Coaching the Mental Game: 45 Tools for Baseball Practice

with Brian Cain, Sport Psychology Consultant;
former college baseball coach and adjunct professor of sport psychology; has worked with the Washington Nationals, many NCAA Division I programs across the country and the Martensdale St. Mary's (IA) High School Baseball team who, in 2011, set the all-time National High School Baseball record with 87 consecutive wins

The mental side of baseball is often neglected by coaches due to the time constraints of trying to run a successful baseball program. This video teaches you how to effectively implement mental conditioning into your daily routine making your team more successful on game day. Brian Cain, one of the world's most sought after sports psychologists, provides a number of drills and techniques to maximize your players' performance and shares his proven program for mastering the mental game.

Cain takes the Baylor University baseball team through a series of 45 mental conditioning drills that are designed to give your players a competitive advantage. He describes how coaches can get their players to invest their time in mental conditioning. Through a variety of visual and verbal "signs of success," Cain offers drills that can be used in practice and in the classroom to help your players:

• Gain confidence by learning to control the things they can control
• Develop a routine to control focus
• Improve their ability to concentrate on one pitch at a time
• Become a `champion of character' and creating standards of excellence
• Discover how to handle adversity by practicing the `so what, next pitch' attitude

Cain tells you how to organize these drills into your practice schedule uses explanation and illustrations to maximize their effectiveness. Cain even gives tips on how to make team meetings more effective for the athletes so they can absorb the information better.

Gain an understanding of Cain's "Five F's of Time Management" and why dugout organization is essential to the success of your hitters. Cain also shows you exactly how to set up your batting practice to develop good mental habits for the on deck hitter, in the hole hitter and the fourth hitter in the rotation.

Cain recognizes that all players and coaches learn differently. The mental conditioning drills in this DVD are flexible and designed to achieve the same results through a variety of teaching methods. The drills are presented in a way that allows coaches to effectively implement them into their programs. They also provide players with quick ways to take a negative and turn it into a positive by focusing on `WIN' and the process rather than the outcome.

Repeating mental mechanics in the same way you repeat physical mechanics maximizes performance. Train your athletes how to focus, so they're ready to perform at their best when it counts the most.

79 minutes. 2012.