1 to 10 before the game

Have you ever heard of an Olympic medal winner who never trained at least 6 hours a day. Has a chess world champion won a championship match without hours after hours of serious work.

If we do not train, how realistic is it to expect to win anything significant. More likely, we will only ever been a Wanna-be and one day a Has-been.

But assuming that we take our training seriously, there is the competion aspect. So here are 10 pre-game tips for the May-be:

1. Practice is over
2. Win ugly
3. Get-out-of-jail cards
4. Performance mindset
5. Forget expectations
6. Process goals, not win goal
7. Strive for success, not avoiding failure or mistakes.
8. Go For It!
9. Kiss
10. The performer.

 Soon more details. After all, the devil is in the detail



A winner



A peacock

More on the "Zone"

You cannot make yourself enter the "zone" Best you can do is set the scene. This includes hard work, both technical and mental training, pre and post-game routines, and passion (for the game)

The following are not my words. Rather they are the words of a psychologist by the name of Csíkszentmihályi (pronounce it “chicks send me high” :)). I include the link toa public lecture he made in Sydney a few years back.

http://austega.com/education/articles/flow.htm

He identifies the following nine components as accompanying an experience of flow:

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities). Moreover, the challenge level and skill level should both be high.
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action and awareness merging.

If you only have room for ONE Goal

In a previous post about quieting the mind, I talked about the captain ship and its crew. When the captain is focussed on captain's matters, the crew gets the job done. Likewise, your captain's mind must be on the cards and only on the cards.

SO

If you cannot be much bothered to keep track of your own performance (after all, it is only a game!), then only keep track of ONE thing.

But do it every every time, whether you are playing a practice match, playing a friendly match or playing the real McCoy.

Your performance goal = 80% (or whatever number above 50 you want to start at)

1. Stop thinking about past and the future and become immersed in the now.
2. Stop predicting (going into the future in your mind)
3. Focus 100% on the cards.

And after every game, give yourself a score of 1 to 3.

1. why did you get up this morning
2. next time will be better
3. you were in the zone
   

When you get to a hundred, add it all up and divide by 3 and you get your achievement. Then start another set.

PS: If you always get 100%, you may need a reality check

Still your Mind – Pysch up

To maximise our chances or getting into the “zone”, mental preparation is essential. The purpose the pre-game routine is to help us find this place wihin ourself where external and internal meaningless distractions cannot enter.

The goal is to let go of our ego – self consciousness, to shut out the distractions and to become the performance (without judgement and evaluation). Our bridge actions must becomes “autotelic” ( an end in itself, done for it’s own sake).

Listed below are a few techniques used to attain the state of mind where we lose this self-consciousness. Mainly, I have found some of these techniques useful when something happens at the table and I am risk of losing my cool. A key point is that you can trigger yourself back to intense concentration in any way you like but it needs to be consistent. Practice us and use the same cue for the same situations.

Imagery

Find Your Center
Now don’t think I have gone mystical. The concept of Chi is used in martial arts. It refers to our internal life-force energy. The major location of chi in the body is a space located just a few inches below the navel, which is also the body's center point of gravity. A number of techniques are based on focussing on your center as an energy source. I have found that focusing on my center was an effective technique for me at the table.
The black box
You imagine you have black box, and you consciously imagining stowing distraction and worries away in the black box, leaving your mind free to focus.

Deep Breathing

This is a well know method of achieving relaxation, of quieting our mind. So I won’t go in to the steps.

Count backward from 100 to 1

It is likely that as your start, you may loose count. If this happens start again.

Mindfulness Upon Details

Brine you mind to observe – really observe what is going on around you? Slowing down forces you to bring your mind into the present moment. This moment of awareness can be amplified by bringing all of your mind unto the thing that is in your present. This forces the mind to be aware.

Affirm Your Present

Repeated mantra, where you repeat a chose set of word or phrase over and over again.

The power of your mind - Goals setting

Your Conscious Mind = The Captain of the Ship
The conscious mind has the ability to think, decide, and to act. It is rational in nature and its purpose is to either accept or reject the information that it receives. He issues orders to his crew and they follow it without question or evaluation

Your Subconscious Mind = The Crew of the Ship
Your subconscious mind takes orders without questioning the conscious mind. It simply obeys and carries out those orders.

Your Thoughts = The Captain’s Orders
The quality and safety of the ship can only be as good as the quality of orders being communicated from the Captain to his Crew. If you think "I am fat and ugly", your subconscious mind will oblige and take you on a binge. If you think : I am tall and strong", you will start walking straighter.

Here is an exercise to see how it works.

Create a pendulum by tying about 20cm of string to a small metal washer, nut or bolt.

On a table put a piece of paper with a 2 crossing lines.

Get comfortable at a table. Pick up the pendulum in whatever hand you write with. Rest your elbow on the table. Holding the string between your thumb and forefinger, suspend the pendulum over the paper.

Holding the pendulum with the washer suspended over the paper, look at it (keep your eyes open), and think about the string moving in one of several directions from A to B for example. Don't try to make the pendulum move, and don't try to keep it from moving. Once it is moving, you can start thinking about another direction going from C to D. Or you can make try make the pendulum going in circle.

The same principle works for your goals. If you have a goal when you go to play a game of bridge, if your purpose is clear - you unconscious mind will also work toward the same aim. Remember: the goal cannot be to win - For you have no total control on the results.

The goal has to be related to your own performance, to your actions - whether your goal is to play card perfect, or to only make no more than 3 errors, etc.

The second point is that the purpose has some what in line with your capabilities. The ship may sink otherwise.

You don't have a choice over using your subconscious. You can only choose what instruction you give. If the instructions are not clear or do-able, you will get random results.

..

So step 1 toward the zone is:

..

...

Have a clear goal every step of the day

Think about it

A simple analogy for the "Zone" and a starting point for high performance

Think of your brain as a camera that can take 40 pictures a second.
Say under normal conditions, your camera brain takes an equal number of pictures in each of the concentration areas.
Now, think of a shot on goal in soccer that takes one second to travel from the foot of the kicker to the goal. The goalie’s perception of how quickly the ball gets to him, will depend
upon the number of pictures the brain takes of the ball.

• If, under normal conditions the camera is focused internally on the goalies thoughts and feelings for half of the time, then 20 pictures will be taken of the ball.
• If the athlete stops all internal processing the camera brain takes 40 pictures of the ball. With twice as many pictures to look at, the ball seems to come to the athlete much more slowly.

The thing to remember from this is that:
The perception of the passage of time is dependent upon the direction of your focus of concentration. The more internal the focus, the faster time seems to pass. The more external the focus, the slower it passes and the more time you feel you have to react.

Once you are capable of performing and of making adjustments without having to consciously think about it, you are ready to begin work on learning to control distractions or those thoughts and feelings that interfere with performance in the actual competition

For us bridge players, imagine how many external cues our internal camera is missing when we focus on our bad play, our bridge partner defensive mistake or any other random topics unrelated to the present game.

Slowing down time

Our Perception of Time Depends Upon our Focus of Concentration

Perception of the passage of time is affected by the amount of time concentration is directed to things going on in the world around us, as opposed to being focused internally, on our own thoughts and feelings. When we are able to quiet, conscious, internal though processes, and keep concentration focused almost exclusively on the game, time is slowed down and we enter the zone.

Time perception can be speeded up as well. When we go to sleep at night, our focus of concentration becomes almost exclusively internal. When we wake up,we have the feeling that time passed very quickly. People under extreme pressure in competitive situations often have associated changes in physiology which causes concentration to become more internally focused. Breathing rate, heart rate, and muscle tension levels all increase. Those internal changes act as distracters causing us to spend more time in our head than usual. When this happens, time seems to speed up and we feel rushed.

There will be methods and training to help us enter the "zone". They would teach us techniques to help us to reduce attention to internal thoughts and feelings, and stay focused on only performance relevant external cues. This must be harder than it sounds as most teaching must require us to start thinking more, not less, thereby temporarily increasing our internal focus. !! I imagine it takes time and patience to reap the reward of such training.

The "Zone"

What is the Zone?

The zone is an altered state of consciousness. When we are in the zone, our normal way of experiencing things is dramatically altered. By examining the descriptions provided by elite level athletes, it's possible to identify some of the common alterations of perception that occur when an athlete has a "peak experience", or enters the "zone" or "flow" state

• There is a feeling of complete control, total confidence.
• We know with certainty what is going to happen before it actually occurs.
• Time is slowed down.
• Objects seem larger and/or more vivid than usual.
• The performance is effortless, occurring automatically without any conscious direction.
• There is a feeling of exhilaration even joy.
• The level of performance exceeds our own expectations, making us aware of a higher level of potential than we would have hoped for.

Calming the mind

Calming The Mind So The Mind Can Perform

There's two seconds left in the championship game, your team is behind by one point and you are at the free throw line shooting two shots. You're very aware of the situation and you, like everyone else, know how important these two shots are. You can feel your heart pounding and your legs are a little weak as you bounce the ball and prepare for your first shot. You take a last deep breath and push the ball towards the basket. You watch with considerable anxiety as the ball hits the front of the rim and bounces straight up. It comes back down and starts rolling around the rim, finally dropping through.

As the ball drops through the hoop, you feel a tremendous sense of relief. It's as if all the weight of the world has been lifted from your shoulders. The ball is passed to you by the referee for your second shot and you step up to the line and dribble the ball. This time, there is no thought of failure, there is no doubt in your mind. You know that you're going to make the shot. You take the last bounce, look to the basket, inhale, feel your knees bend slightly and begin pushing the ball towards the basket. It's effortless and you're in total control, you know before the ball leaves your hand that it's going through without even touching the rim. You feel the excitement as watch the ball spin through the air in slow motion towards it target. The moment almost seems frozen in time for you.

That is the Zone

To reach that golden state we have to quiet our thought processes, shut out distractions, to trust our self and simply let ourselves perform