Episode 206 | The .300 Mindset: Embracing Progress Over Perfection in ACL Rehab

What is up everyone and welcome back to another episode on the ACL Athlete Podcast. Today, we are talking about a concept called The 300 Mindset. And I am super excited to talk about it because we’ve been on this mindset theme. As you can tell, we are in the new year. If you’re listening at a different time, maybe we are not, but hey, maybe this gives you a really big mindset boost as you are in this ACL rehab process and gives you some tangible stuff. 

My goal is never to just talk about all this abstract things and it’s like, woo. It’s no, let’s make it practical on the ground. So that’s what we’re going to try and do today with this 300 mindset. It’s a concept that comes from baseball. It’s all about a player’s batting average. It’s calculated by taking the player’s hit, a specific player, the amount of hits that they have and dividing it by their total number at bats. This is how you get a batting average. And then this also relates to the 300 batting average so that’s where you are thinking about cool. If I’ve had a hundred at bats. I have hit the ball 30% of the time. That’s 300 batting average. It’s considered actually highly successful, despite it meaning the player fails 70% of the time. You can get this by hitting three out of 10 hits. But it takes more rest to truly get that 300 with the 30% successful number. It could be 150 out of 500, it could be 300 out of 1,000. 

To give you guys reference, the highest batting average in baseball history—Ty Cobb. He is known for this and guess what’s hat highest batting average was? 366.Now let’s talk about how many at bats? 11,429. That means he hit 4,185 balls out of 11,429. He’s technically hit 36.6% of the balls he was pitched to. And it’s the best that has ever played the game. It wasn’t 400, it wasn’t 500, which would equate to 40% or 50% of hits. It was literally sub 40% or 400. 

Some of you are like, cool, that’s baseball, but how does this apply to me as an ACLer or maybe you’re a clinician or a coach listening? Let’s go mindset focused first. Celebrating the wins, especially the small ones when you get that hit or hit that milestone in your process, that creates consistency and a compounding effect. Resilience—knowing failure is a part of growth and getting better and being able to learn from those setbacks. Consistency over perfection—huge. I’m a sucker for perfection, so I totally get this being consistent and knowing that to be amazing or successful, you don’t have to be perfect. This is so key. I think that people think you need perfection in order to be successful or amazing. 

In baseball, if you want to equate whatever amazing or exercisable is, is 300. It’s not 80%, it’s not 100%. It’s 330%. Confidence—approaching these challenges by believing in yourself and staying focused, even when a setback might happen. And then playing the long game—knowing that this a success doesn’t just come from a few reps. It’s through repeated effort and persistence. 

Now, I want to build on this last point, baseball athletes understand that they need as many bats as possible to achieve this 300. For you, it’s about getting in the reps, knowing that you might not move the needle with just 10 reps or honestly, even with 500. You think about this ACL rehab process, it’s long. You got lot of stuff to work on. And we need raps. And whether that’s you working on an extension or flexion for weeks and months, working on getting your quad strength back, working to get that pop back in your jump, easing up that donor site, that’s giving you some issues or maybe you’re the clinician or coach that’s wanting to really improve your craft and work with ACLers. It’s about putting in the reps. Whether that’s exposure, programming, design, communication, exercise, prescription, so many different areas for you to dive into, but that’s where we’re working on putting in the reps and improving our craft. The more reps you put in, the better your chances are of succeeding in these areas. And especially for my ACLers who have been in this for a minute and don’t see light at the end of the tunnel—I know it’s a grind. Trust me. I’ve been there twice myself, but keep getting the reps. It gives you a better chance of getting back to the thing, whether that’s you being back on the field, playing soccer, football, maybe it’s on the court playing basketball, running that first 5k, getting on the mats in BJJ or getting back on your skis. We want to keep getting the reps and it might take thousands and thousands and thousands of reps. 

When we think about people who are so skilled at their crafts at what they do, whether it’s artists or people who are performing, whatever it might be, they are putting in reps. Just like ACL rehab we have to put in reps, we had to put in quality reps and there are days where you might only put in a few reps because you’re just kind of in this place where you don’t have it and that’s okay. But as we talked about in previous episode of never letting that momentum hit zero, keeping something in motion is easier to stay in motion versus completely stopping. And here that’s where getting in the reps really matter. And that’s where this 300 concept comes in because you don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to have this all or nothing. If I’m not perfect, I got to restart or I’ll start the next month or the next week. In reality, it’s just accumulating these reps and really aiming for how can we have a pretty solid batting average or go for that 300. But the thing is it wasn’t just three out of 10, because if you do 10 hits your chances of getting three aren’t very high. In reality, the more and more and more reps we get, the higher our batting average can get, or really being able to be “successful” in this process and that’s what we’re trying to focus on. Not perfection, but getting in the reps, aiming for 300, because even in baseball, 300 batting average is elite. We’re trying to aim for that as we move in this process so you can dump all this stuff, a perfect reps, and every single thing needs to be aligned and linear. When in reality, it’s messy, let’s embrace the messiness of it and keep getting the reps. 

I hope that this is helpful guys. As we kick start the New Year or wherever you are listening to this and the timing, put this in play. It really allow us to move the needle and continue to take it 1% at a time. Until next time, this is your host, Ravi Patel, signing off.