There’s an interesting article in skiracing.com by Jim Taylor. I wonder if this applies in motorsport as well.
How media use hurts ski racers
I have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to ski racers and their training including leaning on their poles shortly before a training run (no intensity), chatting it up with teammates when they’re in the starting gate of a training course (no focus), and half-hearted effort to the first gate (easing into the course means leaving time on the hill). But I now have added a new pet peeve that has quickly risen to the top of my list, namely, racers having their phones with them and checking their social media between runs.
This pet peeve extends far beyond the hill and into the daily lives of young people. The last generation or two (those who grew up after the iPhone was invented) have become addicted to social media including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, texting, and others. When I use the word “addicted,” I mean literally so; research has demonstrated that social media has the same neurochemical effect on the brain as drugs, alcohol, and gambling.
A broader discussion of the role of technology in human development is beyond the scope of this article, but there are some real implications of media overuse and misuse on the lives and development of ski racers and that is what I’m going to explore in this article.
Let’s return to my newest pet peeve, namely, the apparent inability of most young racers to disconnect from their phones, even during training. So, you may wonder, how is this incessant use of media impacting ski racers?
Let me first make a disclaimer: Everything I talk about in the remainder of this article is not based on scientific research, but rather on my own experience and the observations of many racers, coaches, and parents.
The biggest area in which racers are finding more and more difficulty is in the simple act of focusing. Considerable research has found that the attention spans of young people have decreased since the rise of smartphones and social media. Because of the distractions caused by the constant pinging, buzzing, and vibrating of social media notifications, young people are losing the ability to stay focused for extended periods. The result has been a decline in study habits, learning, and grades.
This problem is no less evident and no less of a problem in ski racing. Many coaches in recent years have told me that their racers are far less able to focus compared to previous generations of skiers. The consensus is that racers in general these days are less able to pay attention to their coaches’ instructions, remember the feedback, and stay focused from start to finish.
One of the most common reasons young racers come to me is because they say they have trouble focusing on what they’re working on in training and they make mistakes in races because they lose focus. And in recent years, I have also found that young racers have a much more difficult time staying focus during imagery sessions I conduct with them. Many tell me that their minds drift off quickly and they’re not able to maintain or regain their focus on their ski racing imagery easily.
Why is focus so important in ski racing? Well, the ability to focus is the foundation of so many things related to consistently fast skiing. Focus impacts learning; without the capacity for sustained focus, racers will forget what they are working on technically or tactically during training. As soon as racers lose focus, they stop doing whatever they were working on and further ingrain old and bad skills and habits. And, without that extended focus, they won’t be able to gain enough quality repetition necessary to effectively ingrain new skills and habits.
Focus plays a big role on race day as well. First, focus is important during inspection. Your ability to focus influences your memory of the course as you inspect. If you can’t focus well as you are slipping the course, you won’t transfer your inspection of the course to long-term memory. And we all know that terrible feeling of reviewing the course in your mind in the start area before your race run and saying, “OMG! Is that a flush or a hairpin after the transition?”
Focus is important on course as well. Without consistent focus from start to finish, whether on technique, tactics, or just going fast, racers have little chance to ski a race course without mistakes.
Now, I can’t realistically get racers to set limits on media use away from our sport. At the same time, I would like to make some reasonable suggestions that racers, coaches, and programs can implement to at least keep the tech monster at bay while racers are training and racing.
First, a few thoughts for racers. Off the hill, a consistent program of mental imagery is one of the best antidotes to the loss of focus due to excessive media use. When you do imagery, you are, by its very nature, requiring yourself to focus, thereby exercising your focus muscle and training it to focus from the start to the finish of your imagined runs.
On snow, I do understand that many of you use your smartphone as a mental tool on race day, mainly by listening to music to help you stay positive, adjust your intensity, establish a good mindset, and to create healthy distractions that keep your mind off of the race. I totally support that. But when it comes to training, do you really need to listen to music on the ride up the lift? Do you really need to be checking your social media between runs? I would encourage you to ask yourself what will and will not help you to stay focused in training and consider leaving your phone in your boot bag when you head out for training.
Second, for coaches. You should have a conversation with your athletes in which you educate them about the importance of focus and talk to them about how media during training and races can help or hurt their preparations and skiing. See if you can come to some consensus on how, when, and where they use their media that will actually help them to ski their fastest.
Third, for programs. At the club, team, or academy level, I would recommend that you assemble a committee of coaches, parents, and racers to create some guidelines that can help shape the culture of media use in your program. These guidelines will act as the norms and defaults for media use, so racers will be more likely to adhere to them.
As we all know, ski racing is a sport of milliseconds. Any advantage you can gain that will enable you to ski just a little bit faster can make a big difference on the result sheet at the end of the race day. One simple, yet powerful, advantage you can gain is to be able to focus effectively in training and to be totally focused from start to finish in races. A key tool you can use to improve your focus is, in my humble opinion, to keep your phone off the hill in training and use it only as a tool, rather than a toy, on race day.
Want to learn more about how to be mentally prepared to ski consistently fast? Get a copy of my Prime Ski Racing e-book or register for my Prime Ski Racing 101: Train Your Mind like a Champion online mental training course.
If it’s too long an article for some to focus on, I guess the author has a point!
joeblogsf1 
He could be right, or he could just be an old fart dissing what the youngsters are into. Nothing new there.
No such thing as an expert, right?
Yes, but even experts get older and more out of touch with things.
Well, I’m not.
To be fair, the author does point out that the majority of the article is based not on fact but on his own “experience”. Which of course is subject to cherry picking and confirmation bias.
Or maybe an old fart who’s been around before the internet, and can judge social media from a broader perspective .
But how dare one be critical of that shiny idol .
Nailed it with the shiny idol reference, Of course this technology has a usefullness. Unfortunately humanity will always find the dumbest ways to use it first. Kardashians, while driving, daft vain profiles, etc…
It really is better suited for people that excel at something that the masses can appreciate having the profile not the masses profiling themselves. I wonder how improved peoples social lives actually are, what real worthwhile relationships this social media style connectivity actually leads to?
The article hit a little too close to home Eahorest2?
If you had actually spent two minutes on Google instead of losing your own focus, (see what I did there?) wanting to make a snarky point – you would have found out that Dr.Jim Taylor’s credential’s and reputation widely exceed anything remotely attributed by you as Dr. Taylor being, ‘an old fart’.
Moreover, the field of study that you should be looking at instead of athlete focus is reading comprehension…
Even credentialed people become prone to being behind the times and curmudgeonly once they get older. That is exactly how the piece reads to me.
It is my opinion, no need to be rude.
And labelling anyone who has a healthy skeptism of technology that can be, if used incorrectly a massive time waster & distraction an old fart isn’t rude?
Not everone needs to be ‘down’ with todays kids to be relevant, thats for the insecure, but it is funny when you see people dressing like them in an effort to young it up. Just because your parents didn’t like rock n roll does not make anything young people embrace or fall for automatically correct. Otherwise we’d all be walking around with our pants falling off our arses sporting atitude from the ‘hood’, fortunately that fad seems to have been outgrown.
Perhaps a better term is grown ups rather than old fart, as these kids grow up and actually develop their lives with all associated responsibilities – careers, family resposibilities. etc. they will streamline & optimise their use of social media in a wait for it – focussed manner, why? because they only have 24 hrs in a day like the rest of us.
You confuse rudeness with directness.
I class implying somebody can’t read just because they disagree with you as rude.
I am going to say that this provides a compelling thesis right up to where the real world rudely interrupts with facts. I do not do twitter, Facebook or other social media. I am as Joe has described me in the past a Luddite because I don’t do those things. So you would expect me to go along with the thesis.
However I coach a robotics team full of students who fit this profile to a T. At practice, at competition, the phones go away, they are not distracted and are more focused than many of the competitors who are their peers. I don’t see the distracted teams on phones and social media. They just don’t care as much about the results. That description fits most generations, some care to compete at a high level, others do not. So when an 8 hour competition day is over, what do they want to do? Go run outside and blow off steam. Then when they get in the car the phones come out, they chat on line and do social group games. It is not what I would have done at that age. But it is what they do, socially.
You have to remember that social media is the equivalent of kids hanging out at Malls and other social gather areas of previous generations. Phones are CB radios of another age. Saying don’t use social media is the same as saying don’t chat with the competitor or team mate on the lift. They just have an ability to chat with someone down the road, remote from there location. Is that conversation on social media in short bursts worse than a causal conversation in person? No! Is it different? Yes!
All that leaves in this thesis is commitment at the first turn and during training. How many Olympic records are set in training? You push to it, you train for it, but the big time has to come on the day with the Adrenalin pumping and the spectators cheering. Otherwise we would call the world championship after winter testing, save all that travel and expense.
My prediction for 2017. Joe will refuse to call the championship based on the testing results and want to see what happens race weekend in Australia and races beyond etc. Just as he has done for years. Why? Because training or practice is all about muscle memory, stamina, refinement, development, technique and repetitive practice. Oh and these days BIG DATA! Takes 3000 hours to become an expert so they say, but it also takes time to maintain it. That is what training and practice is all about. Expecting every run to have 110% is just dumb, whatever the sport. You need 98% coach for the best on game day, then ask for it. Motivate them up from where you feel they are at. But asking for a record breaking run, practice after practice, makes no sense.
So if the skiers wont focus on the grunt work, tell them to put the phone away. tell them you want and expect a level of focus. This is a bad coach blaming others for his inability to motivate discipline, NOT a reflection on society. The best coaches don’t enforce, they motivate. You cant order, not for very long you cant, you promote an idea that will achieve tangible results. Tangible results are the feed back loop for motivation. That includes having fun…. and if fun is talking to your social media friends……
I have found You Tube videos are a way to teach and promote skills if carefully selected… Why? Because it is a media the Social Media generation will readily accept and absorb. Zero resistance. Don’t fight it, use it! So the distractions of yesteryear have changed. So what? They have and always will. How many people leave boy scouts because they found girls? They are still on the hill are they not?
Why does Toto not tell Lewis to put the phone away all the time? One it would demotivate his world class driver and two it is marketing. So find a way to use it, in skiing, if that is what it takes!
Yes Joe I am a social media Luddite, but I am not buying into this thesis. This old farts real world experience of this social media generation just does not match to his, except for the observation that social contact has evolved and is different than my generations. Go figure, here comes the Beatles and long hair and everything that pissed of my old man and made him rant!
Great reply…just as interesting as the original article 🙂 Thanks!
Your old man was correct he knew the Beatles would lead to future Paul Mccartney solo albums!!
Yes, because an on line existence is so much more enriching than actually going out and doing something, virtual is so much better than real. Social media – I wonder what Shakespeare would have thought about the average Lemming full of self importance blithering away about their hum drum life.
Vegging out on social media (social facade) is the equivalent of channel surfing and about as productive as channel surfing on your T.V (that box with moving pictures your Dad watches) At least the old farts are smart enough to channel surf at home in their down time and not walk around all day with a dumbphone in overdrive. You may as well be walking around with a remote control endlessly flicking it, you’d get about the same amount accomplished.
There is nothing I disagree with in Jim Taylor’s article. However, surely at least the larger F1 teams will employ a sports psychologist if not full time, on a consultancy retainer. These psychologists must be aware of this attention deficit phenomenon, especially if they have children or grandchildren, who are glued to their smart phones. My two year old grandson cannot count to five but he can operate an iPhone perfectly, to get to the Amazon app and then open the cartoons he likes.
Before both practice and races, you often see drivers in a near trance state, which I am sure is a learnt technique, where I assume they are visualising and working out strategies for various scenarios. In contrast to ski racing, I suspect today’s drivers in F1 are more professional and focused than they ever have been in the past. Most of them have been racing drivers since their pre-teens and the route to F1 has never been more difficult and competitive than it is today. Nevertheless as a team manager, I would make it a rule, that unless demonstrably required for your job, smart phones would have to be left in the team motorhomes and not be brought to the pits area.
I am in my fifties and the article is too long for me…
I am in my eighth decade and I disagree.
I’m in my 70s, and I think his point is valid. I have eschewed the Smartphone so far, and intend to continue eschewing it (and thanks for giving me the opportunity to use “eschew” in a sentence for the first time).
I can never find a phone box that works
I came as far as “use the imagery .. blah bla .. yadda yadda .. ” (I’m not a skiing fan, couldn’t care less)
then I skipped to the last line by Joe, priceless! 🙂
I don’t doubt his assessment for a minute. Smartphones are killers in the literal sense. Just look at the havoc their use causes in day to day traffic, that basically proves his point about focus.
You beat me to it. Thank you and AMEN.
Conversely, it was interesting to hear Nico saying that he had been practising mind exercises all last year and that helped him win the WDC.
It just makes sense doesn’t it…..We have four kids between 11 and 18 in our household and I see this every day.
Interesting side note – the Great Britain women’s hockey team took a collective decision to all come off all social media for thn duration of the olympics in order to get into a team bubble. They won every game.
Laura Trott meanwhile used SM. Anyone can cherry-pick.
Now, what was I doing before my phone pinged to tell me there was a new post from Joe?
Notice the reduced concentration span in daily school life and at home with kids. If, for instance, it takes a few minutes of dialogue to set the scene in a film – there is no action to grab their attention – they lose interest and do something else, only to return at a later point to have missed out on key information/contexts. Thus they actually fail to make the mental connections necessary to understand and appreciate the ‘bigger picture’.
In racing terms, if your ability to focus sets you apart, then forgoing social media is surely a very small sacrifice.
Interesting article on a related topic “When Your Phone Uses You” from Seth Godin. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/12/when-your-phone-uses-you.html
The was the most interesting and longest advertisement I’ve ever read.
kerbrider – I had a similar thought….and I have to agree with much of what he says about the reduced attention span. My wife especially sees it, as a teacher of nearly 20 years, she has noticed this.
We’ve talked about how it seems to have developed due to social media and other distractions on smartphones, the resurgence of comic books as a quick read, and the way visual media is now edited – video games and movies consisting of rapid cuts across various scenes, and explosion after explosion after some special effect.
Other trends may contribute to the “instant feedback” concept, such as the polls used in political campaigns or the reporting on which movie made the most money over the weekend – big f’ing deal in my book.
I’ve also seen articles about how this has become a problem for the military with new recruits. Great.
I’m 20 years old so I fall straight into this category. In my view, he’s absolutely right. Fortunately there seems to be increasingly better awareness amongst young people of the negative effects of smartphones on our brains and ways of life. An entertaining and thought-provoking video recently went viral with the title “The Millenial Question” – definitely worth a watch. Whether this new awareness means we change our ways is another question.
great article Jim, Joe! very relevant especially while driving car when commuting daily which I observe in some countries! very good read and observation!
That is a really good article (and no, it wasn’t that long). I always laugh when parents say their kids are glued to their phones. Um, who bought the phones in the first place? It wasn’t the kids. Plus, you may buy them one but if you don’t teach them how to use it, they will abuse it. The problem, as always, is the lack of education.
There are plenty of middle aged people who also suffer from this.
Just having a normal conversation
– with them constantly checking their phone –
can be very tiresome.
Guilty as charged. I could say I can stop anytime but it really is an addiction. I did remove Facebook from my phone for a month or so last year and I was amazed how I adapted to not needing to look at it. I’ll try that again. I read once that people keep checking their mail hoping for good news.
I’d welcome this if I were competing. For the simple reason I wouldn’t have my phone with me and would be more focused than the others, any slight advantage would be a bonus! I’ve not seen F1 drivers sitting in the garage on their phones (much), I’d imagine if they did the team would have words, or they should have words with themselves as it could be losing them a tenth
I think the key word here was ‘focus’ and that he used it more than once.
The problem is that ‘focus’ is a vague term, something which cannot be measured and is hard to assess. There are better ways of describing and measuring someone’s involvement in a task e.g mental arousal, alertness, response times.
“I have an expert opinion on the matter – to read it, buy my book, available for too much at all good bookstores”
Love the last sentence Joe 😆
The “problem” is self-correcting: the goal in racing is to win and the winners on the course will reap the rewards. Put your head in your phone and miss the “patch of ice by Gate 8” pointed out during inspection and you lose. Or worse – you’re injured and unable to compete.
If competitors were using their mobiles to somehow cheat, that would hurt the sport. But using them to merely distract themselves is not a “problem” any more than are other unwise choices (e.g., booze, shagging).
Best of all: focus is free and not an inherent advantage of the well-off. As such, F1 shouldn’t demonize mobile use as it is a potential differentiator between a scrappy, underfunded-but-talented driver and a “silver spoon” driver with more cash than skill.
Loss of focus over extended periods Vs enhanced ability to multitask and manage several work streams at the same time, progressing each one a little at a time. Including an almost instinctive ability to understand “logic” and long process flows.
P.S. i got bored half way through the waffle of the article, read some emails and came back to write my comment. Perhaps with journalists/writers too much focus is a bad thing 🙂
Auto racing is a science when it isn’t focused on being a business. Why wouldn’t the human interface also be approached in a scientific way, with improvement of the emotional machine plugged into the cockpit the goal? Some of the people criticizing this approach to improving athlete focus, appear to be carburetors (Solex) in a fuel injected/ hybrid world it would appear… 🙂
I’ve been told anecdotally that current teenagers, when learning to drive a car, will not stand on the brakes like we all know you have to occasionally do in an emergency. I was told this is because they are so used to getting everything with a click, swipe or tap that something so physically mechanical is alien to them.
Kids these days.
I think you made that up or somebody jerked your chain.
Oh wait: Is this rudeness or directness? (laughing)
Really – and when they ride bicycles they try to click on the pedals with their thumbs. When they open doors they try to swipe right accross the surface, missing the handles. They try to open cans and bottles by double tapping on the side of them. And when they’re geting amourous as teens will do they whip out thier dongles and attempt to sync with each other – kids today indeed!
As an aside, I know some instructors would say that what Gareth is advocating with regards to standing on the brakes is technically incorrect.
When you perform the emergency stop manoeuvre, the instructors are looking for the driver to bring the car to a rapid halt in a controlled manner and in a way that would allow the driver to take other evasive action if necessary.
In most modern cars, standing on the brakes in the way that Gareth is mentioning would potentially trigger the anti-lock braking system and potentially lengthen the braking phase. Instead, the expectation would be to brake firmly and with increasing pressure on the brake pedal instead of just slamming on the brakes, as the former generally works more efficiently by reducing the likelihood of triggering the anti-lock system.
Is this the issue that caused Lewis to garner so much flack ?
I think it is the author who lacks perspective, to state as he does that a ‘Couple of generations’ have grown up since the iPhone was invented is a bit odd.
The iPhone is less than 10 years old so everyone who grew up since it was invented is 9. I make that one generation of children.
To suggest that adoption of smartphones is confined to younger people is equally facile. People of all ages have enthusiastically adopted the tech, just as previous generations adopted colour tv, the electric lightbulb, wireless radio central heating and hot and cold running water.
Adopting new technology is in no way the preserve of the young.
Hi Joe, Great article by Jim and thanks for sharing with this part of the world that is F1. I think it is very relevant anywhere in motor-related things. I thing very relevant in daily commuting by car. I live in the Czech republic and the use of a smartphone while driving (not just on your ear) is extremely frequent and I wonder how many accidents are actually caused by simply not focusing on the task of driving… Police not-enforcing the law is one thing but where is our responsibility? not even speaking of focus… Perhaps a topic for JT and his Road Safety campaign…
On a related note, I recently watched a really interesting interview on Millenials in the workplace and how they struggle to adapt to a corporate environment
Marginally interesting. However all the time that the following is true, its not really relevant:
“Let me first make a disclaimer: Everything I talk about in the remainder of this article is not based on scientific research”
A good day for whining about the internet. Apparently its too dangerous for online voting as well.
“Sir John Sawers head of MI6 until 2014, told the BBC that casting a ballot with pencil and paper was “actually much more secure. The only trouble is, the younger generation of people expect to be able to do things remotely and through electronic devices.”
Show me the evidence or….
Flow. The above is about their flow being broken and also their ability to properly enter the flow state being broken. Mobile phones, pagers, any attention demanding device is bad news in this area.
If you want to know more search for “Flow” and “Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi”. I’d post a helpful link but Joe would frown upon that 😦
I have to speak to the public as part of my job on an advice line. Most have the attention span of a gnat, the brains of a flea and the ethics of a hyena. I am convinced that social media plays a large part in this dumbing down process. It requires a minimal attention span, with no critical thought process involved, with followers being bombarded by and large with a constant torrent of drivel and irrelevance. Things just go in one ear and out the other. Consequently, it’s the devils own job trying to explain anything because they have such little miniscule attention spans and zero ability to understand actual proper words, requiring an explanation of things at least 3 times before it finally goes in. I’m not against social media. I can see its point, at least if you are say a well known name because it allows you not to only to connect with people but to put across your version of events. But when a future American President is taking to Twitter to announce “policy” in a not very presidential way, you have to ask exactly what type of audience is he aiming at and whether it’s an indication of how low the medium has sunk.
Happy New Year from NYC Joe!
Back in the stone-age (1978-82) I was a collage ski racer in the wilds of Western Mass and raced in Vermont, New Hampshire and Eastern Canada. This was the Stenmark/Klammer era who were our hero’s- the Senna and Lauda of ski gods. I skied GS and downhill though I was too small- height and weightwise to be super competitive in downhill. We skied on 195cm for GS and 203cm boards either Olin or K2 with Marker bindings. Skiing in the Berkshires is icy, super cold and windy. We trained on what we called “bulletproof base” which was ice, so we had to curve turns at high speed on relatively ungroomed courses. Our coaches were really into technique- hand position, the angularity of our knees to load and unload the edge. Metal acuity was rarely talked about. The one thing that was discussed was being “in the zone” and “flow”. Essentially a Zen like state of mind. Skiing downhill at 50-60 mph is super dangerous no matter what the conditions, plus we didn’t wear helmets which now in hind sight I cant believe. I still recall the mega concentration of skiing well on a difficult course- time would slow down, there were times I felt out of my body, almost watching myself run the course.
Now, I don’t ski much anymore but a few years ago I visited friends in Europe and we had the opportunity to ski 3 of the most famous downhill courses; The Lauberhorn in Wengen, the women’s course in Cortina and the monster Hahnenkamm in Kitzbühel. Didier Cuche is a family friend of one of my pals and he was gracious enough to join us in Wengen to ski the course with us (leisurely) and the technical aspects of racing on it. This was a master class in ski racing. Other than interviews with Senna have I NEVER heard a person talk about, describe in such detail the incredible power of concentration to go so fast. His preparation for racing was like nothing I had ever heard of. The guy is a monster and an artist on skis. Like Senna he was preternaturally gifted to be a ski racer.
How this current generation of ski racers can be looking at their phones, tweeting in between races is beyond my comprehension. One micro second lapse of focus gets you wrapped around a tree or dead.
We have all witnessed people at dinner (regardless of age) sitting with their heads buried in their phones or tablets, with nary a word between them.
Sad.
A teacher mate of mine reckons he spends 10mins of each class confiscating mobile phones from students. What bugs me are those people walking around cities and other crowded places while looking at their stupid smartphones and not paying attention to where they walking and then abuse you for walking into them.
Did you post this from your phone, Joe?
😉
Hmmm, I thought I saw Mikaela Shiffrin reaching for her back pocket as she skied of the course during the first run at Zagreb this morning….
Smartphones, dumb people.
According to one UK Red Top, Manchester United players have found a solution. The went to Hereford and discovered that if one’s life depends upon keeping focus…
“…“The lads found it fascinating and were told about how SAS soldiers are able to focus and trust their training and planning. The hope is the talks will give the lads a Who Dares Wins attitude on the pitch that will result in lots of silverware…”
As for Dr Taylor, I detect a whiff of snake oil about his ideas.
I admit I scrolled, I was waiting to see down the bottom “sent from my iPhone” must read later in full.
Interesting and alarming. I think of my future children. As much as I would prefer to never give them a smart phone, would I be denying them a skill that is needed to survive in future society? And is it cruel to make them the joke of their class without the most basic “human right” (said very sarcastically) or deny them access to online socialising? If I had my way, they would have supervised and limited access to social and entertainment technology. We shall see what happens.
Somehow I’m disappointed, 24 hours on, not to have found a simple “TL;DR” response to the original post. 😉
As for short attention spans, isn’t this is much older news than social media? Does not social media perhaps pander to it, take advantage of it, as much or more than cause it?
Yes, I believe the Romans said it first.
I will heartily agree that this complaint – that technological development X is responsible for a reduction in attention spans amongst the youngest generation is an accusation that has been thrown around for centuries.
There was a particularly good example of this from the author of the xkcd website, who collected quotes from historical figures making just those sorts of complaints over a period of nearly 150 years (and that was just dealing with the more recent technological developments during the industrial age).
One example was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Goschen, in 1894 complaining about “human faculty dwindling away” because of “the inventions that have been introduced to render its exercise useless”.
He then proceeded to make very similar accusations to many of the older posters here – in his case, complaining that it was necessary to summarise the events of the day in newspapers in ever more concise details because younger men had apparently lost the ability to read a long article. Social media is just the latest in an extremely long list of developments which can lazily be tagged as a “corrupter of youth”.
There is a gigantic assumption on the part of almost everyone on both sides of this argument that they know what it takes to race successfully. Do they really know ? I very much doubt it, because if they did, they would explain things very differently.
Nowadays we hear quite a lot about mental coaches and sports psychologists, but I hear very little talk and precious little evidence of those supposed specialists taking a thorough and disciplined approach to mental preparation.
It is a given that a racer should be in a particular mental state during a race, in order both to travel as fast as possible and to respond to external events in the most effective manner. What is that state ? How is it best achieved ? How long can it be maintained ? How soon before a race should it be entered ? If it cannot be maintained, what are the best alternate states to use ? If a racer and/or their coach cannot answer each and every one of these questions, their preparation is deficient. And if they cannot tell you about all the things they tried which didn’t work as well, they are dangerously close to being charlatans. Scientific experiments suggest that for any activity there is an optimal mental state and the nearer the participant approaches that state, the more their performance improves, regardless of their natural demeanour and/or temperament.
Apply the same approach to practice and things rapidly get complicated – the optimal mental state for racing is not the best one for exchanging information with one’s coach, so the training schedule must be set so that the racer is always in the best mental state for what he/she is doing. This requires considerable skill and knowledge on the part of both coach and racer.
Knights today eh, reading scrolls prior to jousting. It was never like this in my day. How can they expect to focus?
Having read all the comments here at one sitting I would thoroughly recommend the practice as an aid to focussing!
Fantastic opportunity for the youngster who bucks the trend and concentrates on his/her craft they will be the winners.