When talent vanishes overnight

Summary

Podcast Summary: Unexplainable – "When Talent Vanishes Overnight"

Vox | Release Date: October 20, 2025

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Overview

This episode of Unexplainable dives deep into the mysterious phenomenon known as "the yips"—the sudden, unexplainable loss of ability in a highly trained skill that can upend the careers of top performers in sports, music, and beyond. Host Noam Hassenfeld explores the science, lived experiences, and lingering mysteries behind why some talented people wake up one day unable to do the thing they do best, focusing on the harrowing journey of MLB pitcher Rick Ankiel. The episode explores both psychological and neurological explanations, addressing what happens when automaticity breaks down and what, if anything, can be done to recover.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Yips: When Skill Suddenly Disappears

• Introduction to the Phenomenon
  • The yips are described as a sudden, often permanent loss of "superpowers"—skills that define people’s careers and identities.
  • Notable examples include Simone Biles (gymnastics), Eric Bristow (darts), Leon Fleischer (piano), and Diane Rehm (broadcasting) [02:26–02:53].
  • Rick Ankiel’s journey becomes the central case study for the episode.

"It's one of the loneliest places you ever want to be."
— Rick Ankiel [03:37]

2. Rick Ankiel's Story: From Phenom to the Yips

• Meteoric Rise

  • Ankiel was the top pitching prospect, threw multiple no-hitters in high school, and reached the majors at age 20 [04:02–04:15].
  • Given the ball for a high-stakes playoff game as a rookie [04:26–04:49].

• Collapse on the Mound

  • Started well, then suddenly lost control—wild pitches, uncontrollable muscle tensing, and a total breakdown of automatic pitching skill [05:08–06:27].

"It was like everything I had ever done in the past from a pitching standpoint was gone. And I had no idea how to throw baseball."
— Rick Ankiel [06:27]

• Aftermath and Stigma
  • Ankiel repeatedly tried to fix the problem through hard work and overanalysis, but nothing worked.
  • Teammates avoided discussing the yips entirely, treating it as a curse.
  • The experience brought isolation, nightmares, and mental distress [11:00–12:18].

3. The Science of 'Choking' vs. the Yips

• Psychological Difference
  • Choking under pressure involves failed performance but with retained control, whereas the yips feature a fundamental, often involuntary loss of control [07:04–07:28].

"When we've spoken to athletes who have experienced yips, they talk about that just loss of control. That is almost just a different level."
— Sally Akerst, sports psychologist [07:04]

• Automaticity and Breakdown
  • High-level performance is based on "automaticity." When trust in oneself collapses, the skill degrades by becoming overly conscious and jerky.
  • The more one tries to force automaticity to return, the less attainable it becomes [07:58–08:27].

4. Attempts at Recovery and Accepting the Mystery

• Ankiel's Efforts
  • He sought every possible remedy, from altering mechanics to distraction techniques—even playing catch with kids—but nothing stuck [10:04–11:00].
  • Therapy and sports psychology provided partial relief by changing his mindset, but the problem persisted.
  • Ultimately, Ankiel could not pitch again and decided to walk away, feeling both failure and relief [13:08–13:45].

"It took almost everything I had to retire, to quit, to whatever you want to call it, because I still felt like a failure... but I just felt like this giant weight was taken off my shoulders."
— Rick Ankiel [13:23–13:45]

5. Reinvention: From Pitcher to Outfielder

• A New Chapter
  • Ankiel’s agent unexpectedly proposed a switch to outfielder, an exceedingly rare dual-role transition [14:00–19:38].
  • Returning to baseball with a new role, Ankiel made a dramatic comeback, capped by a three-run homer in his first game back in St. Louis [20:12–21:24].
  • The crowd’s reaction and Ankiel’s emotions — triumph and redemption.

"I could feel the ground shaking from the people in St. Louis... fans going crazy, the explosion of emotions. I don't even—I felt like I floated around the bases on a magic carpet."
— Rick Ankiel [21:36]

6. The Roots of the Yips: Not Just Psychological

• Neurological Investigation
  • Neurologist Steve Frucht introduces focal dystonia, a movement disorder causing involuntary muscle contractions during specialized tasks [23:39–24:34].
  • Studies show abnormal muscle activation in yipped athletes, suggesting a physiological—not purely mental—cause for some cases.
  • Focal dystonia and task specificity: e.g., a musician developing problems with only one instrument.

"Dystonia is a very unusual disorder in which involuntary movements are triggered by a very specific task. That's not just a performance anxiety. That's an actual movement disorder."
— Steve Frucht [24:34]

"Now how could that be psychological? No, come on. This is a physiologic disorder."
— Steve Frucht [26:12]

• Treatment and Limits
  • Physical therapies may blunt symptoms but don’t cure the underlying brain disorder [26:52–27:10].
  • The science remains humble: “It’s just humbling how little we know about this, really... I think 50 years from now, people will look back derisively” [27:10].

7. The Yips as a Window Into Human Talent

• Motor Learning and Talent
  • Studying dystonia offers insights into how the brain manages learned skills and talent itself [28:01–28:37].
  • The yips challenge our understanding of what talent is, why it emerges—and vanishes.

"There isn't another disorder that I know of that gives you a window into talent and cognition and motor learning, the way task-specific dystonia can do so well."
— Steve Frucht [28:37]

• Philosophical Takeaway
  • Sometimes, the mystery can't be solved; acceptance becomes part of recovery.
  • The real marvel might not be that the yips happen, but that people can ever perform such feats in the first place [29:32].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Loneliness of the Yips:
  "It's one of the loneliest places you ever want to be." (Rick Ankiel, [03:37])
• On Loss of Control:
  "It was like I blacked out... Oh God, where'd the ball go?" (Rick Ankiel, [06:12–06:13])
• On Sporting Stigma:
  "People feel like it can be contagious. You know, nobody wants to talk about it." (Rick Ankiel, [11:28])
• On Recovery & Acceptance:
  “Sometimes we don’t always get to know why. There’s not always a why. I think that’s a powerful lesson too.” (Rick Ankiel, [22:26])
• On Neurological Humility:
  “Neurology has lots of therapeutics, but it doesn’t have a lot of cures. It’s just humbling how little we know about this, really.” (Steve Frucht, [27:10])

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Important Timestamps

• [03:08–06:37] – Rick Ankiel’s playoff breakdown and onset of the yips
• [07:04–08:27] – Psychological explanation: Choking vs. the yips and the breakdown of automaticity
• [10:04–11:00] – Ankiel's varied and desperate attempts to recover
• [13:08–13:45] – Decision to retire and emotional acceptance
• [19:38–21:24] – Return as an outfielder, game highlight, and emotional redemption
• [23:39–24:34] – Dr. Steve Frucht’s explanation of focal dystonia
• [26:52–28:37] – Limits of treatment and the yips as a window into learning and talent

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Episode Takeaway

This episode reveals that when talent vanishes overnight, it can be devastating—and often unexplainable. Both psychological pressures and physiological malfunctions (like focal dystonia) may be at play, but science still can’t answer all the questions. Rick Ankiel’s journey from prodigious pitcher to outfielder and back to faith in himself speaks to the resilience—and mystery—of human skill and identity. The yips remind us that mastery is miraculous, and to lose it is not always something we can explain, only adapt to.

Transcript

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Support for Unexplainable comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. You know those questions that keep you up at night? The ones that make you fall down rabbit holes until 2am Claude is an AI that can help you if you want to dive deeper instead of rushing to surface level answers. You can use Claude to help work through the complexity. You can upload documents, you can search the web, and you can explore different angles on problems that genuinely interest you. You can try Claude for free at Claude AI Unexplainable. Morning Zoe Jeff Bridges why are you still living above our garage? I want to be in a T Mobile commercial like you. Teach me so Dana, I couldn't possibly T Mobile get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system. Impressive. Let me try AT T Mobile. You can save up to 20% versus the other big guys.

[Steve Frucht]

You heard them.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

T Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible traded in any cond. Check the math to see how much you could save versus the other big guys@t mobile.com switch I've been spending a lot of time recently watching playoff baseball, and the main thought I keep having is just I don't know how these guys do it. The pressure is honestly hard to imagine. It builds and it builds until every single pitch seems like it has the whole season riding on it. Every player has the chance to make that one mistake that's going to make fans blame him for a generation. It's the kind of pressure that throws some of the best players in baseball into prolonged slumps, as if they suddenly just forgot how to play. And it's been making me think about one of our favorite episodes, an episode about baseball about high stakes performance and what makes some people choke. Think about something you love to do. The thing you're best at. The thing you've practiced more than anything else in the world. Maybe it's painting or writing or playing the piano. Now imagine you wake up one day and you just can't do it anymore. Everything else is fine. You're not sick, you're not injured. But that one thing is impossible. You can barely even hold the paintbrush and you have no idea why. It's happened to some of the greatest performers in the world. To gymnasts like Simone Biles, it looked.

[Strawberry Me Advertiser]

Like she got almost lost in the air.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Or world champion darts player Eric Bristow.

[Rick Ankiel]

The game I love to play that used to be so easy to do all Of a sudden, I can't even throw a dart.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

There was Leon Fleischer, who suddenly stopped being able to play the piano.

[Steve Frucht]

I was in a state of deep.

[Rick Ankiel]

Thought funk, deep depression.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

There was talk show host Diane Rehm.

[Strawberry Me Advertiser]

I couldn't go on the air. I'd go.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And this kind of thing can last for years, like it did with a pro baseball player I spoke to named Rick Ankiel.

[Rick Ankiel]

I didn't understand the magnitude of what was really happening and what would happen to my career after that.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

This phenomenon has a lot of names. Whiskey Fingers, the Monster, the Waggles, Dartitis, Musicians Cramp, and maybe most often, the Yips. I'm Noam Hassenfeld. And this week on Unexplainable. What could cause people at the absolute peak of their profession to suddenly and often permanently lose their superpowers? The things they can do better than anything else. The things that in a lot of ways make them who they are.

[Rick Ankiel]

It's one of the loneliest places you ever want to be.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And once you're there, is there anything you can do to make it back? Before he ever got the yips, Rick Ankiel was a phenom.

[Rick Ankiel]

You know, I ended up being the number one prospect in the country at the time. In high school, I threw nine no hitters, threw three my sophomore, three, my junior, three my senior year.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And when he was just 20, he made it to the majors, the youngest player in the league.

[Rick Ankiel]

You're watching all your dreams unfold right in front of you.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

He wasn't just young, he was dominant. So at the end of his first full season, his manager tapped him to start the biggest game of his life.

[Sports Announcer]

A huge crowd gathering today as this much anticipated division series featuring the Braves, the champions of the National League East. The Cardinals, the champions of the Central.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

It was the first game of the playoffs. Over 50,000 fans watching to see if Rick was up for it.

[Sports Announcer]

And on the mound for the Cardinals, the young lefty Rick and Keel. First game starter in the postseason, all.

[Rick Ankiel]

Eyes are on you. So your walk from the bullpen when you warm up as a pitcher is like your boxer's entrance. As emotionless as possible possible. Body language, looking like, I want to knock these guys out.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Rick came out throwing crisp and easy. Didn't give up a run in the first two innings. But then in the top of the.

[Rick Ankiel]

Third, I threw a pitch, I threw a fastball in, I overthrew it, cut it pretty good. So, you know, it darts in the.

[Sports Announcer]

Dirt, back to the screen, and over the second base goes Greg Maddox on a wild pitch.

[Rick Ankiel]

I'm just standing there looking at it and I. I remember telling myself, just threw a wild pitch.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Everything seemed normal. The announcers weren't particularly phased. Wild pitches happen all the time in baseball. But Rick thought something felt off.

[Rick Ankiel]

It just struck me weird and all of a sudden it felt like, I don't know, something I never felt before. I didn't really understand what was happening.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

For the first time, Rick started hesitating.

[Rick Ankiel]

I'm going through the routines and different things to get yourself back on track as a pitcher. And nothing was working.

[Sports Announcer]

Another wild pitch over the head of Hernandez and back to pitch.

[Rick Ankiel]

Coach comes out, talks to me, we slow it down and then it just started to unravel.

[Joe Buck]

Wow.

[Sports Announcer]

The screen again. Hits off the back stop and right back.

[Rick Ankiel]

My muscles and fingers in my arm were, you know, locking up and the ball is just coming out of my hand like a shot put. Like I didn't even know how to hold a ball.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

The quietness of the crowd is kind.

[Steve Frucht]

Of eerie right now.

[Rick Ankiel]

It was like I blacked out and then I. It was like, okay, oh God, where'd the ball go?

[Sports Announcer]

So there is the fifth wild pitch of the inning.

[Rick Ankiel]

It was like, like everything I had ever done in the past from a pitching standpoint was gone. And I had no idea how to throw baseball.

[Sports Announcer]

35 pitches, tortured pitches in the inning for the 21 year old and K.

[Rick Ankiel]

It was almost like my body was trying to protect me from death in a way. And I wanted to know why.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So when you think of someone like this baseball player, I talked to Rick Ankiel who suddenly starts blacking out whenever he releases the ball. Is this just like choking under pressure? Is it something different?

[Sally Akerst]

So choking has been defined as a failure to perform under pressure, but you may well still be in control. However, I think when we've spoken to athletes who have experienced yips, they talk about that just loss of control. That is almost just a different level. It's a different experience from performing under pressure and not doing well.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

This is Sally Akerst, she's a sports psychologist in London and she's done tons of research on the yips.

[Sally Akerst]

Sometimes we hear from athletes, their performance is automatic. They can't even tell you what their performance was like. Like it's so unconscious that they're just doing it. And to get that level of automaticity, I believe that an athlete truly trusts themselves that they can perform at that level.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And I guess if someone stops trusting themselves, they might stop being so automatic.

[Sally Akerst]

Yeah. And I guess when I was teaching students around this. I always get them to think about, you know, when you're driving the car and it's so automatic after you've driven for a few years. Isn't can be singing along and doing other things when you're driving. But maybe the police come up behind you and suddenly you become very conscious of how you're driving and it gets all a little bit less automatic and it's then just a bit more jerky. It's not as smooth, it's not as efficient in the way you're performing and processing.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

To do anything at this high of a level, you have to be automatic. You can't consciously think about every small motion you're doing, especially when you're doing something as complicated as pitching. And once you lose that feeling of being automatic, that ability to do something unconsciously, it isn't easy to get it back. It's like waking up in the middle of the night and trying to will yourself back to sleep. The more you think about it, the harder it gets. But that's exactly how Rick tried to attack this problem. And the next game he was even worse.

[Joe Buck]

Right back where he left off. First pitch, head high to Perez.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

It got so bad, the announcers started making fun of him.

[Joe Buck]

He's got guys in the third row ducking. Bob, you all right down there? You ducking? You feel like you're safe behind that screen?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

That's hall of Fame broadcaster Joe Buck right there making fun of a 21 year old whose life is falling apart in front of 50,000 people.

[Joe Buck]

He's lost all his mechanics, and he can't get the ball to the point where the catcher can even catch it. He's throwing like a mechanic right now.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

This time, Rick's outing ended much quicker. His coach took him out before the first inning was even over.

[Joe Buck]

Well, that's the end of the night for Rick Ankiel.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And pretty soon the Cardinals season was over.

[Joe Buck]

The Mets are going to the World Series.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

But in the off season, Rick got right back up. He wasn't going to let two rough games ruin his career. He had a plan.

[Rick Ankiel]

The only thing I knew was to work harder, throw more, try to figure this out.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Rick went back to basics.

[Rick Ankiel]

I'm trying so many different things.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

He broke down his throwing mechanics step by step.

[Rick Ankiel]

I'm thinking about keeping my weight back and the ball's coming out perfect.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Went out the next day, same thought.

[Rick Ankiel]

I can't throw it anywhere close.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

But he didn't get discouraged. He just kept trying something different.

[Rick Ankiel]

I'm Driving down the street, I see kids playing catch. It's like, let me try that mechanics. It works for him. And I'd go find a field and.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Throw another hundred balls, but that didn't stick either.

[Rick Ankiel]

Same thing. Can't throw it anywhere close.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

He tried anything he could think of to get back to that feeling of being automatic.

[Rick Ankiel]

There was times I would just sing songs, right, and try to distract your.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Brain from, like, taking over, but nothing was working.

[Rick Ankiel]

It was like my body would start to tense up and lock down.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

At this point, Rick wasn't throwing in front of 50,000 people anymore. He wasn't facing the kind of pressure he was dealing with on live tv, pitching in the playoffs. He was just out there with a couple of guys, and he still couldn't throw straight.

[Rick Ankiel]

I'm just trying to play catch, and I'm having trouble just throwing it to the guy that's 15ft away from me. And that's when I'm like, you know, I don't know what is going on, but something's not right. The issue with it, right, is that it's not as if you have a shoulder injury where I could say, oh, look, I was hurt. That's what happened. You have something going on that only you can feel and nobody can see.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

He tried asking his teammates if they'd had experience with the yips, but no one would even say the word. It was like they felt it was some kind of curse. You could speak into existence.

[Rick Ankiel]

People feel like it can be contagious. You know, nobody wants to talk about it. So people are nervous all the time.

[Sally Akerst]

There's really quite a stigma around the yips and almost a fear that if someone says, oh, maybe you've got the yips, it's almost having this, oh, goodness.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Sally says all that superstition can make players obsessed with even more.

[Sally Akerst]

That initial experience and the reaction of others will be influencing potentially their dealing with it. And obviously that may well impact their being able to overcome it in future.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

That's kind of what happened with Rick. He started overanalyzing every tiny action in his life. It was like he was looking for something to be naturally automatic. Did he normally brush his hair with his left hand? Was that the way he always tied his shoes? He wasn't sure anymore.

[Rick Ankiel]

I'd have nightmares in the middle of the night that I couldn't throw strikes. I'd wake up, my heartbeat going 100 miles an hour, soaked in sweat. I wake up at three in the morning, and I would just. I would get out of bed and Stay awake. It's just a dark, nasty. You can't get it to leave your mind.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Eventually, Rick found a sports psychologist who helped him get past the worst of it. He helped Rick manage his frustration, to not obsess over every single throw, to not blame himself for everything. And he got to the point where he could control it a bit sometimes, but it would always come rushing back.

[Rick Ankiel]

There was even a time where I could hear what it felt like was blood draining from my brain down past my ears into my neck. And I could feel that feeling coming. And it's like, here we go.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Rick kept struggling for years. He went down to the minors, worked his way back up, but eventually he decided he couldn't keep going. So in 2005, almost five years after that first playoff game, he walked into his coach's office, and I shut the.

[Rick Ankiel]

Door and I just said, I can't do this anymore. It took almost everything I had to retire, to quit, to whatever you want to call it, because I still felt like a failure.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Rick's promising pitching career was over. The yips had claimed another victim. But honestly, for the first time in years, he felt okay. He felt good about it.

[Rick Ankiel]

I just felt like this giant weight was taken off my shoulders, you know, felt like I could breathe.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

He drove home, lay down on the couch, got ready for retired life, and then his phone rang. It was his agent.

[Rick Ankiel]

I was like, what in the are you talking about?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

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[Noam Hassenfeld]

What are the ips? Are you kidding me? You two we don't Say the Y word out loud, you understand? It just comes on automatic. Don't think, just throw.

[Steve Frucht]

Don't think, just.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

After years of struggling with the yips, Rick finally decided to just let it go, move on from baseball, clear his mind.

[Rick Ankiel]

So I went home. I didn't even turn on the radio. I didn't turn TV on. I was just sitting on the couch in pure silence. And I was like the first time I'd felt inner peace in a long time until my agent calls. Hey, are you okay? Yeah, man, I'm good. I'm great, whatever. He goes, hey, what do you. What do you think about being an outfielder? I was like, what in the are you talking about?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Going from pitching to playing outfield in the majors might not sound like the hardest thing, but only a tiny handful of players have ever been able to do both at the highest level. So Rick basically laughed at his agent.

[Rick Ankiel]

He's like, no, I'm being serious. So I hang up. I walked around, I found a bat in my room, and I came back out to the living room and I started swinging it. And I had this, just this feeling took over my whole body. It was an outer body experience, so to speak, but I could see it. I could feel it. I almost felt like I could taste it. I felt like the heavens came down and spoke to me like it was like listening to the best version of Amazing Grace ever.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Rick dropped the bat, picked up the phone, and called the general manager of the Cardinals, who told him, be here tomorrow morning.

[Rick Ankiel]

You're an outfielder. Said, yes, sir. I'll see you tomorrow morning. Click. It was absurd. But the thing is that I believed it.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Rick started at the bottom of the minors and he hit pretty well. Played the field pretty well, too. He slowly worked his way up, and finally, after two and a half years, he was back.

[Rick Ankiel]

When I walked into that clubhouse, the hugs, the high fives, you know, everybody in that organization knew what I went through and what it took to get back. And the love that I felt in the clubhouse was surreal.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

It wasn't a particularly important game. It was mid August, dog days of summer for a Cardinals team that had more losses than wins. But the stadium was packed. And as Rick walked out for his first at bat as a major league outfielder, right fielder Rickel. He got a standing ovation. Rick was amped. He knew just how big this moment was.

[Joe Buck]

What is going through his mind right now, his heart has got to just be racing.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

He blocked out all the noise and swung first.

[Joe Buck]

Did Baddie, pops it up to short, handled by Blum for the first out.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Then his second time up.

[Joe Buck]

A high strike. Looked to be a ball. And Ankiel strikes out. And he's over two.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

But then his third time up, fans.

[Joe Buck]

Are ready to erupt with a base hit. A home run. Something positive for Rick Ankiel.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

He took a huge swing.

[Joe Buck]

2 2. And Ankiel strikes out. 0 for 3.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Finally, in the bottom of the seventh, Rick came up with runners on first and second. And this time and keel out to deep right field.

[Rick Ankiel]

I'm running to first. I'm looking at the outfielder, I'm looking at the ball, I'm looking at the wall. Trying to judge if it's going to be enough.

[Joe Buck]

Has a chance to leave the ballpark. It's gone. A three run shot for Rick and Keel back in the major leagues. Remarkable.

[Rick Ankiel]

I could feel the ground shaking from the people in St. Louis, the fans going crazy, the explosion of emotions. I don't even. I felt like I floated around the bases on a magic carpet.

[Joe Buck]

And these fans are pretty happy along with them.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

After so many baseball players before him had been beaten by the yips, Rick had made it back. But he didn't get there by just working harder and harder trying to beat the yips into submission. He found a way around them.

[Rick Ankiel]

I knew if I didn't give this a shot that I was going to wake up days and be like, what? Why didn't I try that? Why didn't I try to make it back? I already felt like a failure as it was and this was a way for redemption.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

He stopped trying to figure out an explanation for the yips and he just accepted what he didn't understand.

[Rick Ankiel]

Up to that point. I wanted to know why not everything. Doesn't matter why that happened, why that happened. I had to adapt to the fact that sometimes we don't always get to know why. There's not always a why. I think that's a powerful lesson too.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

But as the year went on, something strange started happening. His arm came back to him.

[Joe Buck]

Here comes that throw from a keel. Look at that. On a fly he threw a strike from about 300ft away.

[Rick Ankiel]

Watch this.

[Joe Buck]

He got him another one. Unreal.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

His arm was strong. It was accurate. It was feared. He was that same 20 year old phenom again. Not thinking anymore, just throwing. All of a sudden it seemed like his yips were gone.

[Rick Ankiel]

But the surprising part is that I couldn't do it from 60ft. And then I could go out there and probably throw more strikes from 180ft away than I would be on the.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Mound, One kind of throw, pitching from 60ft, Rick couldn't do it. Another kind of throw from way farther away, back to automatic. Which is a sign that maybe his yips weren't actually a psychological thing. They might have been caused by something else entirely.

[Steve Frucht]

The idea that you can't throw 60ft, but you can throw 300, that's perfectly reasonable to be physiological, okay? Not psychological, because they're totally different motor activities.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

This is neurologist Steve Frucht. And he told me scientists used to assume that the yips were psychological. But in the last few decades, there's been new research showing that for a small number of patients, there's a physical cause. Like this one study on golfers.

[Steve Frucht]

You can put sensors on their wrists, on their fingers, on their hands, and you can actually show millisecond by millisecond, that right before the club head hits, certain muscles over activate. You can actually show that physiologically a.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Lot of these golfers twitched the same exact way with the same muscles. Which suggested they had an actual disorder in their nervous system. A disorder called focal dystonia.

[Steve Frucht]

Dystonia is a very unusual disorder in which involuntary movements are triggered by a very specific task. In this case, just by this athletic performance. That's not just a performance anxiety. That's an actual movement disorder.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Movement disorders are neurological conditions that lead to involuntary movements. So things like Parkinson's disease, Tourette's syndrome, essential tremor, and just like a lot of movement disorders, Scientists still don't know exactly what causes focal dystonia, but they do know a couple basic things about the symptoms. One, these twitches happen in only one specific part of the body. And two, they only happen during a specific action.

[Steve Frucht]

For example, things like writer's cramp, which is a task specific dystonia. Everything about the hand's okay, but when they pick up a pen, the task of writing induces the dystonia. And for musicians, it's not uncommon for somebody to develop dystonia just on one instrument. So they can't play flute, but saxophone and clarinet just fine.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I asked Steve why this kind of thing couldn't just be psychological. And he told me, you can actually see signs of dystonia with a functional mri.

[Steve Frucht]

These are disorders of the way the brain activates, particularly the motor and sensory networks within the brain.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And because this is a physical thing, people with dystonia tend to yip in the same way whether they're under pressure or not. Which might explain why Rick had trouble just playing catch even when no one was watching.

[Steve Frucht]

Now how could that be psychological? No, come on. This is a physiologic disorder.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

A diagnosis like this can be hard for patients to accept. Steve says that people he works with can find it hard to believe they could have some kind of involuntary twitch. They don't even feel themselves doing, so they're often convinced that the whole thing is just in their head.

[Steve Frucht]

So what do they do? They work harder and harder. The musician locks the practice room door and says, I'm not coming out of here until I fix this. And usually that's exactly the wrong thing. It just accelerates the development of the problem.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Practice on its own isn't going to make dystonia go away. It might actually make it worse. Medicine or even Botox injections can help stop twitches in some cases. But even when these treatments do work, they just blunt the effects of dystonia. They don't fix the underlying issue in the brain.

[Steve Frucht]

Neurology has lots of therapeutics, but it doesn't have a lot of cures. It's just humbling how little we know about this, really. You know, I think 50 years from now, people will look back derisively, like, I can't believe they thought that. I can't believe they were treating it this way. You know, didn't they know this? They're probably going to think that of people who are seeing these patients today.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

To actually cure someone with dystonia, scientists would probably need to know what causes it in the first place. And right now, they just don't. But when Steve looks at what scientists still don't know about dystonia, he thinks it's an opportunity to learn something even bigger, something that goes beyond the yips. Just think about what connects tasks like writing, throwing, or even playing music.

[Steve Frucht]

They're all tasks that require teaching. And it's not something that happens overnight. It requires multiple repetitions, probably over many months to years.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

These are all things we need to learn. And how we learn them, or even how we learn anything really, is still pretty mysterious. But Steve thinks that by looking into this one failure in the system, the moment when someone stops being able to do something they've practiced their entire life, scientists can get a better understanding of how that learning system works in the first place.

[Steve Frucht]

There isn't another disorder that I know of that gives you a window into talent and cognition and motor learning, the way tasks specific dystonia can do so well.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Dystonia is just one potential cause of the yips. We still don't know whether it was at the root of problems for Rick or with so many other people who've dealt with these issues. But it might be able to help scientists get answers to questions that used to seem unanswerable.

[Steve Frucht]

How come one person will practice the 10,000 hours and only get so far and another, you know, laps them by three years in? Well, what is that quote? Talent? You know, we take it for granted that of course in sports there are those that are more talented than others. But where is that in the brain? And what made that so? Was it inherited? Was it chance? You know, they're profound questions.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Maybe the most surprising thing the yips reveal isn't that people can suddenly stop being able to do the thing they're best at. Maybe it's that they were ever able to do it at all. This episode was reported and produced by me, Noam Hassenfeld. We had editing from Jorge Just and Brian Resnick from with help from Bird Pinkerton, mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala, music from me, fact checking from Melissa Hirsch, Meredith Hodinot manages our team, and Manding Nguyen is turning inside out. If you want to hear more about Rick's story, check out his book. It's called the Phenomenon Pressure, the Yips, and the Pitch that Changed My Life. Thanks to Charles Adler, Debbie Cruz and Phil Clark for their help on this episode. And if you have thoughts about the show, send us an email. We're@ unexplainableox.com and we'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you can leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen, it really helps us find new listeners. This podcast and all of Vox is free in part because of gifts from our readers and listeners. You can go to vox.comgive to give today. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast network and we'll be back on Wednesday.

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