Barry Eisen, a sports psychologist, reveals how to zero in on baseball mental toughness using hypnosis

Baseball mental toughness a choice? I say it is. Most of baseball is mental game anyway. And this is something that is often overlooked. The focus typically is on the mechanics of the game. So this interview focus on the mental side of, with an interesting twist.

Barry Eisen is a sports psychologist. We talked baseball for nearly 40 minutes (and then some I think even) about baseball mental toughness and the game itself.

You can download a copy of the audio file or the transcript in PDF format at the bottom of this page.

Also be sure to check out Berry Eisen’s Sports Psychology CD. Several people used it and had a dramatic improvement in their performance within a relatively short period of time.

Here is your baseball mental toughness lesson

Matt: Okay, got you I will do a quick little introduction. This is Matt Santi, I’m the tournament marketing director for www.TopBaseballTournaments.com. Today on the line I’ve got Barry Eisen he is a sports psychologist and also works with hypnosis. And actually baseball is a passion of his and several years ago he actually had some semi-professional experience within the baseball world. And it’s just something he loves doing. So Barry, why don’t you just kind of tell me about yourself, what got you into sports, baseball, what’s your background and how did you stumble across hypnosis, kind of your angle within the world?

Barry: Yeah the sports world had a big play on the hypnosis aspect of it. Like most kids from the age of five I was really ball and progressed through the ranks and then you see where the passion is and where the talent is. You go as far as you can go and I ended up playing semi-pro for about five years and one of our coaches went to a Michigan State University coaching seminar, came back with a new concept. It sounded very scary to us and maybe to many of the listeners here. You talked about hypnosis it’s imagery, it’s imagery in a relaxed state that’s kind of guiding the mind to do what’s right rather than what’s random. And our team quite benefited from that by going through these visualization sessions.

It also helped us to calm down and relax so that we weren’t overplaying so that as they in sports, you slow the game down so it doesn’t get control of you. So it made an impression on me there and then some years later I was in the business world came across somebody who made another impact. If you turn left and you turn right instead your world changes. So I bumped into somebody who became a mentor and he was a psychologist who taught hypnosis for changing habits and attitudes. And he did a little bit with sports that was more of my passion and since I’ve been working mostly with business industries, I do a lot of speaking and coaching and seminars and things like that about habit change for entrepreneurs and sales people basically.

But for about 25 years also I’ve been working with athletes from shot putters to pole vault, to baseball players, to swimmers, to divers and water polo teams. And it’s just kind of fun because I get really good seats where I want to go that’s pretty important. And also you see kids just kind of getting on track and learning how to mature in the thought rather than just playing uncontrolled. So it’s a very interesting process, it’s a little system where you just get your head and your body in synchronization.

Matt: Awesome. So I’m looking on your website at www.BarryEisen.com and everybody has heard the phrase, baseball is 90% mental it’s from Yogi Berra. How do you bring that phrase to life?

Barry: Well the big phrase today, sports or otherwise, is the basic word mindset. And once you’ve had all of the drills and all of the teachings and all the practices and you’ve gone through it what distinguishes, all things being relatively equal, what distinguishes one individual from another is how they picture the game, how they see themselves, how they take criticism, how they get distracted. The world is filled with talented people and performers and frankly the world doesn’t care how much talent you’ve got unless you show up with some kind of consistency.

And a lack of consistency has a lot to do with self image; it has to do with our perception of how we view the world. So the mindset relative to sports and relative to sports psychology is to see yourself winning, not necessarily at the expense of somebody else but winning in a more positive vein of getting the most that you can out of yourself. Not everybody is going to be a pro even if they want to. So if you’ve run the good race, if you’ve done the good work you feel gratified in what you’ve done and you don’t have to apologize to yourself or anybody else. So sports psychology helps somebody stay focused and just do what’s right even in the face of distractions which could be pain.

Not all pain is something that has to be debilitating but the reasonable pain to play through and the distractions of parents and coaches and the intimidating self taught teachers striking everybody up in front of you and you keep your head in the game. That’s what the imagery in a relaxed state that’s really what the system of hypnosis is about, is to kind of get your mind grooved in, doing what’s right with such great consistency. That’s what batting practices is, it’s not trying different stances and grips and twists and turns and shifts.

It’s finding something that’s comfortable that works for the individual and then just grooving it so that basically every swing like a golf swing is the same perfect swing. You may get into a rut, you may get into just not things going right but then again if you just stay consistent with what you are doing you hear them talking about in the majors and it’s true for little leagues and ponies and all the rest as well you just stay consistent with what you have in your head. So you don’t come to a panic, you don’t overemphasize anything playing with yourself as the expression goes as well.

Matt: Barry I had a question for you, so I’m a decent baseball player I hit 300 I hit consistently and you hear about it all the time, you hear about the great legends. They had a 76 hitting streak cycle and all of a sudden they came to a rut and it’s like game after game after game they hit nothing they are just striking out constantly. How do you clear that mental junk, the mental chatter that’s in your head?

Barry: One of the things that is kind of difficult to teach somebody depending on how open they are is you don’t focus on what’s wrong you focus on what’s right. And if you are in a slump, it happens. You can be grounding out whether it’s weakly in a weak way or you can be hitting sharp lines drives that are just being smugged by everybody in front of you. But if you just continue to do what’s right the law of average is going to drop in. so when people start making adjustments physically generally that’s enough of a distraction to pull along the slump.

Basically good sports psychology is what brought you here so far, what did you right in that 20-game hitting streak that you had? And when you look at video and if you look at tapes of pitchers and fielders and batters etc. they’ve got to go back to the basics and I don’t think there’s anything fancy about that. It is see the ball, hit the ball and you do what’s right with consistency and you’ll come out of your slump.

Matt: We both know within the baseball community there are so many clichés and you just said one, the whole see the ball hit the ball. A lot of times people say it, coaches say it they think they are being motivational. I’m a coach I run a 14-year old team and I’ve got 15 players on. How can I actually bring that idea to life for them, to a 14-year old?

Barry: With the kinds of things that I do which is being accepted more and more by people because sports is such a mental exercise. Life is, you know this is just a micro cousin of a larger micro cousin that’s out there. If you get into the habit of just going through the imagery, I’ve worked with some teams where they end up with a CD or they end up with a DVD or however it is that they are filming and the kids live in the library basically trying to find some pretty good instructional things. When somebody is comfortably relaxed there’s less resistance, there’s less judgment and if you see the perfection of a swing, of a perfect throw, of a perfect whatever it is that’s how you teach kids you teach them what to do not with what not to do. If you emphasize on what they are doing wrong, if you give it too much emphasis then obviously that’s also a picture in their head and it’s a mixed message.

So maybe a couple of times a day is what I suggest for anybody, whether it’s kids playing sports or an adult taking care of business. If you can plan what you need to do in your head more often than not that law of attraction will work for you. And that’s not a metaphysical kind of thing you just stay more open to the positive things. So if you get involved with a little short system of relaxation the relaxation is less to do about the physical body and more to do with just kind of putting the mind to rest a little bit and not bringing up history and not bringing up judgment, right and wrong and good and bad, it’s just a little simple relaxation.

I provided in my CDs different worlds full of these kinds of things so I don’t have a corner in that market nor is that necessarily a new idea to anyone listening. But the doing is really where the truth is, not in shaking your head and saying yes that’s right. So to sit down and not to fall asleep but to sit down and to relax and if you don’t have a visual of that great swing and the crack of the bat and the clean fielding play and throwing it across the diamond or hitting the cut-off man on the outside, whatever. If you can picture what your position is in the most optimal situation see yourself batting and just putting line drive after line drive out there, just having that nice, fluid comfortable swing it’s going to happen.

If you can see yourself hitting the cut-off guy, making the play, sliding in, being aware and let that run in your head. Thoughts become things and that’s your action culmination of how you think most of the time. So it’s not a very simple practice, the steps that coaches teach on the field should be practiced, should be rehearsed if you will in your mind, why not? And probably the most powerful time to do that is right as you go to sleep at night. If there’s any negative stuff going on from a world that has a tendency of producing it, it kind of puts that on the shelf and gets you thinking in a much more positive and constructive way.

Sleep happens easier, restfulness comes a little bit easier but the perfect picture of the throw, the slide, the bat, the cut-off throw those things literally continue to work subconsciously and you become what you think about. So as you go sleep at night some other time during the day for that positive reinforcement that’s what we did when I played so many years ago. I’m 67 years old I’ve been playing year around baseball when I was five I played softball hard to see an 85 mile ball coming at you.

Matt: Right.

Barry: But basically it’s the same game at any level. See the perfection in your head, do it in a relaxed state of mind. You can call it hypnosis or you can call it [0:13:35] if you like it really doesn’t matter what the term is or the name is but it’s what the pros do it’s what the sport psychologists charge an awful lot of dollar for, for people to get on track with this.

Matt: And I’m also just kind of going through your website. One of the great points you bring up is that [0:13:55] even for an 11-year old 50, 60 miles an hour I mean that’s pretty fast and it’s coming straight at you. Is there any comment for what somebody can do stepping up to the so they don’t [0:14:23]?

Barry: Yes there’s a quick little preparation, let me precede that for a moment by saying if you are rehearsing in your head and see yourself in a catch situation and really coming through. On one side if you do come through that’s nice if you don’t come through at least you were participating at the best of your ability. Not everything happens it only has to be right one out of every three at best to make them all the same. So your preparation desensitizes you to those big moments so that when the big moments happen there’s no more or less energy attached to it than anything else. Stress is simply energy but stress can build you up and that’s a positive energy talk about the new stress taking the stress of the moment pressure of energy of the moment and using it in your favor.

So all these things are kind of equal and even in big moments you can really approach it like it’s batting practice, like your coach is pitching to you. You just take it in stride and you just do what you’ve been trained to do and that’s what practice is about; desensitizes. There’s a little technique that we do teach athletes to do and it’s a little trigger or an anchoring technique have them circle the thumb in the index finger with either hand, that is just a physical gesture you can do any other motion that you like. But if you watch the pros and I mean the pros in any sport, before they do anything whether it’s to serve in tennis or whether it’s dressing the first tee in golf or baseball players they go through some rituals here and there.

Kids generally develop that themselves anyway but if you don’t already do that a little ritual that takes you away from the last moment because that’s now history, you can’t live the next moment that’s future. You can only be in this moment which is present and what brings you back to that can be just a little thing like the circle the fingers on one hand, take a couple of breaths and relax as deeply as you are going to. You see people huffing and puffing but do it with a kind of systematized approach, a couple of finger circles, a couple of breaths, relax and maybe pick out a positive term, focus.

That’s a good one a lot of people that I know use just focus, your ability to focus means everything that you have to the top when you need it and then you get into the batter’s box that’s when you pick up the balls after some warm up tosses you are ready to pitch that in or wherever you are on the field, just something that kind of calms you down and centered and focused. Little physical things anchoring or trigger mechanism that’s what it’s referred to.

Matt: Awesome, here’s another question for you is again take your athlete it’s just natural raw talent and of course I mean 11, 12 and 13 years. It’s not full potential I’m still [0:17:39]. However they have this mental block where they’ve got this talent but they just don’t focus, they don’t [0:17:50] do you have any advice for essentially a coach on how they can maybe push to get their attention when they become teachers?

Barry: That’s why God created duct tape—that was a joke. You know you have maturity levels and even adults sometimes don’t want to listen and there can be a lot of reasons why, some of it is medical and some of it is just—kids know more than adults do we all know that. I don’t know that you can get their attention other than you are not going to do it by screaming and ranting and raving. I think that you have to bring them into something, let them participate let them feel like they have some kind of control. I’m not really in a position of a coach I work with mostly really individuals who just know that they have more ability than what they are demonstrating. So I think coaching technique that kind of leads to the coaches.

Everybody has their own style; I’ve seen some harsh ones and I’ve seen some very loosey goosey kinds and probably something in between works best. But I really don’t have coaching techniques how to get somebody’s attention but I do think that if a kid buys into the process that they are more than just their physical bodies, that their minds have something to do with this, not only will an 11 or 12-year old do better at baseball or whatever the sport is but they will also do better at school too because they’ll apply the same system, the same points the same techniques, if you will, to life.

Matt: Okay so say for example I—we’ll kind of revisit the slump idea I know I’m good at XYZ, I know I can bat the ball in a tough situation. Are there other suggestions that you can build upon that you begin building a more mental consistent picture within your mind instead of stay focused on whatever I don’t do well what actually I do well?

Barry: I think kind of on the same scene if you practice in your head what you do want to happen like a salesperson giving a presentation. If you can run that through your head, you know what to experience in life situations and I think the best preparation is mental approach maybe a couple of times a day in a relaxed state. As long as the coaching is there and the coaching is solid and the coach knows what to do then the kids basically will follow through with that and end up doing well. So it really is see the ball hit the ball, it’s not see the foul ball and hit the foul ball it’s see the ball putting it into play. See yourself running the bases the way that you are taught, see yourself doing those things it really is about as simple as that.

Hypnosis is a catalyst it makes things happen faster and easier but you’ve got to work with it to make those neurological connections in your brain that your expectancy is a positive one rather than oh my God what do I do now. So that’s it it’s just a matter of consistency, you want kids at practice to participate, give their all, to pay attention and if you are doing this on your own if you want to be a step above the rest and really excel you do the little extra work and the little extra work is not just going into the batting cage when you are not expected to, it’s also to do some of the mental work in getting some really clear pictures of how you are going to be in various kinds of situations, various scenarios.

Matt: That makes sense. So part of your philosophy is we have a competitive nature and as baseball for example and teams everybody gets very competitive especially when it’s a slow game and especially if it’s a game that’s a message of we are going to win the championship or we are going home. If you knew better nature I mean how does that [0:22:30]?

Barry: I think when you are 11 or a 2-year old whether that competitive nature has been defined or not is kind of a questionable point and not everybody is in it to win, some are in it to participate. When you really get into the more rarified era and you are getting into real travel teams and tournament plays and all the kids are on the same page there’s a group psychology that’s there and of course the leader there is the coach and you’ve got to set the pace of what to do to make a failure a temporary thing in the learning experience rather than you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that.

The corrections need to be in a positive direction but basically everybody’s competitive nature is a little different. What you are willing to an event and what I’m willing to give to an event may be quite different. I may be willing to stretch out and dive pole vault four feet off the ground and you may be kind of lopping at it to throw it in. But when you get into the major leagues, you get into the big plays where there are contracts and a lot on the line you have really fiercely competitive individuals who are willing to do whatever it takes, whether it’s cliché. Some kids are really willing to do that but to get the most mileage out of the kid is what the coach’s responsibility is and I think also what’s the parent’s responsibility is if they are going to back up the kid.

So it’s not just a matter of I’m a good dad, I’m a good mum I drive my kid to this practice and that practice. Is there anything else that you are doing like hopefully supervising their homework, are you supervising maybe how they are approaching the mental aspects of the game at home? Are you setting a good example as to what a winner really is about, what a leader is about, what a good team player is about? So I think it’s not just the kids’ responsibility, they are just trying to figure themselves out in the world. You get into 12, 13, 14 it’s just a sack of chemicals and you just kind of work it out so they protect themselves and do the best. And the leadership comes from the big people around them.

So if it’s a matter of do as I say not do as I do that’s a mixed message there. But if there’s consistency and it’s what I’m talking about these kinds of things sound right. You can call it sports psychology you can call it hypnosis, you can call it imagery, you can call it preparing for the future. It doesn’t matter what the term is but if you are serious about the game and if the team is serious about the game they’ve got to get into the mind aspects of it and just see themselves as good composite team player.

Matt: Right on, you mentioned something interesting there group psychology. What do you mean by that?

Barry: You watch when the commentators are easy to pick that up, when things go wrong you see the body language, you see the shoulders down, you see people slumping forward. They don’t run off the field or off the court or whatever the sport is. They are kind of dragging and they are moping and they are complaining just looking for comfort from somebody else who feels as miserable as they are. And it takes not just the coach, not just the parents but it takes the kid to recognize that you can turn those kinds of things around that you use those to feed its moments as learning experiences.

And that kind of group psychology can be contagious. Inevitably on the team you are going to find one or two as they call it clubhouse leaders, somebody who has those intangibles. They don’t have to be a rah-rah kind of player but as long as they are kind of leading by example which how do you lead any other way really, but if you lead by example generally one or two kids on the team we always had them as we were coming up, there’s always somebody a couple of teams who with somebody else it just kind of naturally worked that way. But when the body language is down, the talk is down and you can’t get eye contact with somebody you’ve got to turn that around immediately you’ll turn your game around as well.

So there needs to be eye contact, there has to be a nice posture because posture has a lot to do with your confidence. You have to change your physiology and that helps to change your mindset as well. So stand up straighter, take a couple of deep breaths, eye contact when you talk to somebody in a correctional way and you do it with compassion, you do it with supportive kindness. Not just to be overly sweet that’s not the point really that I’m looking to make but you have to do it with some supportiveness there, where somebody wants to do what you are saying. It’s like yelling at a kid and saying change your attitude.

If you do it with that kind of intonation in your voice the kid wants to shrink back into the show that they are in the process of shrinking into even more. But if you allow them to express themselves there are things that happen between innings that literally you see in the last innings of the game it’s a totally different team that goes out there. So you can either be the victim or you can be proactive so what does it take to me instead of letting it be chance let every kid have the responsibility of being their own leader and then the leader in the clubhouse will emerge.

I think everybody has got to be responsible, not just with the proper batting stance and the proper know where you are in the rotation and your cut-off guy and all that stuff. But you have to take your head out of the armpit every once in a while. When you are struck out with the bases loaded that’s just called history, that’s just history and it’s only negative if you attach to it. So what are we doing next? Next you get out in the field and you be the best fielder that you can be and the next time you are up at the plate you swing from the hip again and you do the best you can, pretty basic human nature but it’s not natural.

Matt: They are all great points. Barry I want to say as we wrap things here you do have I want to see if I got this correctly about getting your head in the game is that correct your website?

Barry: Yeah

Matt: And if people just want more of it.

Barry: Yeah they can take a look through, there’s a lot of written material there that is overly scientific whatever but there’s a lot that’s just based on science that when you rely if you become a better learner things happen faster. And it is one that is dealing with sport excellence. There are some dialogues on the first track kind of what I’m talking about now with you. And then on track two there’s a relaxation session, you can call it the hypnosis session that I would say would be very appropriate from the ages of about maybe 11, 12 and beyond. It’s not a lot of [0:30:05] words to it.

I try to keep it really simple, you never know who the audience is and I don’t mean it’s dumbed down I mean it’s just plain English. And then it’s relaxation for about 12 minutes and you plug your own sport or your own exercise into it. So you use your own imagery to see your swing, your throw, whatever it is that you are practicing so it kind of works with the individual and it grows with them. And because it ranges depending on if they have a special for it like $14, $17 it’s not break the bank concept if somebody wants to try it this is the kind of stuff that is relatively cutting edge.

Matt: Okay right on and again your website www.BarryEisen.com and then they want to explore further into their talent maybe they aren’t 14-year olds maybe they are 16 year olds and they are getting ready to go play major level. Are you able to kind of get some input?

Barry: Sure, I recently worked with a young guy who just went to the University of California, Irvine. We’d warm up all over the place and he just needed to warm up faster because they weren’t being able to call on him quickly enough before he got centered and focused and we facilitated that kind of thing. Yeah I do work with relatively young adults although it’s through the majors as well, names they are not really comfortable in talking about but I’ve worked with some pretty big guys in the major leagues as well. And it’s all quite available and it can be very individualized too. I do sessions specifically for people who have particular issues.

And it’s very inexpensive kind of stuff it’s not a lot of dollars and it’s not a lot of visits because with hypnosis unlike therapy where you are getting better and better in moving through things and issues and whatever. Here it is see the ball hit the ball so if you’ve got the repetition generally you are going to rectify whatever you happen to be in a relatively short period of time. So yeah I’m open to either emails or calls I’ll chat with anybody because this is not a business, this is a passion for me. It’s just fun working with people who just want to do better and better. Payback to me is better life because I’m not working with sick people I’m working with people who are just looking to get ahead.

Matt: Well are there any final words do you have to offer young and aspiring baseball players?

Barry: I don’t know if I’m able to sum it all up in golden words of wisdom. You do what the coaches tell you to do if you feel like you’ve got not the right coach get other opinions and play hard, it’s fun. If you do it for the fun and don’t look down the road for the paycheck and the dollars your passion will shine and it’s an important thing to have in life, a zest for life, a zest for doing what you do and doing it because you want to do it not because you have to do it that always brings out a better element of a person. Beyond that I can just go on for endless hours doing silly generalizations but other than that now have a good time, excel and do the best you can that’s all.

Matt: Hey Barry I just want to say it’s been a pleasure talking to you and thank you on your time for this. I got a couple of points there so it’s awesome solid information.

Barry: You are gracious in the time that you’ve given me. I hope that somebody who is listening to this has gotten some benefits from it, I certainly hope so and I’m available if anybody wants to chat or email.

Matt: Okay and do you want to give your phone number or a way to contact you?

Barry: My phone number is 818—that’s in California 818-769-4300 which is the same number that you find on the Contact page of the website.

Matt: Okay, perfect.

Barry: Matt, thank you very much for having me.

Matt: Hey Barry it’s been a pleasure and good luck to you.

Barry: Hope to talk to you again.

 

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