September 17, 2021

REDLEG STATE OF MIND #6–21

Monthly newsletter of the Cincinnati Reds Mental Skills Program (MSP). What we’re pondering and promoting to optimize your mental performance.

Theme: This month we want to highlight the incredible importance of staying in the moment for optimizing your engagement with the world around you. We will provide techniques we expose Reds players to as well as a bonus technique from a world renowned source within the high performance community!

“Life is available only in the present moment.” -Thich Nhat Hanh

What Present Moment Focus (PMF) is: The ability to put your full sensory awareness in the present moment without judgement or analysis

This is a difficult skill to do as you must first learn the difference between focus and thinking, then be able to direct your focus to cues in the internal and external environment within the present moment, or in the now.

Focus = attending

Thinking = assessing, analyzing, and judging

Focusing takes up less of our mental resources compared to thinking, thus we allow our bodies to perform more optimally because we are less distracted, and more mentally flexible to adapt to the environment around us.

How to train the skill of PMF: Just like you train to hit or catch a ground ball, we have to train our brain to function more effectively and efficiently. We do that with the PMF cycle, starting with targeting present-moment focus on your breath.

The PMF Cycle:

Primary goal for conducing PMF cycles:

Repetitively practicing refocusing back to the present moment after mind wandering.

Secondary goals: (1) build attention span by staying on target longer (2) notice when you become distracted, and (3) not judging yourself and accepting you are off-task.

Side effects: (1) training more functional breathing, (2) muscle tension release, and (3) improved emotional tolerance.

Importance: It is not about staying focused for minutes on end… that is not how our brains work. It is about practicing bringing your focus back on target when you need it. It’s working with our brain, not against it. Training locking-in and being on target helps us experience a richer environment moment-to-moment. With training we can start to make mindfulness or PMF our default focus pattern, giving more opportunity for better engagement with the world and others in it.

Sensory Scanning

This quick three step process makes you tap into the present moment through your body’s sensations. You can do this with one sense or all five if you prefer, or only one target or multiple. The following is a three-step exercise to get you started. Be creative with this one.

1. What are three things you see? Take time to observe them each.

2. What are three things you hear? Take time to listen to them each.

3. What are three things your body feels? Take time to feel them each?

Bonus Morning PMF Routine: Before you get out of bed to through this one minute PMF routine as presented by Michael Gervais as a morning mindset training (Gervais & Carroll, 2020).

Step 1: One breath

• One deep breath to connect with yourself before you connect with the outside world (especially your phone)
• Time: 12–16 seconds

Step 2: One thought of gratitude

• Gratitude is 100% under your control and is correlated with happiness, life satisfaction, and performance. Tap into this source of appreciation so that this is more of a feeling instead of a thought.

Step 3: One intention

• Use imagery to think about how you are going to complete a single task today. This gets the ball rolling to create effectiveness and efficiency, creating momentum.

Step 4: Be where your feet are (PMF)

• Put your feet on the ground and feel your feet. Connect your body and mind with the world around you in the present moment. Set the tone for how you are going to engage with the world around you that day.

#Trainyourbrain and #Upyourgame

Tyler Klein, Mental Skills Coordinator, Cincinnati Reds

Be sure to follow us on the following Social media platforms:

Slack: #mentalfitness (#trainyourbrain for pitchers)

Instagram: @redsmentalskills

Twitter: @Redsbrain

Youtube: Redsmentalskills

And grab a Mental Skills Field Manual near you!