Mindset is your viewpoint or attitude. Another way to think about it, is how much confidence you have in yourself. There are several components to mindset. I will not cover all of them in this single post, I do plan to talk more about mindset in the future.
Believe & You Can!
The most important point to remember, this applies to anything in life, is that the limiting factor for people is generally what they believe they can accomplished.
This is true both Mentally and Physically. This can affect Starcraft 2 performance both ways, since Starcraft involves the "physical skill of a musician, and the mental skill of chess" (Day9 paraphrase).
I worked a lot of Security in college, and a bit after college, since I could frequently get studying done while getting paid with that kind of work, if it was slow. I have also taken classes related to Security and Disaster Preparation after I finished college, since one of my plans for work late in my life, is to work at the City or County level in Disaster Management.
One of the most valuable things I have learned from this, was during an emergency, if you needed someone to get help to tell them "get Police, get Ambulance, or get Fire Department", not to say "call 911".
The reason for this, as the instructor explained, was that people tend to rise to the level of the expectations placed on them. If you tell them to call 911 and they don't have a cell phone, or they don't have signal or something, then they tend to sit there and do nothing or ask you to solve the problem.
But if you tell them to "get Ambulance" and they have a phone problem, they are a lot more likely to find a solution on their own.
I have also personally seen belief limit people's physical strength. I started lifting weights in College, I had wanted to lift weights in HS, but I was a skinny nerd and thought the jocks would laugh me out of the weight room.
In one of my college classes their was a bodybuilder, I asked him if he would help me learn to lift weights, and he said sure. I felt safe going to the gym with him, he was only 5'6" (1.68 Meters) tall, but he could bench press 400+ lbs (182+ kilos), it was like having a Big Brother (think Incontrol taking Idra to the gym).
If you read this Rick, thanks!
After I had been lifting for a while, Rick started telling me that sometimes, when I was doing benchpress, when I signaled for him to grab the bar, that I would finish the rep myself, as soon as his hands went under the bar, but before he actually touched the bar.
I would actually move the bar because I thought he was helping! I didn't really believe him at first, thought he was just trying to encourage me, even though he said it happens to everyone.
Then one day when I was spotting for him on bench press, he was stuck about 2/3 the way up for last rep and signaled me to help, and the minute I got my hands under the bar it shot up. I wasn't even touching the bar. Then I realized what he had told me was true.
A good Coach will be able to tell, at least some of the time, when you need to push harder at something. This is one of the most important things a Coach can do for you, since you really can't do it yourself. They will push you past your mental block! Or they will figure some way of tricking your brain for a moment, so you exceed what you thought was your potential!
Believe & You Can!
The most important point to remember, this applies to anything in life, is that the limiting factor for people is generally what they believe they can accomplished.
This is true both Mentally and Physically. This can affect Starcraft 2 performance both ways, since Starcraft involves the "physical skill of a musician, and the mental skill of chess" (Day9 paraphrase).
I worked a lot of Security in college, and a bit after college, since I could frequently get studying done while getting paid with that kind of work, if it was slow. I have also taken classes related to Security and Disaster Preparation after I finished college, since one of my plans for work late in my life, is to work at the City or County level in Disaster Management.
One of the most valuable things I have learned from this, was during an emergency, if you needed someone to get help to tell them "get Police, get Ambulance, or get Fire Department", not to say "call 911".
The reason for this, as the instructor explained, was that people tend to rise to the level of the expectations placed on them. If you tell them to call 911 and they don't have a cell phone, or they don't have signal or something, then they tend to sit there and do nothing or ask you to solve the problem.
But if you tell them to "get Ambulance" and they have a phone problem, they are a lot more likely to find a solution on their own.
I have also personally seen belief limit people's physical strength. I started lifting weights in College, I had wanted to lift weights in HS, but I was a skinny nerd and thought the jocks would laugh me out of the weight room.
In one of my college classes their was a bodybuilder, I asked him if he would help me learn to lift weights, and he said sure. I felt safe going to the gym with him, he was only 5'6" (1.68 Meters) tall, but he could bench press 400+ lbs (182+ kilos), it was like having a Big Brother (think Incontrol taking Idra to the gym).
If you read this Rick, thanks!
After I had been lifting for a while, Rick started telling me that sometimes, when I was doing benchpress, when I signaled for him to grab the bar, that I would finish the rep myself, as soon as his hands went under the bar, but before he actually touched the bar.
I would actually move the bar because I thought he was helping! I didn't really believe him at first, thought he was just trying to encourage me, even though he said it happens to everyone.
Then one day when I was spotting for him on bench press, he was stuck about 2/3 the way up for last rep and signaled me to help, and the minute I got my hands under the bar it shot up. I wasn't even touching the bar. Then I realized what he had told me was true.
A good Coach will be able to tell, at least some of the time, when you need to push harder at something. This is one of the most important things a Coach can do for you, since you really can't do it yourself. They will push you past your mental block! Or they will figure some way of tricking your brain for a moment, so you exceed what you thought was your potential!
Fear, the Internal Enemy
Fear is a natural safety mechanism to keep us from being eaten by Lions, Tigers, Bears, or whatever. But that part of our brain is very simple, it can't tell the the difference from imagined fear and a real Bear. So if we think something can hurt us, that part of our brain believes it.
Humans are social animals, which means among other things, that we care about our image because it affects our rank in the pack. So we tend to feel that losing hurts our image, just like wearing the wrong clothes or no clothes in certain situations. You can get stressed/afraid with SC2 either because you have told your brain that you get hurt when you lose or because you think it will affect your status. Or because of both.
To improve your Mindset you have to show your brain the opposite is true, because that part of the brain is simple, like a child. It will take lots of checking under the bed, for monster that hides there, before that part of your brain believes it. Start with controlling breathing, which is first aid for Stress/Fear when it is happening, like I mentioned on in an earlier post. If you need more detail on breathing google Zen (meditation) or Yoga breathing. I have more of a background in Zen, from martial arts & stress management for school & work.
Yoga breathing techniques quickly become very advanced, but if your even halfway good at most Yoga breathing techniques you will have far more breath control skill than you need for most SC2 pressure. Yoga would be a good component of practice for a Pro Gamer, not only do you learn superb Breath Control, you also learn a lot about flexibility and posture.
Other than breath control, you need to teach yourself that you can succeed & that losing can't hurt you. That will take LOTS of repetition. Start with schooling. Schooling, in the psychological sense, is providing a reward for any positive result no matter how small. But then as time goes by, requiring closer to the ideal action/performance to earn the award.
Example of schooling, that actual psychology students did to a prof, one day every time the prof moved towards one side of the room during a lecture they would pay attention and focus on the Professor. Whenever he went in the other direction they would look away or start playing with their pencils or whatever. They managed to get him crammed in the corner in response to this, then they told him what they had done.
Now if they had only rewarded or punished him when he was in one corner or the other it would never have worked. Lectures don't normally stand in the corners. But by schooling him, they were able to get him moving in the direction they wanted.
So work on telling yourself in game that your doing good, and that everything is okay. Reward yourself whenever you feel yourself relaxing when things are going bad in game. The reward can just be a mental, or even verbal to yourself, "good job".
Use Schooling by rewarding yourself for any progress at the beginning, but slowly make yourself work harder to earn that "good job". Ideally you want to get to the point were you can lose or win and not feel big difference either way, in game, this means your more relaxed and less stressed. So you will be able to perform better.
Note, I am not saying you can't still feel good or bad over winning or losing, more that keeping calm enough to stay focused in game will improve your performance.
One of the reasons that watching replays is so important, besides understanding why you lost, is to teach yourself that losing doesn't hurt you. You want to watch the replays calmly and relaxed, it is fine to watch them hour or two after your done playing for the day. Or to have a day of watching replays between days of playing.
That interval of time will help you to calm down and focus on the actual game play, without telling yourself that losing means your going to die. Additionally, if you and training partners both or all do this, then you will also have a social group to talk to about losing in a productive fashion, so you will be teaching yourself that you don't lose status because you lose a game.
Fact is you can gain status from losing a game, if you can learn how to become a stronger player by analyzing that replay.
Visualization, Closing the Circle
One of the best training tools in world only takes time and effort to use. It is called Visualization. It is used by Professional and Olympic Athletes among many many others. Breath Control and Meditation techniques from Zen or Yoga tie in very well with Visualization. Basically you imagine, or pretend, in your mind specific situation. Say that your being Six Pooled and you play Protoss.
You would imagine, with as much detail and precision as you can, what you would see and feel when you spot that. Then you would imagine the correct response. Getting pylon down in mineral line, microing Probes, etc. It is like using a simulator. Remember this part of the brain is very simple, like a child. It can not tell pretend, or imagination, from reality.
This type of practice has pretty much the same effect as "real" practice. Skilled people tend to use Visualization, whether they know it by that name or not, a lot. They may just call it "thinking about the game" or something else. One of the reasons Visualization is so important, is that you can use it anywhere & anytime as long as you can mentally focus on what you want to imagine.
It is a easy way to get in more practice without much risk of over training. You can also use Visualization as way to "replay" a game you lost. Or even a game you won, but were you made some mistake. You can just imagine the game as you played it, till you get to the mistake you made, then visualize the different game play and what responses the enemy would be likely to use.
If you really want to get good at this, start playing Chess as practice for SC2. Many/Most Chess Masters can play Blindfold Chess. While all Grand Master Chess players can play blindfolded. Because Chess is a TBS (Turn Based Strategy) game, you have to be able to visualize the game to be able to play well.
Further reading http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/819/1/Gobet_Campitelli_Minds%20eye.pdf
GL HF
~Cliff
One of the best training tools in world only takes time and effort to use. It is called Visualization. It is used by Professional and Olympic Athletes among many many others. Breath Control and Meditation techniques from Zen or Yoga tie in very well with Visualization. Basically you imagine, or pretend, in your mind specific situation. Say that your being Six Pooled and you play Protoss.
You would imagine, with as much detail and precision as you can, what you would see and feel when you spot that. Then you would imagine the correct response. Getting pylon down in mineral line, microing Probes, etc. It is like using a simulator. Remember this part of the brain is very simple, like a child. It can not tell pretend, or imagination, from reality.
This type of practice has pretty much the same effect as "real" practice. Skilled people tend to use Visualization, whether they know it by that name or not, a lot. They may just call it "thinking about the game" or something else. One of the reasons Visualization is so important, is that you can use it anywhere & anytime as long as you can mentally focus on what you want to imagine.
It is a easy way to get in more practice without much risk of over training. You can also use Visualization as way to "replay" a game you lost. Or even a game you won, but were you made some mistake. You can just imagine the game as you played it, till you get to the mistake you made, then visualize the different game play and what responses the enemy would be likely to use.
If you really want to get good at this, start playing Chess as practice for SC2. Many/Most Chess Masters can play Blindfold Chess. While all Grand Master Chess players can play blindfolded. Because Chess is a TBS (Turn Based Strategy) game, you have to be able to visualize the game to be able to play well.
Further reading http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/819/1/Gobet_Campitelli_Minds%20eye.pdf
GL HF
~Cliff
Thank you so much :) I really enjoyed this post.
ReplyDeleteYour welcome, and thank you!
ReplyDeleteVery nice! good work
ReplyDelete