Athlete's Mental Gym
Mental Skill: Sharpen Your Hearing and Concentration
To defeat competitors on the playing field, you need to have more thorough and prolonged concentration than your opponents. The more you fully use the three senses of vision, touch, and hearing that are required for athletes to have advanced awareness and concentration, the better you will be able to perform the physical skills needed at that moment.
The ability to hear what is going on around you during competition is one of the most under-developed senses in sports but is needed in order to heighten your concentration and out-perform the competition, such as:
- The soccer player who can hear an opponent approaching from behind and makes a move to avoid the defender.
- The football lineman who can effectively hear and respond to an audible called at the line-of-scrimmage.
- The lacrosse player who can hear a teammate cutting to the goal and makes a quick pass for an assist.
- The 800-meter runner who can hear the coach yelling split-times above the crowd noise, and quickly adjusts the pace.
- The tennis player who can hear the opponent mishit the ball and responds aggressively.
In addition to improving your vision and touch-coordination for your sport, you can also exercise your hearing so it is more precise during competition and helps you better focus your attention.
Exercise
The following is an exercise you can do during the week to sharpen your hearing and improve your concentration:
Step 1: Turn on your radio or television to a talk show or news report. Lower the volume until you can barely hear it.
Step 2: Draw a horizontal line on a sheet of paper. Put the point of the pencil at the beginning of the line and very slowly turn up the volume of the radio or television.
Step 3: As you turn up the volume, slowly move the pencil along the line and make a mark on the line when you can understand clearly what is being said on the radio or TV.
Step 4: Repeat this exercise several times in one day striving to make the mark on the line earlier each time. Try the exercise again several days later, each time working to hear the talking more clearly and sooner than the last time.
The changes you experience each time you do this exercise may not be dramatic, but you should notice some improvement as a result of purposely listening and concentrating.
