Examining the importance and reasoning behind baseball batters' pre-bat routines

Automaticity in sport is crucial to executing tasks and skills sufficiently and literature has concluded any thought processing and interactions of thoughts will disrupt the performances of the athletes, ultimately impacting the outcome of their performance (Beilock et al., 2002; Wulf et al., 2001). Automaticity is the act of performing actions without the conscious thought about them (Singer, 2002). Adding a stage before a task will eliminate the decreases in performances and increase the automaticity within athletes and their skills. These structured tasks and behaviors are focused on movement regularly before attempting the desired skill or task (Boutcher, 1990; Lidor & Tenenbaum, 1993; Lobmeyer & Waaserman, 1986). A pre-performance routine is the sequence of task-relevant thoughts and actions, which athletes engage in systematically prior to his or her performance of a specific sport or skill (Moran, 1996). There has been an important amount of research on the roll pre-performance routines play in the success of performances when used, specifically in self-paced sports such as golf or tennis. Although, there has been a lacking in the area of pre-performance routines in externally paced sports such as track and field, swimming, and baseball. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to investigate the following research questions: 1. How do baseball players perceive pre-bat routines to prepare them for hitting? 2. What is the developmental process of pre-bat routines in baseball batters? With an additional secondary research question of what role do pre-bat routines play in self-efficacy and anxiety? The study will follow a qualitative research design with high school and collegiate baseball players. One of the objectives in this research is to aid in the knowledge for young ball players to understand and start to develop their own pre-bat routines to potentially help increase their batting performances, as well as to get a deeper understanding as to why athletes are using pre-bat routines and the impact they may have on the players performances. In addition, this study will also provide valuable information to coaches and athletes on the process and development of pre-bat routines in the sport of baseball specifically within baseball batters where there has been no attention in the pre-performance research field.