Sports Imitating Life: Pushing Through Uncertainty
Train Like A G.O.A.T (mentally)
It is one of the hardest concepts a person can apply: sitting with discomfort, anxiety, and uncertainty but continuing to move forward. In the moments of intrusive thoughts, negative self-talk, panic, or catastrophizing, blocking out the noise and focusing on the moment with the goal of pushing through is never easy. In fact it’s difficult as hell. In high stakes, pressure filled, and transitional situations, this obstacle is at its peak. Before it got rained out, as I waited to watch the Red Sox play the Yankees in an important AL East matchup, I found myself wondering, what do the G.O.A.T do? What makes them the greatest? What makes them so resilient to this pitfall we all face?
They train. Mentally.
I’ve seen Judge do this both at games and on TV, but I didn’t think anything of it. When asked, apparently neither did most of his teammates. Aaron Judge has a subtle habit; before a pitch, he reaches down, picks up some dirt around home plate, and presses it around in his hand, before letting it go and getting into batting position. Those who noticed, like his former manager Joe Girardi, said he thought he was doing it for a better grip. Girardi wasn’t wrong. It just wasn’t for a better grip of the bat, but a better mental grip.
When interviewed, Judge admits that it is part of his routine, “reminding myself to focus on the next pitch, not agonize over the last one.” “For me, it’s just a way of slowing things down, taking an extra two or three seconds to grab some dirt,” Judge said. He added, “For me, all my negative thoughts that I have about, ‘How did you miss that pitch? Why did you miss that pitch? You shouldn’t have missed that pitch.’ I just kind of sit there and kind of crush it up, and once I’m done doing that…I just kind of toss it aside. That’s basically tossing all those thoughts out, like, ‘Hey, that’s done with. That’s over with now. Start fresh and get back in the box and get back to your positive thoughts and get back to your approach.” “The mental game is what separates the good players from the great players,” he went on to say. “So anything I can do to get that mental edge to help me stay my best, I’m gonna try and do it.”
Michael Jordan credits George Mumford, a “Mindfulness Meditation Coach,” and author of The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance, for Jordan’s ability to lead the Bulls to six NBA Championships. Mumford also worked with Kobe Bryant, Andrew Bynum, and Lamar Odom, among other NBA players. Mumford has his own incredible story about what led him to his work. A basketball player at the University of Massachusetts, Mumford was forced out of the game due to injuries. He relieved the physical pain and his emptiness of not being able to play the game anymore with pain meds that eventually led him to heroin. His recovery from addiction and negative self-talk issues led him to earn a master’s degree in counseling psychology. Mumford went on to expand his roster of clients to Olympians and athletes in multiple different sports.
Another man behind the scenes, Graham Betchart, a mental skills coach, has spent over a decade mentally training college and NBA athletes, including three of the last four #1 NBA draft picks, Ben Simmons, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Andrew Wiggins. Encouraged by his mother, Betchart started working with a therapist with whom he practiced meditation, visualizations, and affirmations. He maintains that the turning point for him was learning to be vulnerable and realizing this is a strength.
“So many people think there must be something wrong with you to have to seek out mental help. I wanted to phrase it as a skill, just like your physical skills that you would have to practice every day.”
WINS, What Is Important Now, is Betchart’s core concept. “What you can control as a player is your attitude, focus, and effort. The outcome of the game is outside your purview. If you can learn to focus on what you actually control, it’ll more often lead to a win. The moment you waver, you lose track of what is happening right now.” Betchart created a brand, “Play Present” out of his methods, and sold it to Bay Area company Lucid. The app that was created aims to utilize Betchart’s work with professional athletes to normalize mental training and make it accessible to the masses. You can find more info here. Betchart is continuing his mental training with up and coming NBA stars such as a favorite of mine, Syracuse’s Tyus Battle.
In the incredibly vulnerable article, “What I Learned Watching Lebron James During My OCD Treatment”, Vinay Krishnan references two quotes he feels are highly overlooked, one from an interview with Lebron James, and another with Kobe Bryant, in which the two star athletes highlight self-reflective mental battles in their careers that had gotten in the way of their performances.
Krishnan likens the fears and self-defeating thought processes that these athletes fight against every game, to his main takeaway from his stay at the intensive treatment center for his battle with OCD. Krishnan bluntly yet eloquently highlights the parallel he draws between Sport and Life in the quote below.
“I don’t mean it’s possible that you will achieve everything you want to achieve. I mean it’s possible that you will achieve none of it. It’s possible that you will fail completely, in everything you attempt. It’s possible that you will make an embarrassing mistake at work and lose the respect of your peers, become an office punch line, or worse, get fired. It’s possible that you will never attain financial security. It’s possible that you will never be satisfied in your relationships, that you’re a disappointment sexually, that your crush across the way really doesn’t like you and never will. It’s possible that your partner will cheat on you or that there will be another terrorist attack tomorrow.
This is the most significant lesson I learned at the Center. It’s the key to overcoming obsessions, to resisting compulsions, and to reengaging in what you value in your life. The most succinct explanation I can offer is this: the crux of OCD is fearing a specific outcome (obsession) and doing whatever you possibly can to avoid or prevent that outcome (compulsion) to the point where your actions are entirely irrational, are accomplishing absolutely nothing, and are disrupting—if not outright debilitating—your daily functioning. The treatment for this is called an exposure—specifically, it’s called ERP (Exposure and Response Prevention)—which we spent four hours doing every day at the Center. Basically, you directly expose yourself to whatever it is that is terrifying you and sit with it for as long as it takes for your anxiety to drop and for your mind to realize that your compulsions are unnecessary.”
Whether you’re a professional superstar…or not… we all deal with uncertainty. More time spent with the negative scenarios doesn’t make the outcome we fear less likely. By distracting us, and throwing us off, they often become self-defeating, directly standing in our way. We can focus on the negative thoughts about what’s done or what’s to come, the fears, the what-if’s, and the worst-case scenarios. Alternatively, we can choose to sit with it, we can take a moment to hold it in our hand, crushing it around like a clump of soil, toss it to the side, and get back in position.