Mental Aspects of Competition

Sports psychology, a developing field as I understand it, applies to our horses (?)...somewhat. Keep in mind, though, on top of those horse ride little humans subject the the whims and foibles.

After that devastating and stupid loss of mine on the Internet chess boards yesterday I am now sporting a 4 game win streak. As your chess rating goes up so does the quality of the competition, and I'm almost fearing that next game since the player on the other end is likely to have more skill.

The Internet chess boards are superb labs for competition related to sports psychology. Over thousands of games you learn to recognize patterns in your own play and how you handle things both over the course of several games and within the games themselves. Successful chess playing requires certain mental qualities that everyone has in degrees. The trick is applying those qualities in each game, and then maintaining them over the course of several games.

Allow one illustration of this. A chess game clocked at 10 minutes is a 20 minute game--10 minutes allowed to each player. There will be about 40 to 50 moves per player to check mate. About each move--a total usually of 80 moves--a complex situation must be considered This requires the mental quality of CONCENTRATION. It is impossible--for me at least--and for most to completely concentrate for 20 minutes. Concentration wavers. You get distracted both within the game itself and by outside factors. A noise will occur, a fly will buzz, something extraneous will appear on the computer screen, and boom, you lose your focus and make a critical error.

Whatever one's mental qualities of imagination and intelligence that one brings to the chess game, it is all irrelevant without CONCENTRATION. Unless you're focused and paying attention you're unable to bring to bear your mental talents. It being physically impossible to maintain complete focus over any lengthy period of time each chess game becomes a personal contest with yourself as to how well and how long you can keep your CONCENTRATION.

I have discovered that in competitive situations there are actually moments of MICRO-SLEEP where the brain is completely withdrawn from the situation and paying attention to nothing. I strongly suspect that many errors in baseball result from this phenomena.

Does this sort of thing apply at all to horses? Will try to be more systematic and reply to this Q over the next posts.

Training:
Thurs. 7/21 Off. Burch training pattern of 3 days works well for Rollin' Rod in terms of maintaining his interest. Additionally, am hesitant to beat on those cannon bones without some rest. The w/os were riderless but significantly more in volume than tack speed work. My injury is improved and normal tack work should commence tomorrow. Trailer will be ready to go by end of week! Progress.