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Desperate Practice

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.” — Janis Joplin

A caveman walks the savanna. From a bush comes a rustle, making him stop and weigh odds. That sound could mean a nice meal snagged on a branch or a predator that will make him the meal.

Even in this moment eons ago, the fight-or-flight response guides action. This time it tells him to stay safe, so he leaves.

Two weeks later the same caveman hears the same sound. He again weighs odds, and this time hunger drives his fight-or-flight choice. He heads to the sound, and we’ll leave his story there, because we don’t know if he ate or was eaten.

We know one thing, though. Desperation drives change. When people can’t stand where they are or what they’re doing, they try something else.

You see it all the time in sports. If a hockey team is losing in the last few minutes of a game, it will replace its goalie with an attacker. This leaves its own goal wide open, but at that point the team figures it has nothing to lose.

Desperation, in fact, comes from two Latin words meaning “without hope.” Without hope you change your decisions and your behavior. It happens in everything from hockey to crime to cramming for exams.

This raises a question for those who aim for peak performance. As the game/test draws near, they get more and more desperate. What if they could find that sense of desperation at the start of practice, instead of at the end?

Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs became a best-seller, but he never knew that — he finished them three days before he died.

Now that’s desperation.

He needed the money to support his family.

Desperation will go on display at the end of the NFL playoff games and the Super Bowl. But how about at the start of the game? Or, even better, in practice? Or off-season training?

You might say that discipline could help. Set your standards, and practice to that level. Even that might not work. You would need something else, namely, a sense of danger.

Nothing gets your nervous system’s attention like a threat. Your breathing, blood pressure and heart rate go up. Your pupils widen and your senses go on full alert. When the threat passes, it all goes back to where it was.

You can’t live on full alert. Your body could not stand the stress. But you could practice with pain in mind: the pain of your last loss, the pain of losing a job, the pain of missing an opportunity.

You can call this “connected” practice — when you connect what you’re doing now to the test that awaits, whether it’s tomorrow or, in the case of Olympic athletes, years from now.

Coaching legend John Wooden said, “Confidence comes from being prepared.”

Even if you can’t create true desperation, the closer you come to it in practice, the better you will feel when you hear the rustle in the bushes.











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