I am not a professional athlete. I am not really even an athlete; I try to exercise every day for at least 30 mintues and lift 40-pound barbells once in a while. However, I sometimes get why athletes “have off days” and have grown to appreciate what professional athletes have to go through on a day to day basis. (Although not the part where some get paid millions of dollars to play).
For the last year and a half or so I have been very active in the Los Angeles dodgeball community primarily through World Dodgeball Society, a great organization with lots of great dodgeballers. I’ve enjoyed myself so much that I play 3 nights a week during the season, plus maybe a Saturday tournament (taking up anywhere from 2 to 8 hours) and maybe even an Open Gym where one just goes and practices for 2 hours. It’s been a bit of an obsession, but I’m drawn to it because I can pretend I’m a professional athlete where there’s a game almost every night and you have to make preparations for each game.
I’ve come to realize that it is very difficult to bring you’re A-game 100% of the time. I consider myself one of the more focused and dedicated players on the court most of the time, but even for me I lose focus sometimes. Part of that is we don’t have “coaches” or necessarily have monetary incentives awaiting us, but for me the “championship,” bragging rights, and a reputation to uphold as one of the better catchers in L.A. is very important. However, just because
There’s the obvious physical component. Sometimes I am just tired, I have other things going on, I didn’t get a good meal, I didn’t eat a banana before the game, I just woke up from a nap, I didn’t get a good night’s sleep due to my roommate’s alarm waking me up/ the upstairs’ neighbors’ baby bawling throughout the night, etc. A good night’s sleep, actually, is essential for the “Reaction time” aspect of sports (see my Reaction time blog post about this).
It’s not just necessarily physical lethargy neither, it’s mental. Eventually, everyone loses some motivation. It’s like, “ok it’s not playoffs, it’s only a regular season game, I can turn it up later in the playoffs if I wanted to,” or “I just played last night, I don’t need to give max energy tonight” etc. Lots of things come out. Sometimes, especially if you ask some guys in the MLB, it’s actually probably more efficient to sit a game out, come back refreshed and healthy the next night with more motivation. I don’t necessarily adhere to that theory,
This past week has been abysmal in terms of dodgeball. I’ve been trying to diagnose the problem, trying to see if I’m late, or early, or slacking off, or pressing too hard. It may be one of those or a combination of some, but sometimes, I think one just gets unlucky and you go through a rough stretch, or that you got lucky before and the luck is evening out now (regression to the mean). Like a baseball hitter who’s suddenly hitting balls directly at fielders or hitting deep fly balls that die at the warning track, I’m going through a slump. Usually, though, hitters break out of those slumps. I just have to keep striving, keep working, stay mentally focused.
The lesson here, I think, if I understand where I’m coming from (and really, if I don’t understand it, the reader has no chance) is that you have to allow for some “maintenance days” in athletes especially in long seasons like the NBA and MLB where seasons are half the year, and in the MLB there’s a game EVERY DAY. Even if a player plays 162 games, you gotta expect an off day once in a while a la Robinson Cano, and don’t get upset just because they’re getting paid millions of dollars to play. Some of those athletes get that money regardless of what they do on the field, so a huge motivating factor is lost, and those athletes didn’t sign themselves to those huge contracts without proper incentivization.
I truly don’t understand how athletes get hurt so much, however. Obviously pro athletes are bigger, get hit by bigger people, and play more ferocious sports, but baseball players? C’mon suck it up. I pride myself by the number of bruises and achy joints I have to play through every night.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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