You CAN do it with your Eyes Shut!

The Eyes have it

In the course of my coaching cricket, I sometimes step off the well-worn path and go down the rabbit-hole of uncertainty. And certainly, those of you who are familiar with the more esoteric side of my methods, will be aware that I have been known to ask players to undertake actions with either their eyes closed, or by projecting their perceptual position from the customary 1^st position to the 2^nd position.

http://pjwhypno.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/watch-your-own-performance.html

and

http://pjwhypno.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/visualisation-in-action-part-1-throwing.html

So, WHAT happened this week to set me alight once again?

I was working with three lads with their driving shots off the front foot.
Technically, this involves their stepping towards the line of the ball, getting their weight going forward and getting their hands to hit through the line of the ball.
Of course, they are holding a bat – and the bat is an extension of their hands – so if their hands are hitting through the line of the ball, the bat (the extension) will strike the ball at the optimal moment, as directed via their watching of the ball in flight.

Any striking the ball process (and this one is no exception) is whittled down to 3 words:
Hand Eye Co-ordination

These three lads all had differing issues with their developing technique for this particular shot. Issues that I would describe as their having difficulty with correcting the errors and mistakes and being able to install the correct technical elements into their shot execution.
Put in street terms, they consistently “got it wrong!”

I set up a target “gate” for them to hit through – first with over-arm feeds, then under-arm feeds, and then finally I did drop-feeds for them. They failed to hit through the gate with any consistency whatsoever.
In fact, two of the lads found playing with a straight bat (in the vertical plane) really awkward for their hands to manipulate the bat in the correct way, and to get their front foot to step towards the line of the ball. Even with the drop feed, they struggled to get their leading foot to do what I’d asked for and what their brain wanted their foot to do.
(Good job I wasn’t asking them to walk along a path at the edge of a cliff!)

“Close Your Eyes!”

Then I set up a final challenge with the drop feed –

I asked them to play with their eyes closed!

They all looked at me and said “You’re joking, aren’t you? We’ll miss the ball for sure.”

“Trust me,” I replied. “Here’s how we’ll set it up. Nothing will change with where you stand and where I drop the ball. You’ll close your eyes - I will say when I’m dropping the ball – and you will step and play the shot.”

I was curious with my expectations, though not pre-judgemental. I knew from past experience that batsmen can still hit a ball with their eyes closed, even when it is pitched towards them from, say, 12m away – provided they are told when the ball is pitched and how fast it will be going.

I gave them all a couple of practice goes each and reminded them where they needed to step to, in order to be near enough to the ball to be able to hit it. We then ran the test, with a points reward system so there was a competitive element between them all.

The results were amazing enough for them – but they really got me buzzing!

Without the aid of being able to see what they were doing, they ALL made contact with the ball with either bat or hand. Of the 12 balls dropped (4x3) 10 were hit off the bat cleanly and well enough to send 7 through the gate

• The more accomplished player hit every ball through the gate
• The players who’d struggled with their leading foot NOW managed to step towards the ball correctly
• The hands of these same two players had no trouble or awkwardness in playing correctly
• When I asked the accomplished player how he’d done it, he said he knew where the target gate was, and where the ball was. He had visualised their positions. His control of the shot was immaculate.

All the players could not believe their eyes – which I found rather amusing.

Yet, once again, this does prove a number of things – we know, on the inside, far more than we think we do. We can perform, unaided by sight, far better than we ever think we can. How and why can this be? How does this happen?

Stuff

As I see it, there is a conscious foreground of our attention that is not always 100% linked to our actual bank of skills. Stuff, for want of a better word, gets in the way.
In execution of any action we draw upon our COMPETENCE to perform that action. In the 4 quadrants (quarters) of the Learning Cycle, the final quadrant is UNCONSCIOUS COMPETENCE. This is the ability to perform the action without any conscious thought process taking place.
From learning to drive > to writing our name > to tying up shoelaces – we go through the learning cycle and eventually end up at Unconscious Competence.

For the three lads in the experiment: two were still at Conscious Incompetence (2^nd quadrant) and one was at Conscious Competence (3^rd quadrant). They were very much “stuck” in these quadrants too – because of the Stuff getting in the way of their desire to marry up their banks of skills with the foreground of their attention when attempting to execute the skills.

This is a dilemma facing millions of humans worldwide on numerous occasions on a daily basis. None of us are EVER perfect in performing ALL of the skills we have in our banks of skills. It is our human frailty – in that we cannot seem to by-pass the Stuff.

Yet, for the three lads in the experiment, and myself, we all discovered a moment when their Stuff WAS by-passed! They suddenly became more capable than they THOUGHT they were - they stepped out the ordinary.

We did this by taking away (DEPRIVING THEM) of their Visual faculty. This brought about a change in the nature of their brain activity around the required execution of their skills.

I KNOW that by helping people understand the nature of their Stuff, they can THINK LESS and DO MORE, and for DO also read ACHIEVE.

Remember also that the functioning of the Visual faculty is a Thought-Process …

So, for our 3 lads, suddenly with a lot less thought processing going on, they were able to ACHIEVE more – and astound themselves!

My conclusion therefore is this …

STUFF = THOUGHT