THE BENEFITS OF NOT TRYING SO HARD

Many athletes have told me about a game where they didn't play well and later realized that they was busy trying to make things happen and forced their game rather than let it come to them.  The following stories offer good examples of how this can cause us to become both physically and mentally tight, and the negative consequences that occur as a result.

  WISCONSIN'S SAM DEKKER had some huge games to help his team to the 2015 FINAL FOUR.  After one game he talked about some on-court struggles he had in the first half - and what helped him to turn things around:

"Well, the first half I wasn't playing up to my capabilities. I got kinda out of sync and started trying to force some stuff, and Coach took me out, and the assistants just said, hey, just keep with it; let that go. Don't try to do too much. And at halftime they said the same thing, kind of pulled me off to the side when we came out of the locker room and told me that half is over with, just play your game and be you. And when I'm myself, I can do some good things, so I just let the game come to me and just put up shots with confidence and tried to be a little more aggressive."

   IN THE EARLY 1960s, Bud Winter, the San Jose State University track coach, discovered one of the difficulties which kept his athletes from achieving total concentration.  Winter’s sprinters would come to the track and, seemingly without trying, would run near record times in practice.  Often, they would be amazed by their own performance and would vow that the next time they would break the world record.

More often than not, to their great disappointment, they would run slower the second time. They would try too hard, tightening up and working against themselves.  Winter sought to alleviate the problem by asking these sprinters to run at 80-90% of their maximum effort.  This simple change in thought process kept them from tightening up.

When you are experiencing this kind of flow or concentration, you are not “working”. Instead, you have gotten so much into the immediacy of the experience – you are so into the moment – that you are simply allowing things to happen.

Your attention is directed externally to the things going on around you almost to the exclusion of any internal analytical thinking.  You are reacting so automatically that you do not have to consciously direct your body…. You are simply letting it do what it has been trained to do.      (from Athletes’ Guide to Mental Training by Robert Nideffer)

     BASEBALL HALL OF FAME PITCHER SANDY KOUFAX is one of the best to have stood on the mound.  But his first years pitching weren’t all that spectacular, with a less-than-impressive 36-38 record through the first six years of his career.  In a spring training game against the Twins in 1961, Koufax was throwing his fastball with little success, walking player after player till he had bases loaded with no outs. Catcher (and on-the-road roommate) Norm Sherry went to the mound and said, “Sandy, why don’t you take something off your fastball?  Just lay it in there,” and ran back to home plate. Koufax then pitched – strike one, strike two, strike three…. Three up, three down. At the end of the inning Sherry said to Koufax, “I don’t know if you noticed, but you just now threw harder trying NOT to than when you were trying to!” Some observers trace Koufax’s great success to that day.

     AFTER READING THE ABOVE DESCRIPTIONS, ONE BASKETBALL PLAYER PLAYING IN SPAIN WROTE TO SAY: “I have noticed that usually if I am overly concentrating on the game I usually have a bad game – but if I am just relaxed – good things seem to happen. One time this happened I don’t know where my mind was; I played really terrible and I ended up with just two points!!!  When I am relaxed and not trying so hard – and just remind myself that I am after all a capable player – good things usually happen."

     Another player wrote to say: “This article really hit home. I have this tendency to overwork and over-think about basketball. It starts slowly with extra workouts, then extra everything lol … Next thing I know I am mentally and physically exhausted and not enjoying playing. Now that I am watching this it is definitely helping my game.   When I keep in mind that enjoying my life and my friends and family are my priority and keeping basketball in perspective this also helps a lot!”

© by 2015 by Dr. Mitch Smith.  All rights reserved