Mind Gym: An Athlete's Guide to Inner Excellence

by Gary Mack

Ninety percent of the game is half mental. —YOGI BERRA

Imagine you are watching your own highlights film. You feel no fear, no anxieties, and no self-doubts. Everything is flowing and going your way. Look around. Where are you? What time of day is it? What time of year? What are you wearing? Who is with you? Who is watching? What do you hear? Breathe in the air. If you are on a playing field, or a golf course, can you smell the grass? Visualize that pleasurable experience. Now, let that image slowly fade, and in its place recall your worst performance. Think of the game, event, or experience when you felt weak and ineffective, when nothing went your way no matter how hard you tried. Now leave that memory behind. Fast-forward to the present. With Yogi’s quote in mind, compare yourself competing at your best and at your worst. Then honestly answer these questions: What percentage of the difference in those performances had to do with your physical skills? What percentage was mental?

As Yogi supposedly said, when you come to the fork in the road, take it. By reading the first section, you are taking your first step.

Learn to use your mind or your mind will use you. Actions follow our thoughts and images. Don’t look where you don’t want to go.

Sports psychology is the science of success. Studies show that within a group of athletes of equal ability, those who receive mental training outperform those who don’t almost every time. Mental skills, like physical skills, need constant practice.

Hamilton said he approached his gold-medal performance in Sarajevo with “refined indifference.” He had trained for years to prepare for that moment. When the spotlight came on and the music began, he let fate carry him through. The hard work was over. Now, he told himself, go out and enjoy.

In fourth place after the short program and feeling she had nothing to lose, the 16-year-old took a leap of faith and skated with abandon. Sports Illustrated described her performance as “uninhibited joy.” While older, more experienced Olympians faltered under pressure, Sarah made history by landing two triple-triple combinations and won the gold. “I didn’t hold back,” Hughes said, beaming.

Competitive. Professional golfer Nancy Lopez clearly defines a competitor. “A competitor will find a way to win,” she said. “Competitors take bad breaks and use them to drive themselves just that much harder. Quitters take bad breaks and use them as reasons to give up.” Michael Jordan’s flirtation with a major-league baseball career is testimony to his competitive fire. Why would the greatest basketball player in history attempt to play another sport? Because he couldn’t accept not trying. Late in life, Joe DiMaggio said he would give away all his trophies and records to be twenty-five years old and able to compete again. “The one thing I both loved and now miss the most,” DiMaggio said, “was the competition.” Confident. Tiger Woods said, “Every time I play, in my own mind I’m the favorite.” Confident athletes have a can-do attitude, a belief they can handle whatever comes their way. They almost never fall victim to self-defeating thoughts. Jordan said he went into every game believing he was the best player on the court until someone proved otherwise. Very few did. Control. Successful athletes are able to control their emotions and behavior. They focus on what they can control and don’t allow things that are out of their control to affect them. The hallmark of mentally tough athletes is the ability to maintain poise, concentration, and emotional control under the greatest pressure and the most challenging situations. Committed. Mentally tough athletes focus their time and...

You can’t control your performance until you are in control of yourself. What you’re thinking. How you’re feeling. Most importantly, your physiology. Know your numbers and your early warning signs.

What has benefited me the most is learning I can’t control what happens outside of my pitching. —GREG MADDUX

One of the great powers we have is the power to choose. How you choose to look at an event is going to affect how you feel and how you perform. I see a tendency in young pitchers to get upset with umpires or teammates who make infield mistakes. Too often, people play the blame game. Successful people take responsibility for themselves and their game. They understand that it’s not the event but how they respond to it that’s most important.

The great Stan Musial said, “When a pitcher’s throwing a spitball, don’t worry. Don’t complain. Just hit the dry side, like I do.”

While you can’t always control what happens, you always can control how you respond to it. It’s not the situation but how you respond to it that makes the difference.

Rafael Colon is my bilingual counselor for the Mariners and president of Voices Internacional. On his voice mail is this message: “To achieve anything you want in life you must first start by getting out of your own way.”

In psychology there is something we call the self-consistency theory. It means we act consistent to our self-concept—our self-image. Throughout this book we will talk about the importance of seeing yourself as being successful. If you don’t see yourself as successful, then your chances of succeeding are diminished. When good things happen, you tend to discount them.

Impersonate the person who you want to be.

Fear. We all have a primitive fight-or-flight mechanism built into us to survive. It’s a neurochemical response. We are ready to fight or flee whatever is threatening us. As we learned earlier, the body treats all vivid images as if they are real and happening now. In reality, most dangers are not a threat to life or limb. They are a psychological threat to self-esteem and ego. Why else would a brain surgeon turn to jelly over a four-foot downhill breaking putt? It’s a threat to self-image. Fear actually can paralyze you. Anger. We have to learn to control our emotions or they will control us. Anger is born out of frustration and expectations. Our minds and bodies don’t always work together, as illustrated in a Peanuts cartoon. Lucy is holding the ball for Charlie Brown to kick. When he misses, Lucy tells him he has to use his mind and body. Charlie Brown informs Lucy that his mind and body haven’t talked to each other in years. Anxiety. This is a generalized feeling of uncertainty or dread. A sense that something bad is going to happen. In baseball, some pitchers look great warming up on the side, but once they step across the chalk line and onto the field, they don’t perform well. We call this “White Line Fever.” We all become anxious, but people plagued by this gremlin get anxious about being anxious. This only leads to trouble. Self-consciousness. Some athletes are afraid of looking bad or embarrassing themselves. They focus on the image of how they look instead of the...

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts. —EARL WEAVER

Build your weaknesses until they become your strengths. —KNUTE ROCKNE

One thing I learned from my association with the Orix Blue Wave is a concept called kaizen which means constant daily learning and improvement.

I believe in the Parachute Principle. The mind is like a parachute—it only works when it’s open.

Most people resist making changes. They prefer to stay in a comfort zone. The paradox is that sometimes you have to get worse before you get better. It takes a leap of faith to make changes and work on weaknesses.

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I have a dream.” He didn’t say, “I have a good idea.”

An exercise I teach is called A.C.T. backward. I want you to try it. The A stands for accept your present state. Understand your strengths and weaknesses, as we discussed in the last section. C stands for create your desired state. Dwight Smith had a dream. What’s your dream? Close your eyes, and see yourself exactly the way you want to be. Write down what this desired state would look like. T stands for take action steps to get you there. Success is a journey of one step at a time. And the longest journey begins with the first step.

Goals should be challenging but realistic. “Setting goals for your game is an art,” golfer Greg Norman said. “The trick is in setting them at the right level, neither too low nor too high. A good goal should be lofty enough to inspire hard work, yet realistic enough to provide solid hope of attainment.” Dick Hannula put it this way: “Goals must be high enough to excite you, yet not so high that you cannot vividly imagine them. Goals must be attainable, but just out of reach for now.”

Seek progress, not perfection, I told him.

Talent is never enough. With few exceptions the best players are the hardest workers. —MAGIC JOHNSON

The harder you work the harder it is to surrender. —VINCE LOMBARDI

Lars Anders at the University of Florida, writing in a paper on “Deliberate Practice,” said he found it takes ten years of practice to acquire the mastery of an expert. Ricky Proehl has been catching footballs for a long time, but it took him ten years of hard work to become an overnight success.

In sports, as in life, there is no substitute for commitment. Vince Lombardi called it heart power. “A man can be as great as he wants to be,” the Hall of Fame coach said. “If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done. Once a man has made a commitment … he puts the greatest strength in the world behind him. It’s something we call heart power. Once a man has made this commitment, nothing will stop him short of success.”

Rod Carew says he has seen many baseball players blessed with God-given ability who simply didn’t want to work. “They are soon gone,” Carew says. “I’ve seen others with no ability to speak of who stayed in the big leagues for fourteen or fifteen years… . You have to want to do the work.”

Interesting how millenials get the blame for this, when it's always been there.

It takes years of hard work to become an overnight success. Are you willing to make the commitment and pay the price?

If you are of legal age and drink alcohol, follow Knute Rockne’s rule: Drink the first, sip the second, and refuse the third.

There is a saying in baseball that you can’t steal second with your feet on first.

One of the paradoxes of sports is that fear of failure actually makes failure more likely.

Limits begin where vision ends.

When I introduced Wolfley to the crowd, his message carried the same energy and passion with which he played the game. Ron spoke of a former NFL player he knew who took steroids and had become gravely ill. “I’ve seen steroids, and I’m telling you, I don’t use any of that stuff,” Wolfley proclaimed. “The only drugs I use are the four D’s,” and he ticked them off, one by one, his rising voice whip-cracking over the silent auditorium. “Desire … Dedication … Determination … Discipline. Those are the drugs I use! And I don’t have to buy them on the street corner. They don’t cost me anything.” He pointed to his chest, to his heart. “I’ve got ’em right here.”

you can’t outperform your self-image.

Permanence. Optimists believe that when they lose or experience setbacks, these disappointments are temporary rather than permanent. Pervasiveness. Unlike pessimists who let their doubts and troubles affect every area of their lives, optimists are able to put their problems in a “box” and not let them distract them. Personalization. Optimists internalize victories and externalize defeats. We played great today. We deserved to win. They were lucky tonight. We’ll win tomorrow. The pessimist does just the opposite. We were lucky to win tonight. It’s all my fault we lost. I’m a worthless loser. It is said that 10 percent of life is what happens to us and 90 percent is how we choose to react to it. So let me ask you, what kind of attitude do you have? Are you an optimist? How do you view competition, winning, losing, adversity? How do you see yourself responding to pressure?

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

It doesn’t take talent to hustle and work hard. Invest in yourself with a positive attitude and “can-do” thinking.

Like our beliefs and attitudes, our thinking can be a powerful ally. How we think affects how we feel, and how we feel affects how we perform.

“Let me ask you something,” I said. “If Ken Griffey Jr. thought like that, how good a batter do you think he would be?” The question stopped the kid. He knew that if Griffey thought the way the minor leaguer did, the Mariners’ slugger wouldn’t perform well either. The kid’s thinking was hurting him more than his swing.

Which voice do you hear? Which is louder, the negative critic or the positive coach? You can choose to listen to the voice that offers and reinforces positive thought. It has been said that thoughts become words. Words become actions. Actions become habits. Habits become character. Character becomes your destiny.

Buy the solution, not the emotion. When you let anger get the best of you, it brings out the worst in you. The key question is who is in control—you or your emotions? Remember, before you can control your performance you need to be in control of yourself.

I have great admiration for the Special Olympics program. Its motto is “Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt.

Athletes should accept fear and recognize it as the body’s way of telling them to become energized. Don’t let fear hunt you. Instead, hunt your own fears. Pull the curtain away. Unmask your fears and face them down. Examine them.

Don’t let fear scare you. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Fear is often false evidence appearing real.

“We all choke,” said golfer Curtis Strange, who won back-to-back U.S. Open championships. “You’re not human if you haven’t. We get just as nervous as the average guy playing for the club championship.” Lee Trevino compares an athlete who caves in to anxiety with a race-car suffering mechanical problems. “Everybody leaks oil.”

You must be present to win. —ALEX RODRIGUEZ

Alex reported to spring training eager to start anew. Rodriguez is a likable fellow, and his disposition is as sunny as the Arizona sky. I greeted him with a hug. Then I asked about his goals for the coming year. Most athletes are numbers oriented. A ballplayer doesn’t have to look up his slugging percentage or earned run average. His stats are like important phone numbers—he knows them by heart. So I expected this twenty-one-year-old to say he wanted to drive in more runs or raise his batting average, which would take some doing. Alex hit .358 the previous year. Instead, his answer floored me and made me smile. “Bat Mack,” Rodriguez said, addressing me by my baseball nickname, “my only goal is to learn how to play one entire game in the present.”