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Home >> Top Tips >> TopTip2020 #11 - Mental Rehearsal - by Chris Jones, GBR
TopTip2020 #11 
Mental Rehearsal 
by Chris Jones, UK 

Chris Jones, our RS Aero 7 European Championship Masters Champion and RYA Racing Coach gives us his insights into Mental Rehearsal (virtual sailing in a virtual world!) the importance of which is often overlooked;


Mental Rehearsal
'There’s a well documented study in which college basketball players were divided into 3 groups. Group 1 shot hoops daily for 8 weeks, group 2 did no practice at all and group 3 were asked to visualise shooting hoops daily for the same period. When all the players were tested at the end of the 8 weeks, not surprisingly those that practiced daily performed best and those that didn’t practice at all performed considerably worse. What was surprising; although not that surprising to the psychologists conducting the experiment, was that those that practiced shooting at basketball hoops daily in their minds actually performed nearly as well as those that practiced daily in real life!
 
Whilst we’re going out of our minds with frustration that we can’t get out on the water indulging in our passion, there are real benefits to daily mental rehearsal to maintain or even enhance our performance.
My suggestion is that once or twice a day for just 5 minutes you put yourself mentally in your RS Aero and visualise making a perfect start, mark rounding, trigger-pull or epic gybe off the crest of a wave. Research clearly shows that this will translate into better performance when you get back on the water.
It’s very important that you focus on manoeuvres executed to your best ability. If you recall in your mind occasions when you capsize on a gybe you’ll be reinforcing that “fail” in your brain.
So, search back through your memory vaults and recall all your successes; that time when you pulled off a perfect port end start and crossed the fleet, out-tacked a rival in a tacking dual or judged a lay-line perfectly to take a couple of scalps at the finish.
One of the biggest benefits to this is grooving in your mind repeatable sequences such as when approaching the windward mark including;
  • Assess the position of the boats around you to judge the perfect time to hit the lay-line at or when you can take a cheeky late tack, having taken advantage of clearer air on the port approach
  • Dumping the down haul before your final tack
  • Releasing a bit of kicker on the mark approach
  • Looking upwind to anticipate any gusts as you round
  • Keeping the boat flat or heeled a little to windward to assist the bear away
  • Catch the first wave you can and then set controls optimally for the new point of sailing.
So there you go - get in your daily mental practice and remember even if you read a great sailing book, watch a YouTube video or simply do a bit of boat bimbling, that too will automatically jump your mind back into your RS Aero! Here’s to a great Spring of virtual sailing!
 
Further reading on the subject:
-The Psychology Sailing for Dinghies and Keelboats: Developing a Winning Mindset by Ian Brown
-The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey
-Sail, Race & Win by Eric Twinaime (updated by Cathy Foster)
-The Golfer & The Millionaire by Mark Fisher '



Reply
03/04/2020 20:01:00
Peter Barton
Posts: 4628


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