Athletes from two millennia ago knew that the mind, the body and the spirit must be united for an athlete to fulfill their athletic potential and perform at the highest level. In the later development of Western cultures, especially under the influence of the Christian church in the middle ages, the unfortunate dichotomy between body and mind was created.
In Eastern cultures, though, this duality never existed. On many Eastern views, wisdom can only be achieved through the integration of reason (mind) with intuition (spirit). In fact, they have always maintained that the drive for improvement and excellence comes neither from the mind nor the body, but from the spirit.
Today, researchers validate what the ancient Greeks knew intuitively(?). The only way for a player to reach excellence is by integrating the physical, spiritual and mental threads of the self into a powerful whole.
When we look at the thought process in motor skill development, action is always preceded by thought. During a game players receive a huge amount of information which they have to process in order to make a decision. This depends on the brain's processing ability.
Memory is another component that plays a crucial part in developing skills and decision making abilities that are automatic, that is they are applied without a high degree of conscious thought.
The brain not only controls the application of skills and strategic movements, but it also affects actual body movements, which people used to consider automatic.
NLP allows us to gain control over what we considered to be automated functions of our own neurology. Imagining an event has the same effect on the brain's structures as performing the event in reality. It's pure magic!
Mental training has for quite sometime been used by top athletes, but its application to beginners has got tremendous potential.
Most coaches spend the overwhelming majority of their time engaged in physical tasks at the expense of mental and spiritual processes. Strong powerful bodies are developed without the corresponding emphasis on the other two elements. Yet, body and mind are closely related and, as the placebo effect illustrates, are dependant on each other.
Most of you must have heard of sugar pills given to patients instead of medicine with miraculous effects. Our thoughts have an incredibly powerful effect on our body and our behaviour. The mental processes send signals to the biological processes of the body which strengthen or weaken the body's physical ability.
Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov demonstrated 100 years ago in a landmark study with dogs, that we can become conditioned to react in a certain way. He would put some tasty food on one side of a room with the dogs on the other side. When the dogs would smell the food and begin to salivate, Pavlov would ring a bell. He did this enough time to create an anchor between the bell and salivating. Then, he would just ring the bell, with no food present, and the dogs would begin to salivate!
It is the same with humans. A touch, a voice or even a look can induce a certain state in us. If you bring to mind a time when you achieved an exceptional performance, you can use it as an anchor to create another exceptional performance.
The process also works in reverse. The fastest way to change your state of mind is to change your physiology. When the body mimics a successful past action it also creates the energized state of mind associated with with that particular action.
If you are happy you stand, walk, even breathe different from when you are depressed.
Change your physiology and you change your mental attitude along with it! Body and mind are linked. If you change one you change the other. Being able to control your emotions, your feelings , your state of mind means that you are able to control your body as well. For example, if you breathe rapidly, assume a straight posture, keep your head high, move quickly and create positive thoughts, you can not but feel exuberant. A study involving manic-depressives, who were asked to look at the roof with a big smile on their faces proved that they could not get depressed without bringing their head down and wiping the smiles off their faces.
Using mental pictures (visualization) to deliberately influence our behaviour is another powerful way of improving performance in sports or anything else.
An experiment carried out at the University of Chicago proved beyond doubt the power of visualization.
A number of people were divided into three groups, then they were tested on shooting a number of foul shots in basketball. the groups were then given different instructions.
| Group 1 |
Did not practice foul shots for 30 days. |
| Group 2 |
Practiced foul shots every day for 30 days. |
| Group 3 |
Practiced foul shots only in their mind (visualization) for 30 days. |
After 30 days the 3 groups were tested again and the results, compared to their initial performance were incredible.
| Group 1 |
Showed no improvement at all, as one would expect. |
| Group 2 |
Showed a 24% improvement, which can not be considered satisfactory given that they had been practicing with the ball for one month. |
| Group 3 |
Improved by 23% which is amazing considering they had not even seen a ball for 30 days! |
These results show the power of visualization, combined with physical training, can make all the difference to a player's progress.
The mistake is also made, like in traditional education theories, to present soccer as a series of discrete disciplines, technique, tactics, fitness training, and not as a dynamic whole.
This emphasis on physical skills development is based on the prevailing analytical thinking, that it is possible to isolate an aspect of a human being and train it to perfection, without taking into account the other components of the whole self. Of course, this view fails to understand that a human being is an integrated entity with the three domains interconnected and dependant on one another.
It is believed in soccer that the best players come out of an urban environment and more likely than not are underprivileged in some way. It is not a surprise that these conditions are more conductive to creating world class players because from a very early age they learn how to solve problems in order to survive. It is precisely these skills which transfer onto the soccer pitch and give these players an edge over other privileged players.
Certain types of injuries which one would consider as purely physical are now proven to be connected with the mind.
Often times an athlete who has suffered multiple ankle injuries will assume that they have 'weak' ankles. This may not be the case given the fact that the athlete is probably in excellent physical shape. The more likely scenario is that the joint positioning systems (proprioceptive processes) that the brain uses are not positioning the joint properly in the midst of athletic movements. Over time, this poor joint positioning will lead to injury.
By improving the brain's ability to integrate all the information being received from the various senses and formulate appropriate movement responses, the chances of poor joint positioning and injury are reduced. Balance activities that integrate the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, and vestibular senses have the effect of improving the proprioceptive processes that help to reduce injuries and improve performance. These improvements can be realized because sensory integration activities increase the efficiency of the neural processes in the brain.
Involving the brain is of paramount importance in developing soccer skills. Standing in lines, running in prescribed patterns, following to the letter the coach's instructions are all mindless tasks which do not contribute to a player's development.
If the brain does not find an activity meaningful it switches off and the player will not learn.
To be effective, training needs to take place within a mentally and physically challenging and spiritually motivating environment.
A cognitive approach is crucial if one is to benefit from practice sessions and apply that knowledge to future situations.
Soccer should be experienced with the whole of one's body, mind and spirit, with all the senses joined and the self opened to new experiences.
So, what we have is a triangle with each side representing a particular dimension. The left side being the mind, the right side being the body and the bottom side being the spirit. These are the walls of change. If one of them is weak, the others suffer. If one wall is removed, the others collapse. If you have them in balance, then you are in focus.
|
