In the ZONE

If Performance has a trademark its the Zone.
The bubble, the space of being in the moment.

Most athletes are searching for those moments when it all come togheter.
Obviously such peak state must be a great advantage when performing in sports and it is.

What most never do and never learn is to enter the zone by choice.

What typically happens is that, one day it all works, its all comes silent and everything just goes slooow.
Such moments are states of consiousness that can be elicited, trained and practiced as any other skill.

Most never do.
Think about it, many practice the technical levels, the skill to perform but rarely practice the mental game, the states that produce the highten perceptual performance?

As I work on my technical skills, as I must do since I never really learned to hit a golfshot with a proper swing, I also from time to time practice my state of consiousness, as a way to turn it on and off.
I dont practice it much when I am learning a skill, I use it when I can produce the technical level and then add the state to the performance I want to have and test.

So, being in the Zone is a choice, its learnable and also can be set on or off flickin on a switch.
So how come so few knows how to do stuff like that?

Often they learn it by chance, they just happen to produce it when competing.
Some learn to produce it with external pressure, as the pressure increase, their performance goes up and as it does, their state shifts into a Zone like one.

So, instead of writing stuff that been written before, any state can be learned, accessed and put into practice as any other skill in sports.

Enjoy being in the Zone

/Robert Johansson
Re-New NLP.