Life Lesson #70: How an Athlete Separates

Posted on January 1, 2011 by admin

Life Lesson #70: How an Athlete Separates

Three Coaching Keys to Championship Athletes

Welcome to October: Off-Season workouts for the kids and playoff baseball for the pros. It’s been amazing to watch the quality of pitching as true professionals Andy Pettitte, Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum bring forth their best efforts. Games are decided by razor thin margins – a head’s up baserunning play or a single defensive error have been responsible for wins and losses.

Personally, I can’t get enough of pitchers who dominate, especially on the road. Their ability to control emotions, overcome a playoff-sized opposing crowd, bear down and attack hitters is truly, truly special. In Game 5 of the ALCS, Cliff Lee shut down the team with the best record in baseball, never even allowing the home crowd even to play a factor. What a performance!

When I analyze the difference between those that step up on the biggest stage and those with “great stuff” but are relegated to bullpen or bench roles, I can only conclude that the differentiating factor is something intangible. I believe mental toughness and fortitude separate the best from the rest.

At Lifeletics, we attempt to draw attention to… and train… this area of an athlete’s skill set. Through our Friday Night Lights program, we constantly challenge the kids with this question: “How will you separate yourself?” We bring back current pros to share their stories and what has kept them progressing through the multiple levels of baseball. And then we aim to train those skills during mental and physical workouts.

My main message to these elite athletes: At some point, all the players on the field will have the physical skills required to advance. They will all be able to run, field, hit and throw. Most will excel in one or two of those areas and some will separate themselves with freakish natural ability (see that 105-mph Chapman kid for Cincinnati – what a freak!). When you reach that point in your career – how will you separate yourself from the pack?

The first time this becomes truly relevant is making a high school team. Our 8th graders are starting down this challenge currently, realizing that these “other” factors ARE important.

So, just how should we teach these athletes to separate? What areas should we train when scouts have no tool to measure it? As parents and coaches, what the heck do we do?!

My answers after 10 years of watching athletes succeed and fail condense to three main areas unrelated to running, throwing or hitting:

  • Accountability – Teach your athlete to follow through with tasks and complete them on their own. Here’s a great example. Two weeks ago, I worked the Elite athletes through a Goal Setting Workshop. We wrote, shared and fired through a series of questions designed to get athletes to think about what they want out of this game. At the end of the session, I gave them a short assignment (4-5 minutes of homework) to complete and bring with them the following week. Then, I actually told them THIS was the way you separate yourself – the physical part is easy, but returning the following week WITH your completed assignment showed an outstanding level of Accountability and willingness to work that would be above average. Even with that warning, exactly 3 of our dozen 7th/8th grade athletes brought back their Goal Setting exercise – 3! I took full advantage of this situation to clearly point out WHO had separated themselves. All of these kids can play, but only 3 of them following through on a simple task. The concept of Accountability is easily understood when a specific task can serve as an example. In this case, we used this Life Lesson to relate how the little things in life can make or break a game, season or career.
  • Aggression – Nothing is won by playing defensively. I could go on an on about overcoming the fear of failure (which is basically the same thing), but speaking on a more positive tone, we can describe this key as Staying Aggressive. As coaches, this means we must constantly support athletes playing with aggression through all the physical errors, mistakes and hiccups along the way. Realizing that you are actually trying to train your athlete’s approach and attitude to give 100%, ask for their best physical effort on every play, movement or repetition. Take the guess work out of it and demand maximum effort. Then, once the mental decision of constant aggression is taken care of, go to work on the physical movements, and specific mental approach and adjustments that go along with that effort. All the training in the world won’t do a darn thing if an athlete can not consistently give their all.
  • Work Ethic – This term can be a bit vague or cheesy, so I’m always careful to make sure athletes truly understand what it means to work. Again, it really helps to have current pros come back and explain how their “off-season” is going. First, they describe the level of workout required to play upper level baseball. Then, more importantly, we follow up those descriptions by explaining that this is not a unique or special situation. This is simply what… we… do. Working hard is a character trait, almost a skill, that can be learned and acquired. Some are naturally tuned to a certain frequency of work ethic – high or low. But all of us contain a dial we can turn to ramp up the level of workout accomplished. Those that fail to crank their work ethic dial, whether they realize it or not, are committing baseball suicide and will last only as long as their natural abilities can carry them. Those that learn to manually pump up their work ethic, or those somehow born with a ‘run-through-that-wall’ mentality, will have a secret weapon in their arsenal to pair with the natural skill and fundamentals developed through training.

    • There are 100’s of tips, tools, exercises and recommendations of how and what to train when it comes to the mental side of playing baseball. Baseball coaches can talk until they are blue in the face about “the intangibles,” or “what makes this kid a winner?” But in the end, after 10 years and thousands of athletes, my experience has left me with this simple summary to help your athlete be his or her best:

    • Get your athlete to play hard and give maximum effort on every play>/li>
    • Get your athlete to work hard. Learning to enjoy working out, pushing through physical and mental barriers, and getting the maximum reps in each practice session is a must to maximize what you get out of God-given talent.
    • Teach your athlete to take ownership. Be accountable for one’s actions and follow through on one’s tasks.

    Whether in practice or in a game, at a workout or at school, these three bullet points should be written into an athlete’s DNA. There will be many skills to learn along the way, but keep accountability, aggression, and hard work on your short list for go-to coaching points. Thanks for reading!

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