27th May 2012
Dear John,
Yesterday’s game
Last time I played okay and lost. This week I played well and won. The difference?
As we both know, I know exactly how to go in search of my “timing”, so it is reasonable to assume that I went in search of it as much last week as I did this. Therefore, the difference in outcome could reasonably be put down to extraneous factors.
There were four main differences between last week and this:
- The green was playing beautifully
- For the first time in a long time, I had a “third” who was experienced
- The opposition were decent and played well
- This was our first league match
Firstly, I think it is very important to acknowledge that these sorts of factors, the sort that are beyond our control, do make a difference.
Secondly, in getting to understand exactly how these factors affect our play, we get to consider the idea of pressure and how our brains handle pressure, and the crucial role that the discovery of the exact mechanism of “timing” plays in this context.
The idea that encapsulates the difference between the two weeks is “pressure”.
- A fast green puts more pressure on ones accuracy
- Having an experienced “third” eases the pressure of being the “can-carrier”
- In terms of pressure, decent opposition playing well speaks for itself
- For me, there is such a difference in playing league matches as opposed to playing friendlies, even though I always play to win and we have no chance of winning the league.
But what is “pressure”?
“Pressure” is the emotion we feel when we want something to happen and it is in our power to make it happen. In hitting and throwing games, the thing we want to happen is that our next “shot” makes it more likely that there is a successful outcome to the game we are playing. The “shot” involves hitting or throwing something accurately. To hit or throw accurately requires “timing” to be present, and to give ourselves the best chance of “timing” being present when we execute the shot, we need to follow the routine.
So, if we are to be successful at playing games, the routine needs to be able to function in the context of the complex web of emotional and psychological needs that comes under the description “pressure”. This is where the good news comes and the point of the start to this letter.
Pressure
“Pressure” is an emotion, it can be felt, and so it is a conscious phenomenon. In other contexts, it would be called “anxiety” or “worry”. Anxiety has an interesting physical side-effect in that it can often make people feel “tense”. This word is used to describe the feeling of being “tense” because one gets a sensation of muscular “tightness” or “tension”.
Anyone who plays games competitively will recognise the sensation of muscular tension when they are feeling under “pressure”. Unfortunately for games players, tight muscles will not swing: they just won’t. So, our experience of playing games is that when we feel tense it is the moment when we are least likely to be able to execute the shot that we want to play because our naturally tense muscles are naturally unable to swing. This is the bit about playing games that is so maddeningly frustrating.
In other words, a completely natural emotion – pressure – has a completely natural physical effect that often results in the source of the pressure, the desire to execute a perfect shot, being thwarted. “Pressure”, in the context of playing games, is the perfect self-defeating mechanism. Is it any wonder that such a huge amount of time and energy has been spent looking at the psychological aspect of playing games?
But “pressure” has a mental effect as well as a physical one. “Pressure” naturally heightens one’s ability to concentrate fiercely, and it naturally raises one’s general awareness of one’s surroundings.
My routine makes the conscious part of your brain (the bit that is feeling the pressure) concentrate on giving the subconscious part of your brain (the bit that locates “timing”) the information it needs to execute the desired task of hitting or throwing.
In this context, the mental affect of “pressure” is highly advantageous because the conscious’s heightened state of awareness means that the information the conscious supplies to the subconscious (visualisation of ball flight and visualisation of rhythm) is more vivid, more piercing and therefore, completely naturally, more likely to make the subconscious locate that oh so precious “timing”.
What’s more, the act of gathering and transmitting the information is sufficiently distracting for the conscious to become momentarily unaware that it is meant to be anxiously tightening up all its muscles.
The upshot is that the routine thrives on “pressure”. This means that one’s experience of playing games transforms. Unlike before, when “pressure” was something to fear and ward off with analysis, now “pressure” is fundamental to the process of locating “timing”, playing perfect shots and reaping the subsequent rewards.
At the start of the letter, I identify some important external factors that seemed to affect my performance from one week to the next. Each of the factors was a contributor to my general experience of “pressure” within the game. Because of the routine, each element of “pressure” was a welcome addition to my experience of the afternoon’s endeavours.
Colin
