Preparing for Athletic Competition

in my friend, co-hosts, softball national champion at the University of Alabama and for the 20th. Cassie Riley Bochia. Cass, how are you? Yes, thank you for having me. Thank you for having me for for 20 as I missed that that one a couple of weeks ago. Well Pat Murphy, we were just talking about him prior to recording. He of course, your head coach at the University

of Alabama. He filled in for you as a guest co-host. I was just talking about how I see on Instagram. You I think what is it? You a Pat Murphy, you a Patrick Murphy on Instagram. Maybe coach Murphy. Yeah. He's a different wedding. It seems like every weekend. It's amazing. He's a lot of money on wedding gifts. You know, he's he genuinely takes an Anderson people.

He's he believes in the handwritten thank you card. He believes in the face-to-face conversation. When you feel that connection with someone, it's a no doubt or that he gets invited to so many weddings. And it's not even always softball players. It's sometimes a baseball player that he saw in the training room that he got a liking to and that he stayed in touch with that he

invites him to the wedding. You know, so it's special. All right. Well, we've got a great topic today, episode 20 talking about preparing for game competition. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast, Apple Google Spotify, wherever you get your podcast or on I Heart Pandora as well. And you can watch the show. Some all strength Academy YouTube page again, episode 20 today, preparing for game competition.

And you know, sometimes the universe really casts works in your favor. Last night was at the gym thinking about this. And I wasn't 100% didn't feel well physically. Not that I was hurt, but I didn't feel well physically and just wasn't 100%. Whether it was fatigue, I don't know, not sure. Probably fatigue, but that kind of translated to mentally. Now I have to get into a

certain state of preparing for what I need, what I need to do, lifting in the gym. Anyway, long story short, thinking about it, it kind of relates in that I was wondering how many athletes go. And this more so because I don't want to really put the professional side in this. They have different coaches and different resources, but talking about high school athletes and collegiate athletes

division one, two, and three male and female. How many times a year? When athletes go into competition, they're not fully prepared because their bodies don't feel good. And mentally they are just not feeling right either. And they're not really fully prepared for that game competition. Yeah, you bring up an interesting point. You know, we might not be 100% physically there because especially as you get a

little bit older, like we might have to accept like, hey, we're not always going to feel our best. You might have a cold. You might something might be going on, but that doesn't mean we don't. We can't also be prepared. Right now, granite. You might be mentally off because you aren't prepared. But I think, you know, as the maturity of an athlete develops, they start to

realize, hey, I have to figure out not just how to play well in my eight days, but how to still be successful and contribute on my B days or my C days are. No, because who knows what if you wake up the day of the championship game and you're just physically worn and we need to still figure out a way to be prepared and whatever capacity

that may look like and still give our best effort in that game. And maybe maybe what for some athletes a better and analogy is a gas tank analogy, you know, you might not always be full going into the game, but to be mentally prepared or to be overall prepared is to say, okay, can I still give what's in my tank? Or am I going to be

too preoccupied by the quarter tank that's missing to miss out on actually contributing to my team today? Yeah, it's amazing to that you speak better to this. When you're not feeling well physically, you're just not all there physically tired fatigue, whatever. How it does sometimes trans late, mentally, and you have to be how mentally strong you have to be to be able to perform at your

highest level and gut out that performance. Yeah, and it's tough to because I remember we were playing a game against Washington. And it was a high pressure game under the lights. Number one and one pole versus number one and another pole. And we had so much adrenaline. And Murphy took us to the side and said, hey, you can't go tackle them. Like this is not our

sport. And so I've, you know, I've had experiences playing basketball, but I've never played a very physical sport where, you know, actually having like that physical like energy in the tank, like you need to muster, you need to really dig deep to order to like come with it physically. Whereas we play such a skilled sport where it's really this short burst and then a like a

mental recovery to short, you know, so it's a little bit of a different aspect. But I do wonder how that, like, you know, my, my change, someone's mentality, but I do think in our sport. That is something to, to just consider is like, hey, we don't actually have to go tackle them. Like for a little bit fatigue that day, we're going to be able to fight

muster away to. We need to be successful in three of us or four of bats, you know. So there's the four seas. This is an article on stack.com and you wrote for stack.com, a couple of articles back in the day. But the four seas of competition, four seas of preparing for games, contributions, and pose your consistency confidence. And this goes okay. The most important one to

me though is this composure. It could be wrong. No, I mean, well, I think it depends on the individual, right? Like I so interestingly enough, when I played, I used to keep the rubber band on my wrist and every now and then I would write my what I thought was like my personal phrase, I guess, that just helped me stay center and it was calm, confident,

focused and control. So not too far off from what we talked about with Slack, but to me, confidence was something I always lacked in. So that was ended up being my mind that I always lend it towards like, okay, this is probably the one that needs my most attention. Maybe for a little bit of a higher pressure game when we're on television or, you know, maybe

if there's like a bunch of family coming into town, composure might have been something that I would lend towards, but I think I really do think it depends on the individual and probably the which one they feel like they are they're lacking with a little bit here and there. All right, well, be sure to follow us on social media. I'm at Jim Tara and Cassie. Cassie

RB on Instagram at Coach Cassie RB on Twitter. And of course, again, subscribe to the YouTube page. So I'll post strength Academy for some great videos, coaching videos. And of course this podcast and previous episodes and clips from previous shows and the catalog of shows that we've done here, episode 20 today, preparing for athletic competition, preparing for games, what kind of questions, Cass, to ask an

athlete, what are you asking that athlete, what are you zeroing in on for that upcoming game to prepare for the game? So I'm trying to get a feel of what their perception of that game is, right? Are they are they feeling good about it? Are they and they might they might say like, yeah, I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good. And they're like talking a little faster.

There may be fidgeting a little bit. And you know, so it's it's not sure. It's not exactly. Yeah, I'm looking at the whole story like, okay, you know, they might be a little nervous or maybe they are in tune with how they're feeling and they're not as veiled and they're being honest and they're like, you know, I'm not sure. I've never faced a lefty that there

was as hard like I you know, I've been watching video on her and and what we can start to zone in on is, okay, it's not necessarily what I think is the most impactful thing that needs to be worked on, but this is I need to kind of look in at it from the athlete size and say, what do they, what do they feel like they

might need to work on her and grant it like as a coach, they might not need us if they knew exactly what they need to work on. So we're trying to I'm trying to help them understand, listen, we might not have faced a lefty, but the drill we did last week mimics this type of pitching and they're like, oh, okay, and then that'll be our focus,

you know, and we need to lend towards a physical focus for the day. Or they might come in and just be really lacking confidence and I might need to go back to my notes and only pick wheelhouse items so they're feeling really, really good sometimes, you know, at that Pittsburgh camp I was at for the pirates that here we are, we're sitting with some of the

best minor league players in their organization. There's a lot of money spent on them. And they're like, you know, like, sometimes the best hitting coach is just the guy that makes the hitter feel good, makes him feel like he's a great hitter. It's not someone who knows every single aspect of the body. And I think that's that's maybe where you need to go to when you're

preparing that athlete for the game. Sounds like, though, you need coaches who have that not just knowledge, but that actual wisdom that could help that athlete get to where they need to get to mentally preparing for games. Sure. Yeah, I mean, the wisdom part is so important. Because a lot of times ego gets in the way a coach is going to say, hey, we have to

work on this. This is part of our plan. This is part of this. It was part of that, whatever it may be. I think so many times the ego gets away in the way of the coach to be able to impart that wisdom and says instead of being like, Hey, what's the best thing that my athlete might need for me right now. It's well, this is

the plan. This is what we're working on when I played. This is what we did. And that's that. Instead it might be. Hey, let's take a look at what this athlete is feeling. They might be experiencing some anxieties completely different than what I played with or what I experienced and their prep for a game. Should hopefully look different athlete to athlete person to person and maybe

game to game. What works one game is not going to be the same that works in another and that's important. I think. For the coaching community to really hold on to. Okay, so let's move on now to developing a scouting report against opposing pictures of a lot of information out there, especially at the professional level. With the Pittsburgh pirates, but there's also a lot of information

and a lot of data that's being collected at the collegiate level, even maybe some with at the high school level with all the new technology that's out there as well. How to decipher through scouting reports, different data, different information, different forms of information to get that player ready to go for the game and prepared mentally. So you know what's interesting enough is we know I was

I was asking at that Pirates came just not to keep bringing up, but I said, how do you guys prepare for a game, right? How do we prepare the hitter for that game? And he said the biggest issue I see is we have an athlete on an iPad or phone looking at their swing, trying to analyze their swing and what's going on. And they're missing 10

to 15 pitches of the next guy there about to face who star warm up pitches. And what I think we start to forget as hitter sometimes and maybe we forgot it as a hitting coach was just how important actually seeing the picture is. If phenomenal picture every time you see a pitch coming from them, the scales tip in the hitter's favor. So how do we not

lend to film? How is that not sometimes the first piece that we start with. And you know, I remember we would just we would put up a bring up a video of a picture pitching on on TV and and granted. It's not from the hitter's perspective. But we're sitting there and we're in our stance and we're just trying to feel like, okay, how does this hitter

or excuse me? How does this picture move? Like what is their cadence? Like is sometimes the most effective picture is a pitcher who looks like they're about to throw hard and doesn't or looks like they're about to throw slow and ends up throwing faster. Right. So just those little pieces, you're trying to add to your subconscious. You're trying to add to the puzzle to help you

figure out. How do I get my barrel to the ball and to be able to work on that timing is going to be so huge for for the athlete and then also for the coach helping that athlete prepare. So I'm a huge fan of visualization. I'm. and more. Hey, this girl might throw all over the place, but this is, you know, it was very coach driven.

This is where she's hitting the zone consistently, and this is where we're going to attack. And it was like I was it low and outside, middle and like this is it. She might throw all over the place. But like this is it. And that was like that's where you start to focus in. I am. And go from there. Yeah. No, I'm not. I don't know why

some of those things, but I'm going to be. I'm going to go a little off topic here, but I have to ask because I have I asked this question. I think on last week's episode of the lab Epstein hitting podcast, please subscribe if you haven't done so already, by the way. But are we creating with all this data and all this information you would know as

a coach because you have your your fingerprints on all of it. Are we creating or coaches who are inexperienced and don't have that wisdom. They may have the knowledge, but they don't have the wisdom. Are we creating showcase type players throughout the country? High school, college, baseball and softball male and female. Is that something and kind of lack of a better term? Excuse me. Kind of

a pandemic as it pertains to both baseball and softball. Or am I just off base? No, I think it's 100% an issue. And if you know, I think it probably was happening before the data and before the metrics, it probably happened when you had these tournaments that were, you know, I can't speak to baseball exactly how the parameters work, but softball. You have all these teams

in one tournament. And the only way you get it to work is if you have an hour and a half drop the time limit. So it doesn't matter who wins or loses the entire tournament. It doesn't matter who won. And sometimes you have showcase camps before that tournament that make the games matter even less. So if we've just been making these games and the actual like

gamer athlete matter less and less and less. That is going to it's I think it's actually already starting to flip flop. I think we're already starting to trend in the opposite direction because anybody who. That's just a question being a bet for the better. I think for the better, like less, less and like we're always going to have technology. It's a part of our game. Sure.

We're always going to have video. It's a part of our game. But we are starting to realize that, hey, it doesn't matter what you do off of a tee. It doesn't matter what you do. What your exit Velo is in practice. I want to know what that looks like in a game. So although we had this period where like people were so metric driven in it.

And I really do think people are trying to do with hitting what we did with pitching where it was like, hey, if you throw 90 something miles an hour for every one mile an hour, that's how much lower the batting average is going to be. So like we start chasing miles per hour there, but it's. It's not the same in hitting hitting is is such a

different animal than pitching is. And then even so even talking to any MLB scout when I ask what you're looking for the last you know granite they'll use metrics for development, but they're not using it to evaluate. And I think that is really the difference that we need to harp on is it's an evaluation tool like anything else. Not a determination of someone's future success or

not. You made a great point there to pitching trying to make hitters and use that data make it all applicable. You can't really do that because again, pitchers and you they use that data to pitch design can't really swing design. There's certain I've talked about this before. There's certain absolutes that you have to have in a swing. I know everybody swing is different, but there's also

those certain absolutes you need to have in your in your swing to actually be successful at higher levels. 100% and I think the biggest difference is the reaction piece. It's like you can running back design like you can you can call a play, but you don't call every step of that play because he's reacting to what's happening. You know what I mean? And and I it's

it's that you know the the same reason why. A like a pre designed drill is not going to make a very good athlete faster. They might be able to do it well because they're so good athlete it's not going to help them is because we need to add that chaos. We need to add the ability to react. We need to prepare these athletes in a way

where it's not the same pitch down the middle over and over again. It's not the same drill. It's not the same schedule. We're very like we're adding all this variability because that's what our game is our game is variability. And if they if we get them really good at making adjustments. If we can intentionally train adjustability. How much better could we prepare an athlete then then

they don't need a coach. They don't need a metric to lean on it's no I'm confident in my ability to adjust now. So that's the question that's our topic today episode 20 please again subscribe to the podcast Apple Google Spotify wherever you get your podcasts and watch the shows up. All strength academy you two page. Prosh previous episodes as well episode 20 preparing for game competition

any questions email us Jim podcast 21 at gmail.com let's discuss a little bit about creating a plan having that plan in place and creating a full proof plan for preparing for games mentally and preparing for game I'm going to stop looking at my swing on a Thursday because I know if I have videos of of mechanics and my swing come Friday Saturday I'm not going to

be successful so it is getting to know yourself. I can tell you what has worked for a lot of athletes that we work with that journaling aspect is huge like a free journal where it's like hey let's dump anything that's on your mind right now out. Let's clear mine okay how are we going to prepare and it's it's a lot of confidence resume stuff it's reviewing

your previous successes it's if you got to watch a highlight tape of your best performances ever right before you had an iPad how good would you feel so we're reviewing previous successes we're practicing that vision. visualization from previous successes and then we're trying to apply that visualization practice to future successes okay we can remember what it looked like felt like when when we hit that home

run off that really great picture now let's translate that into okay I'm going to visualize myself doing that this weekend I'm going to visualize myself doing that off of this picture I'm watching film off of and and again when you talk about training for adjustments and variability you have to talk about training for adversity which we've got into length about but that's also valuable I think

to say okay let's review what your failure recovery method going to be this weekend and it's you know I'm going to pick up dirt up drop it reset that's how I'm going to get to my next pitch cool we're going to practice that now off frontos you know so I think just making sure we can have a blend of our game preparation in our practices will

be big. Yeah I was going to say how do you block out that adversity because that always you know creeps in and and that's part of not out-siking yourself but part of I think out-siking yourself is is thinking too much about trying to prepare for games and it's not coming as natural as it should be right so how do you kind of block out that negativity

sure you know I think it's it's it's and when I say we brain dump it's we're trying to get that out we're trying to lean into it because if we have something that's really nagging at us if we have this you know it's like when you you go through your day you go to lay down to bed at night and you're like all that time I

struck out with the basis of it like that's the first thing that pops in your head is you're trying to lay down we probably need to talk about that instead of just keeping ignoring it because it is going to continue to pop up and it's almost like your body is going to go back to it during moments of that stress like you're going to get to

the plate with the basis loaded is well shoot I've just tried to block this and I haven't actually dealt with it and now what do I do so sometimes we'll we'll take an athlete through a little bit of visualization practice and I'll say okay bring me back to that moment and she's sitting there he's sitting there and they're describing what was going on who is in

the stands the lights were on with the crowd sound like what I felt like we're walking through the plate this is the this was the pitch I got this is pitch I thought I was going to crush and we reenacted a little bit and we either try to visualize success in that moment or we actually try to do it off front toss we said okay I'm

going to throw that same pitch again and then we work through it until it almost desensitizes us to it happened we're moving on and and and and now we can get rid of it so if it's a moment like that we can typically do it but it's also just to recognizing that these are very very normal to have these adversities and failures and and the best

don't it's not that the best of the best don't experience these failures it's that they're just really really practiced at dealing with them and moving on from them instead of dwelling on them and having those be what defines their practices or defines their their next game. Yeah you want to be a professional athlete part of that is or even a collegiate athlete at the highest level

part of that is being prepared mentally and understanding yourself mentally to get in that right mindset. Sure. Yeah I mean that's when you look at the best like even you're watching World Cup soccer you're watching whatever it's like okay hang on every single one of these people are physically talented so then if the talent is is even who wins how are you determining who wins and

it is that mental prowess it's that mental preparation and it's sure there's a game games of inches and sometimes the inches don't fall your way but that mentality is what's separate to you when you get to that that next level. So I'm not going to be honest on everything today episode 20 preparing for games did I miss anything. No I think you know at the main

point is that it's not going to be the same you're not going to be able to say hey here's this cookie cutter approach that works for every single player preparing for game. Get to know your athlete find out where their anxiety's life find out where their confidence is lie and then that's how you can start to prepare that's where you can begin to start to prepare

an athlete for games. Yeah. Hey next week episode 21 and don't forget to follow Cassie at coach underscore Cassie R.B. on Instagram. And I think that's really where you know coaches sometimes get stuck and I've experienced burnout too where I have this athlete and I'm like how do I progress them with their speed and power right now how do I progress them with with developing their

world. How do I progress them when they don't even know what it feels like to launch and so whether you have a low end athlete or high end athlete four levels to every category four phases and every level four drills and every phase it comes out to 504 drill so all with a video 504. Okay. 504. It's a little bit worse a little bit more than.

How many years did it take you to come up with the five. You know what it sounds crazy but I'm not going to be able to do it. I've coached for technically I've been giving him lessons since I was 18 I really started it professionally at 22. So I don't know how long that takes but it kind of when you when this is your passion I

we have huge NHL hockey glass in our in our facility that outlines our walls and I remember I put headphones on one day and I grabbed three dry race markers and I just started writing and I was like okay like this could be a phase this could be a level this could be this this could be that and I'm like and then it just became very

easy where I was like well these drills fall in this category and then you know you're walking your dog and you're like these drills will fall in that category. Yeah. So it's it's hard to pinpoint but to film it and put it together and be able to share it is what I'm excited about. I think what people want to know is what were you listening to

when you came up with these drills. Oh like what's my headphones on when I was in that stuff. Yeah, what was the music? What was the talk the genius behind the genius? No, I listen to instrumental just no no verbal. No, you two. instrumental. Yeah, there's an app called Endel that I was messing out with. It's like just just a beat sometimes. And then it's like

study music or like focus. Right. Yeah. There's YouTube channels for that. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That usually helps me just block everything out. There's something that would help athletes prepare for games too. Music or you know, yeah. Shoot and good. Look, that's my perception of what has worked for me or hasn't you know, so yeah. Honestly, the power of recording yourself, you talk about that, that's the

four C's or like your personal mantra being like, I am calm, I am confident, I'm focused, I am under control. I am, like, I am, I am confident because I've earned the right to be confident because I have done this. I've woken up in the morning and done that. You know, whatever, whatever. If you speak that into your voice recording and maybe listen to that right

before again, you realize how empowering listening to yourself tell you read back your own words to you. You know, that that behavior is huge. Damn straight. What you just said has pumped me up for next week's episode, episode 21. Have a great week, everybody.