Getting to the Twilight Zone
Sometimes, when calming and concentration techniques merge with an athlete’s high arousal (is this what we should be calling an optimal experience?), a slow-motion effect is reported, and the action seems to slow way down - a sort of tachypsychia. Full-blown tachypsychia (defined in chapter 3) may be the most difficult of the arousal zone states to summon. At its height, it’s certainly the most fleeting. Maybe that’s why, when many athletes are asked how they get there, they just shrug their shoulders like basketball player Reggie Miller and say, "You don’t come to the zone, the zone comes to you." But there is evidence to suggest otherwise. Like other positive facets of the psycho/adrenaline system, it seems to kick in at optimal arousal - the point at which the athlete has reached harmony of the mind-body-hormonal triangle. That’s the state the Japanese call "ki" and the Tibetans "lunggom." It’s directly related to intense concentration, visualization, and perhaps hypnosis. "We may be able to harness it," says John Krystal, associate professor of medicine at Yale University. "It’s similar to inducing a trance and it’s under the control of the adrenaline system." To get to tachypsychia, the athlete may need to reach the highest "workable" level of the mind-body alarm system. Whereas extra speed and strength kick in during a two- or a three-alarm reaction, tachypsychia seems to require a four- or five. When an athlete who has reached optimal concentration is suddenly faced with a crisis stage of competition - bingo - the dopamine and noradrenaline arrive to give momentum to a situation that’s already there, some biochemists believe. These wonder hormones seem to always attach themselves to the direction of momentum the athlete is headed. (Those chemicals were found in large quantity in a study of British racing drivers who were concentrating hard and achieving good results.) Of course, when they’re pumped into the blood of a competitor who is concentrating poorly or is anxious or fearful, the opposite - choke and poor performance - can occur.
As in other peak performances, anger is often a key quotient, as long as it is channeled optimally, and with confidence. When he’s playing poorly, Doug Flutie - now in the NFL after years of great success in the CFL - gets mad at himself and takes command of a game. That’s when tachypsychia often appears. In a 1994 CFL game, he got mad at an opponent who stepped on his arm. "After that, the whole game in front of me slowed down for a while and my concentration became superior," he recalls. "Suddenly I had more time to react to what the defense was doing and my adrenaline levels seemed way up, but I didn’t let them get out of hand." Flutie added that he saves those emotional bursts for the latter stages of a game. "I can’t hold that concentration level for 60 minutes. I wish I could bottle it, though." Such moments not only give Flutie more energy, but more desire to win, he added. "It keeps your morale up, knowing you have the ability to bring on those powers."
Tachypsychia doesn’t last long - from a few seconds at it’s most intense to a few minutes in a more watered-down form. The great athletes know how to strive for it at the turning point of a match. And remember - it’s important not to confuse various types of peak performance zones. This short-term state seems only vaguely related to long-term zones, such as Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. In between are many other mind-body "flow" states, lasting a whole game or through several competitions.
Former tennis great and Olympic women’s coach Billie Jean King calls tachypsychia the perfect emotion. She tries to bring it on as often as possible by focus, relaxation, and using cue words such as "Go!" during the turning point of a competition.
She explains: If a match gets close, I slow down my rituals. If I bounce the ball twice before serving, I’ll bounce it slowly, or repeat the ritual, bouncing it four times, exaggerating. I make absolutely sure I have total clarity, acuteness, focus. I try to visualize where I’m going to hit my serve . . . It’s an exercise in total commitment -technical and visual. I go through all this before I start. Then I feel the adrenaline flowing (like many athletes, she may be misinformed about the type of hormone she refers to, but the spirit of her words seems accurate), and I know the moment has come. "Go!" I say to myself, and I commit myself. You’re totally involved in the moment.
When King synchronizes such moments, the ball starts to look bigger to her and slows down as it comes at her off her opponent’s racket.
Some athletes are born with a big advantage: their hormonal and concentration systems are set up differently, says cardiologist Arnold Fox. They are allowed to take in greater detail, and perhaps are offered more room in time, because their visual and hormonal systems are different, and/or are better developed. It’s been said that Ted Williams could see the seams on a 100-mph fastball, although part of that was his intense concentration of pitchers’ habits while he was sitting in the on-deck circle.
"We know that people who are able to ’flow’ have a greater ability than others to screen out irrelevant information," says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. "It could be the way their brain is put together, but I think it’s something that people can learn through technique."