Make Baseball Fun Again-The Flow State

Last spring, I had the opportunity to take a positive psychology class as a free elective. It was great timing because I was entering my first season as a college baseball starter. We read one of my favorite books, Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (no I don't know how to pronounce his name). He describes Flow as this ultimate state of productivity and happiness. A place where time flies by, and you are fully immersed in what you are doing. This is when you are so locked in on a book, or a project, that you forget you skipped meals. Flow gives us immediate feedback, long term feedback, and a goal just past our reach. Where am I going with this article? When our baseball season was cut short this year by COVID-19, and a bunch of 18-23 year old men cried at Fairchild Field one last time together, almost every player came up to me and thanked me for the same thing. I had made baseball fun for them again. This got me thinking.

A major dynamic of flow is curiosity within a new challenge. I was once told by my teammate, and now ZOPS intern Chris Douglass, "The first person to use the word "I" in a discussion loses." I agree with him to some extent, but for this story I have to tell my experience because it will help other high school, college, and pro baseball players out there. I had played baseball at Shippensburg for three semesters, walked into my coaches office, and quit the team my sophomore year. Two years later I walked back onto the same team. The time away fueled the fire, and gave me a new perspective and challenge. Playing college baseball no longer felt like a given but a privilege. I now had something that I wanted so bad, and I wasn't going to let any distraction get in my way. Nothing really mattered, I had to control what I could control. My workouts had this intensity to them that I did not know were possible. I was flowing.

There are people out there who have never experienced flow. Distractions enter and exit their day to day life, without any real momentum taking them forward. I can tell you right now that today, I didn't have the best day, and thats okay. Creating this website was choppy, and I am scrambling to move up to Mass in a few days to intern at CSP, but sitting down and writing this has reset me. I am flowing, and then I will go cut my grass, (listening to some Morgan Wallen), and I will be flowing there. Then I will come inside and study functional anatomy. The lesson here is that I was able to catch the flow bird, and it's going to help me win the rest of my day. I've had shitty mornings, days, and even a shitty week during quarantine, but one positive head clearing flow moment will always jump start your engine.

So besides being away from baseball for so long, what really made it so challenging and fun again? Three months before I walked on I impulsively decided to start switch hitting, and a week before tryouts I decided that I would become the bullpen catcher, something the team desperately needed. Looking back, it was the best thing that happened in my baseball career. I was coming in with about 3,000 career at bats righty and maybe 3 lefty (not including wiffle ball.) It felt right though, I thought about it and said to myself, why not, let's go for it. Dude, this brought the most insane aspect to baseball you could imagine. Suddenly, I was relearning the game, flipping my brain to see the game from the opposite side. There were zero expectations of me, I had zero ego, and had no idea what to expect.

Catching bullpens brought an even bigger challenge. I was terrified of the baseball. Seeing a 90mph fastball that was going to land 55 feet out of the hand caused a lot of anxiety. But it taught me to track a baseball, and it kept me mentally in the game. I threw myself into a very uncomfortable position, and had to adapt to be comfortable and in control. I had to be a positive voice for the freshman arm who probably had the same attitude that I once had when I first showed up on campus. I don't think I've ever flowed as intently as I did when I caught or swung it lefty. This took every oz of my focus and attention, and I was having a blast. The best part was it helped me to eventually take control as a right handed hitting center fielder.

How can we apply this to baseball, workouts, and life? In the baseball world I suggest that everybody change things up. Catch a pen here and there, play a different position during defensive work, switch hit in batting practice, even let position players throw bullpens, and pitchers hit. This will challenge you to think outside the box and keep the game fun. Taking fly balls everyday in the OF can get stale. Catching pens actually made my glove really dynamic, and I was able to make plays in the OF I never thought I could. In the gym, change it up. I have this saying that I will never repeat the exact same workout. Now for a month straight, those Monday's might be similar, but we need to make small changes short term, and larger adjustments from program to program over the long haul. You have to challenge the mind and push your body to do something that flat out might not make sense.

Take my travel ball teammate, and Orioles minor leaguer, Ryne Ogren, as an example. He vouched to run a mile for every 10 dollars he raised for cancer. From a pure energy system/power/speed standpoint this is the worst idea in the world. But, with the season being cancelled it actually makes sense. He is pushing his mind, body, and spirit, to a limit and place its never been pushed. He is not made for this, and it's helping him grow. I guarantee the lessons he is learning are going to outweigh the short term negatives on his muscle fibers.

In life it's simple, try new things. I'll be honest, I've locked myself in my office during the pandemic and just focused on being the best strength coach that I can be. We all need an escape. One that is completely separate from our work, sport, education, or our family. Secondly, you've got to look at things from different perspectives. By simply changing over to the other side of the batters box, the game instantly changed for me. The ball wasn't going as far, and yea I did swing and miss in batting practice a few times, but i was fueled by the curiosity of a new challenge and rolled with it. This made me better at what I was truly good at.

Before you train with us I hope that you read this, I know that all my current guys are going to or else I'm cutting off their Google Drive lol. You may have been taught all your life how to do a pull-up, or a prone trap raise, but maybe you've never stepped back and realized what is actually going on. What are we trying to accomplish, and what's gonna fuel this engine with the best gasoline any athlete could ask for. To end with a quote from my SS Jacob Pollock, "Winners Win."

Zack Zoller