June 17, 2025 • 11 mins
In this episode of The Hitting Zone, Mitch Thomas unpacks a powerful mental framework for athletes: The 4 F’s to Success — Focus, Flush It, Forget It, and Fight.
These four principles aren’t just about baseball — they’re about building the mindset needed to face adversity, stay in the moment, and compete at your highest level.
⚾ Learn how to:
Focus on what you can control
Flush It when something goes wrong
Forget It to move forward with confidence
Fight through the challenge with grit and intent
Whether you’re at the plate or in life, these habits drive long-term growth and success.
Brought to you by Youth Baseball Midwest (YBMcast)
#TheHittingZone #MitchThomas #YBMcast #YouthBaseballMidwest #BaseballPodcast #4FstoSuccess #BaseballMindset #Focus #ForgetIt #FlushIt #Fight #MentalToughness #BaseballDevelopment #PlayerGrowth
SUBSCRIBE, LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE
Check out our sponsor's pages!
Powered by Game 7 Baseball: https://www.game7baseball.com
Get all your Gear at Prime Sports Midwest https://www.primesportsmw.com
Follow Youth Baseball Midwest
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youthbaseballmidwest
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YouthBaseballMidwest
X/Twitter: Youth Baseball Midwest (@YBM_cast) / X (twitter.com)
Website: https://www.youthbaseballmidwest.com
Follow Prep Baseball Report Missouri
These four principles aren’t just about baseball — they’re about building the mindset needed to face adversity, stay in the moment, and compete at your highest level.
⚾ Learn how to:
Focus on what you can control
Flush It when something goes wrong
Forget It to move forward with confidence
Fight through the challenge with grit and intent
Whether you’re at the plate or in life, these habits drive long-term growth and success.
Brought to you by Youth Baseball Midwest (YBMcast)
#TheHittingZone #MitchThomas #YBMcast #YouthBaseballMidwest #BaseballPodcast #4FstoSuccess #BaseballMindset #Focus #ForgetIt #FlushIt #Fight #MentalToughness #BaseballDevelopment #PlayerGrowth
SUBSCRIBE, LIKE, COMMENT, SHARE
Check out our sponsor's pages!
Powered by Game 7 Baseball: https://www.game7baseball.com
Get all your Gear at Prime Sports Midwest https://www.primesportsmw.com
Follow Youth Baseball Midwest
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youthbaseballmidwest
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YouthBaseballMidwest
X/Twitter: Youth Baseball Midwest (@YBM_cast) / X (twitter.com)
Website: https://www.youthbaseballmidwest.com
Follow Prep Baseball Report Missouri
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Definitely a different type of process.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Put down or freeze, you know, being a coach's son Jackson.
Of course they keep three too. What's the things that
get five pitch?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Oh, three, two one roll it.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Welcome everybody to the first edition of the Hitting Zone
Podcasts on the outdoor side. I'm actually outside my home.
I was taking a walk and wanted to jump on
and do a little podcast to talk about some things.
But first let's talk about Game seven Baseball. Game seven
base we're running through the World Series. I believe that
(01:03):
is on my birthday weekend, six twenty six weekend. There's
still a few tournaments left, so if you're out there
looking for something with all the rain that we've had,
make sure that you go visit Game seven Game seven
baseball dot com. Make sure you also go check out
probably the tenths that will be out there from Prime
Sports Midwest.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
They have three locations.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Now, one in Chesterfield, one and Fenton, and of course
the Midrivers that we talked about all the time. I'm
not in studio to see all the reminders on the addresses,
so I know one's fifteen to fifty Oho Cello ones
on Midrivers, Mall Drive but any jumping on today, We've
got a lot going on with youth Baseball Midwest. You
can see that if you go to the YouTube channel,
(01:46):
you're already there. So actually if you just go cycle
through you can find some of our other events. I
did this last week too. Of course, if you're watching
this year, you're on YouTube already. But what I need
you to do is hit that hit those likes, follow
us comments, give us some action on there so that
we can have some good topics for you moving forward.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And today it's gonna be a quick one.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I just wanted to talk about a few things that
I think as we head into the end of the
season and into tryouts, things that you can work with
your athletes on as as as a parent. And if
you're old enough and you're watching this, this is something
that you can that you can do yourself. Something that
I've been big on is the mental side of the
(02:32):
game lately. And you can go to my Instagram page
which is mitchtime as Sports Performance, and you could check
out some of the things that I talk about on
the mental side, and it's things like failure. You know
what is failure? One of my favorite things was an
interview done with Kobe Bryant, and Kobe was asked about
failure and he said, what is it? And he said,
(02:55):
it's a figment of your imagination. And I thought about that,
and the perception was is failure real? And of course
there are results that aren't favorable, but if you're not learning,
is that really failure? So that leads me into topics
to talk about today, which is gonna be simple. It's
(03:18):
the four fs that I like to call them.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
These are things that we could do to basically become.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Having an elite level mindset in the game, trying to
be unbreakable, and you have situations that go against you,
and I call those the four fs. It's the only
time you can have four fs, and I think be
successful is if you have four f's in school, we're
in trouble. So the first one is the obvious one.
We talked about this last week on the show. Brian
(03:46):
and I did about focus and how to lead focus
at practices or demand focus, and how that leads into
just being, you know, a better apple between the years,
being more prepared, How it helps you in you're at bats,
how it helps you after you've made some mistakes, or
(04:07):
if you go zero for three in a game.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
How do you bounce back from those things?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
And I think focus for me is simply just being present,
staying in that moment, the next pitch, the next step bat,
the next play. Everything that is in our game is
one single moment, and we have to make sure that
we're focused for that one moment. So there's a pop
(04:31):
up and that ball is caught, there's a next moment,
there's a next play, there's a there's a next pitch,
there's a next strike, there's a you know, a next ball.
If you will a new situation, you throw a ball
in a dirt. Guess what if runner at first base
or on second base? Now things change, bunt defense has changed.
So staying present focus is my first of the four fs,
(04:54):
and I think that's probably one of the biggest ones
out of the four fs. The next one is to
be able to flush it. You know, if we do
have a situation where we boot a groundball and you know,
you you strike out with a basis loaded and you
have two outs, you still have to play defense again.
(05:16):
You know, you still have to run out on the
field and you can't take that stuff with you, which
leads into the next one, which is forget it.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
And this one's the hard one. I think.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I think it's you know, easy for us to be
able to make a mistake, you know, get your teammates
rilly around you, you tend to flush it.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
But did you forget about it? You know?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And did you after the ending is over, did you
go back in the dugout and did you start complaining
about it again?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
And you know, things like that I think.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Linger and they create negativity, whether it's between your own
ears or even in that dugout. And so just make
sure that we're not replaying that play or that situation,
you know. Again, go back to focus, focus forward, focus
on the new things you want to work on. What
(06:06):
the mistake that you did. That's fine, Go home, go
to your gym, go go to practice, use visualization tools
to prepare next time for maybe that bad hop that
you got. Maybe maybe that's the maybe that's the one
you're visualizing. But again, you're not going to dwell on
(06:28):
your mistakes. You're going to see it, which goes back
to failure, which is not part of the FOREF by
the way, But you failed on something you can't you
can't continue to dwell. You have to you have to
move on, you have to flush, you have to forget it.
The final left that I have for you today is
just fight, fight, fight, fight. Whatever your situation may be,
(06:50):
whatever mistake may be, whatever you're oh for, maybe the
game score. I think we don't do this enough. I
don't think we can care about this one, and we
just kind of roll over.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And I believe that.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
If you compete every single moment or every single rep,
and you're focused, you can flush and you can forget it.
The fight becomes much much easier because you're not fighting
your other demons that you have inside your head on
the mistakes that you made. So what I like to
see out of this fight is those gritty athletes, Because
(07:28):
if you're a gritty athlete and you keep fighting, you
keep fouling pitches off and you're hard to strike out,
or you're a great base runner and you're grinding grimy
on the basis, it's tough to beat. And so if
talent starts to lose focus all of a sudden, those
gritty athletes can have a chance to come back and
(07:50):
provide an opportunity for the next moment that you'll have
in this game. And so My big takeaway for today
for you guys is I would love for you just
to think about the biggest word here, which is the focus.
We talked about it last week again on the show,
and I couldn't agree more with Brian when we talked
(08:12):
about it, and that's something that eye contact. I had
this last night with my eight U group and I
literally would point at him and I would give him
the old you know, look at my eyes and point
right back at them and say, hey, you guys locked
in on me. And I kept continuing to do that,
and over time, believe it or not, they it became
(08:35):
routine and I was like, Okay, this is something that
I've been missing on myself, is making sure that players
are locked in on me and then making sure that
I'm saying things that they can.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Keep their focus.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I think that's the biggest one of the four fs.
You got to focus, flush it, forget it, and of
course fight. And to end here, one of the things
that I've learned, and this is from the white rat,
which is white he hears all. This game is played
in moments, one singular moment, one pitch, one play, one throw,
(09:12):
one catch, one out, one half inning, one inning, one
ball game, one season, one career. And if you spend
your time worrying about these failures, if you will, I
don't want to use that word, but these mistakes and
they cost you these moments to be you know, to
(09:33):
live in these moments. The game can be harsh on you.
And so I really want you to think about that
and what that means. This is one moment and if
you've made that mistake, turn around and let your teammates
help you out. When you flush it, let your teammates
help you refocus, you'll forget about that, have a little
(09:56):
bit of fun with it, and then here comes that fight.
And that's what we all chase as coaches. That's what
we want, right We always tell you we want these dogs,
But what does that mean. Okay, it's a guy that
can't roll over. You got to be able to fight.
But if if you're gonna fight, you're gonna have to
forget all the other stuff because they ain't gonna work.
So I'm gonna leave you again with that, live in
the moments, enjoy this game as much as you can.
(10:19):
And for my young people out there, my young coaches,
don't be afraid to start putting inside the budgets, maybe
the ice cream stand and get your slushies and your
candy after the game, and maybe the star of the
game gets.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
The extra four bucks.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I guess that's what it costs nowadays the concession stands.
But anyho, make sure that this is something that we're
gonna do. Over the next couple of weeks, we're gonna
be really busy with youth baseball Midwest. We're gonna be
out at Carshield doing some games in the Premiere Pitching
Development League. That's gonna be fun. You might see me
on there doing some games. But you got to make
(10:53):
sure that you're you're you hit the dinger, you hit
that little bell at the top, so that way you
get your notifications when they go live and we're doing
these games.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Missouri Legion.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
They just did the high School All Star Game, which
is a blast go back and see. Of course, you
can go back and see other episodes that I have
with guests on my shows, and we'll get back to that.
But in the meantime, we're gonna have these short little
sessions and we hope that you tune in and you're
not gonna be able to do that without those notifications.
So I'm by myself. But pitchers bump strikes and hitters
(11:25):
hit them where they aint. It's the best advice that
Darren Cecil has given me myself. So you guys have
a great day out there and be safe and enjoy
the sun.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
See you guys.
Definitely a different type of process.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Put down or freeze, you know, being a coach's son Jackson.
Of course they keep three too. What's the things that
get five pitch?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Oh, three, two one roll it.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Welcome everybody to the first edition of the Hitting Zone
Podcasts on the outdoor side. I'm actually outside my home.
I was taking a walk and wanted to jump on
and do a little podcast to talk about some things.
But first let's talk about Game seven Baseball. Game seven
base we're running through the World Series. I believe that
(01:03):
is on my birthday weekend, six twenty six weekend. There's
still a few tournaments left, so if you're out there
looking for something with all the rain that we've had,
make sure that you go visit Game seven Game seven
baseball dot com. Make sure you also go check out
probably the tenths that will be out there from Prime
Sports Midwest.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
They have three locations.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Now, one in Chesterfield, one and Fenton, and of course
the Midrivers that we talked about all the time. I'm
not in studio to see all the reminders on the addresses,
so I know one's fifteen to fifty Oho Cello ones
on Midrivers, Mall Drive but any jumping on today, We've
got a lot going on with youth Baseball Midwest. You
can see that if you go to the YouTube channel,
(01:46):
you're already there. So actually if you just go cycle
through you can find some of our other events. I
did this last week too. Of course, if you're watching
this year, you're on YouTube already. But what I need
you to do is hit that hit those likes, follow
us comments, give us some action on there so that
we can have some good topics for you moving forward.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
And today it's gonna be a quick one.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I just wanted to talk about a few things that
I think as we head into the end of the
season and into tryouts, things that you can work with
your athletes on as as as a parent. And if
you're old enough and you're watching this, this is something
that you can that you can do yourself. Something that
I've been big on is the mental side of the
(02:32):
game lately. And you can go to my Instagram page
which is mitchtime as Sports Performance, and you could check
out some of the things that I talk about on
the mental side, and it's things like failure. You know
what is failure? One of my favorite things was an
interview done with Kobe Bryant, and Kobe was asked about
failure and he said, what is it? And he said,
(02:55):
it's a figment of your imagination. And I thought about that,
and the perception was is failure real? And of course
there are results that aren't favorable, but if you're not learning,
is that really failure? So that leads me into topics
to talk about today, which is gonna be simple. It's
(03:18):
the four fs that I like to call them.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
These are things that we could do to basically become.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Having an elite level mindset in the game, trying to
be unbreakable, and you have situations that go against you,
and I call those the four fs. It's the only
time you can have four fs, and I think be
successful is if you have four f's in school, we're
in trouble. So the first one is the obvious one.
We talked about this last week on the show. Brian
(03:46):
and I did about focus and how to lead focus
at practices or demand focus, and how that leads into
just being, you know, a better apple between the years,
being more prepared, How it helps you in you're at bats,
how it helps you after you've made some mistakes, or
(04:07):
if you go zero for three in a game.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
How do you bounce back from those things?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
And I think focus for me is simply just being present,
staying in that moment, the next pitch, the next step bat,
the next play. Everything that is in our game is
one single moment, and we have to make sure that
we're focused for that one moment. So there's a pop
(04:31):
up and that ball is caught, there's a next moment,
there's a next play, there's a there's a next pitch,
there's a next strike, there's a you know, a next ball.
If you will a new situation, you throw a ball
in a dirt. Guess what if runner at first base
or on second base? Now things change, bunt defense has changed.
So staying present focus is my first of the four fs,
(04:54):
and I think that's probably one of the biggest ones
out of the four fs. The next one is to
be able to flush it. You know, if we do
have a situation where we boot a groundball and you know,
you you strike out with a basis loaded and you
have two outs, you still have to play defense again.
(05:16):
You know, you still have to run out on the
field and you can't take that stuff with you, which
leads into the next one, which is forget it.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
And this one's the hard one. I think.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I think it's you know, easy for us to be
able to make a mistake, you know, get your teammates
rilly around you, you tend to flush it.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
But did you forget about it? You know?
Speaker 2 (05:37):
And did you after the ending is over, did you
go back in the dugout and did you start complaining
about it again?
Speaker 1 (05:42):
And you know, things like that I think.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
Linger and they create negativity, whether it's between your own
ears or even in that dugout. And so just make
sure that we're not replaying that play or that situation,
you know. Again, go back to focus, focus forward, focus
on the new things you want to work on. What
(06:06):
the mistake that you did. That's fine, Go home, go
to your gym, go go to practice, use visualization tools
to prepare next time for maybe that bad hop that
you got. Maybe maybe that's the maybe that's the one
you're visualizing. But again, you're not going to dwell on
(06:28):
your mistakes. You're going to see it, which goes back
to failure, which is not part of the FOREF by
the way, But you failed on something you can't you
can't continue to dwell. You have to you have to
move on, you have to flush, you have to forget it.
The final left that I have for you today is
just fight, fight, fight, fight. Whatever your situation may be,
(06:50):
whatever mistake may be, whatever you're oh for, maybe the
game score. I think we don't do this enough. I
don't think we can care about this one, and we
just kind of roll over.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And I believe that.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
If you compete every single moment or every single rep,
and you're focused, you can flush and you can forget it.
The fight becomes much much easier because you're not fighting
your other demons that you have inside your head on
the mistakes that you made. So what I like to
see out of this fight is those gritty athletes, Because
(07:28):
if you're a gritty athlete and you keep fighting, you
keep fouling pitches off and you're hard to strike out,
or you're a great base runner and you're grinding grimy
on the basis, it's tough to beat. And so if
talent starts to lose focus all of a sudden, those
gritty athletes can have a chance to come back and
(07:50):
provide an opportunity for the next moment that you'll have
in this game. And so My big takeaway for today
for you guys is I would love for you just
to think about the biggest word here, which is the focus.
We talked about it last week again on the show,
and I couldn't agree more with Brian when we talked
(08:12):
about it, and that's something that eye contact. I had
this last night with my eight U group and I
literally would point at him and I would give him
the old you know, look at my eyes and point
right back at them and say, hey, you guys locked
in on me. And I kept continuing to do that,
and over time, believe it or not, they it became
(08:35):
routine and I was like, Okay, this is something that
I've been missing on myself, is making sure that players
are locked in on me and then making sure that
I'm saying things that they can.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
Keep their focus.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
I think that's the biggest one of the four fs.
You got to focus, flush it, forget it, and of
course fight. And to end here, one of the things
that I've learned, and this is from the white rat,
which is white he hears all. This game is played
in moments, one singular moment, one pitch, one play, one throw,
(09:12):
one catch, one out, one half inning, one inning, one
ball game, one season, one career. And if you spend
your time worrying about these failures, if you will, I
don't want to use that word, but these mistakes and
they cost you these moments to be you know, to
(09:33):
live in these moments. The game can be harsh on you.
And so I really want you to think about that
and what that means. This is one moment and if
you've made that mistake, turn around and let your teammates
help you out. When you flush it, let your teammates
help you refocus, you'll forget about that, have a little
(09:56):
bit of fun with it, and then here comes that fight.
And that's what we all chase as coaches. That's what
we want, right We always tell you we want these dogs,
But what does that mean. Okay, it's a guy that
can't roll over. You got to be able to fight.
But if if you're gonna fight, you're gonna have to
forget all the other stuff because they ain't gonna work.
So I'm gonna leave you again with that, live in
the moments, enjoy this game as much as you can.
(10:19):
And for my young people out there, my young coaches,
don't be afraid to start putting inside the budgets, maybe
the ice cream stand and get your slushies and your
candy after the game, and maybe the star of the
game gets.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
The extra four bucks.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I guess that's what it costs nowadays the concession stands.
But anyho, make sure that this is something that we're
gonna do. Over the next couple of weeks, we're gonna
be really busy with youth baseball Midwest. We're gonna be
out at Carshield doing some games in the Premiere Pitching
Development League. That's gonna be fun. You might see me
on there doing some games. But you got to make
(10:53):
sure that you're you're you hit the dinger, you hit
that little bell at the top, so that way you
get your notifications when they go live and we're doing
these games.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Missouri Legion.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
They just did the high School All Star Game, which
is a blast go back and see. Of course, you
can go back and see other episodes that I have
with guests on my shows, and we'll get back to that.
But in the meantime, we're gonna have these short little
sessions and we hope that you tune in and you're
not gonna be able to do that without those notifications.
So I'm by myself. But pitchers bump strikes and hitters
(11:25):
hit them where they aint. It's the best advice that
Darren Cecil has given me myself. So you guys have
a great day out there and be safe and enjoy
the sun.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
See you guys.
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