The Subconcious Mind

[vmax4steve]

Tuesday the 13th of March, BBC2 9pm, HORIZON : Out Of Control

The latest edition of the long running science programme looks at the subconcious mind and how it effectively runs our lives. Could be very interesting as the programme contains an experiment with golf which some allude to as being mentally similar to snooker. We could learn something so let's watch and then discuss.

[Nugget]

Thanks for the notice, sounds like it could be a really interesting show!

[armstm]

"inner game of golf" an interesting read on this.

[merlin1234]

tbh I suspect it's the conscious mind that's the real enemy in snooker. If you train properly, you're effectively conditioning your subconscious responses, esp muscle memory, and it's your own conscious interference that prevents you from achieving the same results in a match as you can on the practice table. Your mode of thinking is different and so the result is different.

I think it's normal under pressure to find yourself trying to take conscious control over things you shouldn't really have to consciously think about, and mess up as a result. Even a completely straightforward act of physical coordination like catching a ball or walking up some stairs could be something you could mess up if a madman was pointing a gun at you and threatening to shoot if you dropped the ball or tripped.

I suppose that leads me to the conclusion that the more practice you get under pressure, the better you'd get at remaining calm and allowing yourself to play naturally. Perhaps practicing with somebody administering shocks for bad shots might work. On the other hand it might ruin your game, who knows?

[armstm]

i completely agree and its a fascinating discussion. the subconscious learning is most pronounced in kids which is why its more difficult for this 37 year old to learn (at least thats my excuse). its also why copying someone is more effective than receiving written instructions - the subconscious brain works in images whereas the conscious brain is the part dealing with verbal/written instructions...

see here for a fascinating discussion from ronnie about copying steve davis...

http://www.smashingbeliefs.com/SCI.pdf

the inner game of golf goes into this extensively. there's the "awareness" part of your brain which is related to subconscious. for example try to focus on your head or your body or your left arm has you get down on the shot. as you practice being more aware, you'll notice (in my case anyway) lots of little adjustments that i wasn't aware of.

finally how most pros miss (apparently) is cueing across. this means they've sighted it correctly, they're down on the shot correctly but at the last moment the elbow moves out slightly. (i do this a lot apparently). this is the conscious brain "adding to the angle".

[PatBlock]

tbh I suspect it's the conscious mind that's the real enemy in snooker. If you train properly, you're effectively conditioning your subconscious responses, esp muscle memory, and it's your own conscious interference that prevents you from achieving the same results in a match as you can on the practice table. Your mode of thinking is different and so the result is different.

And what about being in 'the zone'. Occasionally, (for me anyway) you'll have a session where you hardly have to think at all, you 'feel' for the shots instinctively, and it all just works, effortlessly. It's almost as if your body has been taken over by a much better player, and you're a mere bystander, you're effectively on auttopilot.

And no, I'm not talking about illicitly fueled sessions either.

I know that my subconscious is doing a lot of the work for me, but why only once in a while?
Lazy sod! The rest of the time I have to concentrate like hell to play half as well.

If only we could tap that illusive 'zone'.

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[Sidd]

I totally agree.. I know what you mean exactly because I have been in that zone like once in every four months and I also do pray that that happens for me more often. If only can one know and understand how to control or in other words reproduce that in every game one plays. It would be highly great. I believe that the pros while they make their 147's under tough match conditions are surely in that zone while doing so otherwise there is no other way that might enable one for that.

The pdf attached here by Armstm is a great insight in to attempting to control all of that. The methods it describes like meditation, breathing exercise, NLP, hypnosis and other things is rather great. I never thought that these things work but now I am ready to give it a try... Lets see!

[vmax4steve]

Very interesting programme and there were several experiments that were carried out that applied to snooker. The toy helicopter where everyone thought they were doing something differently but were all in fact doing the same by unconsciously following the helicopter and keeping its flightpath as straight as possible in relation to the background tells me that lining up a shot in snooker uses the same process ie. moving around the table until you're straight behind the shot.
The concept of 'plasticity' was pretty straighforward ie. repetitive actions opening unconscious neural pathways in the brain to take over from the conscious and leaving the conscious to focus on other things was pretty much as I believed but didn't have a word for it.
What was most interesting though was the idea that the yips could possibly be caused by one or more of these unconscious neural pathways being interupted over time and not just being overridden by the conscious mind when feeling pressure.
The experiment with the guitar player was very interesting but sadly not fully finished and therefore has no conclusive results as yet.
Blind sight, now that was something new to me but not unexpected. A small area of the brain that makes one aware of movement that can't be deciphered by the visual cortex. I would take a guess that movement on the periphery of the visual field when playing snooker is obviously still seen, and even though your eye doesn't leave the point of focus, your hand might still follow this detected movement due to a basic hunting and survival instinct warning you of some danger. After all when we are playing snooker we are hunting down balls using our hand and eye co-ordination. Maybe sudden sound from a particular area could activate this instinct making us search the periphery of our visual field to where the sound is coming from without taking our eyes off the point of focus but our hand could follow that search instinctively and therefore makes us miss.

All in all an awful lot to take in so I shall have to watch it a few more times to understand it at a conscious level, my unconcsious probably already does.