"It’s a very strange feeling. It’s as if time slows down and you see everything so clearly. You just know that everything about your technique is spot on. It just feels so effortless; it’s almost as if you’re floating across the track. Every muscle, every fiber, every sinew is working in complete harmony and the end product is that you run fantastically well." - (Mind Games, Grout and Perrin, 2006).
Being in the zone is every athlete’s dream. For amateurs, it may happen only a few times in their athletic life. For professionals, it could be a constant, occurring each time their mind and body operate as one, allowing for the highest degree of athletic performance. In fact, the ability to tap into the zone might be the factor that separates the superb athlete from the average athlete. The successful athlete can tap into the zone more frequently, whereas the average athlete cannot.
When an individual is in the zone he experiences what could be termed relaxed concentration or the time period during which sensory and motor skills operate in perfect harmony. For professional athletes, the zone condition allows the game or competition to come to a crawl. The baseball becomes larger and moves more slowly. Every shot is makeable. The same might be said of the surgeon in the operating room or CEO dealing with an intense business deal.
Some brain scientists describe the zone as functioning between acute awareness and/or energized focus. In other words, a person in the zone becomes immersed in a feeling of single-minded immersion in performing or learning. He can access the zone by inducing gamma wave states. Gamma wave states would demonstrate brains frequencies every 10 to 14 seconds. Great athletes can get into an expanded gamma or focused gamma state more quickly and probably more intensely than average players of a similar skill level. Monks arrive in their zone during meditation (Ulicsni, 2009).
An important brain area associated with the zone is our brain’s left hemisphere, which represents our critical side, particularly when we experience failure. When performance is inconsistent, the left-brain stimulates our brain’s cognitive/emotional areas, located in the limbic system or a subsystem called the amygdala. When an athlete fears failure, the amygdala goes into a state of fight or flight, short circuiting higher order thinking, and then secreting the chemical cordisol. His/her ability to perform could be greatly compromised.
The antithesis of the amygdala is the hippocampus, also located in the limbic system, an area where our relationship to success and high performance is stimulated. During this period of high performance, the hippocampus forms a relationship with successful achievement, stimulating and our executive centers of the brain. This is the experience of success within the zone.
Athletes use meditation and creative visualization, and as we know, performance enhancing drugs (PED) to improve performance and/or to get into the zone. Unfortunately, meditation and visualization have proved to produce only limited success with athletes. (As for performance enhancing drugs there are multiple problems that need no further explaining.) Fortunately, one successful non-evasive strategy that can induce gamma wave state or zone is called neurofeedback. (Interestingly, neurofeedback has also proved to be highly successful with ADHD children who have a serious problem focusing and almost always are in a constant state of over-arousal. (neurofeedback has been supported by the American Pediatric Society as an alterative to medication).
How does neurofeedback work to produce a zone-like experience? First, sensors are applied to the scalp to listen in on brainwave activity. A trained clinician then processes the signal by computer, and extracts information about certain key brainwave frequencies. The ebb and flow of this activity is revealed to the client, who then attempts to change the activity level. The technician may attempt to promote certain frequencies. For other frequencies, a decrease may be attempted. The information is presented to the subject in the form of a video game or movie. The person effectively plays the video game with his brain, viewing as a movie the person’s brain and eventually redirecting his state toward a relaxed focused condition. Eventually the brainwave activity is shaped toward a desirable, more regulated performance.
The key to optimal athletic performance is understanding the nature of mind and body. For instance, Olympic Beach Volleyball champion Kerri Walsh-Jennings incorporated neurofeedback into her training routine for the Olympics. The Canadian Olympic team used neurofeedback extensively in the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Alexandre Bilodeau, the Canadian men’s mogul champion, credited his gold medal to neurofeedback. He used it effectively to relax between runs. Also, the NHL’s Vancouver Canucks, after a 20 year post-season drought, skated their way to a 2011 Stanley Cup championship. The Italian National Soccer team kicked up their performance by using neurofeedback and took home the World Cup in 2006. Finally, Star athletes from the NBA, NFL, LPGA, PGA have turned to neurofeedback for that mental advantage that can move them above and beyond the competition (Admin. , 2013).
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