The Awareness - Movement Connection
October 16, 2012 – 10:40 am
In the past 7 years, I’ve focused most of my writing upon the physical performance. I’ve attempted to pull back from publishing any more books on flow coaching psychology, specifically because after writing for over a decade on the discipline, which was still very new in the 90s, I had to devote my time to developing the base of instructors in our organization to provide the physical training to our ever-growing community.
But now, we’re one of the largest and most widely-diverse physical education communities in the world. And so it’s time for me to return a major portion of my focus to my ultimate passion: the influence of awareness upon movement. In the past decades, flow psychology had been viewed as a pseudo-science because it remains purely cognitive in its descriptions and background, but in the past decade, I and a few of my contemporaries have sought to provide concrete, practice physical drills, tools and techniques for identification of your genetic tendencies, augmentation of those natural talents, and supplemental strengthening of the other aspects not gifted to us as a result of our innate proclivities.
As a finesse athlete, for instance, I was very much a talented strategist. I could form elaborate or elegant plans very quickly, and given sufficient response time, could use little effort to achieve my ends. I was not as fast as agile athletes, who could overwhelm my reorientation with their repeated angle changes and rapid behavior modifications. I was unable to be like strong athletes who could focus on one very small task and move it over time. Nor was I able to explode against an opening when it appeared for a split second like powerful athletes. But given the right circumstances, if I slowed the game long enough, and capitalized upon using my opponent’s strength, concealing my plans until I could spring my effortless trap, then I excelled.
As I analyzed my own tendencies, I necessarily became aware of the natural advantages in other athletes. And when I became a national coach, I needed to best bring athletes to utilize their own inherent advantages and mitigate each others’ weaknesses until even those weaknesses became collective advantages… as a team.
As a consultant to corporate firms, sports teams and government agencies, organizational management also falls into this quadrantic approach. Help each person on your team best gravitate to those responsibilities which his or her natural tendencies best address, and most importantly, which they most feel fulfilled and excited to do. But rotate positions in non-critical performance times, so that no one becomes over-specialized unaware of whom needs to do what and how. We all need to shore up our weaknesses.
If you’re a CST or TACFIT instructor, you’ve already seen portions of these models, and how they each relate to specific coaching cues. In your higher level certifications, expect to be challenged even more to increase the granularity of your vision, both microscopically and telescopically.
very respectfully,
Scott Sonnon
www.facebook.com/scottsonnon
