Rec and Sports

Baseball Goal Setting and the Mental Game

Every year I get to connect with youth baseball players and teams and teach them the importance of the mental game of baseball. Most athletes spend their time developing their physical skills to become a better athlete. While improving your physical skills is necessary, a strong understanding of the mental game in vital to become a well rounded athlete. Teaching the mental game is tough sometimes since there in no immediate gratification. But, if you are looking to become a collegiate baseball player or higher, the mental game is integral to your success.

One of the first things I teach kids is set proper goals. This usually sounds a bit dry and boring, but its important that a game plan is created in order to form a path to follow as an athlete. There are three important steps involved in setting goals that are functional. Broad goals, process goals, and action habits. Let me explain those below.

Broad goals for each season should be something you can measure once the season has finished. Hitting .400, fielding .975, or winning 10 games as a pitcher would all be examples of broad goals you can set.

The second step is to create your process goals. That is your things that you need to work on or fix in order to accomplish your end of the season benchmark you created. The key is to be specific with your process goal. It may be that if you set a broad goal of stealing 30 bases that you need to improve your overall speed in order to get the result.

The final part of this process is your daily action habits. These are simply the things that you are going to do on a daily basis to make sure that you are accomplishing your process goals. If we take a look at the example used above of hitting .400, you daily action habits may be to work on hitting a curveball for 15 minutes. This would be something that you could measure daily that would help you achieve your process goal, and then ultimately your broad goal.