I had been reading Peter’s blog for most of the year and had also seen him play Billiards. Being a Billiards and Snooker coach myself it was surprising to me that this man was donating one year of his life learning to play Billiards. After twelve months of finding out how Billiards should be played he was then going to the play in the Police Billiards Knock-out competition and try to beat these old men who had previously defeated him. I decided to contact him and offered him twelve hours on some new peak performance ideas. I had formulated a plan which I thought would be of benefit to him. Of course it was not possible to show Peter all the techniques I have adapted as each sports person has their own methods to help them individually. With a twelve hour time limit it is only possible to scratch the surface.
Peter asked me to write about how I though the four sessions had turned out. After a period of time I had written four pages and not covered the first section, so I decided to carry on writing and finish off this first section. It was going to be difficult to introduce Peter into the sections the first being NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming).
In the other sections I also covered
1) Sports Psychology & Sport Peak Performance Techniques
2) Emotional aspects of playing sport
3) Energy Techniques which include E.F.T. (Emotional Freedom Techniques) and T.F.T (Thought Field Therapy)
Lets get started - My first question to Peter “What percentage does the mind play in Billiards”? Peter thought a little bit and said about 15%. The last question I asked him at the end of the twelve hour sessions was the same question but this time Peter’s answer was 55%. How did that change so much in twelve hours? I will try to answer this now.
Peter came to see me with a completely open mind about Peak Performance E.F.T. etc. He did this purposely so that he had no preconceived ideas in any of these departments. He was a sceptic to say the least that anything could be done.
No two people read another’s physiology the same due to each person’s own filtering system. Let me try to explain. We all are at present receiving two million bits of information per/second from our five senses (sight, sound, touch, taste and smell). Let me explain the filtering system first of all. This filtering system is what makes each individual person unique. In N.L.P. these filters are called distortion, deletion and generalisation. Out of the two million bits of information per/second arriving in to our subconscious mind this information is filtered and then the subconscious sends 128 bits of information per/second which IT thinks we need at that moment in time to our conscious mind. If you work this out mathematically you will find that the amount of information sent to our conscious mind is 0.064%.
We continued our talk about N.L.P. – For those of you who don’t know anything about N.L.P. just call it the brain’s language and software. We are born with some software already down-loaded which is no different to most animals e.g. a baby cries when it is in distress or hungry and smiles when it is happy.
I asked Peter to take a short test and first told him that all his answers would be correct. This test is called a VAK test which can be found on your computer. Go into Google and type VAK test, there will be several to choose from. What does this test tell me when I look at the answers? The questions are designed to see what kind of learning style you adopt.
QUESTION 1.) When I operate equipment I generally:-
A) Read the instructions first
B) Listen to an explanation from someone who has used it before
C) Go ahead and have a go I can figure it out as I use it.
If you agreed with
A – Your learning style is visual
B – Your learning style is auditory
C – Your learning style is Kinaesthetic
After 30 questions which take no more than 10 minutes Peter’s answers worked out at 40% Visual, 37% Kinaesthetic and 23% Auditory. The results showed he was quite balanced on Visual and Kinaesthetic (doing things/practical) and low on Auditory.
It meant my best approach to tune into Peter’s brain and learning would be show him visually then let him do what I required but not do too much talking about how to do the techniques. This saves a lot of time and your pupil will learn quickly; this is why smaller class sizes in schools are so much better for our children when a teacher uses the VAK system. I.e. mixes the three learning styles. If the teacher just users the auditory to all the class, then if we have one or two of the children with an 50% kinaesthetic level they will become very bored and the disruptive which in turn effects all the children in the class. One peace of information which you may not know is that 80% of the prison population are kinaesthetic lead and also have reading and writing difficulties.
We then went into what goes on when you meet someone. All your FIVE senses are scanning that person
Sight- Visual
Hearing – Auditory
Touch – Kinaesthetic
Smell – Olfactory
Taste – Gustatory
If you shake hands and they say “pleased to meet you” your brain is already analyzing the handshake – the way they said what was said and if we analyse this we find communication is – 55% is physiology, 38% is tonality and 7% is the actual words. Don’t forget that this person is also analysing you through the same process.
I showed Peter how we can build rapport with this person through physiology. If this person is, in Peter’s case, an opponent in a Billiard match you can make yourself look confident through physiology. I showed Peter how to achieve this and to be just being approximately 5% greater than your opponent. If you go above this limit you may look arrogant. Carly Simon’s song “You’re so vain” is very true of some people and you don’t want to go there. Playing most games and faced with serious problems N.L.P. tools help us stay calm, centred and still project a sense of confidence.
At this stage Peter said “is this cheating”? Well you could say my opponent could do the same to me. It is just that you have started to understand and be able adjust your own physiology. I then asked Peter to take four large deep breaths, watching him do this breathing exercise it was apparent that like 95% of the population he did not know how to take deep breaths. I then showed him how to do this explaining that by doing it in this way it would deal with any stress and anxiety.
I showed Peter how to centre himself. This technique is known as ‘centering’ because it involves focusing attention on the centre of your body, just behind your navel.
Well that concluded the first three hour session. Overall Peter was a good pupil and after reading the blog where he talked about this first session and putting into practice what he had learnt I would say he thought it was a success.
Peter's reactions and feelings are shown and available on his blog at the following addresses:
http://mybilliardsyear.blogspot.com/2010/02/sports-psychologist-visit-14.html
http://mybilliardsyear.blogspot.com/2010/03/sports-psychologist-visit-24.html
http://mybilliardsyear.blogspot.com/2010/03/sports-psychologist-visit-34.html
An interesting section on the website is explains how Peter managed to put these techniques into direct use during a match.
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