How do baseball players respond to failure?

Recently, coaches have emphasized the importance of mental coaching for their athletes. Mental training and the role of sports psychology has been found to help athletes both on and off of the field.

The practice of implementing mental coaching uses the power of the mind to build up different aspects of an athlete’s performance including focus, confidence, resilience and more.

Hunter Lessard, Co-Founder and Head Mental Performance Coach of Maverix Athletic Performance, joined “Arizona Horizon” to discuss the importance of mental coaching for athletes.

When asked what “mental performance for coaching athletes” means, Lessard said, “That means getting inside the mind of an athlete, and especially baseball and softball where we prioritize our development, it’s a game of failure so a lot of kids will shut down, a lot of athletes will shut down, and we even see this at the big league level.”

He added, “You’re going to fail way more than you succeed. Seven out of 10 times, you’re going to get out, and that still puts you in the hall of fame at the highest level.”

Mental coaching is all about aligning cognitive training with physical training.

“If one is working together of if one is off, then you have got an issue, but if they’re both working together, then you’ve got some serious success,” Lessard said.

He added athletes at the highest level are not only very physically gifted but also very “mentally in tune” because something else that affects the performance of athletes is how they talk to themselves.

“Positive optimistic thinking is shown to improve results,” Lessard said.