Welcome to competition season. It has begun.
On the way home from my daughter’s first competition last night, she told me she had an “out of body” experience during her routine. Of course I was intrigued and asked her explain. She said that at one point of her routine she looked into the crowd, realized that she was is the performing, everyone was watching her, and she couldn’t move.

Looking back on her routine she said she couldn’t remember any of it and it all seemed like a blur, except for that one spot. But that one time where she had an “out of body” experience really freaked her out. She felt alone and scared and uncomfortable. She wondered if that was what it felt like to be on drugs. I laughed and told her that her “out of body” experience was actually a point in her routine when she lost her focus. The rest of her routine that she can’t remember and felt like a blur was when she was deep in her zone and totally immersed in her routine. The good point was that it was clear to her that she didn’t like her “out of body” experience.
Those “out of body” experiences are actually when mistakes can happen. When we have those momentary lapse of focus and stop being in the zone, we can let a bunch of negative thoughts and doubts in our mind, or even forget about what we are supposed to do.
She asked me, “How if I can’t remember doing my routine and if it was all a blur, how was I able to perform it?”. I told her that she was in the zone. The zone is where your mind stops thinking and lets your body do what it was trained to do.
And just like that…she understood.
“That’s what it means when you say that you perform how you train in the gym or you win compeitions in practice or to stop thinking and just do it!”
Yes, yes it is.

When you train how you want to perform you actually train your muscles to do what you want them to do, even when you are not thinking about doing it.