Among athletes, “the yips” are an unexpected and seemingly mysterious inability to execute previously mastered performance routines.
Imagine having an exceptional athletic skill that you have spent your entire life developing and harnessing to the extent that it has become second nature. Skills such as throwing a ball, making the putt, or hitting a free throw can be as easy and thoughtless as breathing or walking over time and repetition.
One day, though, while playing catch, perhaps with a larger-than-usual audience in attendance, you spike a throw, short-hopping a target that usually could have been hit perfectly with your eyes closed. There might not have been anything mechanically wrong with the throw, but it worried you for some strange reason. Nothing a good night’s sleep can’t eliminate, right?
Just a weird day at the field, perhaps, only the next time out, you are thinking about that throw before you even step out onto the field. This time, that one short hop becomes a second until the pattern snowballs and your heartrate escalates to the extent that you feel a dreadful sense of panic that there is no escaping. The baseball feels like a can or a foreign object that your fingers don’t quite know what to do with. Like a contagious disease, coaches, teammates, friends, and family respond by keeping their distance. Teammates with the rationale that heaven forbid it could happen to them if they get too close. Family and friends with the thought that it can and will be a small glitch that you will most certainly be able to navigate out from, on your own, through grit and determination.
Photo courtesy Extra Inning Softball
As shown through many examples and famous cases like Rick Ankiel, Steve Sax, and Steve Blass in MLB, countless PGA golfers or some in Division 1 and College ranks like Jason Kuhn or myself as I sit, write, and reflect upon this piece. The dreaded yips will come and go with episodes of embarrassment and deep questioning of one’s identity and place in the world. They might never go away. However, there is a growing field of understanding where athletes can build a framework and apply certain strategies toward preserving the joy of sports and athletic competition, even at the highest levels.
It may be said that a young athlete’s identity is most often kept in a dormant state of safe-keeping, deep within the barriers of the subconscious mind. Through childhood, one might experience a transformation of that identity to the extent that they become consciously aware of its connection to their performance in a particular sport. As one accumulates accolades, awards, etc., the athlete might develop an almost dependent connection with the ego and identify solely as an individual better than most in a particular sport. The dopamine hit of respect and admiration following a successful performance can be countered equally with a polar opposite feeling of shame when a mistake is made in the heat of competition. There can become a constant yo-yo of emotions in the mind of a young competitor. The yips are a condition that attacks this element of vulnerability. They can afflict anyone but there does seem to be some commonality in that they can target those who have expressed going through some level of trauma growing up. This might lead to an athlete subconsciously perceiving a tense situation during competition or in front of a large audience as life or death. Of course, it isn’t helpful to label the yips as a definite response to trauma, but I believe, having suffered bouts of the condition myself, that it is those who value the constant approval of others who are the most prone.
In effect, these are athletes who, in the words of Jason Kuhn, the former US Navy SEAL and current Director of the elite performance coaching center Stonewall Solutions, are “…high achievers who are authentic, genuine people who care for all the right reasons and never want to let anyone down”. With the yips, the letdown is the potential loss of the idea of the athlete as exceptional. The shattering, in an instant, of the ego/identity connection, after which the process of picking up the pieces and rebuilding becomes daunting and, at times, seemingly impossible.
It may be speculated that previous generations were offered one suggestion for overcoming inexplicable bouts of anxiety during a game: the bottle. While it might not have been outwardly spoken of, rest assured, there would always be readily available whisky in the trainer’s office to serve as the first line of defense when the demons of doubt stood in the way of an athlete otherwise being successful. When a team approach is used in this regard, as was shown in the recent NetFlix hit The Comeback, the Boston Red Sox were celebrated and commended for playfully pounding shots of Jack Daniel’s to help initiate their shattering the fears of defeat en route to their 2004 World Series Championship as Jason Kuhn and many others will attest, though, trying to defeat the yips and fear of failure through the use of alcohol, etc., as a lone sufferer is a slippery slope towards further misery.
Photo courtesy MTSU
Jason Kuhn was once a stud pitcher at the top 25-ranked Middle Tennessee State in and around 9/11 in the early 2000s. His description of the yips matches virtually every other athlete’s in terms of their onset. One day, he was playing catch and sailed the ball over his teammate’s head in an otherwise harmless manner. Something wasn’t quite right, but it wasn’t alarming enough to address with the coaching staff or anyone else. It wasn’t until the next outing that something appeared very wrong. In one inning, he threw a record number of wild pitches, ultimately being removed from the game in bewilderment, questioning why. Dr. Mark Brana describes this situation as a perfect storm of tension involving the neuromuscular system, a psychological condition, and the athlete’s perception of their place in a high-leverage situation.
A similar event occurred in the case of Rick Ankiel, whereby he suddenly lost the ability to throw strikes as a 21-year-old highly-touted phenom of a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, who had been tasked with pitching against the Greg Maddux-led Atlanta Braves during game 1 of the 2000 NLDS. As documented and shared in his book The Phenom, it would appear that the young pitcher needed an outpouring of team support at that moment. It wasn’t offered. Relief came with vodka in a Gatorade cup offered by a teammate, the late Darryl Kyle, who indicated that he understood.
The quick fix worked, but Kyle was just as quick to remind Ankiel that the numbing of his senses created a reality that wouldn’t last and only offered an outcome that “wasn’t real”. It is remarkable and should be noted I feel, that suffering athletes like Jason Kuhn and Ankiel, logically turned to alcohol as a quick solution to a problem that needed one immediately and the general perception of this response is admonishment and shame, especially by the partakers themselves. However, when the Red Sox offered this solution as an entire team, it was celebrated and laughed about. Perhaps the lesson learned here is one that Jason Kuhn would later discover and devote his career towards. Lasting success is in the teams, and winning is more about helping the guy beside you. This lesson and practice wasn’t something that Jason stumbled upon. He worked for it.
Proving that the yips and his success or failure on a baseball field didn’t in any way define his level of mental toughness, Jason was among the few in his recruiting class to complete the Hell Week of Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUDS) that is required in the process of becoming a Navy SEAL. He would later deploy overseas and engage in some of the most intensely wartorn areas of the world following 9/11. While effectively and honorably serving his country, Jason learned the value of a team-first approach and, more specifically, the idea that “who he is defines what he does.”
Through the teams, Jason realized that confidence came from his faith in a higher power and his conviction of purpose. Never again would he seek and require external validation to fuel his sense of identity. These qualities would later offer a framework for athletes plagued by the yips or anyone looking for a spring in their performance and a new approach to improved mental health.
Atlanta Braves relief pitcher Tyler Matzek throws during the eighth inning of Game 1 in baseball’s World Series between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021, in Houston. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
Some takeaways from Jason’s fundamentals system include rechanneling the “Predator Mentality” and becoming the aggressor in high-leverage moments. Tyler Matzek of the Atlanta Braves applied this strategy, and his efforts contributed to his whole team’s purpose and goal of winning the 2021 World Series. He effectively picked up the previous guy on the mound and helped to carry his team through several key moments. This was a monumental achievement for Matzek, whose career had been threatened by a sudden case of the yips just a season before.
It was also an incredible triumph for Jason Kuhn, who had served as his strategic mental health coach. With his company, Stonewall Solutions, Jason continues to coach athletes through this condition, offering new hope. Another strategy that Jason applies is one that I believe is too often overlooked in some coaching and education circles, and that is to allow ourselves to celebrate small successes or to “let that feel good”. For example, with throwing, if a proper release point is achieved, even if just while throwing against a wall or netting, take a moment to consider how good that felt, document it, and keep revisiting it, over and over through repetition,
It is refreshing to know that current and former athletes are finally opening up about mental health, performance anxiety, and the yips. The traditional sports psychologist approach might offer that indifference is the approach. If true, why not drink and get to the point of indifference as quickly as possible? I like Dr. Brana, and after experiencing episodes of strange polarity in my sporting career, the first solution should be to talk openly about it.
The people most prone to this condition have no shortage of loyal friends and people who love them, as working to maintain those connections is what is most important to them.
Have faith, reach out, let it out…..and let that ball fly!
__________
Sources: My struggles with the yips and mental health
Jason Kuhn https://www.stonewall-solutions.com/
Dr. Mark Brana (email interaction) The Two Scariest Words in Sports
Rick Ankiel & Tim Brown, The Phenomenon: Pressure, The Yips and the Pitch that Changed My Life (2017)
