Body Mind Mastery, page 12
Most of us have played this game; few of us were traumatized by not finding a chair, but you might remember the sinking feeling. Sure, life is difficult, and we have to learn to deal with disappointment, with losing sometimes. But what messages did that innocent little children’s game teach us? That there isn’t enough to go around, so you had better scramble — maybe even push someone else aside, because we’ll either be in, or out in the cold. Games reflect a society’s needs and level of awareness.
Kohn argued that as societies and our own sensibilities evolve, we may need to create new games to meet the needs of future generations. No Contest points to several hundred studies that showed how competition undermines self-esteem, poisons relationships, and keeps us from doing our best. These findings are particularly unsettling for athletes or parents. Most of us, after all, assume that competitive sports teach all sorts of useful lessons and accept that games by definition must produce a winner and a loser. But I’ve come to agree with Kohn that recreation at its best does not require people to triumph over others — indeed, quite the contrary.
Terry Orlick, a sports psychologist at the University of Ottowa, examined musical chairs and proposed that you keep the basic format of removing chairs but change the goal. Instead, the children try to fit everyone on a diminishing number of seats. At the end, a group of giggling children must figure out how to squish onto a single chair. Everyone plays to the end; everyone has a good time.
Orlick and others have devised or collected hundreds of such games for both children and adults. The underlying theory is simple: All games involve overcoming an obstacle to achieve a goal, but nowhere is it written that the obstacle has to be someone else. The purpose of a game can be for each person on the field to make a specified contribution to the goal, or for all players to reach a certain score, or for all to work with their partners against a time limit. In such games, an opponent becomes a partner. In these activities the entire dynamic of the game shifts, and one’s attitude toward the other players changes with it. In contrast, competition leads children to envy winners, to dismiss losers, and to be suspicious of just about everyone.
Kohn might be encouraged by the game of “Effortless Tennis” originated by Brent Zeller, a gifted teacher who devised a natural, flowing, nonstressful, and cooperative approach in which the goal is to keep the ball in play as long as possible by hitting it to where one’s partner can return it — thereby getting a better workout, with more volleys and improved skills.
The Competitive Mind
Looking critically at some of competition’s liabilities doesn’t mean that we need to do away with it. Rather, we need to explore the liabilities of the competitive mind.
And athletes don’t have a monopoly on the competitive state of mind: essentially comparing one’s performance to someone else’s. The competitive mind emerges in every aspect of life — between siblings, partners, men, and women — even in noncompetitive arts like modern dance, ballet, or music, where we find jealously competitive performers.
I’ve known world-class athletes who viewed their work from a purely cooperative perspective. Steve Hug, a top U.S. Olympian in gymnasts, never really competed against anyone, because he didn’t have that mindset. He simply did his best, measured by his own standards of excellence. Because of his approach, he was one of the most centered athletes and successful competitors I’ve known.
Even in one-on-one sports, such as tennis or boxing, you can view your opponent as your teacher and your student. You each do your best as you test and teach one another, revealing where your opponent needs to improve, as he or she does the same for you. Once we view competition in this manner, we can strive to do our very best, without succumbing to overtones of hostility and negativity.
When we overcome the combative state of mind, when we no longer have opponents — only people like ourselves, brothers and sisters in training, all striving toward excellence — we achieve the highest potential of sport. This is equally true in everyday life, when we compare and compete with others over who is the most popular, most attractive, most successful. The key, it seems, is to maintain a balanced perspective, appreciating the value as well as the pitfalls of the competitive mind-set in sport or life. It’s not that people who maintain a balanced perspective never compete; they just don’t take it too seriously. They remember that a game is just a game — and from their perspective, life, too, is a game.
The moment of truth itself, whether in performance or competition, can serve as an exciting stimulus to excellence. Yet its purpose ends when the race ends. Once we catch a fish, we no longer need the net; once we cross a stream, we no longer need the boat. And when the competition is over, we need not linger over scores, numbers, or statistics. We don’t need to preserve past scores like prize butterflies. When we let go of our preoccupation with numbers, statistics, titles, and victories, we rediscover the sheer joy in the process of training, learning, and striving toward the heights of our potential.
Once the game is over, the outcome is history. Fame is fleeting, and glory fades. The only lasting value in the competitive experience is the lessons we learn and live.
It is not true that nice guys finish last; nice guys are winners before the game even starts.
— Addison Walker
As an athlete, you will always find those more and less skilled than yourself. As you continue to progress, avoid becoming preoccupied with distant goals, or you may miss the pleasure of the climb. Whether your path on any given day is clear or rocky, the only real measure of your achievement can be found in answer to a single question: “Have I done my best today?” All winning, losing, titles, and fame fall into the shadow of that question.
Overload-Cutback
One powerful way to prepare for a performance or a competition involves progressive overload followed by cutting back before the main event. This strategy has both physical and psychological benefits. If you are about to run a five-mile race and you ran eight miles through the hills last week, you’re not only going to be physically prepared, you’re going to feel more relaxed and self-confident.
Gymnasts, for example, complete twelve or more routines in a workout, so that even if they feel a little sluggish on the day of competition, the few routines they perform that day will seem easy.
Emphasize quantity for conditioning earlier in the season, then as the season approaches a peak, stress quality. The exact timing of the change in emphasis varies from sport to sport. The important thing is to do more in training than you’ll need to do in competition.
The following overload techniques can all be useful:
• Training with extra weight, such as running with heavier shoes or a backpack.
• Going greater distances or faster than necessary — or up hills.
• Practicing without the use of one sense — eyes closed, for example — so that the other senses become more refined.
• Working under deliberately poor conditions. Jugglers, for example, may practice in dim light or windy conditions; ice skaters may train for a while on rough ice, in case they meet these conditions in competition; martial artists may practice their skills in the ocean surf or in a pool underwater.
• Increasing the normal demand. A baseball batter, for example, can have the pitcher throw fastballs from three-quarters the usual distance. If the batter can learn to hit those pitches, connecting with full-distance throws will be far easier.
How much overload you practice depends upon your own temperament, capacity, and activity. The main point of the exercise is to practice some kind of overload, then cut back for competition.
Preparing Emotions and Attitudes
It’s entirely normal to feel nervous before a competition. You may experience shaky knees, upset stomach, compulsive yawning, or other symptoms.
Understanding the nature of the precompetitive body helps to overcome — and use — the symptoms of nervousness. Remember that the competition is a ceremony, a special occasion when you are, in reality, tested. You should feel nervous! Your body is preparing for a unique demand: adrenaline is released into the bloodstream, stimulating a release of simple sugars into the muscles for extraordinary activity; your heart begins to beat faster; your breathing mechanisms are stimulated (thus the yawning). The muscles are trembling with readiness and energy.
Don’t fight it — use it. Move around. Do some jumping jacks, run in place, or do a few push-ups. All of the body’s responses are designed to enable you to move faster, stronger, and better — so move.
Before a competition I used to go into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and, providing I was alone, tell myself how well I was going to do. Then I’d do some shadow boxing, breathing explosively with each punch, a practice I recommend before any competition or performance, whether you are entering a playing field, concert arena, or business meeting.
Many thoughts and feelings, both positive and negative, may pass through your mind when the heat’s turned up and the pressure’s on. You have little control over thoughts and emotions. It’s best to focus on what you realistically have more control over: your body. So in any stressful situation, remember to relax and breathe fully so you can channel and direct the extra energy. The only difference between fear and excitement is whether you’re breathing.
The Mental Game
Competition or performance tests, demands, and develops all your capacities; physical skill is only one part of the game. It’s not unusual for the most conditioned athletes to come in second or third because they haven’t mastered the mental game. Even skilled athletes (or musicians or businesspeople) can fall short when their minds are distracted or emotions are in turmoil. The ancient samurai recognized that their minds had to be as razor-sharp as their swords if they were to reach old age.
Body mind masters treat training and performance with the same respect and intensity. When you train, you apply the same mental focus and determination as you would in competition; when you compete, you’re as relaxed and easygoing as in practice.
Competition and performance offer the chance to show grace under pressure. And your attitude and behavior influence the attitudes and behavior of others. You have a chance to raise or lower the standards around you. All of us are teachers and examples, and believe me, people are watching. Psychological strategy can add a whole new dimension to competition and can turn a contest of brute strength and speed into a chess game. It requires mental acuity, refined judgment, and plain old intuition.
Your primary objective is to present your own best effort, not to sabotage someone else’s. It’s never helpful to psyche someone else out if, in the process, you too fall off-balance. You cannot control what they do, only what you do. The ultimate competitive strategy is to remain centered in your own unshakable spirit and calm. And even appearing as a tower of strength and confidence, whether or not you feel that way, is part of the game.
The only safe and sure way to destroy your enemies is to make them your friends.
— Anonymous
Above all, even as you play with your full determination and power, remember that the game will never be more than a game. The lessons it offers are important, but the game itself is only play.
In striving for body mind mastery, every day, every moment, is a learning experience, so ultimately, you can’t lose. What better way to end this chapter than with a reminder from the Olympic Creed of 1894:
The most important thing is not to win, but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the attempt. The essential thing is not to have conquered, but to have fought well.
The Evolution
of Athletics
Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you cannot grow.
— Ronald Osborn
Since ancient times, when athletes evaded charging bulls, fought lions, and hit rocks with sticks, sports have come a long way. Never static, sports evolve constantly, usually reflecting the dominant, mainstream values of the culture in their rules, structure, creativity, and tolerance for violence.
Some sports, such as ice hockey, approach the tradition of gladiators who often fought to the death for the entertainment of packed Roman stadiums. Other movement forms, such as gymnastics, sport acrobatics, diving, and ice skating, are evolving into performance art, with all the elegance and aesthetics of the ballet.
It’s wonderful that such a variety of athletic forms exist to meet the interests and needs of different people.
But the sports we choose to play, both as individuals and a culture, warrant periodic scrutiny because of their power to shape our values and reinforce both negative and positive behaviors in our daily lives.
Sports and games can be fun, invigorating, and boisterous; they encourage teamwork, timing, cooperation, and organization. Athletes are stronger on many levels than nonathletes. We all recognizes the benefits of running, jumping, swinging, swimming, throwing, catching, somersaulting, and balancing. At the same time, the pressures of competition can cause chronic pain and injury. Sport can disable as well as heal.
Although the benefits of training far outweigh the liabilities, let’s explore ways to enhance these benefits and diminish the liabilities.
You can ask two important questions about any sport:
Does this sport contribute effectively to the physical and psychological well-being of the athlete?
Does this sport develop heightened capacity for daily life?
With these two questions, you can look beyond a sport’s entertainment value and assess its relative social value. And quite often changes are in order. Sports can evolve like any other institution to meet the changing needs and values in the modern world.
The records broken at each Olympic Games reflect new heights of achievement. Yet, from a spiritual perspective, we have a long way to go. In many high-pressure competitive sports today, athletes starve, overwork, overbulk, injure, abuse, or otherwise sacrifice their bodies by using steroids or other drugs in order to achieve short-terms goals. Faster progress is the all-important “victory.” Such athletes have lost sight of natural law and the larger purpose of our lives. Self-destructive extremes represent a “moving violation” of the natural laws of balance.
Many favorite pastimes that involve one side of the body more than the other, including such games as tennis, bowling, golf, and baseball, create imbalances in the natural symmetry of the body. We shouldn’t abandon these activities, but rather acknowledge, account for, and reduce their liabilities through wise training.
Today we are witnessing the birth of a new tradition in which sports are consciously designed for our overall well-being. Eventually we will replace the outdated games of the past with new and revamped sports that will better suit our changing sensibilities in the new millennium.
The most obvious way of changing sports is through modifications of the rules. The rules of today’s sports have developed over many years. They reflect our views of what is fair and just and right; they indicate our current tolerance for violence and even our striving for beauty and spirit. Altering rules must therefore be undertaken with the greatest care.
With this in mind, I would suggest one basic rule change that would make our most popular games more interesting and challenging, and far healthier for our bodies.
Symmetrical Training
Golf, tennis, bowling, baseball, and many other sports that make primary use of one side of the body are marvelous games. As I mentioned above, however, they debilitate the symmetry of the body, and symmetry is vital for our natural alignment to the earth’s gravitational pull. One simple rule change would improve their value and eliminate their major liability: requiring these athletes to use both arms equally.
There are several arguments against such a rule change: First, it would, in many cases, require equipment modifications. Second, today’s stars would need to make some quick adjustments to remain stars. Third, those of us who were just beginning to feel proficient would have to undergo a temporary learning period again.
But here are the benefits of symmetrical training:
• You would enjoy a new and stimulating challenge.
• Chronic pain in elbows, backs, or shoulders would be lessened or eliminated by working both sides of the body, since each side would be given a periodic rest.
• You would end up a better performer. Research shows that learning a skill on one side increases learning facility on the other, and can help eliminate old weaknesses.
• You could practice longer without fatigue.
• You add greater versatility and dimension to your game.
• Your health and well-being would improve.
Re-Visioning Sports
The second and most important way you can personally influence the evolution of sport is by altering your own perception.
Casey Cook, an inspiring diver I coached at Oberlin College, told me that the sport of diving evolved for him as he began to view his movements in terms of energy awareness. He felt as if he were “sculpting” energy as he somersaulted his way into the air, forming lines of energy he could almost see. As he learned to shape the direction of energy flow, he felt he was playing a new game — on nature’s team, with the board, the air, and the water as teammates. He was no longer a lonely body, bouncing on a board, mechanically spinning, attempting to knife through the water for a judge’s reward.
During leisure hours, if he played baseball or threw a Frisbee, he continued to enjoy this sense of energy flow and graceful harmony with natural forces. Without a single rule change, Casey had changed the sport of diving by changing his perceptions.
Professional football player Chip Oliver quit the NFL at the height of his career because he realized that the sport as he had played it was harmful to the body or the spirit. After studying yoga and other integrative disciplines, Chip came to realize that, for him, football hurt too much. Later, Chip was drawn back into the sport he loved, but with a new approach to the game — using football as a means to blend with others, to practice symmetry, to master relaxation-in-movement, and to use the sport as a lesson in living.
