Yes Yes Yes

Baseball is ninety percent mental and the other half is physical. Yogi Berra

While the percentages are off, the preceding concept applied to hitting a fastpitch softball remains true. This is a mental exercise first, only followed by a physical action. I have faced this issue myself during my playing career and dealt with multiple 100s of players in my coaching career to solve for being a successful hitter. Fundamentally, success comes from a proper mental perspective.

Proper Hitting Mindset

The title of this article, “Yes Yes Yes” epitomizes for me the mental attitude that a successful hitter must employ. When it comes to hitting, you must be thinking “Yes, I am going to hit the ball” at all times until you say not this pitch. I am amazed at how many hitters I work with that do not start with this perspective. On the contrary, I find that most hitters fill their minds with other thoughts – from the useless to the negative. Let’s consider some examples:

Useless

“I wonder if the pitcher is going to throw me a strike?” – Last time I checked, that’s what the pitcher is supposed to do so is that really a question worth asking?

“What if I swing at a bad pitch?” – Reality check…everybody does so why ask?

Negative

“I hope I don’t strike out.” – You are already preparing yourself for the negative outcome.

“That is a fast pitcher…I don’t know if I can hit the ball.” – Fast is relative. If you think you can’t, then who’s going to argue with you?

This is where we need to train our minds to work in the realm of what I call the “Affirmative, Positive.” This is no more than creating a mindset that functions on the following:

Affirmative:

• To get a hit, I have to swing the bat;
• The pitcher does not want to walk me so I am going to see a strike;
• If I don’t see strikes, then I’ll get on base with a walk.

Positive:

• I want to get a hit;
• I want to hit the ball;
• I want the pitcher to throw me a strike;
• I am going to trust my body to do what it knows how to do to hit the ball.

Applying The Principle

Ok, once the right mental attitude is in place, you now have all of the elements that make up what the “YES” part of the equation is. Additional mental preparation is still necessary for the successful hitter, well before they get up to bat. Let’s see what this entails using a game day scenario.

• Yes – before you even get to the field, you are telling yourself yes, you are going to hit the ball.
• Yes – during warmups, you are refreshing the muscle memory so your body will execute what the mind will be reacting to at the plate.
• Yes – on deck, you are watching the pitcher and pitch declaring “that was my pitch and I am hitting that if I see that in my at bat.”
• Yes – at the plate, before each pitch you are saying “this pitch I am swinging and hitting the ball.”
• Yes – as the pitcher breaks her hands and enters the windup, you are telling yourself yes to hit the ball.

Now this is where all of the training, practice and multiple repetitions come into play. At this point, there is a decision. Trust your mind to make a decision on the pitch and let your body then do the job. I know, you think easier said than done. Time and experience will create progressively better decision making reading the quality of a pitch. However, without the proper mindset at the plate, even the best evaluator won’t have the mental preparation to swing away.

Yes Yes Yes Will Work

Now, before you jump to the conclusion that I am saying swing at everything, that is not what I am encouraging. I am saying that your brain has a fantastic ability to process information and make instantaneous decisions. “Three or four times a second, our eyes dart in a new direction, allowing us only about a tenth of a second to make sense of what we see in each spot. And we make remarkably good use of that time.” Discover Magazine When you consider that it takes roughly ½ second for a pitch to reach the plate, that’s not a lot of time. However, our brain has already made multiple calculations and 3-4 decisions about that pitch before it reaches the plate. Still, if you aren’t saying “Yes” to the swing, then adding that to the decision making is a recipe for failure.

What does all this lead to? You should only say No to swinging when the ball has reached your front foot! We’ll talk about those mechanics in a later post.

About The Author – Andrea Visser is an eCoachIt coach and is active in coaching multiple levels of Recreational Softball from 8U to 14U as well as Head Varsity Coach at a local High School. You can learn more about her experience here.