Adaptability

Adaptability has been a bit of a buzzword in mental performance lately. Let’s break down what

that actually means in terms of being practical and teachable. Relating to performance, it

simply means being able to execute when our circumstances change. How might our

circumstances change throughout the course of a game? A series? A season? A career? We all

know that most players play at or close to their potential when things are going well. It’s easier

to hit, and field, and pitch, and cheer for your teammates, and respond to adversity, and

EVERYTHING when it’s 70 degrees than when it’s 40 degrees, raining, we’ve lost 2 or 3 in a row,

are coming off an 0-4 or a bad outing, didn’t get good food between games, didn’t get to take

BP before the game, blah, blah, blah. Right? As coaches we talk about responding to adversity

– which is great. However, most of us can embody that much better than we can actually teach

it, leaving us frustrated and thinking “Kids these days have no resilience…”

There is another whole article to be written about the previous sentence, so I digress for now.

The reality, though, is that it’s NOT always 70 and sunny. We’re NOT always riding a 4-game

hitting streak. We’re NOT always coming off of our best outing. All of that adversity is real and

all of the circumstances happen at some point or another, in some form or another. So, all

things equal, the question becomes, “Which team/player can best adapt to the new set of

circumstances?” Which team can be handed the problem and solve it the best/quickest? This

is the story of human evolution and survival. Solve the problem, survive. Don’t solve the

problem, don’t survive. We only evolve as a player/team/organization when we evolve to the

new circumstances that allow us to be effective within the framework of the game. As an

example, imagine a hitter that can crush the ball off the tee and/or in BP. Scouts and coaches

watch in admiration. Then the game starts. Strikeout. Strikeout. Ground ball to third.

Strikeout. The hitter has a phenomenal tool: power. However, the hitter does not understand

how to use the tool of power within the context of the game (which is why we play). I think

sometimes this gets forgotten. We don’t play baseball to be good BP hitters. We play the

game to be good baseball player.

With athletes I often talk about the difference between tools and intangibles. It doesn’t matter

if you can throw 100mph if it’s not effective. Similarly, it doesn’t matter if a person has good

ideas but can’t articulate them in a way that will move the audience enough to understand the

idea. A tool is only as effective as your ability to use it within diverse circumstances of the

context of what you are trying to accomplish. This is why coaches like to recruit “baseball

players” over “athletes who play baseball”. Ironically, multi-sport athletes tend to better

“baseball players” because they understand how to use their bodies (tools) in different

environments and understand the culture of sport. Of course, there are exceptions to every

rule. However, the athletes and coaches that can do that are better at adapting because

they’ve developed a more diverse experience within the context of sport that allows for fluid

thinking and movement. The athlete who is good during tee work and BP but not good in

games is static. The tool is only good in that specific context. They have not adapted the tool

to work for them in a context that contributes to the ultimate goals of what we’re actually

trying to accomplish: winning/production/actualizing potential. Thus, all things equal, that

player is more likely to fail if the circumstances change because they’ve failed to understand

the wiggle room and intangibles of the game, also known as “the game within the game”, in

order to execute and reach their highest potential.

Here are some common ways we see lack of adaptability play out:

• Slumping player gets stuck in negative mindset and continues to slump
• Player affected negatively by bad call, carries negative energy forward
• Player reacts poorly to “big game/big situation” circumstances, plays poorly/makes 
• poor decisions (swings too big with two strikes/admires ball that doesn’t get all 
• the way out/runner fails to pick up extra base in key situation/pitcher too amped up/etc.)
• Player is good in practice, not good in games
• Player tries to impress too much rather than just “playing the game”

These are just a few examples and there are many more. The root cause of each of them, in

some way or another, stems from a lack of self-awareness that doesn’t allow their talent to

translate into peak performance in the present moment. In order to combat that, there are

two main identifiable ways in which we gain better adaptability through self-awareness.

The first, which will always be our greatest teacher, is experience. Experience is the teacher

through which we gain wisdom. This wisdom allows for us to understand how to use our mind

and our bodies in different contexts. This wisdom is different from knowledge. We can gain

knowledge through reading a book, but we cannot gain experience through reading a book. For

example, I can look at a recipe of how to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving and memorize it. That

does not mean I know how to cook a turkey. In fact, my first attempt at it will come with a high

level of uncertainty. Is this going to turn out well? I’m not so sure. However, after repeating

that same recipe over and over again I gain confidence. My experience has lead me to gain an

understanding of how to cook the turkey. To gain even more adaptability, I could expand on

that and learn different ways to cook turkey. People will begin to look at me as a master of my

craft. This is analogous to baseball. The best way to get better at baseball is to play baseball

and practice honing our craft. However, just like the turkey, we are only as good as our ability

to execute in different contexts, meaning different forms of “adversity”, if you will. This is

where you will see a player that is normally great in the regular season start to struggle in the

post-season (much like the examples given above).

Which brings us to our other path, which is to invite adversity into our life and form a healthy

relationship with it. In essence, a growth mindset. The tools we use at The MindStrong Project 

to develop growth mindset are sauna and ice bath, among others. Aside from the numerous

health benefits that research has shown for sauna and ice, it is also a tool that trains the body

and mind to become less reactive in the face of stress. Look at it this way for a moment:

arguably the best way to become good at playing baseball in cold weather is to play baseball in

cold weather. Simple enough, but this means we NEED the cold weather in order to grow our

adaptability within baseball. Meaning, we NEED stress in order to grow. Without stress, we

become stagnant. We reach a fake, comfortable ceiling when we don’t invite stress into our

lives. The fact of the matter is that modern society has done everything it can to take the stress

out of our lives, to make things convenient for us, and to make our lives as easy and pain-free

as possible. Despite this, we have a mental health crisis and a generation of young people that

lack the experience of stress that creates the adaptability to thrive independently. We claim

that children have become so dependent on parents, phones, and peers that they lack the

ability to stand on their own two feet. Perhaps, yes, they have had everything made so easy for

them that they lack the understanding of the context that would allow them to thrive

independently. Which is the exact reason for a fun, challenging, outside-the-box way to invite

stress into our lives: cold/heat exposure.

If there is one thing that I can leave our readers with this month, it’s that nature has a way of

finding us one way or another. Too much or too little of anything will create an unhealthy, non-

adaptive change in us. Sunlight, sleep, water, sugar, fat, carbs, air, and social connection are all

examples of this. For the sake of this article, the topic is too little of stress. By inviting a

healthy amount of stress into our life and developing a healthy relationship with that stress, we

develop the independence and resilience to be adaptable; which means we are effectively

valuable in more contexts and more circumstances than the player or team across from us.

Lean into stress to find your growth and own even the harshest of environments.

- Austin Hanson 

MindStrong's Mental Performance Coach