One night we were eating dinner and for desert the children were having popsicles. After they finished one of them dropped the popsicle stick onto the table. It bounced around and ended up standing on its side. Again, I thought, “Maybe that always happens.” There I sat dropping a popsicle stick over a hundred times on the kitchen table and not once did it come close to standing up on its side. But it was possible!
Andy Panko is a basketball player that I worked with while he was in college and during his first couple of years in the pros. He is a wonderful person and an extraordinary athlete. Entering his senior year of high school Andy was a 6’0” point guard. He was a good point guard but apparently not good enough for coaches at the next level to recruit him. But, during his senior year he grew nine inches! He was now an incredibly athletic, skilled ball-handling, 6’9” point guard who could shoot the lights out. By the time he was on the college basketball radar screen, however, it appeared to be too late for the next season. Enter Division III Lebanon Valley College. They had heard about the local wonder and offered Andy an opportunity to play for the Flying Dutchmen. They were thinking they had found their star power forward or possibly center. Andy had a different idea. Rather than wait a year to see what might open up at the NCAA Division I level the following year, he approached the coach and said that he would sign with LVC if he could play one of the guard positions. The rest is history. He went on to set all kinds of records and was twice named Division III player of the year. He signed as an NBA free agent with the Los Angeles Lakers, and then with the Atlanta Hawks. Eventually he settled in Europe where he continues to enjoy a remarkably successful career that included selection as the 2012 Spanish League’s MVP. What made much of this achievable, aside from suddenly growing nine inches and his incredible dedication, had to do with Andy coming to know that he was capable of performing at a level far beyond what he thought possible.
While preparing for a pro tryout after his senior season, one small incident occurred that convinced him of the truth that he had only begun to realize his full potential. Andy and I were walking toward the gym exit and we were discussing his shooting performance during the session. He was and is an outstanding three point shooter but I was making the case that he possessed the ability to shoot at an even higher level. He turned to me and stopped about twenty feet from the exit and said, “Coach,”—he called me coach even though I was not his coach—“you can’t expect me to be perfect. I can’t make every shot I take.” I readily agreed but said, “You are far from perfect.” He looked at me unconvinced, resisting the belief that he could do better.
Because I had been working with an NFL wide receiver prior to my session with Andy, I had an NFL football under my arm. I said, “It is all about mastering your ability to focus on a target. If you continue to improve that skill you could even throw this football through the hoop at the other end of the gym.” He looked at me with a mocking expression and said, “Yeah right. If you’re so great at teaching all of this focus stuff, let me see you do it.” Without hesitating I looked at the basket, cranked back my arm and threw the ball with a perfect spiral across the entire gymnasium as he watched it swish through the net. Well, he nearly fell on the floor! He almost couldn’t believe what had just happened as he yelled out, “No way, do that again!” I said, “Once is enough to make the point.” I desperately tried to look nonchalant even though I was amazed that it had gone in! It was the perfect moment, a proof about what is possible, and planted a seed that has grown throughout his entire professional career.
Too often we witness a remarkable performance and write it off as some anomaly or we watch in wonder all of the incredible pro highlights. Once when I was watching game film with an NFL wide receiver, there was a play where the quarterback appeared to have overthrown him. The player said, “That one was impossible; it was a bad throw.” There were several things the he hadn’t done prior to the catch that would have placed him in reach of it, so I challenged him, “You could have caught that ball.” He argued that it was not possible, so I said to him, “Have you ever watched any highlight films?” and he responded, “Yeah, of course I have.” I asked him, “What have you noticed about them?” “Well, they’re great plays,” he said. Right. In fact, they’re more like extraordinary plays where athletes perform in ways you didn’t think were possible and that’s the reason you enjoy them so much. If you don’t believe some feat is possible, it is not going to happen. If you say, “Oh, I can’t do that,” then you are absolutely right, it is almost a guarantee that your self-fulfilling prophecy will come true. Instead of viewing them as rare occurrences why don’t you expect them all the time? After all, they were possible! And if they were possible, they are repeatable!
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One of the keys to reproducing your peak performance is in seeing detail. The more task-related detail that you focus on during any performance, the more absorbed you will become in the moment. Literally try and see a scratch on the back of the rim, or the pin-point speck of dirt on your golf ball, or the lines between the grains on a football. You might say, “I can’t see it.” Try! Even in trying you will become more absorbed. That is what makes peak performances possible. That is what is meant by being in the “zone.” To the degree that you improve your ability to focus on the details of the task at hand, is the degree to which you will ultimately improve the quality of your performances.
There a few activities where this ability to focus on the details is more important than in hitting a baseball. At the core of it, you are trying to hit a small round object traveling over ninety miles per hour with a round stick. Just making contact would seem a remarkable accomplishment, never mind actually trying to direct the ball to a certain location on a field or hitting it far enough that no one can reach it!
The American Journal of Physics published an article by Dr. Paul Kirkpatrick entitled “Batting the Ball.” He wrote:
Hitting a baseball has been described as the single most difficult feat in sports. And for good reason. Imagine the quality of hand-eye coordination required to make contact with a little white sphere traveling at over 95 miles per hour, using a 2 ¾ inch wide piece of wood being swung at over sixty miles per hour. Consider the intense concentration. A batter standing just 56 feet from the pitcher’s hand has only about 45/100’s of a second to decide if he’ll swing, predict where the ball will be, instruct his muscles to move, and bring the bat to a point of impact. If all goes well, the bat and ball rendezvous a few inches in front of the plate. The ball is crushed to half its diameter, springs back, and is launched on its return flight at speeds close to a hundred miles per hour. Timing is essential. The difference between a hit over second base and a foul near first or third is a swing mistimed by 0.01 second. Baseball is the only sport where being a failure seven out of ten times is considered to be outstanding—only about a dozen players in each major league bat .300 annually. A basketball center who sank only 30 percent of his baskets or a quarterback who hit his receivers only 30 percent of the time would be selling insurance instead.
Given the challenge of just making contact with a ball, stories about players making promises to hit a home run in a major league game and then actually doing it, seems the stuff of urban legends. For young Matt Herndon fantasy became reality courtesy of Mike Sweeney, DH for the Kansas City Royals. Mike told me the story:
We were in Minnesota playing the Twins and I arrived at the ballpark early, about three o’clock. Our PR guy came up to me and said, “There is this really sick kid in the hospital with a brain aneurysm, he is from Kansas City, and he is having surgery tomorrow morning.” He told me that he had received an email at the stadium from Matt’s father saying that I was his favorite player and that Matt’s surgery was life threatening and asked if I would be so kind as to call his son today.” Mike had a little boy of his own and quickly imagined all the anguish Matt and his family must have been going through less than a day before a surgery that might end Matt’s short life. Mike’s first re
sponse was, “Let’s do it right now!” Mike continued, “I love to put a smile on someone’s face so I called Matt, a little eleven year old saint, a sweet boy, and he just told me about his love for baseball, the Kansas City Royals, and that I was his favorite player. We just had a real sweet conversation. I told him, ‘You be strong, I am claiming in the name of Jesus that you are going to get better. And when you are better, I’ll bring you out to a ball game and you can be my special guest.’ It thrilled him. I said, ‘Are there any other players on the team that you like?’ He told me that he really liked David DeJesus so I grabbed David and put him on the phone with Matt. David said, ‘Matt, how are you doing?’ ‘Man, today is the greatest day of my life,’ said Matt. After they finished speaking, I got back on the phone with him and I said, ‘Matt, I have never done this before but tonight I am going to try and hit you a home run buddy. I am praying for you and I am going to try and do this for you.’” Apparently, when Matt got off the phone with Mike he called all of his friends in Kansas City and told them, “Guys, I want you to watch the game tonight, Mike Sweeney is going to hit a home run for me!”
It was probably a good thing that Mike didn’t know that this was going on behind the scene.
“Low and behold,” Mike said, “the Holy Spirit blessed me and my first at bat I sent one up fifteen rows in the Metrodome. I never ran so fast around the bases after hitting a homer.” After the game Mike received a call from Matt, who exclaimed, “Mike you did it! You did it! All of my friends back in Kansas City started calling me, I didn’t get the game on at the hospital, but my friends said that you did it for me!” Sometime later, a nurse brought in her laptop so that Matt and his family could watch the replay and share the special moment together.
For most of us the only way you know you had a peak performance is after it is over. Then we wait and hope that we can repeat it someday. What made Mike’s homer so special is that it was a “called” peak performance. It was a proof that peak performances can be made to happen more often than you might have thought possible. It is not unreasonable to think that you can experience them too. In Mike’s case, perhaps it was more than just mind and body coming together on demand. Maybe, because it was rooted in love, we see what can happen when sport meets grace.
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The ability to hit a target at a great distance is one of the oldest and most recognized forms of perfection. A member of the United Kingdom’s Calvary once found his mark twice by hitting his target over twenty-seven football fields away. That’s over a mile! Now you might never have stepped foot on a shooting range before but there is a good chance that you have been on a driving range to work on your golfing skills. Some time ago I was working with a player on the LPGA Tour. Like most players she would spend hours out on the range hitting hundreds of balls. Even prior to the start of a tournament players would hit a slew of balls with the hope that this would somehow ready them for the competition. However, hitting golf balls for the sake of hitting golf balls while attempting to burn off the mania that accompanies pre-tournament anxiety, does not make a lot of sense. The woman I was working with, I’ll call her Carol, had weaned herself down to just hitting enough balls to feel the groove in her swing. She would only hit two or three balls with each club in her bag and that was it. She was ready to play.
On one occasion, Carol was beginning her warm up and pulled out her pitching wedge. The tournament’s practice range was sponsored by FILA and their name was under each of the distance boards out on the range. Carol and I had worked together for a long time and so she was not surprised when I asked her, “What’s your target?” She said, “The ‘F’ in FILA on the 100 yard sign.” She took her first shot at it and her ball landed about ten feet to the right of the sign. Most of the woman on tour would have been very happy with that shot but Carol had come to understand that she was capable of more. She also knew it was coming when I said, “Is that what you wanted?” Carol said, “No, I wanted the ‘F’ in FILA.” I said, “Okay, do you think you can feel the difference between your last shot and the one that will hit the ‘F’?” “Yeah,” she responded confidently. On her next shot the ball sailed just over the ‘A’ in FILA. I looked at her again and before I could say anything, she said, “I know, that’s not the shot I wanted, but I can feel the difference between the ‘A’ and the ‘F’.” Carol’s next two shots went over the ‘F’ and on the third she actually hit it! You might be thinking, “Now that is an incredible peak performance. To hit a one foot letter from one hundred yards away is truly remarkable.” And of course you would be right but there is another insight to be gained here that might not be so obvious. The fact she had the ability to actually hit the ‘F’ is certainly amazing in its own right, but perhaps more important is the fact that she might never have attempted it in the first place! In the past, she would have never even thought of doing it because she would’ve been satisfied with getting the ball to fall a few feet from the sign. Most players on tour would have been content with the near miss on the first shot. But Carol had come to realize that she was capable of more, much more. And so are you.
Another time, I was working with a golfer named Jim who was trying to earn his “Class-A” designation that would enable him to become a PGA Head Club Professional. The part he was most concerned about was the playing abilities test in which he had to complete thirty-six holes and score at least par plus fifteen. Jim was a pretty good golfer but he was very nervous about taking the test because he had a particular dread of playing in front of people. Not exactly the ideal for a club pro! I met him out on the course one day so that I could see what was actually happening rather than relying on his version of what he thought was happening. After about three holes I had a good feel for him as a player and I could see most of his issues involved his short game including his inability to finish well on the green.
On the fourth hole he had an approach shot of about one-hundred yards to the flag. In order to help him better feel what he was doing, I had him hit three balls onto the rather large green. The closest ball had landed about thirty feet from the hole. As we walked up to the green I noticed that the grounds crew had just arrived and were ready to work on it once we had finished. There were two guys on mowers and four others helping out. As we stepped onto the green all of the workers leaned against the tractor to watch. This was Jim’s worst nightmare, and it showed on his face. Jim stood in front of the first ball which was about forty feet from the hole looking like a man on death row.
In attempt to diffuse the situation for him I said, just before he was about to make the putt, “I want you to close your eyes, hit the ball, and then before opening your eyes, I want you to tell me where it went, left or right, far or short.” He looked at me with a confused but relieved look. He stood there for a moment and then, with his eyes closed, hit the ball. I watched as it went up and down, over and across, several large undulations and into the hole! Jim was amazed, the grounds crew was amazed, and I was amazed. I heard one of the workers whisper, “Didn’t he have his eyes closed?” “Yeah!” said another. He walked up to the next ball about thirty-eight feet closed his eyes, and struck the ball. He sunk it! At that point the grounds crew was no longer able to contain themselves. Jim approached the third ball, about thirty feet from the hole, closed his eyes, hit it, and before he could say where it went, heard the sound of the ball hitting the bottom of the cup! The grounds crew went crazy and started applauding and cheering. Jim, who at the start of the hole looked like a wilted flower, was now ten feet tall and smiling. Three balls sunk from different locations, on a regulation green, from more than thirty feet away, with eyes closed! Incredible, but possible!
That’s the funny thing about peak performances, they can show up when you least expect them. Not too long ago, I was invited by a national sports association to give a presentation on enhancing performance. At one point I asked for a volunteer to help me demonstrate a sports performance drill and a young man in the first row named Ryan quickly raised his han
d, so I called him up on stage. I told him that he would have five tries with a golf ball and putter to hit an object that was placed about fifteen feet away. Then, as I did with Jim the golf pro, I planned to ask him to do it again, only the next time with his eyes closed. Remarkably, most volunteers hit more targets with their eyes closed than open.
I expected Ryan to hit one, or maybe two at the most, but he hit four out of five! I was crushed because the next part of the drill involves doing the same thing but with your eyes closed. I never had a time when someone didn’t hit more with their eyes closed. But Ryan had hit four out of five with his eyes open. My mind raced to think about how to explain why the drill didn’t work with Ryan, but why it was still a valuable exercise for improving performance. While my mind was busy formulating possible explanations, Ryan began putting with his eyes closed. 1 for 1, 2 for 2, 3 for 3, 4 for 4! “I’m saved,” I thought. Then the unexpected, 5 for 5! Incredible! The place went wild, amazed at witnessing a peak performance that surpassed everyone’s expectation, especially mine! I asked Ryan with some incredulity, “What sport do you play?” He said, “I am a wrestler.” I shot back, “You’re in the wrong sport!” Amateur and pro, young and old, peak performances are not only possible but they are happening all around you.
You might be surprised to know that a peak performance can also happen when you thought it impossible to create one. Once I was at a competition when I was suddenly hit by the flu. I became dizzy, nauseous, feverish, and fatigued. Despite feeling like a wet rag, I thought, “Well, I am here. I might as well do what I can.” To my great surprise I ended up jumping a personal best! Although it may seem counterintuitive, sometimes illness or competing in poor conditions lessons the expectation and perceived pressure because no one expects you to do well. This frees you up to actually focus on the task at hand which, despite the adverse conditions, enables you to perform at a high level, maybe even your best ever.
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