Can top sportsmen slow down time

Not literaly obviously but in a mental sense. When you watch them in high pressure situations that most of us would panic over and rush, but these guys just play it like its a training match.

For example watching football (soccer) a couple of weeks ago most european members of this site will have seen Pirlos winning penalty against england where he just dinked it carelessly down the middle. Now to sum it up, hes the last penalty taker of the 5 and its his penalty to win the game, millions of people watching him on tv and tens of thousands physically watching him in the stadium. The pressure would have been immense.

But what he did was jog to the ball and waited until the last minute to see where the goalkeeper was going to dive then made his decision about what he was going to do which was so audacious in that situation. So its safe to say he was nailed on certain where the keeper was going.

But in real time all of this happens in a split second, so just how does he (and others) process so many thoughts and decisions under so much pressure and in such a quick space of time? Is it some sort of super high state of conscious which does in someway slow down time inside his mind?

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard

Professional athletes tune out the crowd. Watch them. They look at the crowd but don't see it and they don't respond to its cheers and boos.

They get more coaching than just how to play the game. They're taught methods of focus necessary to win the battle, i.e., they're taught how to ignore.

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard


i saw that to it was pretty sweet, but i attribute his ability to practice, game film, and player info, when ur at this level you have stat info available to you on every player you play against, and when you are at that level of play all you do is eat, breath , and sh*t soccer(football). I played keeper during my high school career and a little afterward, and i can tell you stopping a penalty kick is next to impossible especially if the taker has any natural talent, the odds are greatly stacked against the keeper in order to produce an outcome to the game, What i do know about time that even though it is constant, it aint reliable time seems to do weird things based on are perception of it. here is a link about the penalty kick keeper relationship

worldcupworld.wonderhowto.com...

When I watched some of my recorded soccer games I noticed that the game looked "fast paced" when watching it. What could be counted 5 seconds in the video felt like 10 seconds when I played the game.

I think it's the adrenaline that helps our brain react faster.

I think a better example would be Messi. I think I would accept that he can "slow down time" when dribbling

There is also the factor of knowing so much about what you do to the degree that you could assess any situation.

How hard to throw, the best angle to throw so it doesn't get intercepted/ w/e.

Also time is only a state of mind.

For instance lab mice were setup to where one had THC in him, one was plain jane, and one had Cocaine in his system.

They were trained to push a button every 30 seconds down to the second. Very good at it too.. But when on these substances the mouse with THC would have a delayed reality of how long 30 seconds was.. And the one on Cocaine would push it much faster than the actual 30 seconds.

So when your on adrenaline you could really do just about anything with your sense of time

Sports like that.. 3 seconds is a lifetime.

I know the odds are stacked against the keeper, but even so to even think about attempting taking a penalty in such an arrogant way in those circumstances is unthinkable. He would have got absolutely slaughtered all round europe if he had missed and cost his team a place in the semi finals. Also he is renowned for being a highly professional player so I really dont think he would have risked his teams place in the semi finals unless he was 300% sure where the keeper was going. I really do believe he made up his mind where he was putting the penalty in the split second before he hit the ball.

Michael Jordan called it the moment. He claimed that everything seemed to slow down and by what I saw him do, I have to agree that it did.

They take over the whole game in such a way that even though other top players are on the field or court, it seems as if they are in Orbit around the one player that is transcending them all.

that's why I like sports, they teach things and allow the athlete to experience things that cannot be achieved in a classroom setting.

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard


google search milton erickson time distortion, one explanation is the phenomena is a time distortion with time slowing down as mentioned by many sportman but time can also speed up. Most of us have heard the phrase time flies when you're having fun. It's not just sportsmen that do this, the real trick is being able to consciously choose to do this because often it happens unconsciously.

Erickson wrote about hypnotic time distortion including stories where time compression suggestions were given that allowed the experimentee to experience an hour of mental revision of a task in 10 real life seconds.

While a hypnotist does this with some planning, examples of the same phenomena occurring naturally are numerous. Hope it hepls

What you're describing is best demonstrated by professional athletes, but it is no way limited to them alone.

In a normal mental state, time becomes differentiated into past-present-future and we are much more cognizant of these temporal categories; but when one concentrates and literally "concentrates" his thought on one particular concept, time becomes condensed into one long moment, it seems.

When one loses oneself in the reality experienced, and self consciousness doesn't squeak through, that's when magic happens. A singer who hits every single note and we all feel the power and precision of his singing - this is the same thing we admire in the professional athlete who becomes subsumed and literally a vehicle for the thing sought.

This is probably most classically expressed through poetry. There is a very obvious difference between self conscious poetry and the poet who expresses some higher reality; it runs differently and produces a different feeling.

In every field and every art, man possesses the ability to rise above himself - which is to rise above temporal categories - and experience the eternal in time. Those are true moment of magic.

I notice the same things you do. In soccer when the attackers move in such sync with each other that they manage to avoid all defensive tactics and pull of a wondrous goal; or in basketball when Lebron James or Kobe Bryant or Kevin Durant goes off for a litany of mind boggling plays - hitting shots at the buzzer, one footers with a hand in the face.

These are all such magical moments. The player is not himself, but a vehicle for some higher reality which expresses the brilliance of the now, the potency of human power.

I figure skate. Slowing down time is part of our training. It's not time that slows, actually. It's your perception of it. Otherwise, you'd never be able to press forward on a left outside edge while pulling your wrists back, deeply bend the knee, kick the back hamstring up outside the trajectory and simultaneously touch the fingers while rounding the arms over the right axis, then snap the left hip into right while pulling in with the legs crossed and unhinge the left leg up and out with a strong checkout into a deep right outside edge -- all within about 2-3 seconds.

(That was an Axel, by the way.)

Originally posted by Idonthaveabeard
When you watch them in high pressure situations that most of us would panic over and rush, but these guys just play it like its a training match.

You just answered your own question.
It's training. Repetition.

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard


what about all the info he had on the keeper before going into the shot, this affected his decision on what to do, can you post the vid of this shot just for sh*ts and giggles, im sure others and myself would like to see it.

Originally posted by Pelvi


How hard to throw, the best angle to throw so it doesn't get intercepted/ w/e.


.

wrong sport i think, but i see your point, many decisions in so little time, i do believe something becomes automatic once you do it over and over as others have said, repetition

the thing about this commercial is that it illustrates the answer to your question: not only does time slow down for the athlete, but they become in some ways, a different person.

at the moment of an event, the athlete transforms, psychologically, into an entire different person...if only for a split second. in that second...for them a whole story could be told.

at the moment, they are not the person people see at the restaurant or the one that signs the autograph...but a completely different individual.

reply to post by michaelbrux


I would say they transcend personhood altogether.

Its in their complete awareness of a transpersonal reality - in the art they're involved in - that they're able to express such brilliance.

The instance self consciousness kicks in - that's when they miss the shot or fumble the ball or write a crappy line of poetry etc.

reply to post by dontreally


thinking doesn't add value. you've got that right. i think that's why Shaq Oneil was an awful freethrow shooter.

he thought about being an awful free throw shooter.

but he'd hit a turn around jumper from 15 ft out with multiple players on him as if it were a layup.

its almost as if the athlete is accessing a whole different dimension of space-time, which can produce ecstasy or pain.

in the right plays you can.

I remember like 6-7 years ago in a hockey game, I came streaming up the ice from our end, I crossed their blue line and let go a slapshot. The moment I took that shot I watched in slow motion the puck perfectly glide right over the goalies shoulder. The whole thing felt uncontrollable. it was an amazing feeling. I just did. I remember that moment perfectly because the goalie was a friend and the game was an important playoff game, but there were tons of 'slow motion' moments where you deke out people like nothing or skate around people like they were nothing.

reply to post by dontreally


its not limited to them.

i had one of those moments during a graduate school exam in 1998.

all I remember is that I was handed a short quiz along with the rest of the class and by the time the professor had passed them all out and sat at his desk, I handed mine in to be graded and got a perfect score.

when i tried to give it to him, he assumed that I was going to ask him a question about the material and he got kind of irritated. when he realized I was finished with his test and was handing it in his demeanor turned to one of shock.

its not limited to athletes...but its the best way to mass produce the experience so people can discuss it.

reply to post by michaelbrux

thinking doesn't add value. you've got that right. i think that's why Shaq Oneil was an awful freethrow shooter.

Shaq broke his wrest in high school which is why he has such an awkward shooting form..also, those massive paws for hands surely messes up with his shooting. but undoubtedly, concentration is the biggest factor. Take Tim Duncan. Some seasons he has shot as low as 59% from the FT line, and as high as 79%.

Memory is what brings us back to ourselves. The great shooter, the guy who hits the shot at the buzzer, if he were to "be himself" he would surely recall that time when he missed; you have to FORGET yourself, and just BE.

Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant are two basketball players who exhibit this mystic approach to the game. They're so good because, I would wager, they have a deep understanding of the psychological, or alchemical elements which goes into performing at the highest level possible.

And it's also no coincidence that both were coached by the "zen master" Phil Jackson.

When you have trained so much that you have loads of different "moves" down to reflex, it enables you to clear your mind, and step back to "watch" your body in motion. It's just a different state of mind really. Time does seem slower in this state, because your brain isn't racing like normally. At least that is how it seems in my experience.