Sunday, June 19, 2011

Physical and Mental component of sports

For a long time, I would concentrate on the physical component of sports like football, cricket, tennis etc. Since I'm physically really fit, I thought that's all that was required. But somehow, in an actual game, I would always feel a bit lost, overloaded and used to experience very little clarity. Then I realized, these symptoms were related to my memory and attention.

Skills required:
  • Tracking multiple fast changing dynamic parameters.
  • High activity in the decision making center of the brain.
  • High frontal lobe activity and thinking on your feet

I also noticed that these skills help a lot in later life in a lot of endeavors.The situations where I found the skills quite analogous were:
    • In the business or work environment. Fast intelligent decision making in the present moment.
    • In social situations, tracking what multiple people are talking, extracting the general topic, figuring out what to contribute and doing that.
    • Any presentation like situation where you need to think on your feet.

    So the mental skills required for sports and business are surprisingly analogous to each other. It is usually these skills that are glorified by society. In childhood, peers would admire you if you were really good at sports and in later life it shifts to the business world.

    Why this obsession with sports, business and for that matter just about DOING instead of BEING?

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