The Power of Vision
Many years ago, I did gymnastics. I was never a competitive-level gymnast, or anything, but I did take several classes even up to my senior year in high school. I could do some basic moves on the pommel-horse, I completely sucked on the rings, but I really enjoyed tumbling. Maybe it was the impact of watching too many kung-fu movies or something, but I loved the floor-based acrobatics.

At one point, I was working on the back tuck. That's when you jump in the air (from a standing position when you are first learning it), flip backwards, and land on your feet. No hands. It looked cool. But I couldn't get it down. I spent a week on it, and I still couldn't quite get it. I'd get about three-quarters of the spin in, and come crashing down on my knees on the mat (much to the chagrin of my spotters, who got kinda tired of it).

I went over the move in great detail in my mind. Everything - tucking my knees in as I jumped, how I should move my arms to give me the angular momentum. I envisioned myself in exacting detail making the leap, the tuck, the spin, and then sticking it perfectly at the end. I played it over and over my head, in slow-motion, making sure that my brain had all those details burned into it so that I could execute a flawless back tuck.

And still I failed. Repeatedly. I couldn't figure it out what I did wrong. I asked my instructor, the other students. They all had minor notes and corrections about my form, which I added to my detailed vision to perfect it. I memorized those details in my minds eye, slowly going over every action. In my head, I envisioned pushing off even harder with my feet, and whipping my arms up even harder to give me more momentum. Maybe I just needed more height, and obviously more momentum to help me complete the flip.

I asked my instructor, Mrs. Treadeau, one more time to watch me to see what I was doing wrong. She watched. She told me my height was fine... in fact, I was probably jumping TOO high. The problem was simply that I was too slow on the spin.

So I thought about what I could do differently, checked my mental vision again, and thought of something. My little internal vision of myself doing the back tuck was pretty close to perfect in every detail EXCEPT ONE. You figure out what the problem was yet?

It was the key detail.

In my mind, the vision always played out in slow-motion. Every time. I was thinking about how to make my spin faster, but I wasn't actually envisioning myself doing the tuck at real speeds. I was mindful of the techniques, but not the actual end-result. My brain and body were trying to achieve my vision perfectly - and that included the slow-motion movement that I was enforcing every time I committed to the jump.

Could it be that simple? I didn't think so. But at that point I was willing to try anything. I told my spotters only that I was going to "try something different" this time. They were already used to trying to keep me from landing on my head, so they nodded, resigned.

In my mind, I ran my vision through at HIGH-SPEED. Double-normal time. I envisioned the flip taking place in a blur, and my feet hitting the mat an instant after they had left it. Let's see if THAT would increase my speed!

I made the jump. Once again, my spotters had to keep me from landing on my head. Only this time, it wasn't because I went too slow. No, this time I had actually nearly made a flip-and-a-half. I'd overshot my mark and kept spinning, this time with my new, faster vision.

My spotters were nearly panicked, having not expected anything like this. Mrs. Treadeau had seen me, and had run over to see if I was okay, and to ask what I had done.

It took me a moment to quit laughing long enough to tell them what I'd done. Mrs. Treadeau just shook her head and said, "I told you that you were jumping too high."

The lessons I learned that day are ones that I would like to apply more often in my life. When I do remember them, they serve me well. Based on this (and other) experiences, I extrapolated the following lessons which have proven useful to me in more than just gymnastics:

#1 - Make sure you have a clear and CORRECT vision of your goal. Your body, mind, and spirit will do all kinds of work underneath your consciousness to help you achieve those kinds of goals. But if your goals are vague or flawed, you will get a confused or flawed result.

#2 - A detailed goal is helpful, but not necessary (beyond helping you achieve that clarity). After all, envisioning all those details about the movement of my body and arms to improve my rotation only helped me incrementally. But when I got the final version of my goal right, my body and mind already KNEW subconsciously what to do. I suspect that if your vision is TOO overburdened with details, it will lose clarity. Better to focus on the important parts and critical details, and let the rest take care of themselves.

#3 - Regularly re-focus on your goal! In the example, I would envision the whole thing in my head each and every time before I made my attempt. When you run a real risk of breaking your neck on a critical failure, this kind of discipline comes easy. So I'd envision it dozens of times a day.

#4 - Measure, evaluate your progress, and make corrections to your goal / vision as necessary. I doubt I'd have succeeded on my first try even if I had the perfect vision to begin with. But at the end, I was actually much closer than I thought, and I only needed to make one minor amendment to my vision to succeed (and, in fact, go too far).

#5 - Don't be afraid to ask for outside help, observation, and guidance. Just remember that they can't / won't do it for you - success still has to originate from within yourself.

Labels: productivity

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 4:04 PM (Permalink)