Sport Psychology Tactics - MLB Players, Brainspotting & The Yips
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Table Of Contents
Introduction: Major League Baseball (MLB) Players, The Yips (aka Mental Blocks) & Sport Psychologists
All sports have unique challenges that present different psychological obstacles. Some sports focus more on challenging athletes from an endurance perspective, while others stress hand eye coordination challenges more. While every sport deserves respect in terms of their independent challenges, Baseball has a reputation as being one of the most psychologically difficult sports to participate in. Baseball is commonly referred to as a sport of failure, and there are very few sports if any where a .300 average is considered to be ‘hall of fame’ worthy.
In fact, Baseball is such a grueling sport psychologically that there are specific names people commonly associate with Baseball mental blocks (the Yips). While I have previously discussed the mental hurdles that Baseball players encounter, I wanted to take the time to discuss this in further detail. For part I. I want to discuss how sport psychologists identify the yips in MLB. In part II. I will review how the Yips can affect MLB players from a neuroscience perspective, and in part III. I will review a new approach that baseball players are using to overcome mental blocks.
Part I. How Sport Psychologists Identify The Yips In Major League Baseball
When sport psychologists work with MLB athletes, there are many approaches they use to help players improve their performance. But when it comes to identifying mental blocks, there are many signs and symptoms that will show themselves either immediately or over time. Some of the symptoms of the Yips include but are not limited to random inability to perform even simple sport movements (e.g. pitcher unable to throw ball 4 feet despite no presence of injury), freeze responses (e.g. players staring off during critical moments), stiff movement patterns or player reports of abnormal muscle tension, pit in stomach sensations, pressure in head, etc.
Unfortunately, when these symptoms are identified most sport psychologists and mental performance consultants use methods that are meant to either distract the MLB player from noticing these adverse symptoms (e.g. deep breath work, overly complex pre-performance routines) or will use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT in summary is when the sport psychologist tries to overload the athlete with positive thoughts and logical reframes to help the player overcome their negative thoughts. But one of the biggest problems with this approach is that sport psychology professionals are focused on treating the symptoms and not the underlying issues.
Part II. The Neuroscience Of The Yips in Baseball
The yips are not the so called ‘disease’ but rather are the symptoms of a much deeper issue within the brain. Neuroscience research shows us that the majority psychological issues are not due to lack of insight, but rather are a result of stress and trauma stored within regions of the brain that are primarily responsible for regulation and dysregulation behaviors. These traumas that athletes carry with them can come from either sport or from events that occurred far earlier in their lives. In the book This Is Your Brain On Sports by David Grand, the author goes into great detail to explain the neuroscience behind the yips and how they are connected to unprocessed trauma: In parallel fashion, the brain attempts to always move toward a state of psychological equilibrium. Over the course of our lives, we are exposed to a variety of life experiences, some positive, some neutral, and some negative. Through a natural assimilation process, the brain adaptively processes these experiences so they are constructively integrated. What is useful from the experience is learned and stored in the brain with the appropriate emotion and is available for future use. When an experience is successfully assimilated or digested it is stored in the brain with little attached intense emotion or physical sensation. When we recall such an incident, we don’t reexperience the old emotion or sensation with it. In this way we are informed by our past experiences and memories but not controlled by them and with sports our present athletic performances are not burdened by emotional or physical baggage from the past, only learned experience. By contrast, trauma or any strongly negatively charged experience isn’t adequately assimilated or processed. Instead, the upsetting incident remains stuck in the system in broken pieces.
The author continues, ‘ The body instantly memorizes the physical experience of the trauma in exquisite detail, including the body sensations of the impact and pain, along with the associated sights, sounds, smells and tastes. The attached emotions and where they are felt in the body are frozen as well. The brain is overwhelmed and instead of getting digested, all of the information attached to the injury, including the negative thoughts is stored in the brain in exactly the same form it was initially experienced. Days, week, months or even years later when the athlete is in a situation reminiscent of the original trauma or experiences prolonged stress, the upsetting experience may be unconsciously activated, thus interfering with the performance of the moment. These components represent all of the sensory details from the earlier event that were frozen in the brain and body in their original disturbing state: the images, lighting, emotions, physical movements, sounds, or smells. The unique sensory details later returning to consciousness cause the performance disrupting symptoms so common in mental blocks.’ When we undergo highly stressful events that cause us to fear for our safety (e.g. car accidents, major injuries, physical & emotional abuse), our body will store these issues in our brains to be processed at a later point in time. However, in doing so this will leave our brains in a type of hypervigilant state which can manifest in many different forms…one of those being the Yips in baseball. But like any problem you need the right tool to help fix the specific issue, and fortunately for baseball players there is one that exists specifically for the yips.
Part III. Sport Psychologists, Brainspotting, MLB Players & The Yips
One of the newest interventions that is starting to take the baseball world by storm is Brainspotting. Brainspotting is a brain-based psychotherapy technique that is specifically designed to either significantly reduce if not completely eliminate the Yips. Brainspotting was developed by Dr. David Grand, a former EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing ) trainer. In Brainspotting we say where you look affects how you feel, and what this means is that through certain eye movements we can help an athlete’s brain identify and process the trauma that is stored within them.
Like all psychotherapy techniques, while Brainspotting can work for everyone, it does not meant that it will work for everyone. Ultimately, Baseball players need to make sure that if they are trying to find approaches that deal with the yips, they need to work with a clinician that is focused on treating the underlying issue and not the presenting symptoms. With that being said, Brainspotting has been shown to have tremendous potential, and athletes looking for a remedy for this issue should seriously consider this intervention. If you would like to learn more about Brainspotting, click here to get started!
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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