When Delivering a Lawn Bowl the Score Should be Absent from your Mind

Sports commentators are always talking about the tension and nervousness that athlete’s must be feeling at critical times. The fact is: thoughts about winning or losing and the emotions associated with these are exactly what top athletes have been trained to banish from their mind. Outcome is supposed to become irrelevant; proper execution is everything. Once the routine of the learned behavior is begun, for many top athletes their subconscious takes over. The activity seems to proceed in slow motion (see http://ishi-in-sn.blogspot.com.au/2012/12/your-mind-heads-computer.html). To me, it seems the lawn bowler concentrates visually on the correct line, thinks of the correct weight and feels the proper arm motion. Everything else is pushed aside. It is even important to control breathing and heart rate because these, if different from normal, can adversely affect a normal delivery. Bowls announcers on the Australia network often comment that under pressure bowlers more often deliver too short. Thus deep breathing and muscle relaxation exercises can help.

Similarly sports commentators will talk about giving 110% or wanting to win more than the opponent. The top athlete does not buckle down more at certain times than others but aspires to peak performance throughout a contest. Wanting to win too much actually destroys performance; striving for your personal best, win-or-lose, by reproducing drilled performance results in more wins because it banishes worry and other distractions.