Mike Mussina compiled over 250 victories in the regular and post season combined. Below he discusses the importance of adding pressure the his practice and taking pressure away from the game. This is a concept that can be applied in many ways. We talk a lot about challenging ourselves in practice to be as game like as possible while finding a way to trust our ability and not try to do too much in the game. Some players like to go back to the mindset of playing backyard wiffle ball or facing off against a close friend in summer ball when all that mattered was competing and having fun in the moment. Enter Bob Rotella (author and mental skills coach) talking about Mike Mussina... Mike Mussina said that when he was a kid, his dad put a strike zone on their barn and built him a mound sixty feet, six inches away. When he would pitch to the strike zone on the barn, he would imagine he was pitching in the major leagues. He would project himself pitching well in various pressure situations. When Mussina went from Baltimore to play for the Yankees, the local press asked him how he was going to handle the pressure of pitching under the scrutiny of the New York stage. He calmly and confidently answered that when he was a kid, he often imagined himself pitching well in the most important games. Now as an adult pitching in those games, he imagines himself hurling to the strike zone on the barn. Mike has thus come up with a way to increase the pressure and arousal in practice and decrease it in games. Perhaps Mike Mussina doesn't need centering breaths as much because he planted the seeds for confronting that kind of pressure at an early age. It seems to be highly effective to prepare yourself to deal with pressure prior to competing and to have a functional method of controlling arousal during competition.
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