Suck It and See!

There are many times in performance when our thinking gets in our way. The more we think - the worse it gets!

To stop people thinking so much (especially those within teams), particularly about the 'what ifs?' of techniques or outcomes, I get them to think tactically. Its a projecting and external process, taking them largely outside their internal dialogue and self-critical faculty.
A real help here also is deep and controlled breathing to get them grounded, calmer, and with more mental clarity.

I had a recent occasion to work with a young cricketer who, when batting, would move away from a ball that was coming straight at her. This is a natural protective or "flight" reaction carried over from a time when younger. As an embedded habit this is extremely common, and there are a number of ways of tackling it - the choice depending upon which is most effective for any particular individual.

In previous cases I have used anchoring, reframing, and inducing a 'sticky back foot' as a means of correcting the process of avoidance. For the young lady in question she described it as "finding myself thinking what to do when the ball was coming straight at me". Whilst this appears to be part of her shot selection process, she said she had no discernible "thinking" when the ball was not coming straight towards her.

I took a bit of a flyer here and saw the intervention of her over-cautious critical faculty as being the thing to distract or switch off. In terms of ecology, just watching the ball would be enough to tell her where any real danger lay, and she could rely upon this intuitive and autonomic process to protect her, to keep her safe.

As I've said many times, especially in "Don't Think of a Black Cat", to get her to stop thinking whether the ball is coming towards her or not is likely to fail at best! Instead I chose to give her something ELSE to think about - something in close proximity and kinaesthetic in sensual terms. (I chose kinaesthetic rather than visual because visual is critical to her shot selection.) I could have chosen auditory, but I wanted to keep that sensory channel free - for mainly technical reasons, both present and future.

First of all I got her to link a deep-breath sequence into various stages of the process of the ball being delivered to her. This is a very useful anchor for grounding and calmness and improves the shot selection process.
Secondly I asked her to notice and consider what her tongue was doing within her mouth, through the period that ball was in flight coming in her direction. This redirection of kinaesthetic information focus, and engaging thought processes to analyse what that tongue was doing, had an immediate effect.

I would like to add here that when getting her to direct and pinpoint her (kinaesthetic) focus I actually described it as "that tongue" rather than "your tongue". "That" tongue implies that the tongue is somehow separate from her and her control and results in her noticing even more about what it is doing. This process takes only a few moments to talk through and set up, and involves the player in a degree of alteration of state - brought about by their 'going inside' (in this case mouth and mind). I used to call this process "localised trance" but now I'm more comfortable describing it as moving perception around.

It is a huge boost to a player's confidence to find that (almost suddenly) they are not shying away from the ball, and instead they are staying more still and playing better shots as a result. This instant feel-good factor then adds into the loop and the process is enhanced every time they face a ball. The more they do it - the better it gets!

Using the tongue this way, or engaging parts of the mouth in other ways (such as gum-shield or chewing gum) is a good way of distracting over-active thought processes. By adding-in some subtle linguistic and mental artifices it all becomes much more powerful and effective.

Try it for yourself or, as they say "Suck it and See"!