Total Reading Time: 4 minutes

Happy Monday - and welcome to November! Life is crazy for all of us so today’s issue is short and sweet…resilience lessons from a Tomato, a Rock and a Bouncy Ball.

So Let’s Go!

Table of Contents

• Resilience Lessons From a Tomato

• JOIN OUR ZOOMS

Resilience Lessons From a Tomato

Recently I was talking to our volleyball coaches who shared a terrific analogy about resilience.

Basically, following any error, bad play or disappointing result you can respond like a:

• Tomato

• Rock

• Bouncy Ball

What? Exactly…

Tomato - throw it on the ground and it goes splat! It crumbles, it quits. It’s good for one throw and that’s it. Done. This is what happens when somebody just quits after adversity. They just crumble, or go splat!

Rock - throw a rock on the ground and it doesn’t break, but it lands hard. It’s tough on itself. It’s probably good for multiple throws. but it’s hard on itself and gets chipped along the way. This is what happens when somebody gets hard on themself after a mistake. They turn internal and judge themself (or even their teammates).

Bouncy Ball - now throw one of these on the ground and it bounces. It rebounds. It’ll take whatever you give it by always bouncing back. This is what happens when people rebound after a mistake and keep going.

This analogy of Tomato, Rock and Bouncy Ball gives your athletes an animated example of how to respond to adversity.

This also gives us ways to quickly talk with our players about their mindset following a mistake.

For instance, “Hey Cindy, it looks like your trending toward a Tomato right now…”. Or, “Cindy, now’s a great time to do your best Bouncy Ball imitation…”. Or, “Hey, it’s Bouncy Ball Time!!”

JOIN OUR ZOOMS

So far in our zooms we’ve heard from:

• Christian Conrad (Arizona) on “How I Watch Film to Prep Myself & My Pitchers for the Weekend”

• Megan Rhodes-Smith (Tennessee) on “Coaching Our Pitcher’s Mental Game - From Practice to Games”

• plus an Open Forum Zoom where coaches share, ask and learn

Every Zoom is open to our Zoom Members - and we’d love to have you join us! Your Zoom Membership includes all Live Zooms, Recordings of All Our Zooms, as well as access to Special Content and Special Zooms…you get all this PLUS the Weekly Newsletter!

Thanks for reading this week’s Curveball Chronicles. I hope you gained some insight, some encouragement, some knowledge or some grace.

Go make this a Great week!

Missed some previous issues? Don’t worry, I’ve got them all on my website: https://pitchingcoachcentral.com/curveball-newsletter/