Using Your Mind to Beat the Yips
The YIPS! My baseball career is over now. Have you ever wondered if the yips are a career-ending phenomenon?
After all, once you have the yips, you always have the yips… right?
Mystery surrounds the yips for many ball players. Players with the yips are baffled by their cause and how to overcome the yips.
When you have the yips, you think about the players who had the yips and never bounced back. Players get so wrapped up in the yips that they unknowing perpetuate the yips cycle and compound the effects of the yips.
You look for evidence to confirm your belief. You start rattling off names of
MLB players whose careers were shortened when the yips took over their game.
Your negative view of the yips keeps you stuck in the yips cycle… fearful of a bad throw, anxious about throwing the ball, muscle tightness, overthinking or over-analyzing your throw, bad throw, blown confidence… fearful of a bad throw and the cycle continues.
When the yips are in the front of your mind, you feel trapped and hopeless as if there is no way to return to your previous level of play.
Truth be told, you can overcome that frustrating feeling. You can overcome the yips.
Conquering the yips requires that you attack the problem from a different angle. Instead of looking for players who never seemed to bounce back from the yips, look for the players that have beaten them and returned to their previous form or performed even better after their experience with the yips.
When you see the yips as temporary, you have taken the most important step in beating the yips.
One example of someone who has bounced back from the yips is Colorado Rockies pitcher Daniel Bard. Bard’s example is a testament that the yips can be beaten with a positive mindset.
Bard had a successful return to baseball after being away from the major leagues for 7 years. Bard’s hiatus was not because of his lack of ability but his false assumptions about the yips.
In 2013, Bard’s last season with the Boston Red Sox organization, Bard faced 87 batters, threw 11 wild pitches, walked 29 batters, gave up 15 hits and 12 earned runs.
Bard described quite clearly his experience with the yips.
BARD: “Throwing a baseball is supposed to be an automatic action. For someone who’s done it as much as I have, it should be as automatic as walking for anybody else. And it was, for a long time. And then all of a sudden, it wasn’t. Imagine something as simple as walking becoming something where you had to literally think of the angle of your knee, the pressure you’re putting into the ground — on every step. It would make walking very frustrating. It would turn into a grind. And that’s exactly what throwing became to me.”
Bard was able to successfully return to the game by reinterpreting his mental experience on the mound.
BARD: “[The yips] would raise anxiety and basically take away my ability to focus. The same physical things are going on. Heart rate’s up, adrenaline’s pumping but just your perspective on what’s going on makes that feeling either a really positive thing where it helps you, or a really negative thing where it crushes you.”
Not only has Bard returned to the MLB, he also won his first game for the Rockies throwing 20 of his 25 pitches for strikes in his relief appearance.
The yips CAN be overcome… And the yips CAN be overcome by YOU. Looking at the yips through a different lens can give you a better perspective and minimize the stress of throwing a ball accurately.
Tip for Overcoming the Yips
Worry about making a bad throw or pitch on the mound opens the flood gates to fear, future anxiety, and doubt. You have to start by focus on the process and a positive intention of the throw to alleviate anxiety.
Instead of seeing the ball miss in your mind and feel the embarrassment of missing your throw, think about the shot you want to make and see the proper trajectory.
Do not get ahead of the execution of the throw – the the trajectory you want and focus only on reacting to that image.
Related Baseball Articles:
- How to Bounce Back From the Yips in Baseball
- How Confidence Affects Your Ability to Accurately Throw
- Your Mental Game And Solving The Yips
Breaking The Yips Cycle Audio
Breaking The Yips Cycle AudioIf you can throw well when alone, but can’t take it to games, this is a mental game issue and not a physical challenge!
The Yips Cycle is a vicious cycle that causes ball players to stay trapped in overthinking and over control…
Learn to throw or pitch freely again with my proven audio and workbook program!
My story is crazy. I’m 63 yrs old and still haunted by what would have been. I was a small frame catcher respected throughout the leagues from little league to high school . Every player shorten their leads off base for fear of being picked off. One day out of the blue I couldn’t even get it back to the pitcher and after word got around runners were just trotting to 2nd base. My coach moved me to center because of speed and catching ability and the first over thrown ball to 2 nd by the catcher I scooped up and fired to 3 rd and picked the runner off. My coaches are screaming and clapping because we had no ideal what was going on with me . Now understand this was in the 70s so yips knowledge to me was limited to zero. Well the yips came back and I tried playing some juco ball but throwing held me back and my career and dreams of ball scattered. Thru the years I’ve continued to coach younger players and sometimes I can throw and most the time I’m just hanging on to the ball like a shank . Believe it or i not I still want to get rid of the Y—- . Roy Oswalt hall of famer is a friend of mine and he always ask “ Dave lets throw some “ I tell him Roy I can’t make you work that hard.
Guys thanks for hearing me out and any advice I’ll take.
Dave
Hi Dave: You want to get away from how the arm feel because hyper focus on your arm is part of the over control. That means put 100% focus on the target instead of your action.