Game Pressure into practice

PUTTING GAME PRESSURE INTO PRACTICE Cindy Bristow www.softballexcellence.com

1. What • • •

makes games different than practice? Competition Accountability Consequences

2. Make these factors present in your practices. 3. YOU MUST OUT PRACTICE THE OTHER TEAMS!!!! 4. INTENSITY – is not emotion!

• • •

Happy Gilmore Intensity is purpose. It’s focus on that purpose without ANY distractions at all!! It’s NOT hard work – it’s doing the RIGHT WORK!!

5. BIG GAMES – if you have to “crank it up a notch” for the big game, than you were ½ assing it prior – you were ½ assing it in practice. 6. Peak Performance is not about focus – it’s about RE-FOCUS: • When you’re playing against the best, you’re going to get your bell rung. Our job is to help players prepare for that and practice making adjustments. 7. Practice just “PLAYING SOFTBALL”: • If you tell your players to just “see the ball, hit the ball” than when do you practice that? • Or, is it always “frontside”, “hands to the ball”, “keep your weight back”… 8. Find the Black Box: • After a loss, what did you learn? • You’ve got to find the black box, and sometimes, that by itself is hard enough! • Then, open it (examine your loss) and LEARN from it. • Following a major airline crash, the FAA searches for the Black Box in order to learn to prevent the crash in the future, NOT to be able to YELL at the pilots or their families!

9. What’s your purpose today? • “I’m going to work hard” – SORRY, not good enough!

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http://www.softballexcellence.com

PUTTING GAME PRESSURE INTO PRACTICE Cindy Bristow www.softballexcellence.com

10. “PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD” – Ken Ravizza • Heart Surgeon: It doesn’t have to be a perfect stitch, it just has to be a good one. (In a heart transplant, it takes 20 stitches with the new heart. The first 16 are easy – the last 4 are life or death. They don’t have to be “perfect”, just good. The patient can die waiting for the surgeon to make the “perfect” stitch.) • Astronauts: Practice in simulators – real situations. All astronauts are deathly sick at first, but they have to perform anyway. NASA doesn’t care how they “feel”, it only cares how they “perform”. 11. Practice Good Bad-Days: • When you’re at 60 % and not having a good day, can you still do battle and get it done?!?!?! • Can you make the most of what you’ve got? • Can you make 100% out of your 60%? 12. Mistakes: (MISSED-TAKES) The Blue Angles: • Their flight lasts 45 minutes and they have 1 ½ hours debriefing before AND after each flight. • They fly 25 inches from each others wings, while going 800 miles per hour! • Any mistake is a life or death situation. • They call their mistakes – SAFETIES – because their lives depend on it being done right next time. It’s personal responsibility for the safety of their mission. NOTE: Our players need to see their mistakes as “safeties” – they need to be corrected to keep the mission of the team safe. • They always end their debriefings with…“hey, and I’m glad to be here”. (Shows their pride and integrity to be a special part of such an elite group, and says this is not personal – it’s to save our lives). 13. PRACTICE IDEAS: • Social Stretching: - allow for a couple minutes of social stretching (talking with each other) - and a couple minutes of focus stretching (starting to focus on today’s practice) • Social Throwing: - allow about 5 minutes of social throwing (talking and not much concern on accuracy) - allow about 5-8 minutes on focused throwing where they’ll concentrate on hitting a left-side target, middle target, right-side target. • If having an absolute crappy practice: - stop the practice and line everyone up on the baseline facing home plate. - Place your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you.

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http://www.softballexcellence.com

PUTTING GAME PRESSURE INTO PRACTICE Cindy Bristow www.softballexcellence.com •

Time -

Now massage your partner’s shoulders for a few minutes (while yours are also getting massaged). Now, reverse the direction of the line, and do the same thing. Then do some relaxation for a few minutes. Then back to practice. You’ll see a much better effort from everyone right away. everyone to add pressure: Time your infielders release time (glove to glove) Time your infield’s bunt coverage (bunt to 1b’s glove in 2.9 or better) Time your outfielder’s releases Pitchers practice with “runs or outs” game Time everyone home to 1st. Get an overall time for group, than do this every few days. They must equal or beat their best group time. Time catcher’s releases to secondbase (glove to glove) Bunt drill Practice making errors Hoolahoop idea

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http://www.softballexcellence.com