Breakthrough Performance Gains: Simulate Difficulty

 

 

What is the secret?  You know, that thing we all pay attention to in those who seem to excel beyond the average and consistently achieve breakthrough results (and show grace while doing it).  Picture in you mind your favorite musician or athlete.  Consider those heroes who excel in their particular field, whether it be science or art or carpentry.  It seems these people are a blessing and a curse…on the one hand we love to watch them perform and desire to emulate them, on the other hand their achievements are so hard to duplicate!

Recently I read about a phenomenon that I believe may be one key to these elevated performances.  Before I tell the story let me discuss the concept.  It is the process of simulating difficulty in order to practice at a higher level than one would in a competitive or real-life situation.  Think about football players who practice wind sprints with harnessed parachutes or military personnel repeatedly carrying a log up a hill in boot camp.  The parachutes create a situation where the runner is straining against the wind, which is greater resistance than the athlete will encounter in a game.  Boot camp is known as the gauntlet that weeds out the weak and breaks down the strong.  Yet these are examples of simulating difficulty to enable individuals to effectively handle real world combat. 

Now to the story…I was reading the September issue of Sports Illustrated and came across an article on Marvin “Towny” Townsend, a high school and college baseball coach from Virginia.  The article centers around a handful of talented baseball players that lived within twenty miles of each other and grew up playing against one another in a youth league that Townsend founded.  The author (Lee Jenkins) discusses how it is unusual for so many pro baseball players to come out of an area that is not known for baseball.  He sought to find out what was the correlation with all the players and why they excelled through the ranks of little league, high school, college ball and finally to the bigs. 

The thing I want to focus on was one coaching nugget that Townsend shared with his players.  When he was a kid he practiced by swinging at bottle caps with a broomstick.  This excercise forced him to focus on his hand-eye coordination.  Later on during his coaching career he sought to challenge his players by spinning coffee lids at them during practice.  The line of thinking was that if the players could get used to hitting a coffee lid then a baseball should be no problem.  Eventually Townsend invented his own practice disks (the Towny Townsend Hitting Disc) and currently players all over the nation are using these batting aids in their practice sessions.

In your day to day activities what is one area that you want to excel? I don’t mean just beating the next guy but truly dominating. Do you desire transformative achievements? Think about your goal and consider the obstacles that consistently trip you up. What areas can you focus on to simulate difficulty and work on your game so that when you enter combat you leapfrog the status quo? Consider the Towny discs and invent your own transformative practice plan!

Interested in other tips on excelling? Check out this post on progressive training and engrams.