive position with his hands up and wrists laid back, palms facing outward. In addition, the individual defensively rises up and rocks back on his heels. A similar defensive response can be seen when an athlete falls and attempts to break the fall by extending both arms outward, with wrists and palms laid back.

These instinctive bodily reactions to fear can get unconsciously triggered whenever the athlete is in certain stressful, performance situations reminiscent of the original trauma. When this physical response to fear is internally triggered, the athlete’s muscles begin to work against themselves. Let’s look at throwing as an example:

Throwing a baseball accurately requires that the ball player follow through in a downward motion with his arm and hand, snapping the wrist downward in the process of a smooth follow-through. However, this natural throwing motion is actually counter to the upward and backward arm, hand and wrist motions seen in the fear response. It’s not as if the athlete’s arms literally move into that protective, defensive position. It’s far subtler than that. The result: Tension in the throwing motion, which completely disrupts the throwing mechanics causing the ball player to either hold onto the ball too long or release it too early.

Think about the outfielder or catcher who finds himself suddenly double pumping the ball every time he goes to throw it. Better yet, think about Chuck Knobloch’s throwing problems when he was the second baseman for the Yankees. Knobloch was continually releasing too early and throwing the ball wildly over the first baseman’s head into the stands. Why? One set of muscles was trying to respond with a smooth and fluid execution while another part was responding in an opposing way out of tension and fear, (perhaps of messing up again and humiliating himself in the media fishbowl that is Yankee Stadium).

HOW “SPORTS PTSD” DEVELOPS

The human body has a natural tendency towards health both physically and emotionally. What this means physically is that our body has built in mechanisms to help us heal. For example, when we’re cut, there is an automatic increase in white blood cells to the wound site to help fight infection. Soon after the injury, the clotting process begins in an attempt to seal the wound. In these automatic responses the human body has all the resources within it to promote healing.

This same type of natural healing process operates for psychological and emotional experiences that we have in our life. In other words, we are always trying to “digest” various experiences, assimilating the good parts to distill out the learning, and then eliminating the bad parts. This “natural assimilation process” allows us to then look back on an experience that we had in the past and be left with only a memory, and without much distressing affect or emotion.

However, this natural assimilation process gets interrupted when an individual experiences a trauma. As a result, the traumatic experience suffered by the athlete can’t be “digested” and it remains stuck in his neurology and physiology in its’ original form with the same thoughts, images, emotions and physical sensations. The athlete may physically mature and develop, he may learn new skills and techniques, but this old experience still remains with him, both physically and mentally to negatively affect present-day performance. In the back of the athlete’s mind is a fear, worry or anxiety that is directly connected to his body in the form of excessive muscle tension and tentativeness. Since muscle tension is “public enemy #1” to peak performance, the athlete’s hitting, fielding, throwing and running dramatically suffers.

When the athlete either consciously thinks back to the trauma or is unconsciously reminded of it, he doesn’t just call up a visual memory. Instead, he actually “re-experiences” various physical and emotional aspects of the trauma. At times his experience can be so vivid that it feels as if the athlete is actually going through the experience all over again. With his present day performance unconsciously affected by past experiences in this way, the ball player is left feeling totally frustrated, out of control and unable to consistently get himself back on track. Which brings us back to Billy….
Intellectually Billy knew he was setting up too far outside the batter’s box. He knew he was leaning back on his heels. He knew he shouldn’t be over-focusing on the pitcher and thinking up at the plate. He knew he was supposed to relax and just trust his instincts. And, of course, he knew which pitch was his. Unfortunately, Billy was not able to use what he consciously knew because he was carrying too much physical and mental garbage from his past injury and related traumatic experiences.

That’s the interesting thing about traumas. They can get “stacked,” one on top of another in the athlete’s neurology and physiology. For example, an athlete commits an error at a crucial point in the game and immediately feels embarrassed by it. His coach then proceeds to humiliate him in front of his teammates, adding insult to psychological injury. Perhaps, a month or two later, that same athlete has a similar experience when he makes a bad throw and it costs his team the game. Once again, the coach yells and screams at this player further traumatizing him. Then the coach benches the player, leaving him feeling humiliated and filled with debilitating self-doubts. These traumas on the ball field can be very similar to earlier painful experiences the athlete may have of getting cut from a team, failing a test in school or being rejected by a friend. The end product of all these traumatic experiences is an athlete who consistently plays scared and tentative, and far below his potential.

BREAKING THROUGH SLUMPS WITH “SPORTS EMDR”

As a sports psychologist, I have been doing performance work with ball players at every level of the game for the past 20 years. If you’ve read any of my previous articles in Collegiate Baseball, then you might remember that my specialty is helping ball players overcome repetitive performance problems and bust out of slumps. My book, “Sports Slump Busting” outlined the slump-busting model that I have been using in my work. Despite the fact that I have had a lot of success with this model over the years, I still felt like there was something important that I was missing. I continued to run into ball players who I couldn’t get unstuck. Athletes who were coming off a physical trauma like Billy’s were sometimes unable to use the mental skills that I taught them. Sometimes a pitcher with Major League potential just wouldn’t respond to my coaching and techniques. Then there was the catcher who could effortlessly and consistently throw out a runner trying to steal second in practice but never in a game, and nothing I did could help that player’s throwing return to normal. Finally there were those ball players who might have had some initial early success with me and then, for no apparent reason, slipped backwards into their performance difficulties. What was wrong?

After spending the last year training with Dr. David Grand, I finally figured out why I was missing the boat with some of these athletes. It turns out that I, like every other sports psychologist out there practicing today had been trying to solve a problem by working on the symptoms and superficial causes not on the root cause. I was like a gardener pulling weeds out of the ground, but leaving the roots intact. In no time at all, the nuisance plants were re-growing themselves. The bottom line is very simple: Unless you deal with the underlying traumas that feed the slump or performance problem, you’re pulling up weeds without the roots and the problems will persist.

Last year I attended a performance enhancement workshop given by Dr. Grand that completely changed the way that I look at sports psychology and performance problems like batting slumps, repetitive throwing problems and pitching wildness/inconsistency. Dr. Grand’s specialty is using EMDR for performance enhancement with athletes and other performers outside of sports. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a treatment method developed in California in 1987 by Dr. Francine Shapiro, a clinical psychologist. It has revolutionized the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder PTSD (resulting from traumas such as accidents, muggings, natural disasters and combat experiences), which now can be successfully resolved by application of EMDR in days instead of months or years.

Dr. Grand is doing important, breakthrough work in the field of applied sports psychology using EMDR. The method he developed, called the Grand System is the most powerful tool in performance enhancement work that I’ve come across in all my years in this field.

To better understand how EMDR works with ball players, let’s briefly look more closely at the neurophysiological effects of trauma. During and after a negative performance experience (i.e. choking, a humiliating failure, an injury, etc.) the athlete’s brain secretes progressively increasing levels of a chemical called norepinephrine, a stimulant neurotransmitter associated with trauma. Norepinephrine then leads to a state of hyper-alertness and intense anxiety within the ball player. In addition, this neurotransmitter contributes to a looped replaying of the distressing event(s) in the athlete’s mind. Think of the impact such a continuous replaying of a significant trauma would have on the average athlete. The athlete gets caught in a self-perpetuating, negative spiral. He becomes more and more anxious, can’t concentrate and is overwhelmed by negative thinking and self-doubts. The performance effects of this negative spiral are obvious: Consistently poor performance.

HOW EMDR WORKS

EMDR utilizes what’s called “bilateral stimulation” of the brain to restore the natural assimilation process and help the athlete successfully process through the traumatic event or negative performance experience. Bilateral stimulation of the brain means alternating, left to right eye movements, alternating left to right tactile stimulation or left to right auditory stimulation, (the athlete listens to a specially designed CD that plays back and forth from the left ear to the right). This “bilateral stimulation” of the brain is said to help resynchronize the firing of the two brain hemispheres and aids in restoring the brain wave activity and chemical secretions to a normal state.

During an EMDR session, the athlete is helped to focus on his traumatic experiences along with his distorted beliefs, emotions and fears, as well as what he’s feeling physically in his body. Gradually a complete reprocessing of the event and its’ attached memories occurs while the accompanying feelings from the trauma are altered and released. The athlete’s negative beliefs and distortions are then corrected and replaced by a more realistic and positive appraisal of the traumatic experience, (i.e "I’m a talented athlete who just had a bad day" or “That’s is the past and I’m safe now. I can go hard without fear of re-injury.”).

Back on the field, the athlete is left feeling more relaxed, looser and normal, “like my old self.” As a consequence, he is able to more consistently perform to his potential. The Grand System of Sports EMDR physiologically accomplishes a rebalancing within the ball player and not only restores the previous level of performance, but it actually helps that athlete perform at a higher level. Sports EMDR gets at the problem right at its’ roots and helps completely remove it from the athlete’s mind and body. EMDR reaches deep into the athlete’s nervous system and lets him work on releasing traumatic memories. By releasing the traumatic memories and the physical sensations that go with them, the athlete becomes mentally and physically freed up enough to begin to play the kind of ball that he’s physically capable of.

This is exactly what happened with my work with Billy. After using Sports EMDR to review his accident and the related images, feelings and body sensations, he reported feeling much more comfortable and relaxed up at the plate. Soon he found himself in games setting up inside the batter’s box the way he used to before he had his hand broken. He found that he was looser and more patient up at the plate. He no longer felt rushed. His coaches could see that he was also no longer sitting back on his heels. He went on a 10 game hitting streak in which he batted a ridiculous 23 for 28! The truly amazing thing was that Billy was able to totally and completely leave his injury in the past. It was no longer occupying space in his mind or the muscle memory in his body! When used appropriately, Sports EMDR doesn’t just bust slumps, it seems to erase them without leaving a trace!

For more information about getting the stuck ball player unstuck, or for cd’s, tapes and books on mental toughness training contact Dr. Goldberg by phone, (413) 549-1085, email ibustslump@aol.com, or visit him at his web site at www.competitivedge.com.