Do You Practice Mindfully and Deliberately?
Practice is a vital element of learning isn’t it? Of course you know that but is learning as simple as straightforward repetition?
In his book “Outliers:The Story of Success” Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes 10000 hours to become an expert, focussing on music students at an academy in Berlin. The 10000 hours theory is catchy but it’s a huge generalisation and has largely been dismissed in sport psychology. It would, of course, be interesting to know how many hours some of our elite horse riders have spent in the saddle and how they plan and record their practice.
A more useful concept when thinking about practice is that of “Deliberate Practice”: a term coined by psychologist Anders Ericsson. Ericsson says that Deliberate Practice is:
“the individualized training activities specially designed by a coach or teacher to improve specific aspects of an individual’s performance through repetition and successive refinement”.
Deliberate practice can be broken down into four elements:
- Growth mindset and motivation – seeing learning as a process to be enjoyed rather than being focused on the outcome.
- Practicing out of your comfort zone.
- Consistency
- Feedback
When thinking about learning new mindset skills which will help riders to grow in confidence I prefer to use the term “Mindful Practice” which encourages riders to be more fully aware of the elements involved in the results they are getting.
In the same way that learning new technical skills on horseback can be challenging so can developing new mindset skills.
You may have had many years of habitual ways of thinking, feeling and behaving and it can be quite uncomfortable in the early stages of making changes and developing new mindset skills which will help you to achieve your riding goals. It’s important to have support, at this time, so working with a mindset coach will help you to develop new skills which are valuable and well founded.
Your mindset coach will help you to challenge your thinking and your beliefs giving you techniques to learn and experiment with and, naturally, it will be up to you to then practice the things which you have talked about in your sessions.
When you practice these new ideas mindfully you are giving yourself the best chance of ensuring that the changes you wish to make are sustainable and, in fact, become your new default way of thinking and behaving.
So how can you put this into practice?
Firstly, it is important that you DO practice the things which you are taught!
Secondly, get yourself a notebook to record your experiences so that you can regularly refer back to them.
Thirdly, note down the results of the changes you are making and regularly check back on them.
Example A: when I thought (or told myself) X…. I felt Y….and that had effect Z on my behaviour (my actions/my riding/my ability to focus/my ability to stay “in the moment”).
Example B: when I controlled my breathing and my relaxation levels in order to optimise my physiological state…this is what I felt (fill in blank) and the effect on my riding was…..
Example C: When I focussed on those things within my control and on my pre-planned process….this is what I felt….. and the effect on my riding was…..
Becoming mindfully aware of how your thought processes affect your feelings, and your actions, will assist in your learning as you make the changes necessary to have a stronger mindset.
You can then regularly repeat the above exercise and, over time, you will prove to yourself that you CAN change your thinking to become more helpful and that this WILL help you to feel stronger and that with a stronger mindset you WILL see positive effects on your riding.
It will take you a LOT LESS than 10000 hours to notice big changes!!