Thursday, July 12, 2007

Tennis for Robots

Did you ever pay much attention to how your mind works while you are performing various tasks? If not, try it some time. Tune in on the mental experience of doing things like talking, reading, trying to remember something, or doing something physical.

In doing different things, the brain actually operates in different modes.

For example, when you are reading good fiction, you get lost in it. You become unaware of the words on the page. All they do is (through the power of suggestion) plant images (sights, sounds, smells, etc.) in your imagination, so that you IMAGINE the scene taking place, as if on some magical movie screen in the mind.

But if you put down that novel and pick up a math book, you are suddenly back to experiencing thought as words again.

You are using different parts of the brain for these different processes. The frontal lobe is that part of the brain most exaggerated in humans. It is so large in the human brain that it grows up and folds down over the rest of brain. Why is it so huge? Because it processes language. It thinks in words.

It thinks consciously.

Now, what happens when you do something physical, say, lean over a child gate to pick up an object off a low coffee table on the other side? That takes a careful balancing act so that you don't fall over that child gate. But you don't worry about that.

Do you analyze the motion, deciding what you're going to do with your off arm, how much you should bend your knees, deciding what angle your toes should be pointing, and so forth?

Of course not! If you did that, you'd surely fall over that child gate!

You just walk up to the child gate, form a picture of yourself doing it, and then just do it.

You don't think about it at all. You don't use the frontal lobe of the brain to control your movement. You use the further back parts of the brain, the parts that house the imagination and the unconscious coordinating centers.

They need only that brief mental picture you form of yourself doing it. It's their marching orders. So they see to the details of how to carry out this command. If you're very young, they aren't very good at it yet, because you haven't had enough practice at tricky movements. But if you're an adult, they have learned enough through experience to know just how much to bend your knees and which way to point your toes and what to do with your off arm.

In other words, they are filled with unconscious KNOWLEDGE. They gained it through natural learning, as Tim Gallwey discusses in his book The Inner Game of Tennis.

The result is spontaneous movement, intuitive movement, highly coordinated and well timed movement.

The surest way to botch up this kind of movement is to interfere with it by consciously thinking of how you should perform the details of this movement. Don't.

Why? Because then you are using your body like a robot. What is a robot? A robot is a machine. Its movement is not spontaneous. Inside its little robot head orders are buzzing, like "Move right arm this way. Move left leg that way. Now lean forward at a 45 degree angle...."

Result? Robotic motion.

This is why people find golf and tennis hard to learn. They get instructions. Verbal instructions on how to move the feet and swing. Those verbal instructions get into the head and buzz away as word commands from the frontal lobe while the player is trying to hit the ball. Result? Robotic golf and tennis swings.

Don't.

We don't learn physical things that way. In a million years you won't learn a good tennis or golf swing that way. You'd still be blabbering on your hands and knees if you had tried to learn to walk and talk that way.

And the proof is in the pudding. Why is it mainly just golf and tennis that people find so hard? The answer lies in how we learn most other sports.

For example, a kid sees other kids playing basketball. He watches and watches, imagining himself doing it and then jumps at the chance to go out there and imitate them. Not once is he given, nor does he think of, a VERBAL INSTRUCTION. His brain is doing it all with pictures and feeling. He experiments to discover through results and feel the best ways of doing a thing.

In other words, he learns how to play basketball naturally, not through verbal instructions, like many tennis and golf players learn.

Now, it would be foolish to become an extremist in this regard. To break a bad habit, a tennis coach may have to have a player key on a single verbal instruction while practicing a stroke. Verbal instructions aren't evil. But they are the least effective way to learn. And, you don't want to form a habit of playing with verbal instructions buzzing around in your head.

Which means that your normal mode of play should be with your conscious mind as quiet as possible. Then, if you must key on a verbal instruction occasionally, for five or ten minutes at a time, fine. But don't make a habit of it.

The bad thing about our glorious frontal lobe is that its task is enormously complicated. All the logic involved in processing language (such as that in verbal instructions) costs vast sums of brainpower.

So, guess what the brain does to get extra brainpower for this business whenever you are thinking?

It reflects its attention inward, on your thoughts. You stop seeing the things in the room around you. You stop hearing the traffic passing outside on the street. If someone says, "Honey, would you get me a beer?" you probably won't hear them. Your brain has tuned out incoming information from your environment. Nothing that isn't alarming will get your attention.

But it isn't just your external environment that gets tuned out when you are thinking. Your internal environment gets tuned out too. You won't be aware of your posture or whether your feet are flat on the floor. Your kinesthetic perceptions will be dimmed.

Why? Because the brain is diverting its resources to the frontal lobe for this huge task of processing conscious thought in the form of language. And it doesn't want anything distracting you from it.

Indeed, no one can think (or remember anything) while being fully conscious of the sights and sounds around them. It's one function or the other: take your pick. The brain has reflected its attention inward on your thoughts, or it has turned its attention outward on the rest of your body and your external environment.

Things like - you know ... the BALL. The quieter your mind, the better you'll see and judge the ball. It's as simple as that.

So, learn as much as possible the easy way, by watching others play, by viewing videos, by looking at pictures, by imagining/visualizing yourself doing it, by taking shadow sings. Experiment. Yes, experiment, discover. You'll be surprised how much that helps you get the proper feel.

And if you do have to key on a verbal instruction now and then, fine. Just don't make a habit of it.

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