The concept of the playing zone is very simple to grasp, essentially it’s a room inside the mind, but the question is this, what does this room thrive on?
Essentially its space and time and the more space and time the zone has, the better it works.
The playing zone loves simplicity and it works best with less and this is why focusing on a few key skills and doing them well becomes very important to the process. Don’t get me wrong, one must up skill to become better, though the reason one up skills is that it makes it easier to better execute the key skills.
The playing zone also likes discipline because without discipline there is no way that simplicity can be maintained or improved upon, because:
Simplicity creates the space and time and discipline maintains the space and time.
The question becomes: How does one create more time on the sports field?
The solution is actually very simple: You give people less things to do.
For example: If you have got 20 things to do on the field and 20 seconds to think about it all, one can only devote 1 second to each.
If one takes away 17 of those things, leaving only 3, then the amount of time that people have to think about things during that same 20 seconds, has increased, in this case from 1 second per thing, to nearly 7 seconds per thing, thereby increasing the amount of time.
And this is how one creates more time in sport, by giving people less things to do and to think about whilst on the field.
And this is why understanding the keys for your sport become so vital because if one has less to do, one can do more.
And the reason why discipline and simplicity are so important to the process is because:
Simplicity creates the space and time and discipline maintains the space and time.
And with more space and time in the mind, it creates more space and time on the field because when the aspects of discipline and simplicity are combined it creates a compound that expands the space and time
Unfortunately more and more people are going away from the core ingredients of discipline and simplicity which the zone thrives on and if one brings these aspects into their training regime, one gains a big advantage that others have lost.
Expert Author: Robin Clarkson – “Be A Winning Coach”
