It’s No Surprise that Flexible Thinkers are the Best Athletes
Yesterday I wrote about classifying athletes into four types based on the way the athlete focuses their thinking. These four types are categorized based on the direction of focus being either internal or external and the breadth of their focus being either broad or narrow.
The names given to these four styles are as follows:
- The Analytical Athlete: internal, broad
- The Quarterback: external, broad
- The Home Run Hitter: external, narrow
- The Marathon Mind: internal, narrow
Athletes who are very rigid with their thinking fit into only one of these four categories. Athletes who are flexible with their thinking are able to shift their thinking style from one category to another based on the situation.
It should be no surprise that flexible thinkers are better athletes than rigid thinkers. The reason for this is that flexible thinkers are less mistake prone. Robert M. Nideffer, Ph.D., author of the The Inner Athlete explains this quite nicely. He states:
…flexibility of attention is vital. Errors occur when your flexibility breaks down. For most of us there is a consistency to the type of error we make because we have difficulty developing one or more of the four styles described. This means we often enter a competitive situation with the wrong attentional style…
Obviously the purer and less flexible your attentional style, the more difficulty you have adapting to changing conditions. Each of us has to recognize our attentional limitations. One way of doing this is by becoming aware of the types of errors which occur because of some specific attention deficit.