Pittsburgh Pirates: Embracing the Suck with Bernie Holliday

In one of the most awe inspiring interviews to date for me I talked to the Pittsburgh Pirates mental strength director Bernie Holliday

Dreams, what exactly are they? To me, it’s following a passion you care deeply about, and you run with it no matter what. Writing is my passion, and you could call it my dream as well. Within that dream, you find yourself making personal goals and watermarks to set. I set one of those goals about a week ago when I landed that dream interview with Pittsburgh Pirates mental conditioning coordinator Bernie Holliday.

As many of you know, I’ve been talking to a plethora of Pittsburgh Pirates minor league players. To be specific, 24 in total. The key to their success is not only physical and God-given talent, it also comes between the ears. Like Yogi Berra once said, “Baseball is 90% mental, and the other half is physical.”

For those of you who aren’t sure who Bernie Holliday is or what he has done, I’ve got you covered. I asked Bernie for his credentials and what he does precisely within the Pittsburgh Pirates organization.

“This is my 11th year with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and my official title is director of mental strength. What that really means is I help out players and coaches with the mental game of baseball, which is the game played between your ears. We try to maximize what I call the three Cs: confidence, concentration, and composure. In the long term, we talk about motivation and resilience to keep pushing forward and not giving up.”

Holliday continued with his background and training. “I went to the University of Idaho to get my Ph.D. My background and training deals with sports exercise psychology, which includes an in-depth study of peak performance psychology. I’m also certified through the Association of Applied Sports Psychology (AASP) as a Certified Mental Performance Consultant.” Holliday mentioned to me that this certification has been pushed to become necessary as a sign of “professional competency.”

The mental side of the game of baseball and life is a very crucial part in development on so many levels. It takes an individual with not just competency but a passion for pursuing this field and doing well as Holliday has done for a long time. I wanted to know what made Holliday passionate about this field.

“I’ve been asked a lot recently with what we are doing with this whole pandemic and quarantine period. For me, the most fulfilling part of this role is when I get a call back from a player or a former coach, and they are doing something else now. Some opened up their own company, baseball academy, or even going back to school. They told me the mental skills they learned from me and our program they are using even now with their families or career. That is the most rewarding thing I do. It’s fun to do that with a player on the field, but it’s more impactful when they use these skills later on in life.”

In life, it’s guaranteed we are going to fail a ton of times. What matters is you get back on the proverbial horse and try again. The one term that caught my eye with Holliday is called “embracing the suck.” I wanted to know where that came from and what it precisely means.

“It’s a term that we borrowed from the US Army, you hear that a lot with the soldiers. What it means is that when you’re doing something hard or extremely physical, we will be able to suffer more effectively and longer than our opponent will be able to. It’s about how you get through hardship, adversity, and how you can keep coming back, and thrive in that suffer-fest.”

We continued to “embrace the suck” here. “The second part of this is seeking out the suck. When we grow, it’s usually when we get out of our comfort zones. We got to push ourselves beyond our capabilities and this place of uncomfortableness. Embracing that suck allows us to grow and adapt to become better than what we were before. There are two parts to embracing the suck. The first is perseverance, and the second is growth.”

Holldiay mentioned before that he worked with the Army and their soldiers for quite some time. I wanted to know if there was a similarity with what he did then and what he is doing now as far as the people aspect goes.

“There is a lot of overlap, but there, of course, are some big differences. The first difference is we are playing for rings and championships, and they are playing for keeps. The soldiers don’t have the luxury to lose. At the same time, the human mind is the human mind, and high-level performance is high-level performance. That could be in business, education, surgery, being a soldier, or in our case, baseball.”

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Holldiay continued, “When I would go into a commander’s office, I would look on their bookshelf. They seemed to have books of legendary coaches like Lou Holtz and Vince Lombardi. Now I go into a manager’s office. I see books about Patton and Eisenhower and these great military leaders. I found out that each world tends to draw from the other as inspiration and motivation.”

Baseball is a very polarizing sport, in my opinion. You have people that absolutely love the game, and then you have others who despise it. Very rare to find a ‘casual’ fan as far as baseball goes. In that vein, I asked Holliday what is it about baseball that fascinates him and why he chose it.

“The thing that I find most intriguing is it’s unlike any other sport in the world because you practice every day and compete every night. If we include spring training and the postseason, you play almost 200 games in a row. There is no other sport with that endurance factor to maintain a mentality and perspective for that long a time. It is interesting to me that in baseball, the box score threatens your process mentally. You have about 15 hours to pull yourself together before it’s threatened again with another box score and result.”

He continued, “Football is a different process and mentality. You’re only threatened on Saturday or Sunday. You have six days to recommit to the process. Baseball, your process is threatened every single night. That’s so hard mentally to maintain that focus and commitment when it’s threatened so often.”

Mental health and strength have always been ‘taboo’ not just in life but also in sports. Holiday and I discussed that very subject for quite a bit, and I wanted to know why there is a stigma in sports? Some things opened my eyes. When you hear mental health, you automatically think there is a “problem,” or there is something wrong with you seeking help. Holliday told me, “you don’t need to be sick to get better,” and that spoke volumes. “We’re like strength coaches but for the mind, thoughts, and emotions,” Holliday said.

One of the ways he said they were breaking the stigma was, “viewing things in a peak performance model rather than a medical model. If you want to get bigger, faster, stronger, you go to a strength coach. If you want to get bigger, faster, stronger, mentally, you go to a mental strength coach.” I like to put it as getting those GAINS FOR YOUR BRAINS!!

We then touched on the Pittsburgh Pirates organization as a whole and how serious they take mental health and wellness. “We take mental health and wellness very seriously, especially considering the mental and emotional strains of the pandemic. Our organization is actively working to reduce the stigma around mental wellness and illness. We want to ensure our players and coaches that mental and emotional health exists on a continuum, and we’re constantly moving up and down on along that continuum. Asking for help is a display of courage and strength rather than weakness. Life is a team sport, and we can’t expect to go through it alone.”

I want to take the time before we continue any further. If you are suffering from depression, anxiety, mental illness, or are just feeling blue – it’s ok to seek out help. You are not alone, and there is always someone there to listen and get you through this.

Back to the task at hand with the interview. I asked Holiday how much stress and mental strain being a minor league player can put on them just trying to make it to the Majors.

“It’s a difficult, long, and confusing journey at times for those guys. I think they understand the percentages of making it. As they are in the game longer from short season, Low-A, High-A, you start to see that bottleneck happening. There is a lot of stress and pressure to show up and get results. That becomes a challenge. They know that on the one hand, there’s the developmental process, and on the other, they are expected to produce to get promotions. Having that challenge of wanting to develop long term but knowing you need to get results tonight is very stressful.”

He touched on another aspect, “You also start to look in front of you and behind you and realize how many talented players there are at your position. That can create a lot of stress and trigger competitiveness. On the one hand, you have to be teammates with these 24 guys, and on the other, your main goal is to get called up. You think about team chemistry and cohesion. The challenge we have is how do we create a team feel and create a good teammate all while trying to develop them to get to the Pittsburgh Pirates eventually.”

Holliday touched on a big challenges these minor league players face. “The sheer number of coaches these guys encounter. If you’re a minor league player, you have been impacted by over 40 coaches. We need to make sure with the coaching staff that we are cohesive, systematic, and we are all on the same page. This is to ensure the players aren’t getting mixed messages as they go from level to level.”

We started getting into the messages the entire mental strength team focuses on with players and coaches alike. “We talk about the head and the heart. When you’re inconsistent day to day or night to night, it’s not because of your ability it’s because something changed in your mental process: your mood or attitude changes, which then changes your game. We’ve devoted a lot to develop the head and the heart, and on top of that, we value the man or person as much or more than the player, which is something we take a lot of pride in.”

Obviously, we don’t know everything and anything when it comes to mental strength or conditioning. Naturally, there has to be some sort of programs they offered for players and coaches alike. I wanted to know more about said programs and workshops.

“The programs we offer we have a rookie development program. That is a foundational level of courses and education. Our rookies and newly signed guys will take this over the course of a year. They learn the foundational techniques of mental strength; once that occurs, a lot of it becomes small groups or area groups like pitchers, infielders outfielders, etc. You then can have the one on one course where you can master an area they want to be good at or strengthen their mental game.”

He then touched on the coaches, “We spend a lot of time in three areas. The first is supporting our coaches mentally. That way, they are mentally resilient, tough, and fulfilling life professionally and personally. The second part is helping coaches help players with the mental game. We spend a lot of time with our caching staff walking through 12 or 13 guys on their roster. The last area is actual practice design and construction. Helping our coaches develop a workday and make quality drills and practice time.”

One of the burning questions in the back of my mind dealt with the actual session with a player. The main thing I wanted to know if there was a set list of questions or if every situation was unique?

“The ironic answer is YES! There are some foundational principles on how the mind and body operate together and how the nervous system works. That’s one of the main things in the rookie development where the head and the heart operate. Once you understand that you can start to personalize it and embrace it, nerves are a good thing, and emotions are natural. There are no negative emotions. Once that is out of the way, things become more unique and contextual with how the player views the game and themselves.”

Every athlete, Pittsburgh Pirates prospects included, that I’ve talked to is “superstitious” in one way or another. For me, I had to put my right sock on before my left.

Baseball players, on the other hand, are a completely different animal with superstitions. I asked if that routine or ritual was interrupted how much that could affect the player’s psyche.

“There is a difference between a routine and a ritual. A routine is something that you can control to set your day up so that you’re mentally and physically prepared. Rituals control you, and that’s something like I don’t have my lucky socks or something to that effect, which controls you. Although we don’t discourage them, we also don’t encourage them as well. We want our players to develop a really strong routine.”

He continued to tell a story about a football player and his ritual. “He had to find a penny in the stadium the day of the game. He felt like if he didn’t find a penny in the stadium, his game would be ruined. Every morning he’s out there on game day crawling underneath the bleachers trying to find a penny. Sometimes he found one in ten minutes, and other times it took him two hours; he comes back all sweaty and beat up because he hasn’t eaten. That is something we try to work on and replace a ritual with a routine.”

The last part dealt with emergency routines. “Some routines are very detailed, and that’s great when you can control it, but what happens when the bus breaks down and you show up at four instead of one. You don’t have time to go through your routine, and we have to figure out the nuts and bolts of the routine that has to happen. If you have the nuts and bolts, you can still get through it in the abbreviated amount of time.”

One of the things you hear in baseball is something called “the yips.” One of the most well known examples of this is former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Steve Blass. This is a very mysterious occurrence, and the origin is unknown, for the most part. Although I knew this, I wanted to get Holliday’s opinion on the matter.

“If you ask 100 different people what the yips are, you will get 100 different answers. I can tell you that with my experiences with them. There have been a handful of guys that have worked through it. Many of them have had success in dealing with it; others struggle to this day. I believe you can certainly get through it. There’s controversy in the sports psychology world as to if it’s a mental or neurological thing. It’s a very touchy subject that not many coaches or players like talking about, but you might be surprised how many guys go through it in their careers.”

He then talked about working with the yips, “One of the things we try to emphasize is maintaining the fundamentals throughout that battle trying to figure themselves out and get back on track. It’s a tricky thing to deal with when you talk to anyone in my profession. They will tell you they walked away, scratching their head, and wondering how that happened (the yips).”

One of the things I kept hearing when talking to the Pirates minor league players is the “Dojo” or the mental strength hub they would visit quite often. I wanted to know what exactly goes on in there.

“It’s our space where we work on the mental game. It’s a giant room that used to be our weight room. When we were building our new performance center, that room was vacant, so the mental conditioning department moved in. We were trying to come up with a name for it, and my partner in crime Hector Morales came up with the name. He has a black belt in Judo, and he said Dojo means the way. It just became a thing, and the players started calling it that, and it stuck. With Dojo meaning the way we figured this could be the way for mental strength with the Pittsburgh Pirates.”

Although there isn’t a book in the works as of now for Holliday, he did say it’s on his bucket list. I will be waiting very patiently to read his wise words when that day comes. Overall, this was an amazing experience, and I would do it again if the opportunity arose. Bernie Holliday is truly one of the great minds at the forefront of the Pittsburgh Pirates system.

In one of the most awe inspiring interviews to date for me I talked to the Pittsburgh Pirates mental strength director Bernie Holliday

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