Transcribed from video:
– A good way to understand this, we can actually look at some of the research, and they did research into 400-meter runners, so let’s do this experiment. We got two groups. Just put your coffee on the ground ’cause I’m going to get you to move your arms very quickly in a moment, or somewhere where your not going to knock it over. They took two groups of 400-meter runners and you guys are going to be Group One, over this side. Group One were told to run at 95% of their maximum speed. So what you guys are going to do, I want you guys to pump your arms at 95% of your max speed in a moment. Group Two, they said to them, alright, you guys, we want you to run at 105% of your max speed. So you guys are actually going to run faster than you’re able to and therefore hopefully get a PB. Yep, you’re hopefully going to run faster than you’ve ever been able to run before. You’re going pump your arms at 95%, you guys are going to pump your arms at 105%, faster than you’re able to. Yeah, overdo it. We’re ready? We’re going to do this for five seconds. Three, two, one, and go. 95% here, 105%, faster here, guys. Fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, and rest. Here’s what they found. These people PBed. They ran a faster 400 than they ever had before. These people went slower than their best. Because these guys were in a hyper-aroused state, they were trying to overdo it. They were trying to do too much. To come back to your question, of course, this also comes back to strategy. We’re going to be talking about that later today. But it comes back to strategy, that if you’re hyper-aroused and you go out too hard, it’s not going to be appropriate for what you’re doing. For a 30-second event, you want high levels of arousal. For a 30-minute event, it needs to be a little bit less. So it does come back to energy-system training as well. How did you guys feel as you were doing that? Talk me through, how did your muscles feel? Describe the sensation.
– [Woman] Tight.
– Tight, contracted, tense, yeah. How did your guys’ muscles feel?
– [Man] Good.
– Yeah, control, a bit more flow. Surprise, surprise, in a flow state. And you guys were trying so hard, so hyper-aroused that you couldn’t perform. You guys were in that ideal performance state, in flow, in the zone. So it’s a really good analogy or a really good piece of research which shows us the effect of this. Now, the other main thing that this can help to change is your focus and your attention. And we’ll talk about concentration as we go in this module as well. But the people who are too focused, hyper-aroused, if you’re in a sport with other players on your team, you can’t have this attention narrowing. You can’t be focused here. You need to have your periphery on what’s going on around you. You guys would’ve been able to do that. You guys wouldn’t. You’d have been so focused on what you were doing that 100% of your effort was there. Now, of course, for some sports, for a max deadlift, who cares what everyone else is doing? It’s you, the bar, and gravity. That’s it. If you’re a net baller, you need to know where your opposition is. If you’re a footie player, you need to know where the ball is coming from and where you’re going to sent it to after you’ve made the tackle. Okay, so we can focus our attention, we can focus our concentration based on that.
