bipolar confidence at the plate

14U DD is technically a very good hitter and goes through streaks of tremendous success. Everything was coming together for her a few weeks back and she was hammering the ball and as cocky.

2 weeks of rain later, she had a rough game hitting and her confidence went in the toilet. Demeanor and vocabulary totally changed. I just cannot fathom how someone so skilled can have such a fragile sense of confidence. Very frustrating.

My 2 cents...

Find something else to focus on that she does really well, and try to rebuild her self-confidence through that avenue.

Remind her that even the best hitters in MLB have bad games and bad streaks. The only way to get back on track is to keep trying.

Build her up again. You know what kind of hitter she is.

So, I'm working on a follow-up to explain the kind of thinking she was doing that was getting in the way of success and some of what she did to work out of it, but I did get this very timely piece from TewksHitting.com which addresses many of the same points:

8 Steps to Having Better At Bats Today

I know allot of people wont agree with this but confidence has very little to do with performance under pressure in the box.I could try to explain it here but google up winning state .com. click on the softball link and look at some of the promotional short video clips.Its very interesting stuff. Ya they are trying to sell a book but you can gleam allot from the clips.It has to do with which half of the Brain they are choosing to use during athletic performance. will go along way in explaining the Jekyll and Hyde thing. They are stating its new stuff but it was what we were studying as part of the Olympic/team USA program years ago. It even goes into nutrition to increase focus. 35% of all your total stored energy spent playing an athletic sport is used up by the brain. what you feed it makes a difference.

guero_gordo said:

14U DD is technically a very good hitter and goes through streaks of tremendous success. Everything was coming together for her a few weeks back and she was hammering the ball and as cocky.

2 weeks of rain later, she had a rough game hitting and her confidence went in the toilet. Demeanor and vocabulary totally changed. I just cannot fathom how someone so skilled can have such a fragile sense of confidence. Very frustrating.

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