The Shot Has Changed

Sports psychologist Dr. Dean Hinitz coaches the industry on adapting to the COVID-19 era

As a bowler, Dr. Dean Hinitz - known as Dr. Dean - describes himself as, “Fine on my Wednesday night league team. In the over- 50 handicapped division of sports psychologists, I can probably hold my own.” It’s because of his skills as a sports psychologist, however, that champions like Carolyn Dorin-Ballard and Kim Terrell-Kearney and several national bowling teams have engaged Hinitz to help them perform at their best in the most stressful and challenging competitions.

A lifelong competitive athlete, Hinitz is an expert at the mental game and how to overcome the obstacles that the mind can place in the way of success in competition. He believes that the same techniques can be used to overcome obstacles in business and in life, including a once-in-a-lifetime obstacle like COVID-19.

Dr. Dean was a collegiate-level gymnast at the University of Minnesota in the 1980s

SAVED BY SPORTS

Hinitz was born and raised near Minneapolis, MN, in a part of town where he got into “a lot of trouble” as a teenager. Realizing that he had to turn his life around, Hinitz channeled his adolescent energy and frustration into the sport of gymnastics. He was good at it and competed in high school and later at the University of Minnesota. “Gymnastics saved my life,” says Hinitz.

It was also gymnastics that put Hinitz on the path of becoming a sports psychologist. “I was a gymnast all the way through college. I competed with the University of Minnesota in the national championships and got pretty far, but I choked a lot,” he recalls. “My mental game was an obstacle. I thought I gotta get a handle on that, and I want to be able to help other people with it.”

Hinitz began devouring psychology books, looking for answers to his problem. This led to undergraduate studies in psychology and a PhD from the University of Nevada in Reno, where he lives and is now a UNR adjunct professor.

Coincidentally Hinitz began bowling with family and friends in Reno, not knowing that the city is a center for competitive bowling and home to the National Bowling Stadium. He had retired from gymnastics and other demanding sports like martial arts and rock climbing but missed the thrill of competition. He was excited to learn that bowling allowed him to again experience some of the exhilaration he had known as a gymnast. “Bowling and gymnastics are balance and timing, and there was a lot of body involvement,” Hinitz says. “It didn’t matter what age you are and I thought, oh my gosh, you get to have this [feeling] again.”

Realizing that his bowling skills needed improvement, the evercompetitive Hinitz took lessons from Chris Alderucci, a coach whose ad he found at a local bowling center. That chance meeting began a serendipitous chain of events that ushered Hinitz into competitive bowling’s inner circle, albeit as a special coach and not a bowler. “Chris Alderucci was loosely connected with Team USA,” says Hinitz. “He introduced me to the men’s and women’s Team USA coaches, Fred Borden and Jeri Edwards, as well as Bob Summerville, then the editor of Bowling This Month magazine.”

Former head coach of Team USA Fred Borden and Dr. Dean

Hinitz began sharing his expertise with Team USA and writing on sports psychology in Bowling This Month. Today he consults on performance with Team USA, the Peruvian national team, several champion collegiate bowling programs, and athletes and teams from a wide range of sports. A regular speaker at bowling industry events, he is the author of two books, Focused for Bowling and Bowling Psychology. He has also presented clinics at the Kegel Training Center for more than 15 years.

SWATTED BY GODZILLA’S TAIL

“In sports psychology some of it is performance enhancement and dealing with pressure. Some of it is dealing with change and loss, which is inevitable in the field of sports,” says Hinitz. With all the change and loss in the bowling industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s easy to see 2020 as one long losing season.

Hinitz says that the feelings experienced by losing athletes are part of what bowling proprietors and their staff have been dealing with. “The hit of shock, the rapid, startling, jerking away of normal operating procedures is universal,” he says. “The [pandemic] was like Godzilla’s tail — it just swatted everything that people considered normal, reliable and predictable.”

Although it isn’t as harsh as traumatic shock, such a hit can nonetheless lead to feelings of loss of empowerment and a disconnection from things or people one thought were stable. Typically people will have one of two reactions to this type of shock. One is feeling helpless and overwhelmed, which Hinitz cautions is not a good place to stay for long because it can lead to depression and inaction.

“Shock is universal, but how long it’s experienced as paralyzing is not universal,” says Hinitz. “For some people that becomes a resting point and they just feel bad. And for others, it drives [them]. They want to feel like something is being gained.” These are the people who take an “adaptive stance” early, which Hinitz describes with the Marine Corps motto: “Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.”

“If you have an adaptive stance, it leads to problem solving,” Hinitz says. “The pandemic has changed the world so much that you don’t have the luxury of waiting for a return to how things were. That could be a long wait for an improbable return.”

Rod Ross, former Team USA coach (left) discusses the team with Dr. Dean at the PABCON Championship in Peru in 2019

KEEP YOUR GOALS MEASURABLE

Hinitz advises not putting the finish line too far away by setting unreasonable goals for your recovery; pursue interim goals so you can see progress along the way. “If I’m working with an Olympic athlete, we don’t want to have the podium be our [sole] measure,” he says. “We want to have so many measures before then to establish a measurable rhythm in your approach. That’s so far ahead of the medal. I want to keep score around things that [can be] achieved sooner.”

For a proprietor that might mean setting short term goals for improving the bottom line by marketing your center in new ways. Current examples of this are operators who have set up outdoor dining in their parking lot or converted dormant party rooms to study areas for students doing remote learning.

It’s also important to remind yourself about difficult situations that you have survived in the past. Hinitz illustrates that with a story about his friend Norm Duke, the PBA Hall-of-Famer. “Norm was competing on TV. He chose a great shot [but] left a single pin. Some people would kick the ball return and say, ‘All I get is bad breaks!’ But Norm is an amazing split shooter and thinks, ‘All right, I can make these.’” Hinitz explains that Duke goes to tournaments with the mindset that no matter who he is competing against, and no matter what happens, he’s going to get his. So will others who think, “I got this far, I can make it.”

After months of dealing with the pandemic, many people are understandably fatigued by stress and insecurity. How can they continue to find the strength to deal with the situation? “You’ve got to come to it with energy,” says Hinitz. “You can’t rely on the problem to generate the energy. Otherwise you will get fatigued. You will burn out.”

The answer, he says, lies in “What do you do when you’re fatigued with anything in life? You have to step away from it for a moment and [do] whatever repair thing you have to do — take a walk, kiss your husband. You cannot just bury yourself in the problem the whole time and expect to stay fresh.”

“The conditions have changed. Can you spot them? And can you see where the break point’s going to be? The break point is just the place where you get friction and you say, ‘Now I can be effective.’ There’s no traction in the old shot,” says Hinitz. “You have to adjust because the shot has changed.”

Dr. Dean in action at Kegel Training Center

LEARNING THE NEW SPORT SHOT

Recognizing that things have changed due to the pandemic, and adjusting to it, is crucial, says Hinitz. He explains this with the bowling analogy, a bigger sport shot. Until now, life and business for many proprietors was a predictable house shot. But the pandemic has changed life’s lane conditions, and proprietors are like a bowler confronted with a pattern that they’ve never played before.

“As in bowling, we don’t want to spend one calorie of energy resisting inevitable change. If you can learn to embrace and adapt to change, you will be on the fast track to easing anxiety and concerns, and your relationships with everyone around you will be strengthened. You will certainly feel much stronger inside.” ❖

Robert Sax is a writer and PR consultant in Los Angeles. He grew up in Toronto, Canada, the home of five-pin bowling.

Robert Sax