Train then trust

What’s with the sports analogies you might ask!?
Well funnily enough a lot of music psychology is derived from sports psychology, it’s just that there’s more money in sports for this kind of thing. (Don’t get me started on arts funding!)

I grew up in a sporting family with my 3 older brothers, mum and dad all heavily involved in playing, coaching, and umpiring basketball each week. We were constantly watching sport on the TV, or trying to beat each other on the backyard basketball court, often ending in tears (for me!). This helped me greatly with my music studies, teaching me valuable lessons in repetitive practice, teamwork, and concentration, among a whole range of other skills.

What I did realise pretty quickly was that my weekly game was when all of the parts of our practice sessions came together as a whole. We had to execute the skills that we had honed in mid-week practice or at home in the backyard, in order to work well as a team and play efficiently together.

However it was often the case that we would play worse when we were more concerned about our own individual performances, rather than gelling as a team. All of a sudden our well-oiled machine was clunking and sputtering along, and simple skill errors would be riddled throughout the game.

This happens in music performance too, when we start to overthink the countless minute muscle movements that are required to perform effectively. Labelled “Explicit Monitoring”, our overthinking disrupts skill execution, resulting in a reduced performance standard. Whilst this type of thinking is useful in the practice room, it sends us back to "Beginner-Land" when we’re trying to perform, as it activates the areas of the brain that we use when first learning a new skill.

The antidote is to have greater trust that all of the work you have done in the practice room will come out in the performance. Consciously and regularly telling yourself this will help you to trust yourself more, let go, and have fun in performances.