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April 27, 2007
Being in the moment-how to get there, how to stay there
This week in practice we have been trying to get our players to be more concious of how they think, talk and act. More specifically we have been trying to have them become more aware of their negative thoughts and actions as athletes. We are trying to help them differentiate between positive and negative energy. One way we did this was to offer a financial reward. At the start of an hour practice, $10 was available to split between those players who were able to go the entire hour without a negative comment or exhibition of negative body language. Guess what happened? Everyone made it through the first hour. Is $10 divided between a group of 10-20 players really that motivating? We we discussing it as a group and what we decided is that the financial reward was just a catalyst. What really happened was that everyone was concious of their responses to mistakes or good shots by their opponents. Just that act of being concious of what your resonse was going to be changed behavior. Instead of old habits of negativity, a new pattern emerged from the act of being concious of what you were doing.
I subscribe to zaadz: The Philosopher's Notes and today's notes are about savoring things. I would say we were trying to get our players to savor their tennis by eliminating negative thoughts and actions. The article started with sure fire ways to make sure you don't ever fully experience the pleasure of the moment. Those things were:
Think like a'Kill-joy"
Worry about what other people think.
Multi task
Be Rushed
Ways to prolong and intensity being in the moment were also listed:
Share it
Build memories-Consciously try to store away the memories of the event for future recall.
Congratulate yourself
Sharpen the Experience To heighten the intensiity, use "effortful concentration" to focus on certain aspects of the experience and try articulating the experience into words as well.
Compare the Experience Try to think of all the wonderfully unique attributes of this particular experience.
Be absorbed Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it being in "Flow!" (he wrote "The Psychology of Optimal Experience", others call it, "being in the zone" Tennis players call it treeing. Whatever you call it, get absorbed.
Block Interference
Enhance your attention
Each of these elements is something we talked about with our players in trying to get them to be more concious about how they react. We will be working more on this in the next few weeks.
If you are interested in the zaadz site, you can reach it at:
Coach Newman
Posted by Jack Newman at April 27, 2007 8:37 AM
+1 512.276.2271
+1 512.276.2272
