The "mental game" of skiing

[James]

Hitting a baseball has got to be one of the hardest of all tasks. By the time you think about what went wrong the pitch before, you've missed the next one and then you're quickly out.
Has anyone got info on how Daniel Murphy of the Mets got into a state where he hit 7 home runs in the playoffs? (Then died in the World Series). I mean the guy was not Barry Bonds. Not even close. Not even...in the ball park! He also made fielding plays at that time yet he's well known for his bungling of the simplest ground balls.

 

[Philpug]

Hitting a baseball has got to be one of the hardest of all tasks. By the time you think about what went wrong the pitch before, you've missed the next one and then you're quickly out.
Has anyone got info on how Daniel Murphy of the Mets got into a state where he hit 7 home runs in the playoffs? (Then died in the World Series). I mean the guy was not Barry Bonds. Not even close. Not even...in the ball park! He also made fielding plays at that time yet he's well known for his bungling of the simplest ground balls.

The only sport that might be more fickle than baseball is golf and how fast you can "lose it".

 

[Warp Daddy]

Phil ur right on target , if your head gets in the way and your tense and urfocesed on negative thoughts your game is toast . Once your fundamentals are learned try not to focus on more than one thing when actually playing .

My course pro took me to a single digit handicap using that strategy . A Latin , my good friend the course pro used to say to me " JOOOST hit de Ball Warpy don't think "

 

[Lewn]

For me skiing is like meditation. I know that I'm improving because I get down black runs, narrow shutes, drops, powder and mega icy groomers in more control than before. It's oh so easy to be pretty-pretty technique wise on a blue run, it's when you're running tight on double black glaciers or powder with loads of confidence, that's what counts in my book. That's what separates the intermediate, advanced and expert.

Skiing is a weird sport though, with skiing good fitting boots are essential as are the right well maintained ski for the conditions. In golf people blame their clubs, and buy new ones all the time, but mostly it's just in their head, whereas with skiing a bad worker really can blame their tools. I think with skiing sometimes people forget the importance of good cardio and good nutrition and get gassed out and their technique then suffers. I apply endurance cycling philosophy to skiing. Get in good shape, with good cardio, eat loads of carbs and keep eating maybe 100-200 calories an hour up on the mountain.

In the end it's all about confidence. In mountain biking and skiing if you feel super confident everything will probably go well. When I play golf standing up on the first tee with a driver, I just feel less confident, things seem to go wrong quite often, could hit a birdie, more likely a triple bogey. With golf you can try too hard and get worse with practice.