8—Fractured Action—Choking in Sport and its Lessons for Excellence

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Notes

1. Harbach (2011, 320).

2. Mishima (1982, 48).

3. I am grateful to Andrew Edgar for bringing this novel to my attention.

4. Chan Buddhism is the Chinese precursor to Japanese Zen.

5. Qing-yuan Wei-shin’s poem reads: ‘Before I had studied Zen for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and waters as waters. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and waters are not waters. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and waters once again as waters’ (Watts 1957, 126). This is the terse Chinese version: 老僧三十年前未參禪時、見山是山、見水是水、及至後夾親見知識、有箇入處、見山不是山、見水不是水、而今得箇體歇處、依然見山秪是、見水秪是水.

6. Wertz states, ‘Our bodies perform the actions without our minds being aware of the movements on more than a surface level’ (1986, 99). For him we know how to execute a kick but do not know how we do it. As stated in earlier analyses, there is indeed much that happens offline and subpersonally, but both reflective consciousness and the Jamesian fringe play a larger role than he assumes, giving us more awareness than he attributes to our sporting and performative movements. As discussed earlier, it is possible to pay attention, become aware, and discriminate much that can show us much about how we kick—particularly if the expert makes this an important aspect of her practice.

7. Christensen, Sutton, and McIlwain (forthcoming) propose a broader and more flexible model, which they call ‘Mesh.’ The holistically and ecologically broader basis allow for an optimistic outlook.

8. Contrarily, infants and pre-linguistic children do not learn thus originally, with imitation, trial and error, and coordinative dynamics prevailing (essay 7). Of course, once language (itself a skill) is in place, the efficiency of rule-based learning and teaching takes over (this is particularly expedient for the adults), even if arguably many skills are best learned by doing and being shown rather than through verbal instruction.

9. This ‘democratization’ or devaluing and watered down normalization of expert skill is adopted across a wide disciplinary spectrum. It influences even philosophical analyses, interpretations, and translations of Chinese classical texts such as the Zhuangzi. Chris Fraser’s conception and analysis of ‘forgetting’ in performance in said text follows suit (see also appendix). He speaks of us as ‘virtuoso walkers’ that ‘need not attend to our shoes’ since when they fit we forget them (Fraser 2014, 207). But as Scheffler’s (1965) analysis of ‘closed’ and ‘open-ended’ skills shows, walking is a closed skill that bears no improving after a certain level, so speaking of ‘virtuoso’ walkers is hyperbolic and detracts from true virtuosity in other activities where we find that (tight rope walking for instance). For his part Billeter, to explain the performance of the consummate performer, states ‘we all have experienced it [consummate performance]’ as he refers to the common experience of learning to ride a bicycle (2010, 57, my translation). Surely, this works well to illustratively give a sense for what it is like to operate at a superior level. But this also elides true expertise with our more common and less refined actions and movements. Nonetheless, there is a sense in which we can improve even ‘closed’ skills to some extent. Chozansi explains through the mouthpiece of ‘the Demon: ‘Again, look at someone who is walking. Because most people are usually more conscious of the upper parts of their bodies, they walk counterpoise to their heads, while others walk moving their arms or entire bodies. A person who walks well does not move his body from his waist up, but rather walks with his legs. Thus, his body is serene, his internal organs are not stressed, and he is not worn out’ (Chozan 2006, 160).

10. Of course, this ten year/10,000 rule is not hard and fast. Some take a considerably shorter time to become experts while others never reach expertise.

11. In addition, Breivik raises a number of issues against Dreyfus’ phenomenological account elsewhere. For example, he shows how Dreyfus’ expansion of the Heideggerian view on tool use overreaches Heidegger’s own account and then develops an alternative theory of absorbed coping (2007).

12. Athlete presently refers to sportspeople who are competitive and train assiduously, not to recreational sportspeople.

13. For a beautiful and transfixing short video of some of the best wingsuit women and men see professional skydiver and BASE jumper Sommer’s (2013) compilation at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRqnTODwvEA

14. Crucial to this is the social context of communities within which athletic, martial, and performing arts practitioners become wise in the ways proper to them, and through which the practices flourish (essay 10).

15. For purposes of analysis and clarity, not because these are separate from a holistic perspective.

16. In Gibson’s sense of agent and environment interaction that creates behavioral possibilities for the former (1988).

17. This does not mean that the body will resemble a Greek statue, for athletic practice molds athletes into shapes congruent with the demands of the sport. For a critique of the athletic build see Ilundáin-Agurruza (2006).

18. Flow states differ from peak performances. Superb performance, whether in states of flow or not, presents challenges to computational, Dreyfusian and Searlian accounts, see Krein and Ilundáin-Agurruza 2014.

19. He redeemed himself with a gold medal in the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics.

20. See Ilundáin-Agurruza (forthcoming-a) for the fully developed version of this model. This subsection summarizes the main features. In a way, the ecological analysis as presented here, and the full model combine to constitute the full holistic account of the phenomenon of choking. The present summary however, does include some additional elements, e.g., the discussion on representations.

21. This does not imply that emotions are solely cultural and thus inherently and always relative. Diversely exhibited across cultures and varying by person, there is also a pan-cultural and common structure to how we experience them. See Sheets-Johnstone (2009, especially 207–210.

22. Interestingly Ackerman and Bargh go on to state that, ‘Additionally, redirecting the cognitive resources typically involved with self-monitoring to other-monitoring (where the self becomes an observer) may help prevent “choking” under pressure’ (2010, 357). Although we need not endorse SFTs as the singular way to account for choking, this centrifugal notion where we efface the self finds echoes in traditional Japanese martial arts treatises, as the next essay shows.

23. Russell also makes reference to this saying. This reference was antecedently and independently incorporated into the text before learning of his use.

24. In the last essay, the notion of kenosis, the complete giving of ourselves with no expectation of anything in return will add another layer to this.

25. Cleary translates it, ‘Intending not to think is still thinking of something; do you intend not to think you won’t think?’ (2005, 125).