The whole idea is to get an edge. Sometimes it takes just a little extra something to get that edge, but you have to have it.
—DON SHULA
The most important part of a player’s body is above his shoulders.
—TY COBB
Moments before his last at-bat of the 1998 season, baseball’s new Man of Steel sat in the shadows of the St. Louis dugout with his eyes closed. Mark McGwire wasn’t napping. The man with the broad shoulders and Popeye forearms, who had already hit one home run that late September afternoon, was deep in thought—mentally rehearsing.
“It’s hard work, mentally and physically,” the Cardinals slugger once said of the art of hitting. “Everybody looks at my body, but I use my mind more than my arms.”
By the time McGwire stepped into the batter’s box he was focused, relaxed, and ready. When Montreal relief pitcher Carl Pavano turned loose a 95-mph fastball, Big Mac’s mind and body worked as one. A ripping swing. A cork-popping sound. Away it went, a streaking line drive. The ball landed in the left-field stands for home run number seventy—proving to the last skeptic that Big Mac’s sixty-nine others that season weren’t flukes.
McGwire hit five home runs in the last forty-four hours of the season and waved good-bye to Sammy Sosa, with whom he had formed a mutual admiration club and competed in a dinger derby unlike anything baseball had ever seen.
Sports psychology has been called the science of success because it studies what successful people do. What we have found—and what McGwire and other great athletes validate—is the value of mental rehearsal and imagery.
Here is how Carl Yastrzemski described his use of imagery: “The night before a game, I visualize the pitcher and the pitches I’m going to see the next day. I hit the ball right on the button. I know what it’s going to feel like. I hit the pitches where I want to.”
The power of visualization and mental rehearsal has been demonstrated in dozens of research studies. If you take twenty athletes of equal ability and give ten mental training they will outperform the ten who received no mental training every time. This is what we call the head edge.
One interesting study involved college basketball players. For three months, one group shot free throws for one hour each day. Another group spent an hour each day thinking about shooting free throws. The third group shot baskets thirty minutes a day and spent thirty minutes visualizing the ball going through the hoop from the foul line. Which group, at the end of the study, do you think improved its free-throw shooting the most? The third group did. The imagery had as much impact on accuracy as shooting baskets.
In another case study, cited in Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology, a sports psychologist worked with the United States Olympic ski team. He divided the team into two groups equally matched for ski-racing ability. One group received imagery training; the other served as a control group. The coach quickly realized that the skiers practicing imagery were improving more rapidly than those in the control group. He called off the experiment and insisted that all his skiers be given the opportunity to train using imagery.
As a kid growing up in an immigrant neighborhood in Queens, New York, I played on a soccer team in the Polish American Youth League. One Saturday we went to Randalls Island for a clinic. I sat in wonder in the presence of Pelé, the greatest soccer player in the world.
I still remember what he said: enthusiasm and the mental edge are the keys to winning. Pelé described his routine, which was the same for every game he played. An hour before he stepped onto the field, Pelé went into the locker room, picked up two towels, and retreated to a private corner. Stretching out, he placed one towel under the back of his head, like a pillow. He covered his eyes with the other. Then he began to roll his mental camera. In his mind’s eye he saw himself as a youngster playing soccer on the beaches of Brazil. He could feel the gentle breeze. He could smell the salt air. He remembered how much fun he had and how much he loved the game.
Pele then hit the fast-forward button of his mental video. He began recalling his greatest moments in the World Cup and reliving that winning feeling. Then he let those images fade and began rehearsing for the upcoming game. He pictured his opponents. He saw himself dribbling through defenders, heading shots, and scoring goals. After a half-hour in solitude, alone with his thoughts and the slide show of positive images, Pele did his stretching exercises. When he trotted into the stadium, washed in cheers, he knew he was physically and mentally prepared.
An exercise for this section is called the mind gym. When I was with the Cubs, the team acquired Bob Tewksbury from the Yankees. At the time Bob wasn’t a dominating big-league pitcher. He didn’t have a great fastball, relying instead on location and changes in speed. In working together, I asked Bob to create his own mind gym, an imaginary retreat where he could go before games to reflect and mentally prepare. His vivid imagination created an elaborate studio. Bob’s mind gym featured a bubble-like structure—an energy machine with a ticker tape that flashed positive affirmations, and a state-of-the-art sound system. From his mind-gym bed Bob could stretch out and watch a highlights tape of himself on a big-screen TV mounted overhead. Tewskbury later bloomed into an All-Star with the Cardinals.
To get the head edge, try creating your own mind gym. You always can do mental practice, even when you are physically tired or injured. Make your images as vivid and as clear as you can. See yourself overcoming mistakes, and imagine yourself doing things well. Remember, confidence comes from knowing you are mentally and physically prepared.
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.