When You Lose Confidence In A Game
/Most players have started their season already. Games will be testing your and your team’s abilities. They are an accumulation of all the work you’ve put in all winter. While the offseason was a time when you’ve learned new things, like improving your pitch repertoire or making big changes to your fundamentals, the in-season is all about performance.
Even though you’ll be learning a lot during the season, if you want to play and if you want to win, you’ll have to give the coach a reason to let you pitch. Giving chances in order to let the pitcher learn or see if she can handle pressure might be few and far between.
While struggling on the mound, the last thing you want to do is think,
"What am I doing wrong?”
”Is it my release?”
”Is it my arm circle?”
“I'll try releasing it earlier. Hm, that didn't work. I'll try a different arm circle," and on and on.
When your parent sees you tossing bad pitch after bad pitch, he must try to avoid yelling out, "Speed up your arm!" or "Take your time!" or "Don't throw the drop!"
So why wouldn't you try to change a fundamental or your pre-pitch routine when you are performing poorly? First, understand you didn't suddenly forget how to pitch. You’ve been pitching for years and had a great warm-up fifteen minutes ago. What you forgot is to trust yourself. Mental breakdowns are a result of losing the belief that you can perform. Shouts from the stands or telling yourself that you are doing something wrong reinforce the belief that you aren't a good pitcher.
Some of the best solutions for avoiding this loss of belief in oneself, or getting it back in the middle of a game, include:
Being prepared - throw a mock entire game in practice and go through a few batters in your warm-up.
Having proper expectations - you will hit a similar amount of spots in practice as you will in a game, so track how accurate you are in practice.
Having a pre-pitch routine and stick to it no matter what. Have someone score you on the number of pitches you succeeded at accomplishing this.
Don't forget what Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't - you're right."
