Posts tagged Equilibrium
Refocus and Realign With Every Stroke in Golf and in Life
Oct 10th
When in the course of human events you perform at less than your ability and fall into a destructive cycle of doubt about your skill, which makes you feel worse and thus perform even more badly, how do you escape? At a recent golf tournament I witnessed my son doing just that. And he even knows about mental resilience. What I realized from silently watching from the sidelines is that in golf, you have a chance to restore your equilibrium and get back on track with each and every stroke. When you know the formula, you can apply a similar strategy of refocus and realignment in many other areas of life as well.
You may know that on average, an airplane is said to be off-course 87% of the time from take-off to successful landing at its desired destination. How can that be? The pilots simply keep micro adjusting the trajectory when the plane veers too far off the direct line of travel towards our final stop.
We can also use this principle in life, and even in a golf game. When an event happens, we get feedback. So a long drive that ends up in the middle of the fairway gives you feedback, in the form of your positive feelings and applause from the crowd, that your skill got you well-positioned. A long drive into the woods off to the side elicits groans and the need to dig deeper into your bag of tricks for both the rules that apply to this situation and for escape strategies. At this point you want to both minimize strokes as well as avoid penalty points.
Once back in play, each stroke is an opportunity to take another excellent shot…or not. In sports and life where your attitude and mental fitness have a huge impact on whether your skill delivers through your performance muscles or not, it behooves you to return to your desired trajectory line, just like that airplane. All too often though, without sufficient training, the mounting emotional stress, frustration and humiliation serve to hold tension in our body and brain, thus throwing off our game. We need a way to release these feelings and readjust, fast. Part of success also lies in knowing your baseline to refocus on, and the rest is tactics and strategies to realign.
I use a mnemonic trigger to remind me to reset from any point in time- the now- towards what I want to have happen. Well, when I remember to…. because when the stakes are high and the pressure is on, without a default to that trigger, I too can fall into the negative cycle of defeat. I use the Mind Chi BEAT trigger, where B stands for Body, E stands for Emotions, A stands for Actions and T stands for Thinking. I notice my current state of being, and on my left (or non-dominant) hand touch my thumb to my index finger to assess how my Body feels, middle finger to notice my current Emotions, ring finger to note current Actions and pinky to take note of my Thinking right now.
With a few deep breaths for relaxation, I move to my right index finger and choose my desired feelings in my Body now, like relaxed concentration; move to my middle finger and choose positive and helpful Emotions now, like feeling confident in my ability; move to the ring finger to choose helpful Actions now, like taking deep breaths and maintaining good posture; then touch my thumb to my pinky and choose Thinking that will support my goals- like a reminder to focus, remember my stance, and stay cool.
Now it’s your turn. Just try it. Once you have the BEAT trigger embedded, you can move quickly to the right/dominant hand and instantly trigger your desired BEAT when under pressure. It becomes a near automatic, yet still conscious refinement of your state of being. This leaves you in control of your state of play by getting you back on track at any single moment, with any single stroke. And that adds up to a great game- of golf or of life.
Do The Reebok Easytone Trainers Really Work?
Sep 24th
Sports giants Reebok have claimed that their Reebok Easytone trainers can improve the tone of your hamstrings, calves and bum by nearly 30% more than regular trainers just by walking. They claim the trainers can “train muscles your trainers never knew you had.”
They seem too good to be true; you can exercise the same amount or simply walk around and your legs and behind get a workout that would usually take hours a day at the gym. But do they actually work or is this all just some marketing campaign? A team of scientists with backgrounds in exercise, sport and physiology at the University of Wisconsin conducted a study to test the claims on each of the shoes.
Heading up the test was John Porcari PhD who agrees that in theory the trainers should work the muscles harder because it creates instability that the body attempts to counteract. The shoes are based on a curved sole which creates an unstable surface which forces the wearer’s body to constantly struggle to find equilibrium.
The team tested the Reetone range on a group of females aged between 19 and 24. The subjects were tested through exercise trials and measured by muscle activation, heart rate and caloric expenditure.
The trails were also conducted with a group aged 21 to 27 and both groups were tested with regular trainers to compare. The first results were not impressive, using the Reetone trainers did not increase caloric expenditure or heart rate and only produced aching of the muscles.
The scientists also surveyed users of the shoes over a period of several months and found that they experienced a degree of toning of the legs and bum. But the team struggled to determine whether the toning was entirely due to the imbalance the shoes created or the motivation to walk more.
