Thursday, September 7, 2017

The benefits of meditation... even when things don't go well

Okay okay, so I might not be the best person to try and sell you on meditation as a useful tool for sport performance right after I bombed for the first time, but I think you should still hear me out. I’m not the expert on this stuff, but I definitely follow some folks who are.
First, I want to start with the Yerkes-Dodson theory of stress and performance. Basically, it’s an inverted U which shows that at the far left, we cannot perform because we have minimal stress, in the middle with increases in stress we get increases in performance, but only to a point, because if we keep going and applying increasing amounts of stress we end up on the far right and have a decrease in performance again. Although I should probably cite this from an old textbook where I learned it, here’s a quick reference for information on this theory http://changingminds.org/explanations/motivation/yerkes-dodson.htm
The theory goes on to state that with simple, routine tasks that require less thought and skill, we can tolerate greater levels of stress and still perform, but with tasks that are increasingly complex, we can tolerate lower levels of stress before we get a decrease in performance. As athletes, we are often performing tasks that require some level of difficulty and complexity, but the simple task of practice increases our ability to tolerate more stress. I used to use this theory to explain high stress performance related to bowling. After 20+ years bowling, the movement was typically routine for me and I could tolerate very high levels of stress and still bowl well. However, when my timing was off or something wasn’t feeling “right”, those high stress levels would further impair my capacity (and any of my bowling buddies can understand this). It would be in those times I would need to employ alternate strategies to decrease my overall stress load in order to improve performance by allowing myself the ability to move into more “thinking” in the task.
See, arousal impairs our ability to think. Dr. Bruce Perry refers to this in his work with abused children all the time, but it’s neurology that we can apply beyond child abuse. Stimulus moves us up the arousal continuum. As you see in his graph below, the more we move up the arousal continuum, the less we are able to access cortex and given cortex is where we do our thinking, when we can’t access it, we aren’t doing much in the thinking department. When our complex task requires intentional thought, rather than relying on routine movement, too much arousal impairs our ability. (NMT training and www.childtrauma.org)
Of course, we all have individual factors that allow us to be more or less resilient to stress. We have different personalities and different inherent levels of anxiety. But, at the end of the day, we still have a choice to do something about it. The first thing we can opt to do it is the one we all love the most – practice more and practice better. Related to powerlifting, this will include more time gaining neural patterns that are efficient and effective for the lifts and practicing how you compete. Are we all perfect and able to bring the exact same flawless form to everything all the time... heck no. But, should we strive to practice well and practice as close to ideal as possible. Yes. Practice allows the complex to become routine and when it becomes routine, we can tolerate higher levels of stress and still achieve optimal performance.
Now, here’s a second strategy that I’m really all about the last year. I’ve been using this in my work and in my life for several years now (go back to the Dr. Perry reference – I’ve been following this idea of reducing arousal in clients and myself for a long time). Then I had a thought, if I use it in my work, and I apply it to the Yerkes-Dodson model, then this should work in sport. So, I went on a mission to find psychologists doing this and stumbled on Dr. Michael Gervais (https://findingmastery.net/). This guy is using meditation as a means of improving sports performance and his track record is pretty darn good.
How does meditation link to the theory above and improve performance. Well, one way is that it decreases our level of arousal overall. If we go back to the inverted U diagram, imagine you start at a slightly lower level of stress, now you have greater capacity to increase stress more before you reach the top of your inverted U and start to see a decrease in performance. Often sports meditations can also include tapping into a time when things felt “just right” – or when you had a sense of flow. The more you tap into this feeling of flow, the more you can pull on it in times of need and settle your system. I intentionally do this before my lifts. Squat is the most obvious example because my “hyped” behaviour is visible and not primarily in my head. While I’m getting my knees wrapped I start listening to my coach – typically he is giving me reminders and cues and I start nodding. I might start making positive remarks about completing the squat as well. I then approach the bar and often I will aggressively roll the bar into the rack as my intentional adrenaline surge. Then, I stop, stand still, close or focus my eyes and centre, both with my sense of flow and some physical cues. This all happens very quickly. The rolling of the bar and the settling is a matter of 20 seconds at most. I actually attribute bowling for so many years to my ability to do this quickly, but people who haven’t practiced this will need to go back to my first point – practice like you compete. In the gym, I typically just centre myself before my lifts, but when the weight gets heavier, I will practice getting a bit amped up and then settling. Even with the years of doing this, it’s always important to practice.
Additionally, sports meditations will sometimes include visualization and visualization taps into both the practice and the flow. We know that visualizing a task provides us with almost as much (about 90%) benefit as actually practicing, but one of the great benefits of visualization is we can visualize perfection and tap into that feeling of flow. The more we do this, the more our capacity to tolerate increasing levels of arousal and still adequately perform improves.
Meditation is excellent at improving mindfulness and improved mindfulness is one of the very important things that allow us to achieve improved performance. Mindfulness is the act of being present in the moment, without judgment. Mindfulness allows us to stop getting caught up in thinking ahead, causing ourselves stress and grief over what might come and stops us from being hung up on what happened in the past. Related to powerlifting, being mindful allows us to be in this present lift, without thinking about the last lift or the next lift, without anticipating things or getting ahead of ourselves. Worrying about what might come next increases our arousal and what do we know about increased arousal? It can sometimes put us over the top of our performance curve and cause reduced performance. This can be good and bad. How many people can relate to needing to pull a deadlift for the win or a record and the anticipation and thinking ahead (increased arousal) ends up biting us in the arse? We might not realize that’s what happened and maybe it isn’t what happened, but it sure might be. Or something I just got a taste of – fighting to get that third lift to stay in the meet and thinking ahead or worrying about what has just happened might be the thing that drives arousal too high and bam, now we’ve bombed. This actually wasn’t why I bombed and I can say that with confidence. At no point was I worrying about anything beyond the lift I was facing. But, meditation and in turn, mindfulness, gave that to me.
Meditation went so far as to allow me to bomb with grace. I knew I was facing a tough total after my second 2 squats didn’t go well, but I didn’t think about it and just went into bench unphased. I then knew I was facing my first bomb after my first 2 benches. At no point did I roll into “I wish I had” or “oh my goodness, what if...” I went forward into “let’s face this lift and only this lift”. I made one future oriented joke at one point and said I sure wasn’t helping myself not have to pull a crazy deadlift. But I wasn’t invested in a total or a number. I walked off after my third non-bench and simply said “well, that was disappointing” and I took my shirt off, had a realistic discussion about why it looked like a bad day to deadlift and packed my stuff and got some food. No tears, no drama, no worries about what might happen next or what I should have done. I learned some things and approached them with curiosity and inquisitiveness, not judgment and self-hatred. I will even go so far as to say that my ability to bomb with grace and integrity is one of my proudest moments in this sport. Meditation gave that to me.
**Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive list and I’m not a sports psychologist... if you have other benefits or things you think are worth adding, please leave a comment because I’m always about learning*