The Sounds of Success In Sports

by Herb Rubenstein

Introduction

There are four ways to “participate” in sports and all ages can participate. First, we can watch sports. Second, there is “playing” sports. Whether it is jogging at a slow pace, ice skating in a carefree manner at Rockefeller Center in New York or the Galleria in Houston, or playing a game of catch (with a football, basketball, baseball, soccer ball, or lacrosse ball) where no one keeps score, shooting some hoops in basketball, hitting a birdie over a badminton net, and just hitting some golf or tennis balls, people all over the world “play” sports like this just to have fun and use a few muscles. The joy of hitting, throwing, kicking, and catching balls, playing sports, has mass appeal. Third, there is what we call “practicing” a sport or “training,” where we our primary goal is to improve.

The fourth way we play sports is we compete. Competition can be described as where a player seeks to win, either competing against others or competing against themselves. When I jogged 40 miles a week at the end of the run I checked my watch to find out how long it took me to run from my office to my home. Was I competing? Yes, I was competing against myself and my previous times.

This article focus3s on how excellent hearing can help us watch and understand sports, play sports for fun, as well as improve and compete in sports. What does better hearing have to with improving in almost all sports? Here are several examples of how every person who wants to enjoy sports more and improve at sports, and play sports with less pain and effort, can use listening carefully to hear the “cues” described below to help one improve at sports.

Running, Jogging or Walking

Listen to your feet when you run, jog or walk. If you hear your feet move or slide when they hit the ground, or slam into the ground when they hit the surface, or even make any loud sound when you run, jog, or walk you are not running, jogging, or walking properly. Quiet feet are not only a key to walking, jogging and running, they are a key to using less energy when doing these things, having fewer injuries, and enjoying walking, running and jogging more. Having quiet feet while running, jogging and walking requires both a “soft landing” and landing on the right part of the foot causing a smooth “rolling of the foot,” from near the heel to the ball of your foot.

The good news is that if your feet make a lot of noise when you walk, jog or run, you can try many different “landing” “approaches” or types of “strides” to help quiet your feet and avoiding a hard heel or toe/ball foot strike. As you listen to your feet better, and hear them, and “quiet them,” this will help improve your walking, jogging, and running. If you do not have good hearing, and your hearing could be improved by hearing aids or some form of technology that assists people with hearing loss, one way to improve at these sports would be to improve your hearing and be able to hear your how your feet contact the ground. In addition, hearing better and paying more attention to the sounds of your feet when running, walking or jogging can help you avoid injury, plus allow you to use use less effort to accomplish the same distance and speed. So, if you hear anyone make noticeable sound with their feet while jogging, walking or running, you can point this out to them and help them be better at these sports. They may not be able to hear their feet if they have a hearing deficit.

Catching a Ball

As you play catch and want to improve or help others improve in catching a ball, listen to the football or basketball hit your hands, the baseball hit your glove and you will notice a real difference when you catch the football or basketball in the palms of your hands and you catch the baseball in the palm of the glove. Noticing where you catch the ball and listening for the different types of sounds that are made depending on where and how well you catch the ball is a key to improving how you “catch” any type of ball. And, similar to the running example above, hearing this can dramatically improve how you can coach or help someone improve at catching a football. baseball, or basketball or any ball.

Listening for this “catching” sound also has one more very beneficial impact when you are catching a ball or helping another person catch a ball better. If you are the player catching the ball using this method, you will be listening intently for the “sound” of the ball impacting your hands or glove. When you do this you will naturally look more carefully at the ball, any type of ball, as it gets to your hand or glove and thereby improve your “hand-eye” coordination, and your concentration on the ball coming towards your hand. Thus, where you direct your listening, you also direct your focus and attention, thus helping you catch better and be able to teach others how to catch a ball better. You can teach this excellent improvement strategy to everyone you coach or try to help improve at catching a ball.

Tennis

We all know the sound of a tennis ball, racket ball, squash ball being struck properly is very different from a shot not hit in the sweet spot of the racket. Listening and hearing a little better can help in these sports in two distinct ways. First, when you are in competition, listening to how the ball sounds off your opponent’s racket can provide some useful information about the shot, its speed, and how much topspin or backspin is “on” the shot. More importantly, when you play one of these sports, especially when you are practicing your serve or hitting against a concrete wall or volleying, listen and learn what it sounds like when you hit the center of the strings, the sweet spot, versus when you hit the shot more on the perimeter of the racket. Just like “listening to the ball impact your hands,” discussed above regarding “catching,” if you do this in racket sports l, you will direct your focus, your eyesight, and your attention to what we call the “moment of impact,” the most important moment in any sport.

Thus, being able to discern the sounds of a shot with a racket hit perfectly in the sweet spot is a key ingredient of how you can improve your own hitting skills through practice. And you can help others you coach or just give a tip to in these sports improve as well.

Golf

Let’s focus on the impact sounds of three different golf shots. One way to improve hitting your greenside “bunker” or sand shots, often a difficult shot for amateurs and casual golfers, is to practice swinging the club in the sand trap without the ball. In a greenside bunker or short sand shot, the club MUST NEVER HIT THE BALL DIRECTLY. Rather, the club hits the sand behind and under the ball. If done correctly, the clubface is “open,” where the face of the club with the lines on it is pointed up towards the sky and the back of the club lays flat in relation to the sand. To hit a good greenside bunker or sand shot, you want the back part of the bottom of the golf club, often called the “bounce,” to hit the sand first and slide under the ball, never digging into the sand and never, never directly hitting the golf ball. When the “bounce” or bottom back part of the club hits the sand, there is a discernable sound we call a “thud.” So, you do not need a ball to practice your sand shots since the only things that matter are where your club enters the sand, the speed of the club, and what part of the club hits the sand first. So, take a sand wedge and draw a line in the sand, set up to hit the shot imagining a ball an inch or two ahead of the line, and swing and have your club enter the sand ON THE LINE. Master this drill, by listening carefully, and you will have a consistent sand game in golf.

The other two times in golf where sound can really help you in golf is hitting your irons and putting. You can hear the different sounds when you strike the ball on different areas of the face of an iron. You can use “face tape” or foot spray to tell you where the ball impacts the club to help guide your learning. You can also tell where on the club it strikes ball by the result of the shot and the feel to your hands if you are skilled at knowing golf ball flight laws/physics or develop the feel in your hands for identifying where on the face of the club the ball was struck. As you will learn the different sounds of hitting a golf ball “in the center of the face,” “off the toe,” “off the heel,” “high on the clubface,” or at the “bottom of the clubface” you can take this feedback in practice and use it to help you improve. This feedback is truly important for you and for your instructor to be able to distinguish to help you improve as quickly in golf, which is often very challenging for many who take up the game.

One more area in golf where being able to hear very well helps you improve is in putting. When you accelerate your putter too fast as it strikes the ball, the sound the putter makes is higher pitched than if you accelerate more slowly through the ball to hit the putt. Every instructor and most golfers know that accelerating too fast to hit a putt often leads to poor putting as one loses control of how far the ball will go and one also loses control of getting the putter face exactly square (perpendicular) to the line where you want the ball to start out. Listening for the low (good) pitch sound or high (bad) pitch sound can be done best in a very quiet setting or at home hitting putts on the rug. Overall, listen to your putter’s pitch, and it can help you point out a flaw in your putting that sight and “feel” have a very hard time pointing out to you.

Conclusion

Being able to hear the sounds of success in sports can help you and others improve, can help avoid injury and can help people enjoy sports better. And that’s a good thing for all of us.