mental – Biomechanics and performance psychology for musicians and guitarists

Cultivate and develop your focus

Like anything else, your focus is something that can grow and maintain. Each day you have to train yourself to develop this element. Take every opportunity to cultivate your attention. At a time when our attention is often drawn to all our electronic communication objects, it is even more important to retrieve this faculty that we seem to gradually lose.

For example, in a room full of people who speak them, try to focus on one voice.

In class, try to concentrate on what the teacher said, his voice insulation of all ambient noise and distractions.

Practice with your cell open and try to stay focused despite signals that indicate that you have received an email, a text message or a call. Try the same thing with a book or watching television.

When practicing your instrument, focus on one part of your body and pay attention to sensations, tension, gestures… Do the same if you practice a physical activity such as running, swimming, etc.

Focus on a word, an idea, an image and try to keep your attention directed toward them. Visualize your goals.

In short, be creative and do you find objects or ideas to which your attention to work your focus. Make sure nice not jeopardize your personal safety while doing this exercise in an inappropriate place.

Have you managed to read this without being distracted?

Holidays, perspective, draw your line

On the eve of what will be for many the holidays, with the family and friends reunions. It is a good time to put things in perspective. In this work so demanding that we make, it’s easy to put aside our friends, our family, our leisure activities and relationships, all that for the benefit of our work and professional success. It is so easy to get lost in our career, until finally, considering work as the most important thing in our life.

The danger in this way of thinking is that we end up defining ourselves by our work. Each professional failure lived in this state of mind will seem insurmountable. Healthy relationships help us to maintain a balance and a life outside of work. This could help you maintain a healthy emotional balance essential to a high-level performance.

Moreover, these friends, the family and all the people around us will be there to encourage us, to help us change our ideas, and so potentially help us increase our confidence in ourselves, which will facilitate our evolution.

Again, it’s all about balance, and that is to each of us, to draw the line.

Focus, concentration, commitment

Maintain maximum concentration and focus is one of the goals of all those who have to perform. Some have a natural ability to enter this state of mind. Other less fortunate will need to work a little.

The first thing to do is to manage its energy level to be able to use a maximum when it is necessary. Maintaining a state of concentration for a long time is demanding. We must learn to dose our efforts.

Great athletes use to the most of this trick, which is both simple and complicated. They simply decide to rush headlong to give the best of themselves and perform in a state of relaxed concentration. Everything is there. They have a clear purpose and fully engage in the pursuit of their goal.

Sometimes the fear of failure can motivate us, but often it paralyzes. In a situation where we have already experienced the failure or fear, one can focus on the routine preparation, on the warm up to finally connect fully with what we do during the performance itself.

We must constantly remind our best moments, our success, our pleasure, our pride in order to feed this mental state.

Another simple trick is to always work with the same desire to reach a state of concentration and commitment to what we do. Give yourself clear goals in your practice and focus on how to achieve your goals. This will help you develop your focus.

Beat stress in 32 seconds

A simple exercise that can help you lower your cortisol level, and that is fulfilled in 32 seconds, anyone? This exercise is easy, take a deep breath counting four seconds. Never stop your breath, exhale slowly now, even, counting four seconds. Repeat until it makes a total of 32 seconds. Good at math? 😉

By controlling your breathing, it is possible to break the cycle of the physical effects of stress, giving a contradictory signal to your brain. This is what we call cardiac coherence and was first developed by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber.

Controlling your breathing helps to regularize your heart rate and thus standardize the operation of the brain. This will improve your general homeostasis. Repeat it every time you feel your stress levels increase. Can you afford to take 32 seconds for you? I hope so!

Smaller is Better!

When it comes to setting our goals, it’s easy to dream big. Dreaming is excellent, but it is often difficult to take actions that will lead us straight toward our goals.

It is difficult not to consider every obstacle in our path as the materialization of the failure of this great dream. Why not just split this dream in different stages, as the climber who climbs the mountain one step at a time, his only goal to be the next step. On an expedition and in my life in general, I often use this technique, enjoying and concentrating on every step taken towards my ultimate goal.

“Do the difficult things while they are easy, and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” Lao-Tzu Not only split our dreams into intermediate steps allows us to draw a clearer path towards our goal, but in addition, each little success can be savored. This action enjoying the success, as brief it may be, will help you build your confidence in your abilities. Your brain will store all as small victories against adversity. One can also, by doing so, easily adjusts the shot and reacts to an unexpected obstacle.

Set yourself small goals, achievable fairly easily, every day, every hour, every minute, every second of your life. Next, take concrete actions to achieve them. Enjoy every success, do not minimize them.

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry From time to time, go wide angle, re-evaluate the distance that separates you from your dream, analyze if this is still what you want and finally, adjust your actions in the right direction. Continue your expedition one step at a time, living every effort, every step forward and every small victory.

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matters the road is the life.” J. Kerouac

Visualization: Getting started! (What you see is what you get!)

No matter at what level is your ability to visualize, it can develop in a daily work. Start by imagining you where you practice your instrument: what it looks like, smells, how you feel when you would normally enter this room.

Imagine yourself trying to perform simple extracts on the guitar. Imagine the sound it produces, acoustics, resonance. To develop this ability to visualize, you should work on it 10 to 15 minutes a day.

For example, you can train to see yourself going up on stage, play your repertoire with pleasure and visualize the warm welcome of the public. You can also visualize a difficult passage seeing you be successful in your head, the brain then lower the psychological barrier that was created earlier.

In addition, you can train yourself to see your fingerings and your scores to accelerate memorization. You can train yourself to relive a performance that was a success for you. Imagine staying focused, despite all possible distractions. Imagine reacting in the right way.

You can help you overcome your blockages thanks to visualization. The secret is in regular training.

Visualize or not visualize, that is the question!

A student asked me: how visualization can help me? My answer was simple: The brain cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real experience. It deals both on the same footing. So what you train yourself to see or feel, your brain registers it as a real experience. Take special care not to imagine the worst, because your brain will be able to help you to realize it! Yours to try using this tool with all possible variations, for sure it will help you reach your full potential!

The importance of mental preparation in music performance

In my research on the optimization of the guitar technique, I quickly realized that an element had to muddy the waters. I could greatly increase my potential, but unfortunately, the performance was not always there under stress. Then I recalled a quote that my karate master repeated to me endlessly: “Who dominates the other one is strong. Who dominates himself is powerful. ” ( Lao-Tsu)

As I drew a lot of information for my research in the field of Sports kinesiology. It was quite normal for me to look to the athletes and their mental preparation to performance to see if there were elements applicable to musical performance. The high-level musician compares easily to high-ranking athletes by his physiological performance (endurance), long hours of training and development, work in precision, need of constant concentration, high stakes (pressure), and no second chance. Finally, one mistake, however, small it may be, has the potential to ruin performance. There are many examples of problems caused by performance anxiety as tremors, forgetfulness, physical cramps, lack of saliva, rhythmic problems, problems of auditory and visual perception… Many musicians are reluctant to seek psychological help to overcome their own limitations. Many mistakenly believe that their physical preparation is sufficient, others believe that the one who needs mental support is a weak person. In our society, there is a negative bias against the use of a psychologist or a mental trainer. Brain functions are poorly understood by the population, and using the help of psychologists remains taboo. “It is easier to disintegrate an atom than a prejudice. ” (A. Einstein) However, the effectiveness of mental preparation is unequivocal.

The great virtuoso we all admire also relies on techniques of psychological optimization to overcome their fears, their beliefs and all forms of deadlocks. The performance equation: Performance = potential—mental interference. We often try to increase our level of performance by increasing our potential, but we can significantly improve performance by reducing our level of mental interference. The next few posts will address how the brain and hormonal system react during the stage performance and practical ways to transform performance anxiety into a positive thing. Then we will discuss how biomechanics can help overcome our technical problems. I am giving master classes and lectures on the subject. If you are interested in having a master class on the subject, leave me a private message in my mailbox.