says
Spin and more spin.
says
Spin and more spin.
Well-Known Member
Super Moderator
I think you may be confusing thinking and planning with being focused and present with WHAT IS ACTUALLY DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU.
So, if you have a ball approaching you and are thinking of a whole bunch of things rather than letting what you see choose how you respond, you are not necessarily focused on what is in front of you which is exactly how you might end up not knowing which side of your shoes your umbrella is on or how you might miss that the match ended as you think you are focusing on what is directly in front of you but are really being overrun by thoughts that are in the backdrop of your mind rather than in the scene in front of you.
So, if you are in the middle of taking a shot and see your opponent break towards his FH before you have made the shot and, reading that, you don't think, or plan, or have a cognitive process, but change the shot to the opponent's BH, you were probably focused on what is in front of you. Which would be much different than all those cognitive processes that you described which would be much more likely to cause you to mess up on the shot because you were thinking too many things at once.
There does not need to be any thought in the matter, at least, if what you are talking about is an actual meditative process unfolding.
That process of, "here are 8 choices and which one should I choose, and what part of the ball should I contact for choice 4, and how much spin should I impart on the ball......etc" would be you paying attention to stuff that is not in front of you. If you are making the decisions spontaneously based on what you READ in the situation in front of you, which in table tennis would be the 1) what your opponent does, 2) the ball (and very much further in the background, 3) the table), then you are reading and responding to what is directly in front of you.
The other sounds more like trying to respond to last weeks coaching session while in a match that is not last week's coaching session.
That being said, how each of us play is how each of us play. I just would not call a whole bunch of mental activities going on all at once being focused on one thing to the exclusion of all other things. So, I am not sure all those thoughts in the middle of play would be describing how table tennis could be a meditative process.
I think one of the reasons why we train the strokes, the body mechanics, the technique, is so that, when we are in the actual act of playing, we don't have to think about the mechanics and we just respond to what is in front of us and make one of many useful choices based on what we see in front of us.
So, if you have a ball approaching you and are thinking of a whole bunch of things rather than letting what you see choose how you respond, you are not necessarily focused on what is in front of you which is exactly how you might end up not knowing which side of your shoes your umbrella is on or how you might miss that the match ended as you think you are focusing on what is directly in front of you but are really being overrun by thoughts that are in the backdrop of your mind rather than in the scene in front of you.
So, if you are in the middle of taking a shot and see your opponent break towards his FH before you have made the shot and, reading that, you don't think, or plan, or have a cognitive process, but change the shot to the opponent's BH, you were probably focused on what is in front of you. Which would be much different than all those cognitive processes that you described which would be much more likely to cause you to mess up on the shot because you were thinking too many things at once.
There does not need to be any thought in the matter, at least, if what you are talking about is an actual meditative process unfolding.
That process of, "here are 8 choices and which one should I choose, and what part of the ball should I contact for choice 4, and how much spin should I impart on the ball......etc" would be you paying attention to stuff that is not in front of you. If you are making the decisions spontaneously based on what you READ in the situation in front of you, which in table tennis would be the 1) what your opponent does, 2) the ball (and very much further in the background, 3) the table), then you are reading and responding to what is directly in front of you.
The other sounds more like trying to respond to last weeks coaching session while in a match that is not last week's coaching session.
That being said, how each of us play is how each of us play. I just would not call a whole bunch of mental activities going on all at once being focused on one thing to the exclusion of all other things. So, I am not sure all those thoughts in the middle of play would be describing how table tennis could be a meditative process.
I think one of the reasons why we train the strokes, the body mechanics, the technique, is so that, when we are in the actual act of playing, we don't have to think about the mechanics and we just respond to what is in front of us and make one of many useful choices based on what we see in front of us.
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