The Truth About "The Zone" (with Steph Curry) | Good Sport, a TED Talks Audio Collective

(3) The Truth About "The Zone" (with Steph Curry) | Good Sport, a TED Audio Collective - YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tSP1M052Sg

Transcript:

(00:00) hey everyone Jody ever again here with another episode of good sport this is actually an episode that I knew we wanted to do from the very beginning before the show even existed because it's something that I've thought about probably more than anything else when it comes to sports and that is the mental side of the game and in particular people tend to obsess with this idea of being in the zone right that flow state where everything seems to be clicking where you kind of turn your brain off and can just play it's this funny irony

(00:29) where we spend all of this time thinking about how to get to this place where we can then just stop thinking and perform so this episode looks into the Zone but also really taught me some things about kind of the other things around the zone that we should really be focusing on instead and some real concrete tricks and skills and lessons that we can use to try and stay at that level of Peak Performance so I really love this episode it starts with a very very famous basketball player and then it goes from there hopefully you will learn

(00:58) some things along the way any way here we go take a listen and of course you can find good sport wherever you get your podcasts in sports there's a lot of talk about a magical place called The Zone you've probably heard of it that place where everything clicks where no matter the weather or the crowd or the sweat in your eyes nothing can break your focus where you just do everything perfectly you sink every shot nothing can stop you now when I think about the Zone when I picture someone in the zone I picture

(01:33) Steph Curry Do You Believe In the Zone I do believe in the zone because it's the one time that everything kind of goes autopilot well if the greatest NBA shooter of all time says the legend is real that the zone is real it's more than just a legend there's this Synergy with everything that you're trying to do and even your intentions have been validated by the atmosphere around you where seems like everything else is going right at the same time you kind of get lost in that moment I love that phrase your intentions are

(02:09) validated by the atmosphere around you I suppose if I were hitting every shot in the NBA finals in front of a roaring crowd I'd probably feel like my intentions were validated by the atmosphere as well but look here's the thing about the Zone almost by definition it is special and fleeting and you can't force it you can't control any of that it's just for me when it goes away it's the reflection on the feeling you just had I think it's just a natural experience you can recognize when it's gone but

(02:45) chasing after it is almost a guarantee that you won't get there I don't think you can train yourself to appreciate it more than just you naturally do because if you do then you start to distract yourself from what's actually happening so you heard it directly from Steph Curry nice as it is when you find yourself in the zone obsessing over getting there and there is a lot of obsession about the zone that will get in the way of what you're trying to do so today we want to figure out what we can control what we can train for

(03:18) because even if the zone is elusive there are still ways to perform at your best to keep your head in the game [Music] my name is Jody Abigail and from the from Ted audio Collective this is good sports we think about athletes getting their bodies in shape to compete but talk to top athletes and a lot of them will say that the mental side of the game is the real key to Peak Performance it's one of the things I've thought about most as an athlete how to get my mind in the right place to be clear I'm

(03:57) not talking about mental health or emotional well-being athletes like Simone biles and Naomi Osaka have started really important conversations about how an athlete's life on and off the court connect and honestly those deserve an entire series of Their Own [Music] what we're talking about in this episode is the mental part of competition that invisible force that I think shapes every game every race every match and a lot of times separates the winner from the loser [Music] Dr Nicole detling is an expert on the

(04:44) mental side of the game she's a sports psychologist who's worked with Olympic skiers and skaters pro baseball and football and soccer players college gymnasts athletes at the very top of their Sports when she first meets with these athletes all they want to talk about is being in the zone [Music] so when you ask people to describe what it feels like what language do they use interesting a lot of them will say things like I don't remember much about it like I just kind of was lost I wasn't thinking I was just doing it and it was

(05:17) amazing and I loved it and I want to get there more but as she starts to work with athletes she tries to shift their thinking she tells them not to think about the feeling of being in the zone that they're trying to chase after but instead that they should work on building a solid and reliable skill that skill is mental resilience being your best self in all circumstances whatever that looks like you know what I'm only at 70 today but I'm going to do my best to give that 70 mental resilience means

(05:46) being able to find whatever version of calm and focus you can even when things aren't going your way those times when you're trying to get your focus or regain it when something is tugging at your attention an unexpected move by your opponent a mistake bad weather it's about recover suffering from those things to still play your best mental resilience is not elusive or magical it's a habit we have these thinking processes and patterns and skills that we're teaching people to eventually get it to automate

(06:17) so it's an automatic process rather than having to turn on that mindset you become that mindset and if we're going to talk about the mindset required for mental resilience I want to talk about a sport that I have come to believe requires more of it than maybe any other sport a sport where a test of mental resilience is baked right into the rules by Athlon meet Claire Egan Olympic biathlete imagine her cross-country scheme whizzing through the mountains of Northern Italy consumed by the drive to go fast in fact so consumed that she

(06:52) would sometimes lose track of where she was and go off course it did lead me astray several times literally because I was Notorious for getting lost when Claire Egan would ski she'd get lost in a sort of beautiful Haze focused only on her arms her legs on pushing forward I can just focus on my body my breath I'm pushing as hard as I can and harder and harder as much as I can but here's the thing biathlon isn't just a cross-country skiing race where you can allow yourself to get totally lost no there's another component one that

(07:28) would often trip Claire up because in biathlon you go from flying across the snow to a full stop and then you take a rifle off your back and on a shooting range that's nearly silent you peer through a sight and you try and shoot five targets that can be as small as Oreos 164 feet away and those shots it's hard to overstate how much making the matters everything is on the line if you miss a Target depending on the race you either have to ski extra laps or have minutes added to your total race time the pressure is immense

(08:09) I grew up watching The Green Bay Packers because my dad's from Green Bay and probably most Americans can think of a time when the kicker took the field and of course there's two seconds or something ridiculous left on the clock and and you just know and that kicker knows if they if they hit that kick the right way it's going to be a win for the team and if they don't it won't and every biathlon race is like that for every competitor except for in football that kicker didn't Sprint up and down the sideline 200

(08:42) times before having to then exactly yeah right right so biathlon is this test of body and mind that's the mental puzzle built into the rules the big test of resilience you have to shift your brain from skiing to shooting do it quickly keep your focus but when Claire would fly into the shooting range dripping with sweat almost Delirious from her high-speed racing her brain felt blurry and jumbled thoughts swirling around as she tried to slow everything down and shoot those five Oreos I wasn't actually Lucid enough to be

(09:24) doing what I needed to do and so sometimes I would leave the range having missed three out of five and I'm thinking to myself what did I just do out there I don't even know what I did is it true that most people missed the last shot or people missed the last shot more than the others the shooting statistics for the last shot would be worse than for the other shots but but that's probably only if you've hit all your other shots but what's going on there you know exactly what's on the line it's

(09:53) easy to become distracted because you start thinking about the outcome it's such a distraction it's a distraction that is being shoved in your face and it's unavoidable so you have to be strong in your mind you have to be well prepared to say okay I'm distracted now what now what Claire was competing in major events the world championships the Olympics and she wanted medals she needed to figure out a strategy for how to handle the mental challenge at the heart of her sport so she made a routine

(10:27) as a first step Claire tried to identify what she called her transition area by looking at the Racecourse she'd show up early and plot out where on the course she had to start shifting her mind from I need to go as fast as I can to I need to breathe and focus she'd pick a change in the terrain or a landmark like a flagpole and physically at that point I would bring my Pace down to a level where I'm no longer accumulating more oxygen depth so I'm not I'm not I don't want to be getting any more tired than I already am

(11:03) and once she got on the shooting range she started using what she called an emergency check to make sure that she'd really made the transition the last thing I need to do is sort of like put my cheek down on my on my cheek piece and and look out through the sides the last thing I did before I would lower my head is I would make sure that I could see the target clearly with my eyes like that I wasn't so tired and out of it that I was like Blurry because sometimes I was really seeing blurry and so I would kind of double check okay like

(11:39) am I seeing the target clearly okay yeah now I can make Intelligent Decisions about what I'm doing on a shooting range it was all about finding simple repeatable cues a routine that could consistently get her mind where it needed to be this would also help Claire handle the pressure of shooting quiet that inner voice that was saying if I hit this then then I'll have hit all five like that's not a hopeful thought and when you recognize oh I've had that thought that's not helpful then you can replace it with something that

(12:11) actually is helpful like okay I had that thought that's fine now I'm gonna take one more breath exhale and then do a really good job on the trigger keeping her mind focused on process is how Clara learned to handle shooting mistakes as well I asked her to tell me about a time when she really struggled with recovering from an error try not to take you there every race um I could think one of the most painful ones Was a Race out of World Championships where I hit the first 17 and then missed the last three

(12:52) that thing about biathletes struggling with their Final Shots it happened to Claire 17 in a row then missed the final three brutal it was a minute of time penalty per Miss you know to be in metal contention and then miss the last like to throw it away in three seconds at the end of the race was so painful when Claire thinks back to that world championship race she struck by how certain she was that she'd make all her shots in her mind it was the only possible outcome and my third to last shot I think was probably really really

(13:27) close in fact I know it was close it was what's called a split it was like half in half out but it didn't the Target didn't go down and I got so distracted by that I it I like I probably flinched I was so shocked that I missed and instead of um resetting I don't even remember taking the last two shots you know I was not I was distracted she lost sight of what she had to do to shoot well like checking the wind direction adjusting her sights and having a steady trigger squeeze on every shot this process versus outcome thing I

(14:01) think it's bled from Sports into the rest of the world almost to the point of cliche I've heard of people in office meetings talk about focusing on process it's worked its way into the world of self-help books and podcasts oh God is this a self-help podcast but yeah focusing on process is really really hard because there are all these moments when outcome tries to rear its ugly head and throw you and you have to try and refocus on the steps you need to take right now but thinking back to that world

(14:31) championship Claire also sees a deeper lesson about the mindset it takes to perform at the highest level after her race was done she ran into a friend of hers who at the time was the best by athlete in the world he'd made a similar mistake at the Olympics he missed his last few shots he was kind of joking you know how badly did you just throw away your race and I'm like real bad real badly and I but I said hey you know but I I think I remember you doing it in in Korea too so you know I'm maybe not alone even heroes

(15:08) do this kind of thing and he said yeah that's true that happened to me but I won the next day and that reminded me that what happens the next day is completely unrelated to what happened the day before it's a fresh slate and that's the beautiful thing the one term I've always taught was just sort of flush it right something goes bad flush it and you just move on that was oh yeah and and people who are awesome at their sport are flushing a lot can you learn and then move on and never think about it again

(15:44) okay we're 15 minutes into this episode we just learned something flush it let's move on [Music] [Music] growing up Dr Nicole detling love sports in fact I was the first girl in my school to play football she ended up running track and playing basketball in college just focused on her game wins and losses points scored having fun with her teammates but one day she was having a chat with her dad my dad called me and said did you know there's a field called sports psychology and I said what no Whole New World opened up eventually

(16:32) it would become her career but it also started to change the way she played one of the first things that shifted something she now works on with her athletes was just a basic understanding that the mental side of the game is always there every time you play physically every time you train every time you think about your sport your mind is involved if you don't know what's going through your mind you're not aware of what's helping you and what's hurting you and quite frankly it's not even Just Sports it's life it's

(17:01) business it's performance it's everything we do every day and talk about something that feels like it's worked its way into the larger culture but just mindfulness and staying in the moment and just going one moment at a time I mean that's you know that's exploded in sports but in real life too we have we have apps you know that I try to get us to focus on just this one moment yeah and it's so difficult in this world when we have so many things pooling on our Attention our phone dings

(17:28) our computer dings the TV you know we always say in sports the most important play is this play and then this play there's a line in one of my favorite books about the mental side of sports called the inner game of tennis it goes it is perplexing to wonder why we ever leave the here and now here and now are the only place in time when one ever enjoys himself or accomplishes anything and I think about that a lot how performing well at anything being an athlete being a manager being a partner being a parent is often about giving the

(18:03) present your full attention so when athletes come to Dr detling she convinces them that they need to work on the mental side of the game and then she gets the work to build that mental resilience what I'll often do is ask athletes okay tell me how you warm up or what do you do between plays what do you do what's your process and they'll say okay at each one of those points what are you doing mentally and most people don't know what they're doing mentally so then what I'll do is say okay well

(18:30) here's what we've been working on so I don't want you to change what you're doing physically but when you do this let's tie in that so maybe you're saying a confident statement to yourself maybe you're reminding yourself what your assignment is on that play yeah I mean I have you know memories it's one of my favorite sort of things it's like during a really high level game let's say there's you know 10 people in the field or the court or 15 people or whatever you know if you were just like at a

(18:56) super critical moment you know if you were to look around or even close your eyes and listen you know be like this person's muttering to themselves this person's singing a song this person's tugging on their on their lucky jersey this person is like so you know but it's like everyone's just doing their own little their little thing but it's you know you take half a step back you're like wow look at these butchers yeah I couldn't agree more and that's why I I that's what those are the things

(19:21) that I look for when I go and hang out with thieves is I'm looking for Baseline so I've noticed you do this first of all did you know you did that second of all why are you doing that and third of all what's happening mentally while you're doing that if that's something you're gonna do let's use it let's utilize it in a positive way that gets you ready for the next play there are some things I do to try and keep my mind calm and my body ready before taking the field and ultimate I'd

(19:46) always do three tuck jumps just the little routine to Center myself I actually don't think I've ever said this to anyone but for like 20 years as I've played sports or worked out I've had this little snippet of a song that runs through my head something I find myself humming turn I have no idea what that song is but it just shows up whenever I'm trying to get into that flow State hundreds of times a year for 20 years probably owe whoever wrote that song serious royalties but for all my humming and Tuck jumps

(20:23) I've still struggled with slipping out of the moment so much of mental resilience is realizing that everything isn't gonna go perfectly I've worked on that I've worked on here's one of my favorite cliches getting comfortable being uncomfortable the good news Dr detling says is that you can train for that some of the things that we've done with some of the skiing Olympians that I've worked with and actually I'll talk about speed skating too is we've not waxed their skis and they've

(20:52) had to train with unwaxed skis right with speed skating you know what your blades aren't quite as sharp as you would want them to be train that way train with you know forgetting you know there's a little tiny little tear in your suit train without your goggles one time that's why a lot of teams will pipe In Crowd noise so they can't hear during training sessions they can't hear each other and they're working on those things and training for those things because at the end of the day we all

(21:20) want to show up and feel great but yet there will be comp day sometimes the biggest competition of your life and you show up feeling like crap if you've trained feeling like crap then you know you can compete feeling like crap okay so you can train for the uncomfortable moments train to keep some focus when there are uncontrollable external circumstances but what about the internal what about when you yourself are the problem when your own thoughts are distracting you that voice that pops up at all the wrong

(21:52) moments telling you how badly you're doing how much the game is slipping out of your hands when she was a college athlete playing basketball this is the kind of thinking that really tripped up Dr detling and really propelled her to want to explore the mental side of the game I was basically my own living walking self-fulfilling prophecy where I'd get fouled and I'd be going to the free throw line thinking oh my gosh I'm Gonna Miss This oh I can't miss this I really don't need to miss this ah come on

(22:19) Nicole I mean listening to that I just missed a free throw here in the studio so I was setting myself up for failure and assuming I was gonna fail before I even got there and gave myself a chance today this is a big part of what Dr detling works on with athletes self-talk I think we all know what self-talk is and we can understand that she was hurting her performance with all that negative self-talk we get too that the opposite is positive self-talk I can do this I got this that kind of thing but Dr detling thinks it's a little more

(22:51) nuanced than just positive and negative it's really about what does the talk do for you here's her example she's a runner and she lives in Utah where it can get to 100 degrees in the summer but she's out there running anyway and there will be times that I will catch myself out there going oh my gosh it is so hot yeah that's true oh my gosh I'm so tired my legs are so heavy both of those things are true and then I start thinking oh I could just call my husband and he can come pick me up oh I could take the

(23:25) short way home and what I'll recognize in the moment is none of those thoughts are helping me achieve what I'm out there to do which is run and that's negative self-talk I will catch myself and Jody I will literally say to myself Nicole you're being [ __ ] stupid run what it does for me in that moment is I flip a switch and I run so in that moment that is positive self-talk because it's getting me to where I want to be to do what I want to do so yeah it's important to think about helpful self-talk and try and keep

(24:01) unhelpful self-talk at arm's distance but easier said than done we all know what it's like for your mind to wander and then all of a sudden you're back at self-doubt that unhelpful voice in your head this is where Dr detling introduces a concept I hadn't really heard before honestly my biggest takeaway from our entire conversation neutral self-talk neutral self-talk is basically keeping your mind occupied and ready but not exhausted but I'll often tell people to do is just in your mind commentate what you see

(24:35) around you all right number 10 has the ball they're moving up to Midfield I'm going to run to that open space okay they passed it to the right I'm gonna drop back a little bit make sure this guy's covered over my shoulder neutral self-talk is like hold music for your mind and when you're thinking neutral you're not thinking negative and your confidence can rest you can play in neutral you can live in neutral neutral is a great place to be [Music] man I wish I knew about neutral self-talk years ago

(25:06) because when I played Sports it was rarely neutral I'd often ride a roller coaster of emotions and often the emotion I most felt was anger I've always been one of those athletes fueled by anger and a bit of animosity towards my opponent anyone who's played against me probably didn't have a very fun time I often didn't have much fun playing maybe I was kind of a dick but it was also hurting my game I didn't have Dr detling all those years ago when I was driven by anger but I have her now

(25:39) how do you handle someone who is who's driven by that well let me ask you let's do it let's do a little bit of work here so how do you find that place of anger where you like to be how do you get there um just get Petty but like intentionally right but just you know or if it's a rivalry and it's someone I know you know use something from a previous Mac but you know I always find that spark like I don't think I cheated but I would often early in a game find a way to scuffle with someone or talk a little

(26:13) [ __ ] or be aggrieved in some way just something a spark to get me motivated and fired up okay and if we go like think of a scale of one to ten where ten is like as angry as you have ever been like probably maybe even a little too far anger one is you have zero you're just kind of there playing what's your ideal level of anger I mean it's definitely not a 10 right because I think I know what it feels like to be out of control um and be and the diminishing aspect of that but you know it's close an eight

(26:50) eight or seven you know I can't be I can't be at a four so let's say if it's a if it's an eight then your ideal range would be a seven to a nine so Eight's where you want to be seven a little too low but you're okay there nine a little too high but you're okay there and so if you get to that ten you have to have your strategies to bring you back down and if you're at a six or lower what are your strategies to bring you up and it sounds like for you beginning a game sometimes you have to fabricate it it's

(27:17) just not there naturally so then let's go to what are your specific strategies to fabricate that anger that's not there inherently right and you talked about opponents yeah go ahead what else do you have on that no and I mean to me you know I think the thing that I've always prided myself on and I think has put me in a position to when I've performed well performed well is just a level of intensity and everything and so you know it's it's the warm-up it's the behavior on the sideline it's maybe you know mixing up

(27:48) with teammates in what feels like a way that it's we're pushing each other up um but you know I can't I can't just flip the switch I kind of have to be in this stew of intensity okay well there you go so now you're using the word intensity instead of anchor so which is it is there a difference between those for you yeah and maybe that's maybe that's the difference between seven and ten right and anger feeling like something that you're sort of holding on to the live wire um and intensity feeling like something

(28:19) you can ride a little bit there you go now thinking about the difference between those two anger can be really hard to facilitate but intensity is a lot easier and so even identifying the difference between those two for you can be incredibly powerful listener I promise going forward I will podcast with intensity not anger deep breath deep the mental side of sports it's a new frontier no surprise with all the money in sports people are trying to figure out shortcuts shortcuts to focus some kind of magical Zone pill or resilience

(29:03) wearable or whatever athletes are experimenting with computer simulations to train their minds there's Research into supplements and hormones that might calm our brains I tried to put Steph Curry in an MRI machine during our interview he was not having it I want to tell you about the vagus nerve it's a bundle of nerves we all have it that runs up your neck and around your ear it connects all the way down to your heart and your gut some people think it might be the key to how your brain and body interact

(29:35) there's a lot of research into vagus nerve stimulation and devices you can wear to activate it with the goal of relaxing your mind and body a lot of these devices attach at your ear and create a sort of low level sound and vibration there's these videos that show someone wearing a vagus nerve stimulator they're on a putting green and they just stand there calmly sinking one putt after another fact over the last 45 seconds or so we've been playing a version of that sound if you're wearing headphones right

(30:13) now you are likely entering the zone try it out go take some free throws do some raiding take a knife throw it in the air you'll catch it by the handle now I'm just messing with you Dr detling says vagus nerve stimulation might help some athletes in some sports and seems to depend on the person in the situation and it's hard to know how much is Just placebo effect it's just not that simple which is actually what makes this so wonderful think about how Dynamic sports are how complicated the ecosystem of a game is

(30:49) every time you go out there to compete there's you there's your opponent different players different plays a different field different weather but research is done on controlling variables so that someone like Dr detling can say x cos y I will often get asked you know where's the objective evidence or the data that shows that what you do makes an impact and there isn't any I don't have any other than athletes saying that it makes an impact coaches saying that it makes an impact people continuing to come back

(31:20) to me year after year after year or hire me year after year after year it's it does make an impact but we don't have the scientific evidence to prove that it's just not we just don't have the capacity to study it yet Perhaps someday we will [Music] I love the idea that sports are too Dynamic to study the drama the constant change the unpredictability it's what can make Sports feel like life is usually more messy than clean Lord knows it's uncomfortable but that's where the lessons you learn

(31:53) in sports can teach you something about the rest of your life too [Music] I've personally had what 10 12 surgeries now related to sports so an athlete comes to me with an ACL I'm like yeah I know I've been there I got you okay let's do this you know so whether it's you know having those injuries or it's having you know personal struggles I'm on my second marriage my first husband just walked out the door one day when my kids were six and three and so as horrible as that experience was and to

(32:21) go through that experience it's helped me help other people who go through similar things we are all so much stronger than we think we can get through so much more than we think and that's part of what mental toughness is all about is not that you're always this stud out there but that you're pushing through whatever it is that you're dealing with you're figuring it out and some days it's easier than others but you continue to persevere [Music] you do your best on your worst days you

(32:52) leave your mistakes behind flush it get comfortable being uncomfortable and on those days where everything is clicking where you Race Across the snow and make all your shots where you're the Steph Curry of reading books to your kids you just try to stay in the moment why would we ever leave the Here and Now here and now the only place in time when one ever enjoys oneself or accomplishes anything [Music] on the next episode of good sport what should we do here ethically never ever comes up when you're negotiating a

(33:38) stadium deal is there such a thing as a good Stadium deal or maybe just a less bad one good sport is brought to you by the Ted audio Collective it's hosted by me Jody evergay this show is produced by Ted this episode was written and produced by Camille Peterson our team includes Isabel Carter Ponce Rush Sarah Nix Jimmy Gutierrez Michelle Quint Ben Chang and Roxanne High lash Jake Gorski is our sound designer and mix engineer fact checking by Nicole pasoka we'll be back soon with more good sport make sure

(34:15) you're following good sport and your favorite podcast app so you get every episode delivered straight to your device and leave us a review We love hearing from our listeners see you soon [Music]