Episode 8 [Audio] | Automatic Skill (Part 1)

Transcript

Archery is a well-learnt closed skill, so let's define what a closed skill is. A closed skill is one where the individual performing the skill does not manipulate the performance with respect to any outside effects. For example, a footballer who has a multitude of different shots available to him [or] a golf player who similarly will not only select a different club for a different distance, can make any single club perform differently - they will manipulate their performance to do this.

So archery is a closed skill. It's like taking free throws at basketball. It is repetitive and it is not manipulated by the performer. One of the things that is important about closed skills is that they have a high degree of automaticity (automaticity means they are automatic - they are performed with a low degree of thought) [and] as as we have said the individual is not going to manipulate their skill in any way. They are going to perform the same technical task each time.

Allied to this idea of automaticity which comes from practice, is an idea that there must be an internal and an external focus. Let me just take a while to explain that. The internal focus occurs when the individual is checking various parts of their setup and form (this could be posture / anchor point etc). That's all very cognitive, checking off like a pilot going through a checklist. There must come a point when this checklist is correct - rather like a driver driving a car choosing to pull out and cross a junction - where you just get on with the skill. You access the skill, trust the skill and get on with it.

This is very important - this moment when one goes from an internal focus, which is a checking process, to an external focus where one accepts that everything is correct and gets on with it. If you do not have this change-over then you will never be able to perform and access the automatic skill. The automatic skill is the execution. This is the making a recurve 'go click', or executing a trigger on a compound. These have to be no-cognition [events]. They cannot be 'I do this, and then I do this' etc. In all skilled performers it is the case that it is a change in focus which allows an automatic skill to come to the front. Anything else that is discussed - any idea often heard from and purported by coaches - this idea of 'lets make this go click' on a recurve by rotating this elbow or tightening these muscles - that level of cognitive control is not there in a skilled performer - and it never has been.

All of these discussions of how it is done come from a self-report, they come from when skilled athletes - skilled performers are asked 'how do you do this', and they've got to say something. It's not [actually] what they do, it's them trying to put into words what they do - hence the idea of 'back tension' is invented - or of a controlled rotation to make a clicker go off, or a squeeze to make a trigger go off. These are not what are done [by skilled performers].

And so it is that you must start to understand that during this external focus after we've decided that everything is fine, everything is set-up, everything is spot-on - then one trusts the skill. If one trusts the skill, it will work. This is why you've practiced. This is why you've shot thousands - hundreds of thousands of arrows. This is why you do drill work - so that your body can go - 'yeah I know how to do this'. It is exactly analogous to making that movement to drive across the crossroads. It is really scary whilst you are learning. It is something that you try to control - you look left, you look right. You think about what you are doing to do when you start to move at the junction and you try and control it - and then at some point in your training it becomes easy to do it automatically.

So practice has taught your muscles, your body, your brain the skill. And you must trust that. SO you must work towards going forwards an idea of setting up the shot, and then letting go. Letting go emotionally, cognitively intellectually. Just let it happen. ANd in the same way that you cannot think a golf club through the ball or a bat onto a ball, you cannot think through that execution stage. You must just let it happen.