Sports Psychologist Explains What Causes the YIPS | Mental Game LIVE

so let's talk about The Yips now let me take a step back you ever had a moment where you were drinking coffee and all of a sudden you spilled it was hot didn't feel good you know this big stain that you're gonna wear all day and you're probably like oh man I got a big presentation it's stressful I can't do this whatever right and you you probably felt a little embarrassed like I remember when I was in college one of my most embarrassing moments ever I was in college and I'd taken an exam it was biology big large classroom at LSU big Amphitheater and I always tried to take my test fast my idea was if I was good and I knew the material I could get done fast trust your instincts go with it and I'm in there and I'm taking the test and I get done and I'm like I want to be done fast because the other way I looked at is if you had an hour and a half class you took a test in 30 minutes you had an hour of free time and I'm taking the test and I'm standing up I'm looking at my Scantron and I'm stepping down just making sure that all the bubbles are filled in and I tripped on the desk in front of me and I go falling on top of the person the poor people in front of me like I'm not small right and here I go I go falling down right in the middle of a quiet test and I was so embarrassed in fact everybody kind of laughed and probably helped somebody cheat because I created a distraction but the truth of the matter was I kind of worried the next time I went back in there everyone's gonna go haha that's the dude that's the doofus that fell down the steps okay and so embarrassment played well if you think about sports we compete on a regular basis we do everything we can to compete at our best and there are times that sometimes we make a fool of ourselves but there's nothing more embarrassing Than The Yips we can choke Under Pressure we can struggle when it's at its biggest moments but at the end of the day when we choke and we make a fool of ourselves because it's something simple God Almighty is it back it first really started studying it or like thinking about it about 40 years ago there was a second baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers by the name of Steve sacks Steve sacks and he wasn't the first okay but he was one of the most prominent he was the second baseman for the Los Angeles and he had Hollywood looks right Hollywood looks and he was you know just had everything going on and at that time the the Dodgers were winning and all of a sudden he started struggling to throw the ball from second base in his position to first base like I'm not talking like struggling like first baseman movement I'm talking like bouncing balls sailing him into the to the stands and you know crowds and opponents with jeer and they'd ahaha funny funny funny right the reality was his neurological system was hijacking itself and that's what happens okay so recently as you know many of you found me because of fix and Frankie I was fortunate enough to bring in Frankie from uh Barstool and foreplay because he texted me and said dude I can't chip at all I can't chip I'm blading shots I'm chunking shots and it's so embarrassing and so I was like look I guarantee you I can fix you because I've had a lot of success working with people who have blocks that have hips and they just can't get it done and so it was a really cool experience because it's really not that hard so Bash as a catcher did you ever have throwing yips I never had throwing Yips but I'm scared of them were you scared of them absolutely because so the thing that I hope you're you're gonna answer and this is why I'm so interested in this but from a Yip standpoint and just because I played the position uh the major college level in the professional level the issues that I've seen with the UPS are the the from a catching standpoint throws back to the pitcher yeah useless throws but you asked me to throw a laser beam to second base this is no problem correct and there could be a lot of different components so I'm really interested in hearing what you had to say on that because from a novice as a novice who doesn't know anything about it like I cannot wrap my head around it right and what happens for you guys to know I'm gonna go through I'm gonna go through some graphics here in a minute it's going to take you through it but what happens is a player just all of a sudden forgets the easy things nobody ever gets the gifts on the hard things they only get the gifts on the on the difficult things okay all right excuse me on the easy things like the throws from a catcher to first base catcher to uh pitcher second base to first base chipping around the green short putts I've had a few with driver Yips um blocks on a round off back handspring tuck people all of a sudden bulk and it's the same pathology so bash we're going to go to the the the the graphics now or is there a video is there a video that we had we're gonna do that in a minute oh jumping ahead here okay pull up Graphics yep pulling up Graphics here we go Graphics coming up let me tell you what happens okay here they come all right here's what happens okay so everybody I've ever worked with in The Yips they've gone along just fine for a period of time but more than likely they've had an underlying mechanical flaw that has never come up to the surface they're jumping along they're bouncing along they're chipping they got a funky grip they play it weird they make it work okay a first base their second baseman gets up and they kind of Chunk it over to the first base and they're fine but they've got a little mechanical flaw and they've been able to play with absolutely no issues until boom something happens they get under an increased pressure something happens with stress and what I call the catastrophic event there's a moment where all of a sudden they go to throw it and they Oh short arm it the ball bounces and their own teammate starts laughing at them so funny I had a golf pro tell me PGA teaching professional really good player he's like Doc I don't play golf anymore and I said what was the event he's like yeah there wasn't an event I said bull what was the event and he says well all right there was an event he said I was coming down the stretch I was playing in a pro member I had a buddy of mine that I was playing with we have a lot of fun playing together he's the member I'm the pro we're coming along and I go to hit a chip in front of the big Amphitheater of all the players standing around drinking beer watching everybody come in and they would jeer at you and yell at you and it was fun right until I flubbed a chip he sails right in front of the green as an easy chip I just flubbed it ball went that far and all of a sudden everybody starts yelling and screaming at me and they're like you suck you whatever and he said normally it wouldn't have bothered me but that catastrophic event all of a sudden he said within seconds I felt the pressure it's like oh my God he goes I couldn't even feel my hands my heart was pounding and my head was racing I said how did you hit the next Chip he said I walked over to it I'll just hit it real quick I said you hit a good one he goes hell no I bladed it over the green and I said what you had to hit another Chip he said yeah now I have to walk up there while everybody's yelling at me and laughing at me I had to walk on the other side of the green and hit another chip and all I wanted to do was to be done to get it over with and if you remember I think we have a video that's going to come up in a little bit to show some of them but there was a very famous scene of Ernie Ells at the first hole at the Masters on the very first hole of the tournament he gets up there and he starts hitting putts and you could just see him moving faster and faster and faster and it's like the Mind goes into Panic you get this increased arousal increased mental energy and all of a sudden it's painful now I want you to understand it like this I treat this um I try to look at this this way you have an alarm system in your house okay and in that alarm system you're hanging out middle of the night and at two o'clock in the morning your alarm goes off Louder Than Hell right and all of a sudden you get up and the first thing you think is Holy crud something's wrong something's the matter right now in that moment what is your mind thinking is your mind thinking huh uh man maybe a bird hit the window well bird doesn't really fly two o'clock in the morning uh maybe maybe the moisture changed the seal of the window no in the middle of the night all of a sudden you think threat threat threat right somebody's breaking in now they've been in an environment where there had been break-ins and there had been people breaking into the middle of the night now that alarm going off is telling you there is a problem it ain't telling you that there's something else going on 100 you've got to be in fight or flight response surge of adrenaline get ready to fight we're gonna go find the burglar we're gonna protect our house is that what the alarm told you the alarm told you that there was an intruder coming to take and do bad things to you and your family right that's what the alarm is saying nope but the alarm is actually saying is there's a disconnect between the sensors the alarm is alerting you to a Potential Threat not a real one but the discomfort that we feel there is bad and that's why people have like a panic attack we have panic attacks we have this pain in our chest heart races we think we're having a heart attack it's a real it's a false alarm that looks real well now our mind starts going uh oh if this happens again I don't know if I can handle it well in The Yips the driving factors not only in loss of control not only fear of that happening is people are going to think I'm an idiot people are going to think I suck and then I love the fact about The Yips throwing I I know Alan jager's on here he's a master in the middle game in baseball and I know he's heard this a zillion times too hey you know as a thrower make sure you accelerate through the throw looks like you're kind of guiding it like snap that wrist you know make sure you get a good turn now the player gets over it and their mind is going wild on mechanical thoughts they're very internal right and they start developing because that embarrassment is there let's go to that next slide Bash and now we start fearing that they're gonna happen again they start building the tension Rises and now there's a new challenge and it's amazing we used to say in baseball that the ball always finds fear at the end of a game got a short stop that's a little concern to throwing grab Fielding ground balls all sudden it's a bad hop every single time right the ball doesn't find confidence it finds fear well if you've got chipping yips or putting Yips well don't leave it three and a half feet short guaranteed to leave it four feet short 100 now you're gonna have to face it and what happens is that false alarm starts telling stories again embarrassment Rises you get unbelievable tension your mind is going a mile a minute and you have this increased Focus on your mechanics in putting one of the things I had I spent some time with Brad Faxon the best Putters to ever play on the PGA tour and I was working with a player at The Yips and he said you know in putting those of you have had putting hips I'm gonna jump between a few things is that people take the club back and everybody goes looks like you deselled on it so they all of a sudden accelerate through the pot which looks like a yip ing looks like you dumped it you stopped so now they go real fast so their transition is Boom really quick throwing you got to turn and throw it accelerate through it and the ball goes right into the ground or sails at 100 miles an hour over the first baseman's head or the catcher gotta turn catchers stand up they got all that gear and they just usually throw it back now so I'm teaching turn step throw it's hard to do okay and what happens you got the opposing team and the other Dugout yelling at you and laughing at you you got your friends well guess what y'all I had the chipping yips 100 percent I used to avoid playing golf I had some bad technique but I'm a good athlete and next I'd check out all the lessons I'd get up over the ball I'd work it and everything and I would flub the chip and then I'd be like screw it and I'd hit the next one fine but I could guarantee because I had unbelievable focus on my mechanics and I completely lost targeting and you know what I did I'd hurry up and hit before the next player showed up The Yips are just like panic attacks just like them you get this sudden surge of what if rolling within you telling you how bad you're going to be and instead of focusing on what to do like um instead of you know focusing on I want to lay on the ball there I want to throw it to the chest of the first baseman I want to shoot my free throw to the back of the rim we're focused on the how not the where and it takes us over I've had unbelievable success helping people deal with it there's a really good story in ESPN magazine about Tyler Matic who was the pitcher for the Atlanta Braves who overcame The Yips by the help of a former Navy SEAL Jason out of Stonewall Solutions up in Nashville and he talked about increased tension he said everybody's trying to release tension but he looked at as somebody who had the Yips throwing himself on how to use trigger and it was the sudden and just the slow increase attention versus the All or nothing and I loved that and I'm going to show you how to overcome those in just a minute but what I want you to understand about The Yips fear of embarrassment number one sudden surge of arousal focus on the wrong things and you are powerless to them in just a minute we're going to come back and I'm going to show you how to break the yips [Music] [Music]

Channel: Bhrett McCabe

Views: 5,718

Keywords: sport psychology, sports psychology, sports psychologist, the yips baseball, the yips in sports, the yips ted lasso, rick ankiel yips, chuck knoblauch throwing problems, chuck knoblauch yips, mackey sasser throwing problem video, putting yips, putting yips on short putts, putting yips drills, mlb yips

Id: MraetcNUyfE

Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 21 2023