David Siskind | Sunday, 9 February 2025
Rob Gray, in his book “Learning to Optimize Movement” writes how gifted athletes differ from the duffers in many respects, clearly, and consistently, in the direction of their gaze. By intuition, training, experimentation, whatever, the skilled performer is looking at the right thing. He writes:
“Where should you look when you're acting? ... We should be looking at whatever we are interacting with!...For example, when making a golf putt we need to look at both the ball and the hole ...but when? ...The results from a large body of research have shown that when we compare good vs bad or even great vs less great performances we very often see a difference in how gaze is controlled. Elite athletes look at different things at different times than lesser-skilled athletes....Often when we move our eyes to the right place, we get control of the movement of the rest of our body for free.”
When casting to a moving fish or in moving water our gaze is critical. Especially under pressure. But what to look at, for how long - do we allow our eyes to flit about gathering information or do we home in on a target the size of a dime and fix our gaze? On my recent snakehead adventure I found that looking at the fish for direction and imagining an appropriate target was far less accurate than taking my direct gaze off the fish and placing it on the target. But the fish is a strong attractor. A realistic fear that looking elsewhere, at a newly chosen target, risks losing the location of the fish. Attention to the target and attention to the larger environment, including the current location of the fish, seem to be in conflict. And since, under pressure, we revert to our instinct informed by training, we have to figure out how to practice what will work for us in the field. Gray suggests disrupting existing patterns by choosing a neutral subject to look at at various points in the act we are training. And changing that up during the course of a drill session. Paul has suggested setting up several targets and moving from one to the next randomly. I think we each will have different solutions here. Experience rules.
Notes:
In the day of YouTube and Tik Tok shorts and reels, paywalls and doom scrolling, it’s easy to find and love highlights. Whether it’s politics, film or sport, it’s addictive to jump from high point to high point. But the picture is skewed. No one is as good or bad as they look, everything is more of a grind. Just saying.
My Hot Tortugas came in the mail yesterday. I took the 4-wt out for a spin today. Love it.
Our self-coup (autogolpe) here continues. Democrats have only a little influence over the processes on the margins in Congress. The Republican Party has all of the levers of power. Many players in all sectors are capitulating to the new order. Corporate diversity and inclusion efforts have widely been abandoned. Congress has ceded their fiscal control to Elon Musk and his crew of lost boys. Immigration policies have become explicitly race-based, Soon someone in the executive is going to defy a court order. Then it’ll be up to the Supremes. I’m worried. A shout out to the ACLU and the State Attorneys General who are doing their best to gum up the works.
David Siskind