11DEC2012

Tags: focus, The ZoneWritten by Robin Clarkson, Posted in Articles for Athletes, Articles for Coaches, Sports Psychology | Leave a commentIf you understand the playing zone, you understand sport.The big thing to realize is you have to go to the playing zone, it does not come to you and once you understand the parameters which allow you to enter, raise, expand and enhance the zone, you have to have a change perspective in what you do.What the playing zone is and how it works goes like this:The zone, like sport, works on space and time.And you have to think of the zone as a room in your mind.To enter this room you require stillness of the mind, which reduces the thoughts, which creates space, which the zone loves because that’s what it works with.To expand this room you require disciplined simplicity, in other words, the ability to do the simple things well, for when discipline and simplicity combine, they create a compound that expands the space and time.To raise the level of the room, in effect going up some stairs, you require inner peace, for those that are settled and calm in their thoughts and lives always perform at a higher level than if their life was full of inner turmoil.To enhance the playing zone, you require concentration on the task at hand, for concentration focuses the mind.And for the zone to work in the physical world it projects the image onto the minds-eye, which is connected to the brain, and because you are in the zone, what the inner and outer eyes see, the body does.All of this can only be developed through simplicity thinking for simplicity thinking likes space, whereas the opposite, complexity thinking does not like and wants to fill the space and hence is why so many people have dramas in their lives and so few get to the experience of being in the zone. And there is also the little matter of disconnecting from the ego, for the ego is part of the complexity thinking.So key words for understanding the zone and how it works are:DoorwayStairsRoomProjectsMindseyeConnectsBrainFor the simple truth of the matter is this, if you:Understand the playing zone; you understand the training required for sport for both the body and the mind.Expert Author: Robin Clarkson – “Be A Winning Coach”