The mind usually interferes with the release of your movement skills in sport, even if you’ve trained them thousands of times. Why is this and how can we solve the problem? When you over-think, particularly with an emphasis on so-called positive thinking or worse, mental toughness – or when you have too many technical thoughts in your head as you’re about to take your shot or start your routine, it interferes with the signal from the motor-system, throwing off your balance, timing and overall execution or release of motion.
Instead of a sweet ball-strike or a fluid, balanced dismount, when the mind takes over and tries to control the way the body moves, you’ll find that your form deteriorates, you’re hesitant and that things don’t go the way they can on those days when you manage to get out of your own way.
What’s interesting about the Eastern approach to sports performance is that is shows how the mind and body work best when they work together i.e. when you’re thinking as little as possible; that means that when you’re in a more Zen-like state as the thoughts move to the back of the brain, specifically the occipital lobe, and a unique and quite extraordinary state of ‘relaxed concentration’ becomes possible.
This state, which we know in sport as the zone or flow is mid-way between trying and not trying, thinking and not thinking; it’s very distinct and makes all the difference between a serve that catches the line and one that goes into the net.
It’s exactly the same with the body; when we examine the physical state of athletes in the moments before they explode from the blocks at the start of a 200m race, or drive the ball 250 yards off the tee, similar conditions exist as they do with the mind.
As the optimum performance state for the mind is quiet yet concentrated, so it is with the body. When the body is athletic but relaxed, when it has good structure yet this structure has ‘give’ or pliability rather than being stiff or rigid, it allows for movement that is powerful yet controlled, fluid yet precise.
So where can we find the training for this? It certainly isn’t in the gym or in mainstream biomechanics which are more concerned with muscular strength allied with mental toughness.
Looking to the martial arts of the East, we find exactly the right exercises that can help you to develop a physical structure that is strong but flexible and which can allow you to work with natural forces like balance, gravity and spin, without trying too hard to create these forces yourself. The latter approach only leads to injury and frustration as the harder your mind tries to control movement, the worse your body moves.
The Eastern approach to quiet the mind and free the body is explored in depth in my latest book The Athlete’s Ascent.
