Strength in Numbers #142
Performance anxiety in baseball players is a real issue that can have far-reaching consequences, extending beyond the game itself.
The pressure to perform at a high level, coupled with the scrutiny of fans, coaches, and teammates, can lead to stress, cognitive distraction, psychosomatic responses, and a lack of confidence.
These factors not only impair performance but also increase the risk of injury. I have become fascinated about how the mind can boggle performance, especially at the MLB level.
Jordan Oseguera, the Director of Pitching Performance with our company, and Christian Conforti, an advanced analyst with the Blue Jays, and I dove deep into why elite players have greater performance declines when it counts.
Check out the abstract here and pay attention to this graph:
Notice how the Excellent performers in the regular season sharply increase their FIP (Fielder Independent Pitching), meaning they have a greater decline in performance, as you want that number low.
Strangely, all regular-season pitching performance groups suffered to some degree, with the below-average performers being the least affected. Perhaps they feel less pressure, and you see it all the time when an unsung hero emerges in the playoffs and wins the World Series MVP.
One cause of the high-stakes decline is the mind-body connection, the pressure mounting on top of the marquee player. The other, one I am most certain about, is fatigue management issues during the season, stemming from a lack of monitoring and adjustments made from the start of the season onward.
HOW THE BODY IS IMPACTED BY COMPETITIVE STRESS AND ANXIETY
One of the critical physiological responses to anxiety is increased muscle tone, which can predispose athletes to musculoskeletal injuries such as strains and sprains. Additionally, elevated cortisol levels and decreased testosterone levels associated with stress can impair recovery and hinder muscle growth and repair.
Sleep disturbances, another common consequence of anxiety, further exacerbate these issues by compromising the body’s ability to regenerate and heal.
At the cellular level, stress leads to reduced antioxidant profiles and increased oxidative stress, which can contribute to inflammation and tissue damage. This creates a vicious cycle wherein anxiety undermines physical health and resilience, further fueling performance-related concerns.
In our Certified Pitching Biomechanics Course, we hit this one hard.
You can see what happens if psychological factors impact athletes—note how it is the top-down approach to injuries—biomechanics isn’t even in the conversation here where people are looking, and neither is velocity.
This is straight up between the ears and has downstream impacts, namely impaired metabolism, muscle recovery, and a baseline level of inflammation that is swimming around. What is the conduit leading to injury in this case?
Yep. Good old STRENGTH MATTERS MOST.
When your mind is in a frenzy, and your body is not in a state of homeostasis, meaning your parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest system) is taken over by the sympathetic nervous system (flight versus fight), your strength profiles will be altered, and that’s when bad things happen.
Catch this clip from our Certified Pitching Biomechanist Course to get deeper details and some reality into the situation.
You can get the full course here.
Our players are people and real-world situations outside of the game can hijack their minds and impact their ability to play.
HOW I EVALUATE ATHLETES AND DEVELOP A PLAN TO REMEDIATE PERFORMANCE ANXIETY
To assess anxiety levels in my clients, I need psychometrics, analytics of behavior, emotions, attention, and symptomology as it relates to situational anxiety in competition.
My consulting firm has a few different people focused on the mind game, and we take our data from the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory (CSAI-2) and the Sport Anxiety Scale (SAS).
These tools help identify athletes’ responses to anxiety-inducing situations during competition, providing valuable insights into their psychological well-being and performance readiness.
This gets everyone on the same page and gives advisors a plan of attack. We understand how much anxiety distracts a player, how much they experience physical symptoms, and where their mind is at regarding their self-judgment.
We just had an article on the Yips, but out-of-control thinking can be way more catastrophic and lead to the friendly local surgeon slicing and dicing shoulders and elbows as it attacks strength by increasing fatiguability.
The bottom line is that the MLB season has started, and the pressure is on. Our athletes sometimes are not forthcoming with how they feel and, at times, find it easier to struggle with anxiety than to talk about it.
What will not lie to you is their strength responses.
When you have the ArmCare platform, you will see early on how much strength they have going into games, how much they retain, and how well it comes back.
When you see alerts, there could be more than meets the eye. You can ask how an athlete is doing and communicate a time when you had a lot of pressure in the game and wanted to make yourself available to talk further if your player is experiencing the same.
Performance anxiety happens to the best of us, and when STRENGTH MATTERS MOST is your mantra, you will catch things about you or your players’ nervous system, not just in a muscle-contraction sense, but how the brain is impacted cognitively.
The top-down approach, the ultimate chain of command, involves the throwing arm as the window into the soul of the mind-body connection. Make throwing arm strength monitoring a priority so your players can have crucial conversations with you.
If that happens, there’s a high likelihood that your pitchers will make every start count this year.
Mind Your Mind, Learn Your Learners, and Fix Stinkin’ Thinkin’ – STRENGTH MATTERS MOST.
