It was a defining time in the life and career of former five-year MLB shortstop Buddy Biancalana.
In the 1985 World Series, Biancalana played lights out baseball for the Kansas City Royals, hitting significantly higher than his lifetime average while playing a stellar defense, helping the Royals defeat the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games.
The Larkspur, Calif., native said it was due in large part to a cerebral aspect of his game that he had never tapped into during his 11-year professional playing career.
“In that Series, everything slowed down,” Biancalana recalled. “I wasn’t thinking and I played more fluidly and effortlessly than any other time in my career. I entered the zone, and it was an amazing experience. I hit 73 points higher than my career average and played errorless at shortstop the entire Series. I felt as if I was in my own world.”
The phenomenon Biancalana is talking about is called the Zone Motion.
He describes it as “a state that occurs for an athlete when physics-based mechanics coincide with proper brain functioning that allows for neural pathways in the brain to build and strengthen to allow for someone to enter the zone,” the 63-year-old zone coach explained.
“The brain-body connection is a two-way street. The brain affects the muscles, and the muscles affect the brain,” he continued. “The zone allows an athlete to access their Library of Preparation which is in the middle of the brain—the basal ganglia. That’s where all the good things we’ve practiced are stored. Then for all the muscles to fire sequentially, information then must move to the back of the brain, the cerebellum.”
For non athletes, Biancalana went on to explain it as if “it could be you’re driving home from work and when you make it home, you don’t recall much about the drive except that you know you were driving safely and responded well to anything needed,” Biancalana said. “It just kind of happened without any interference of your conscious will. You did what was needed in the moment and did it flawlessly. In layman terms, that is the zone. It’s a feeling of freedom as focus/concentration happens naturally as answers and effective motion flow to us without effort.”
Biancalana has been tirelessly working with athletes, online and in-person, from 20 different sports for several years running, allowing them to access the zone while taking their talents and game to the next level.
But Biancalana emphasizes that athletes will perform much better when they come to him with sound physical preparation and proper techniques behind them.
“It’s always beneficial that when an athlete comes to me, that they are, or have received, good biomechanical coaching,” he noted.
For more information and if you would like to connect with Biancalana, you can do so at the following links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/buddy-biancalana-b43215a/
https://www.instagram.com/buddy.biancalana/
x.com/bbiancalana?s=11&t=FptNbT8Js757zoSDQH5pfw
You can purchase Biancalana’s book below.
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– Jerry Del Priore
Photo: Courtesy of Buddy Biancalana
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