The Emotional Athlete
Music is not inside a violin anymore than emotions are inside the body.
A public book writing process on the role of emotions in sports performance and skill acquisition.
Some of the work so far…
Enactivism
Enactivism is a relational theory of life. Instead of thinking about emotion, mind and body as separate, enactivism places them as interconnected strands of the same system. What unifies a system is not the fact that it has goals, but the fact that it naturally strives towards goals. Enactivists call this primordial affectivity; care is primary and what is cared about is secondary.
Application: Participles as affective descriptors
Because behaviour is innately relational and affective, coaching communication can better reflect this. A participle is an ongoing adjective that describe the direction and quality of a movement. Describing movement with participles can expand on the external focus of attention research by bringing in affective descriptors. For example, reaching towards a target is less affective than striving for it. In my own exploration and teaching, this has had immediate effect.
SCAN and Attitude
Recent neuroscience has uncovered a brain network responsible for integrating goals, emotions and motor control. This network is active during planning phases of action, preparing organisms to engage “environmental niches” like mating, fighting, etc. By aligning the body with abstract goals, this system allows the organism to meet physical and metabolic challenges in real time. Interestingly, this network exerts control over the axis of the body — the muscles, glands and organs that gather around the mid-line of the body. Such changes to the organisation of the axis of the body are described in terms of attitude; suggesting that attitude is a way for individuals to align their goals, emotions and behaviour for different contexts.
Application: Character Play and Embodiment
Physical posture is not purely muscular. When an athlete habitually lowers themselves, change will not come from strengthening the muscles of their back, but relating to their environment in a new way. Games, exercises and explorations that bring new relationships between and within individuals may change their attitude. Given the way the SCAN (somato-cognitive action network) recruits the organs, it may also be worthwhile to explore the embodiment of these supporting structures in the style of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s work. Explorations of character, values and identity are also invoked by the inclusion of attitude as a performance variable.
Meta-Cognition and Interoceptive Integration
The ability to think about one’s feelings can be used for both promoting and protecting performance. By understanding the interconnectedness of mind and body, there is an insight: changes to the mental state simultaneously and immediately affect the bodily state. However, engaging in this kind of practice requires a capacity for meta-cognition — to identify internal phenomena like ruminative thoughts, feelings of excitement and sensations of tension. There can be an education in awareness and the resultant beneficial action enabled by this awareness.
Application: Awareness and Inhibition
Choking under pressure, where performance regresses under conditions of uncertainty, is common — and has devastated the careers of many athletes around the world. By recognising the cognitive and somatic signatures that come before choking, it is possible to inhibit its breakdown effect. Through specific mindfulness practices, athletes can identify those signatures. Through games, exercises and explorations, athletes can experience the conditions of choking under pressure in a safe context, learning how to inhibit choking — getting out of their own way, as some people call it. Furthermore, the same pressure that pre-conditions choking offer the same high arousal states that pre-condition peak performance.