Jake Weatherald (Part B): The mindset needed to succeed at the elite level

This is Part B in our conversation with South Australian and Adelaide Strikers opening batsman Jake Weatherald. If you haven’t listened to Part A yet then I highly recommend you go back and listen to that out before listening to this episode. There was such great value in the first part of the conversation that you’re missing out if you haven’t listened to it.

We pick up this part of the conversation with Jake discussing his game in great detail and how he has been developing it.

I hope you enjoy the second part of this awesome conversation with Jake Weatherald.

I loved the part of this conversation where we discussed tinkering with his game and how he’s continually trying to get better. What I took out of that part was:

• You’re going to be challenged all the time and people are going to try and get you out in different ways so you’ve got to be willing to slightly change your game regularly so that you can continue to be successful in the future.
• Tinkering doesn’t have to be about changing something. It could be just keeping things the same over and over. If something is working it might be that you continue to work hard at the same thing!
• Roger Federer makes technical changes all the time and just goes for it. "I just trust myself to react and do what I want to do." The best players make changes so that they are better in the future.

I really enjoyed hearing about how he prepares himself mentally. As he said it’s about making sure your subconscious is making the decisions rather than your conscious. It was interesting to hear how he said when he’s mentally preparing for a team he knows they will challenge him with their voice, short balls and by bowling the top of the off-stump and he needs to make sure he’s allowing his subconscious to make more of the decisions which are done with keywords to allow his game plan and technique come together.

I also loved hearing his ambitions for the future and how he aspires to play 100 games for Australia in all 3 formats and that if he doesn’t have that mindset then he’s no chance of doing it, a real lesson for any aspiring cricketers listening.

I hope you enjoy this episode!