Practice Mode vs Game Mode at Softball Practice

Have you ever finished a drill at softball practice and felt like either you (the coach) or your team focused so much on mechanics that you’ve lost your intensity? We need to teach our players how to FLIP THE SWITCH from practice mode to game mode!

Our dawgs need to have fight, but how do we focus on cleaning up mechanics without losing their competitive drive? The key is to understand the difference between Training Mentality and Playing Mentality, and when to be in each mindset.

It is important that a player is able to play free and loose. A player needs to be able to trust their athleticism, trust the changes that they’ve made in their mechanics, and simply focus on winning the next pitch. Without confidence even the best athletes with the best mechanics will fall short of their abilities.

2 Types of Player Mentality: Practice Mode and Game Mode

🥎 Training Mentality (Practice Mode) is the mental approach a player takes when trying to ingrain a new/different movement into hitting, fielding or pitching. Training Mentality reps are often taken at a reduced speed with intent on producing the correct movement pattern in the proper sequence.

🥎 Playing Mentality (Game Mode) is the mental approach a player takes when taking game-like reps at full speed. Playing Mentality is instinctual. 

• When to focus on Training Mentality

• My team needs to build fundamentals

• Transitioning into Playing Mentality

• Hitting Practice Example using both Training and Playing Mentality

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When to focus on Training Mentality

During player meetings, coaches should identify changes that need to be made for the betterment of the player’s growth. Younger players will begin mechanical changes in late fall after their season has ended. With older players, we will work outside of recruiting windows. This usually takes place during late winter/early spring as college coaches are more focused on their season than they are in the recruiting process.

As we move closer to the start of a player’s spring/summer season we need to shift training sessions and drills from those that focus on individual movements (Training Mentality) to drills that focus more on competitiveness and athleticism (Playing Mentality). Most good coaches and instructors will utilize both mindsets in a training session. Understanding the importance of both and how to mentally navigate each mindset is also a learned behavior. 

What is Coach Steph Reading Now? WINNING (The Unforgivable Race to Greatness) by Tim S Grover

My team needs to build fundamentals

Have you fallen into the trap of pushing your players towards a Training Mentality during practice, thereby creating robots and stunting growth instead of building a confident, smooth athlete. We see this a lot in younger teams where the coach is having to really train the fundamentals in practice mode.

Players at younger ages often don’t have body awareness, and struggle to make adjustments. The coach will break down movement patterns into smaller movements in order to get a positive response. This in itself is not a negative way to build strong mechanics. However, the coach/instructor must understand that it is also important to transition into the full movement and increase the tempo of the athlete moving into game mode.  All too often players get stuck in Training Mentality, don’t understand that they should be transitioning to a Playing Mentality, and don’t know how to move to a more athletic and competitive approach.

Transitioning into Playing Mentality

In practice, we will often make large adjustments with the hopes that a small amount of that movement bleeds into our full speed mechanics. Whether pitching, hitting, or fielding, it is important that once a player moves away from high volume reps towards more of a game mode scenario, they clear their mind and allow their body to move at its internal tempo. Maximizing athleticism and allowing yourself to move freely is an important aspect of competing at a high level in order to win the next pitch.

Players during this approach should be limiting their thoughts to something as simple as “Spin it through the zone”, “See ball. Hit ball”, or “Quick & smooth through the ball”. As coaches, we can help players transition easier into a Playing Mentality by having discussions with our players about playing loose and free, and creating competitive situations in practice after a set of high volume, mechanical reps.

Hitting Practice Example using both Training and Playing Mentality

When working with hitters, we will focus on a specific drill first in Training Mentality. Maybe it's a hip drive drill...During that drill we will break down posture, weight distribution & transfer, as well as the direction of the hip movement. The player is focusing on how this feels in a shortened variation of their swing while they are in practice mode.

Before the end of the training session, we will make sure that the player has also taken reps while utilizing a Playing Mentality in game mode. This will include such things as challenging hitters on front toss to hit so many line drives out of 10 front toss pitches, focusing on an extended hitting zone in a 2 strike approach, or having the player attack their pitch in a hitter’s count (0-0, 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, 3-0 & 3-1). If we are in a group setting we will incorporate a “knock out” concept to the drills to increase the competitive drive. It is important to remind the player(s) that they are no longer focusing on the previous movement (Hip Drive in this scenario), and that their job is now to compete at the plate and see what bled into their game swings.

In the end, the goal should be to help a player clean up their mechanics, but also play confident, smooth and loose. Once a mechanic is grasped, allow the player to be as athletic as possible without focusing on mechanical perfection during the session.

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