Training prepares the body for what to expect during competition. If our training lacks the intensity or skill required in our performances, how can we expect oursleves to perform to a higher level when it comes to our performances or competition. If the body has not experienced the intensity or skill before, then it does not know what to replicate when in flow. Training can provide an opportunity for the body to experience doing what needs doing in a more relaxed environment. If we perform a skill, shot, or sequence in training once, then the body has accomplished everything it needs to know to do it again. Physical and mentally the body knows what to do, it has provided the correct coordination, neurological activity, mind body connection, needed for the skill to happen. If we have done it once the mind and body creates a blue print, a source code or manual of how to repeat this skill again. What stops us producing this skill again and again, is the interference or disbelief of the conscious mind.
Repeating the skills over and over, allows the conscious mind to accept the ability of the subconscious, it builds confidence in this connection and stops thinking of the initial action as luck. As we repeat the skills again and again we strengthen the neural pathways in our mind body connection to access this blueprint, helping the conscious mind to continuously build trust that the subconscious can deliver the skill or action at will. Overtime the conscious trusts the subconscious so much to deliver this blueprint, that it seems to let go control and we perform this action or skill seemingly automatically, leading to what many people call 'muscle memory'.
With this in mind, it seems wise to approach training with a different perspective than the traditional method of repeating a set of skills we require hundreds or thousands of time. If we spent a small percentage of our training time exploring new skills or actions that would improve our performances, we would create many new blueprints of new skills, actions and movements that would increase our ability at a much faster rate. If we spent a percentage of our training time on building the trust between the conscious and subconscious this would allow us to access these blueprints, we have already created by doing the action once. This training would not only be relevant to this new skill but all new skills and existing skills we have learnt. Added to this the time we save by not focusing on repeating the same skill thousands of times in order to trust the body to deliver, we have a powerful acceleration technique to introduce new skills into our performances. Dedicating training time to learning new skills and improving the mind body connection, does not mean we don't have to practice repetition, on the contrary. We can also dedicate a percentage of our training time to repeating the skills we already know, to improve the trust between the conscious and subconscious for times when we find it difficult to let go of the conscious control over our actions, typical when the ego steps in. The above is simply an example of how introducing even a small percentage of mental training into our standard training regimes can rapidly increase our overall skill level.
For more info please get in touch or purchase our book on flow.