Mind Gym

BETWEEN THE EARS

What you are thinking, what shape your mind is in, is what makes the biggest difference of all.

—WILLIE MAYS

Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course: the space between your ears.

—BOBBY JONES

Oftentimes an athlete will go into a performance nosedive. In sports psychology, one means of investigating what happened and why is to retrieve the equivalent of the black box and voice recorder.

I slid the video into the slot and pressed the play button. The major league pitcher seated in my office recognized the figure on the big-screen TV—it was himself. As he stood on the mound and delivered a warm-up pitch, then another, the sights, sounds, feelings, and emotions of that unpleasant day began coming back to ...