Growing up a die hard Red Sox fan and living in the Boston area during the 1990’s I can remember the frustration and disappointment I felt in seeing my beloved home team bested on the field every year by the hated New York Yankee’s baseball team.
So I will admit that it secretly gave me pleasure when the Yankee’s star second baseman at the time, Chuck Knoblauch, became afflicted with a serious case of a malady known as the yips.
Yips is the name given to describe an event when an athlete temporarily loses control of their fine motor skills. The condition occurs suddenly as twitches, staggers, jitters and jerks of the muscles when athletes are attempting to perform a single precise and well-timed action (such as putting a golf ball or throwing a baseball).
The causes of the condition are poorly understood and there is no known therapy that guarantees a cure. Athletes affected by the yips sometimes recover their ability, but many are forced to abandon their sport because they become unable to produce the basic motions that are required to play their game.
The Mayo Clinic says the condition can be psychological, neurological, or a combination of both. Most doctors believe that the unwanted muscle spasms are caused by performance anxiety or by a neurological dysfunction called focal dystonia – caused by the over-training of muscle groups that execute a repetitive action.
In the case of Chuck Knoblauch, his yips started when he suddenly began struggling to throw the baseball accurately to first base. The throw from the 2nd base position to 1st base is considered the shortest and easiest in baseball, yet for some reason in 1999 Chuck Knoblauch lost his ability to consistently throw the ball accurately to his 1st baseman – who was standing a mere 40 feet away from him.
That year he committed a record 26 errors – four of the errors came in a single game, one throw so bad that the ball sailed over the 1st baseman’s head and hit a mother in the face who was sitting in the grandstands. The Yankees ultimately had to move Chuck Knoblauch to the Left Field position because he was unable to overcome the yips he experienced while manning 2nd Base.
Jeff Bond, a psychologist who studies the yips at the Australian Institute of Sports, says the yips are more complex and difficult to treat than almost any physical injury. He believes that: “Within each of us there resides two key motivations: one is the motivation to achieve success and the other is the motivation to avoid failure. We all have both; and at different times, and for different reasons, one voice will speak a lot louder than the other.”
He calls the yip voice the “don’t voice”; that voice inside your head motivating you to avoid failure. The yips are more prevalent in sports like baseball, golf and tennis because those sports have a lot of “think time” and provide a greater opportunity for that “don’t voice” to boom out loudly in the athlete’s head. An athlete in those sports has a long time to think about their next shot and to dwell on the possibility of failure – which can lead to paralysis and self-doubt when the time comes to actually perform.
While I initially derived pleasure watching Chuck Knoblauch struggle with his yips – and I mocked his inability to make such simple throws – it was an encounter with the yips that occurred in my own life that helped me to re-examine my position about those struggling with this affliction and to view them with much more sympathy and compassion.
It happened in my 30’s when I joined a dart team with some of my co-workers. Being part of the nine member team gave me an opportunity to get out and socialize with friends every Tuesday night and to have fun testing my dart throwing skills against other dart throwers in the region.
Our team was initially placed in the beginners division but over the course of several years we gradually moved up to the A division as our skills improved and as we won division tournaments. I found that as the level of competition increased, so did the pressure. At the highest level of competition there is very little margin for error because making one or two poor throws during a match could mean the difference between winning and losing.
To further magnify those feelings of pressure all of the teammates and opponents would gather around the board watching each match with great interest and trying to cheer their side on to victory. What had started out as a relaxing fun activity with my friends had turned into a high stakes battle requiring intense focus.
To cope with the increasing psychological pressure of the games, I worked on different strategies. First I focused on my throwing mechanics, endeavoring to use the same stance and consistent throwing motion each time so as to eliminate variables in my delivery that could cause variation.
The goal was to become so comfortable and practiced with my throwing mechanics that my throws would become automatic during the match, leaving my mind free to focus only on the dart board and the dart target.
Another strategy I employed was to make sure my alcohol level content was properly “calibrated”. My team would joke about this asking if anyone needed additional “aiming fluid” prior to the start of the match. I found that the alcohol did serve to reduce the pre-game jitters and helped me to worry less about my fear of failure. Gauging the proper amount of “aiming fluid” for optimum performance however was a challenge as there were more than one occasions when it was obvious that my over-indulgence of aiming fluid led to sub-par performances.
Despite these coping strategies, I vividly remember several instances that came up during important dart matches in my last season when I came down with what I can only describe as the yips.
The first episode occurred at an important moment during a key match when the outcome was in doubt and I had a chance to win the game. I stepped up to the line and extended my right arm with the dart in my hand getting ready to start my throwing motion.
Suddenly, my hand started trembling and I couldn’t quiet it. I stepped off the line and took a deep breath. When I returned to the line I was able to steady my hand, but at the completion of my throwing motion my fingers failed to obey my brain and release the dart when they were commanded. The dart flew wildly off course – not even hitting the dart board.
The errant throw really shook my confidence because it was rare for me to miss the target I was aiming at by more than an inch. It was inconceivable to me that I had just thrown a dart that missed the target by more than 2 feet.
I stepped off the line again, my teammates trying to encourage me. As I transferred my second dart into my throwing hand and held it between my fingers, I remember looking down and thinking how foreign it felt in my hand at that moment. Even though I had perfected my throwing mechanics in hundreds of practice and game events it felt like I was holding a dart for the first time.
I stepped to the line again, but that “don’t voice” and fear of failure was now booming loudly in my head. Instead of concentrating on the target that I was trying to hit to win the game, my mind was thinking instead about my throwing mechanics, how I was embarrassing myself and how I was letting my teammates down. The voice in my head had become my own worst enemy.
My second and third darts were not as wild, but not surprisingly given the state of my mind, were still way off target. Honestly, I was relieved when my opponent promptly stepped up to the line after my turn and won the game. I did not feel at that moment in time that I was capable of winning the game. My motivation to avoid failure far exceeded my motivation to achieve success.
At the completion of the season I decided to quit the dart team but it wasn’t because of the dart yips episodes. By that time I had worked on other techniques to help minimize their effect on me when I felt them coming on.
My motivation for retiring came when I decided that it was more important and better for me to spend my time at home on Tuesdays with my wife and young family; rather than staying out late, hanging out in seedy bars, drinking too much and being unproductive every Wednesday because I was tired and hung over from the night before. It is a decision I never looked back and regretted.
Nor do I regret the brief time I spent immersed in that world of competitive dart tournaments – because I learned some valuable life lessons from the experience. I learned techniques that I could use to help me perform under pressure; I learned not to let my motivation to avoid failure overwhelm me and get in the way of me reaching out to achieve success; and I learned that there is no place more important than home.
Last of all, I learned not to take pleasure in other people’s misfortunes – regardless of whether they are friend or foe. Life is hard enough after all, and making life harder for people by being mean-spirited ends up diminishing us all.
Words to Live By... 
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