Spiderlounge
Member
I've recently finished reading a very good book, "Bounce" by Matthew Syed, and it's one of those books you read every now and then that completely and irreversibly changes your mindset in some important aspect. I really recommend that as many of you as you can get hold of this book and read particularly the first two parts of it, as it will help you understand how your brain works as you play sport, and give you heaps of motivation. Well, it did for me.
The first part is about how the brain of a sportsman develops to allow him to acquire and develop a highly specialised skill (such as spin-bowling) and his main thrust (backed up forcibly with some very persuasive examples) is that the idea of talent is largely a myth. I know that sounds incredible - you should read the book! He says that so-called "child prodigies" are in fact individuals who have managed to compress an awful lot of practise into a short space of time, and that given 10,000 hours of well-directed practise, any reasonably average individual can become exceptional in a particular skill that is not too dependent on unchangeable physical attributes (i.e. you still need to be tall to be an NBA basketball player, but anyone could become a good golfer).
The second part is perhaps more personal for Syed. He currently writes for The Times but he was once a world-class table tennis player, but on his day of days at the Sydney Olympics he choked, lost badly and was out of a tournament where many thought he could have won a medal. He goes through the way a sportsman thinks as he is playing his sport, saying that beginners start out with their actions very much controlled by the conscious part of their brain, but that as they learn and get better they learn to harness the unconscius part of their brain which allows for a much faster rate of operating, and which allows for much more complex movements to be co-ordinated simultaneously. He says that the phenomenon of chocking happens when a sportsman under pressure slips back into a conscious mode of operating, which is much more crude and fiendishly difficult to break out of once you're there. This certainly rings true for me, when I bowl my best my mind is a total blank save for basic instructions like "top-spinner, leg stump", rather than a complete list of all the actions I need to perform in order to bowl a top-spinner on leg-stump.
The third part is less relevant, so I won't go through it here, but it's still interesting. It's a fascinating book, engagingly written, and you should all read it as soon as you can!
The first part is about how the brain of a sportsman develops to allow him to acquire and develop a highly specialised skill (such as spin-bowling) and his main thrust (backed up forcibly with some very persuasive examples) is that the idea of talent is largely a myth. I know that sounds incredible - you should read the book! He says that so-called "child prodigies" are in fact individuals who have managed to compress an awful lot of practise into a short space of time, and that given 10,000 hours of well-directed practise, any reasonably average individual can become exceptional in a particular skill that is not too dependent on unchangeable physical attributes (i.e. you still need to be tall to be an NBA basketball player, but anyone could become a good golfer).
The second part is perhaps more personal for Syed. He currently writes for The Times but he was once a world-class table tennis player, but on his day of days at the Sydney Olympics he choked, lost badly and was out of a tournament where many thought he could have won a medal. He goes through the way a sportsman thinks as he is playing his sport, saying that beginners start out with their actions very much controlled by the conscious part of their brain, but that as they learn and get better they learn to harness the unconscius part of their brain which allows for a much faster rate of operating, and which allows for much more complex movements to be co-ordinated simultaneously. He says that the phenomenon of chocking happens when a sportsman under pressure slips back into a conscious mode of operating, which is much more crude and fiendishly difficult to break out of once you're there. This certainly rings true for me, when I bowl my best my mind is a total blank save for basic instructions like "top-spinner, leg stump", rather than a complete list of all the actions I need to perform in order to bowl a top-spinner on leg-stump.
The third part is less relevant, so I won't go through it here, but it's still interesting. It's a fascinating book, engagingly written, and you should all read it as soon as you can!
