Freestyle is a style of rap, with instrumental beats, in which rap lyrics are improvised, i.e. performed with no previously composed lyrics, or “off the top of the head”. The improvisational nature of freestyle is similar to that of jazz. This quality is likely to create the impression in many people that there is not considerable preparation or discipline involved.
Relatedly, Allen Braun, the chief of the language section of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), said that the same cognitive functions displayed during freestyle rap are used by athletes.
”If an athlete starts paying attention to what they’re doing, how they’re going to
move their body to catch a ball, they’ll clutch and they won’t do it.”
He is not wrong; however, there is more to freestyle than meets the eye. The ability to
improvise is based on extreme amounts of practice, intense preparation, and even a great deal of study and analysis. The skill of improvisation could not be mastered without hours of trial and error, practice, and diligent rehearsal. At that point, effective improvisation can occur.
Similarly, only through this preparation can athletes perform and improvise as the situations evolve on the field, court, or track. Many creative endeavors are mistakenly seen as simple acts of expression or manifestations of raw talent that need very little cultivation or development. In fact, the opposite is true.
The creative process involved in freestyle is crucial for successful rapping. The creative process requires a state of consciousness where we experience a task so deeply that it truly becomes enjoyable and satisfying. Excellence and success in rapping is often a result of Flow or the Flow State, first identified and popularized by the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He is universally hailed as the father of Flow and after decades of researching the characteristics of the “optimal experience” he wrote Flow: The Psychology of the Optimal Experience.
Freestyle is a great example of the importance of Flow as an ingredient for success.
The popular rapper, Eminem, brought freestyle to the masses in the film “8-Mile,” Eminem, along with Lil’ Wayne, is considered by many to be the pre-eminent freestyle rapper today. In a YouTube interview above, Eminem, displays the deep understanding and passion, the spontaneity, and the raw emotion that are the foundation of improvisation. During the interview, he describes his history and approach to freestyle. As the interview evolves, he mentions several important key elements in the development of his particular style and his ability to improvise. These elements have important implications in their application to any performance
situation or opportunity. These elements also are a source of creativity.
● Initial failure, disappointment and/or rejection.
● A period of disenchantment or quitting the activity altogether
● Re-emergence from failure or quitting.
● Re-dedication or obsession with activity
● Motivation and challenge of “figuring out the puzzle.”
● Strong need to study, study, study (mastery of the craft through practice and analysis).
● Appreciation of those who have gone before him.
● Discovery that this is “what I want to do with my life.”
● Activity provides individuals a source of strength, a voice, emotional outlet, or a means of expression.
● Creative endeavor provides a sense of belonging, teamwork, and/or comraderie (though, it can be an extremely solitary endeavor at times).
It is clear that the seminal experiences that Eminem described were the necessary ingredients for him to learn his craft, ultimately, perform at a high level and receive the critical and popular acclaim that he has received in the past decade. Thus, successful improvisation and creativity are products of hours and hours of intense and focused preparation.
The Zone - Finding Your Flow State
“Basketball is all mental. Everyone’s talent is the same, but the mental aspect
separates stars from superstars.”
-- former NBA guard Gilbert Arenas.
In earlier chapters we discussed the human brain and how it works. The part of the brain that contains logic, our decision-making and problem-solving capabilities fights fluidity. We like this or that. Things are right or wrong, good or bad, black or white, either/or, Go/no go. Our brain tends toward the binary and tends to be dualistic.
Our technology relies on a digital system of 0 and 1, nothing in between. Our brains like binary and fight fluidity. We were born non-binary. We learn binary systems to make sense and order the world. We evaluate and assess the world in binary terms. Evaluation requires a reliance on conventional and traditional models to put our world into a framework to achieve order.
However, our world contains much information that is non-binary. Our senses take in
information that is not binary, not dualist. Our brains tend to reject fluidity. Logic rejects that which is non-binary. Pick a side, choose one or the other. Create a boundary, set a limit.
Peak performance requires flow and fluidity. Peak performers know no boundaries. They see the world and their opportunities as limitless. Numerous athletes have experienced peak performances, such as baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson earning the name, “Mr. October” for hitting three home runs in one game in onlythree swings in the 1977 World Series game and basketball great Michael Jordan scoring 63
points against the Boston Celtics in a 1986 NBA playoff game.
Great performances by athletes become part of the sporting world legends: Kobe Bryant scoring 81 points against the Toronto Raptors, Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, Brett Favre passing for 399 yards and four touchdowns the day after the death of his father, Michael Phelps multiple Olympic gold medals.
Peak performance, or “in the zone,” “on a roll” or “having momentum,” are phrases athletes use to describe peak performances in which their highly-developed skills and abilities seem to be optimized. Interestingly, researchers in the field of sport psychology have studied these peak performances utilizing qualitative research. In 1999, Sue Jackson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi authored a book titled, “Flow in Sports: The Keys to Optimal Experiences and Performances.”
These two scientists highlighted common elements that help athletes achieve these peak performances. Most athletes will tell you they cannot predict when these optimal performances will happen.
Athletes report not being able to predict or control when they have a peak
performance. Ironically, athletes experience a sense of control while having these elite
experiences. Most athletes report after the fact that they feel in total control of a match or a game, although they are not acutely aware of this control at that time.
A second aspect reported by highly performing athletes is their perception of their own skills and the challenge awaiting them. In other words, athletes tend to experience peak performances when they know they are being challenged — not when they’re expecting an easy win or likely to lose to a superior opponent. Most flow performances seem to occur when athletes are being pushed or stretched to their limit.
Another aspect of these optimal sport experiences is that athletes say they clearly understand what they’re supposed to do. Said another way, their goals are vividly clear for the upcoming performance. For example, a golfer knows well in advance how he or she will play each hole in the next round of the championship tournament. In other words, athletes' minds are clear and they feel certain in their minds about their particular approach.
A fourth aspect to playing in the zone also is related to goals. While an athlete understands how he or she may play the next game, they are not concerned with outside goals or rewards related to the sport, such as trophies, fame or money (including endorsements) coming from a potential win. What is valued most during this unique time is the actual enjoyment of participating in the sport rather than potential rankings or financial incentives.
A fifth common element reported by athletes “in a groove” is being totally absorbed in their sport. For example, a football player is only thinking about playing football and not about other life circumstances — such as an impending family situation or projects unrelated to sports — during the game. While these other non-sport, life activities may be important, athletes report not being concerned with them while focused on their sport performance. They are able to be distraction free.
Interestingly, these aspects of peak performance may occur during other non-sport activities, such as acting in theatre, playing a musical instrument during a recital or giving a presentation to a large audience. While these types of performances are distinctly different, the commonalities of enlightened performance are similar.
These ultimate performances usually can’t be predicted, and many times athletes who have these performances are just as surprised as those of us who witnessed them.
Time Transformation
Interestingly, some athletes have indicated that their performances seem to happen very quickly, almost as if they can’t believe it when it’s over, while others say time moves in slow motion. During these slower motion experiences, athletes report seeming to have more time to hit a fastball, shoot a 3-pointer, or move through traffic during a race. In any case, while participating in the sport, the athlete’s sense of time is changed.
Another common experience of peak-performing athletes is effortless motion. In other words, athletes report that they don’t feel they are trying very hard and their performance is coming somewhat easily. In a related sense, athletes report having a heightened sense of control without being actively aware of this control. This type of control refers to control over their own movements and actions, not those of the opponents.
Usually during this experience, athletes may find they are unconcerned with their opponents’ actions. Another commonality of being “in the zone” is a combining of performance and awareness. Athletes usually report not having to think about what they are doing at the moment (“It just seems to happen.”) rather than purposely analyzing the action. Many athletes will describe this state as being “unconscious.”
A final element athletes report experiencing while playing in the zone is total concentration. For example, a soccer player may report being totally focused on the ball, not paying attention to crowd noise, referees or field conditions. Golfers report only caring about their swing and/or the ball, and even report that the ball may look larger than normal in this concentration mode.
Similarly, a basketball player with the “hot hand” will often claim while shooting that the basket seems larger than normal. What makes playing in the zone so remarkable is the pure pleasure athletes experience while in this altered state. Though participating in sports is usually fun for most, this unusual state is a rare, heightened sports moment. As any coach, athlete or sport psychology consultant would
likely state, “If there was just an effective way to make these occur more frequently ...”
Confidence
“My confidence got hurt coming into the league , but after seeing an old highlight
tape, I realized that it’s just basketball. I put all my frustration and energy into
basketball for two weeks. I did it, and I got to play, and I just decided that [my
intensity] is what got me on [the team], and this is what’s going to keep me on it.”
-- former NBA guard Gilbert Arenas, who was drafted 31st overall in the second
round of the NBA draft; he expected to go higher.
One of the most over-used concepts in sports and performance psychology is self-confidence. Nevertheless, this concept holds considerable legitimacy and power as a key ingredient in success and winning in sports, politics, business, and life.
The limitation of this concept lies in the individualistic nature of its use. When we think of self-confidence, our view remains within the confines of the individual athlete. Though some sports are obviously team sports and some are individual sports, the burden to maximize self-confidence lies in the individual performer.
“Confidence is only born out of one thing—demonstrated ability. It is not born of
anything else. You cannot dream up confidence. You cannot fabricate it. You cannot
wish it. You have to accomplish it. Macho or swaggering kinds of confidence many
times are just a cover-up for lack of confidence. I think that genuine confidence is
what you really seek from your team and your individual players. That only comes
from demonstrated ability.”
--Bill Parcells, former NFL head coach of the New York Giants (with whom he won
two Super Bowls),the New England Patriots (with whom he led to a Super Bowl
appearance), the New York Jets (who he guided to the 1998 AFC Championship
game), and the Dallas Cowboys (who he returned to the playoffs in 2004 after a
long hiatus). Parcells was later an executive with the Miami Dolphins until 2010.
Individually, perhaps no one had more self-confidence than Muhammad Ali, an individual boxer. We consider professional tennis players Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, the Williams sisters, and Maria Sharapova to have supreme self-confidence. At the team sport level, we have assumed for years that the Chicago Bulls lived off of the off-the-chart self-confidence of Michael Jordan. Most people believe that the New England Patriots lived off the self-confidence of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan are considered to be the fulcrum of the championship confidence that the San Antonio Spurs have established over two decades as an elite NBA franchise. Andy Murray, former Wimbledon champion, was considered to have extreme self-confidence (at least, before a series of injuries kept him off the court and led him to retire in 2019).
Regardless of the sport, mental conditioning coaches and sports psychologists talk about self-confidence and mental toughness primarily in individual terms and typically intervene at the individual level. Though somewhat effective, perhaps the truth of confidence lies at the group or organization level and beyond. Even individual athletes in individual sports have coaches, trainers, agents, caddies, families, etc.
If self-confidence is affected by how unsure an individual feels as a result of each setback or barrier to success, then their individual mindset is the unit of measure. This maintains the burden to remove that feeling on the individual, and, perhaps, his or her willingness to be influenced by others (coaches, teammates, fans, etc,). The ultimate focus and burden lies on his/her self-confidence and, therefore, his/her performance.
Self-confidence is commonly defined as the sureness of feeling that the individual (even if a part of a team) is equal to his or her task at hand. The media and the fans as well as coaches and players tend to see the problem of self-confidence to ultimately lie at the individual level.
A better definition of confidence is one offered by Rosabeth Moss Kanter. It is the ability to envision a positive outcome. This definition of confidence does not contain itself to the limits of the individual but focuses on the outcome.
The Secrets of Self-Efficacy: An Important Component of Confidence
According to psychologist Albert Bandura, performers’ situational-specific confidence, or ‘self-efficacy’, is based on four primary sources of information.
According to Bandura, there are four major sources of self-efficacy.
1. Mastery Experiences
”The most effective way of developing a strong sense of efficacy is through mastery
experiences,” Bandura explained (1994). Performing a task successfully strengthens our sense of self-efficacy. Past performances and accomplishments strengthen our confidence. What we have achieved in training and competition forms the basis of future expectations of success or failure. Repeated success naturally leads to positive expectations of further success, higher motivation and enhanced self-belief. However, failing to adequately deal with a task or challenge can undermine and weaken self-efficacy.
Unfortunately, the drawback of this principle is that failure can give rise to a downward performance spiral and a ‘snowball effect’ whereby a performer starts to believe that success is unattainable.
2. Social Modeling
Witnessing other people successfully completing a task is another important source of
self-efficacy. According to Bandura, “Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers’ beliefs that they too possess the capabilities to master comparable activities to succeed” (1994).
3. Social Persuasion
Bandura also asserted that people could be persuaded to believe that they have the skills and capabilities to succeed. Consider a time when someone said something positive and encouraging that helped you achieve a goal. Getting verbal encouragement from others helps people overcome self-doubt and instead focus on giving their best effort to the task at hand.
4. Psychological Responses
Our own responses and emotional reactions to situations also play an important role in self-efficacy. Moods, emotional states, physical reactions, and stress levels can all impact how a person feels about their personal abilities in a particular situation. A person who becomes extremely nervous before speaking in public may develop a weak sense of self-efficacy in these situations. However, Bandura also notes “it is not the sheer intensity of emotional and physical reactions that is important but rather how they are perceived and interpreted.”
By learning how to minimize stress and elevate mood when facing difficult or challenging tasks, people can improve their sense of self-efficacy.
High Levels of Self-Efficacy
As a result of these four sources of experience, people with a strong sense of self-efficacy:
● View challenging problems as tasks to be mastered.
● Develop deeper interest in the activities in which they participate.
● Form a stronger sense of commitment to their interests and activities.
● Recover quickly from setbacks and disappointments.
Of course, such an athlete does not mysteriously lose his or her physical skills and talents, but without confidence in these abilities high-level performance is rarely achieved. This is the ‘expectation trap’, which has put many gifted athletes into permanent decline. In research, confidence has been shown to consistently distinguish between highly successful and less successful athletes. Although many people mistakenly assume that confidence reflects performance-i.e. we become confident once we have performed consistently well-it is becoming increasingly evident that confidence can be established, or ‘manufactured’ beforehand.
But let’s look at this systemically. What if confidence were not placed at the feet of individuals to be collected individually like bowling scores?
What if the real burden of confidence and success were shared by all of the major stakeholders of the team, the players and the coaches as a collective entity?
What if there were a greater collective score, called Collective Team Confidence, multiplied by the alchemy of all stakeholders in the outcome of a practice session, a game or a season? Then, confidence would not be held in small buckets with little influence or interaction with other amounts in other buckets. Confidence would be free to interact, to influence the entire team, as a whole through their collective sense of confidence.
Ubuntu: South African concept of selflessness, unity and teamwork
”When the team is elevated, the individual is elevated; when the team is diminished, the individual is diminished.”
”The strength of a team is its players; the strength of the players is the team.”
Ubuntu is an ethic or humanist philosophy focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other. The word has its origin in the Bantu languages of Southern Africa. Ubuntu is seen as a traditional African concept. Ubuntu was introduced to the Boston Celtics by then head coach Doc Rivers. The Celtics chanted “ubuntu” when breaking a huddle during the 2007-2008 season. It proved to be successful as Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and veteran Celtic Paul Pierce blended their talents with
the other teammates to win an NBA championship. Their NBA championship that year was an example of great individual talent yielding to the team concept.
”A person is a person through another person. I can’t be all I can be unless you are all you can be. There’s an amazing amount of hurt that goes with that. The only way you’re going to win is that you’ve got to open yourself up to hurt. You’ve got to open yourself up and go for it. You may have to pass more, you may have to set an extra pick, you may have to dive on the floor for a loose ball. You can’t do it by yourself. Individuals don’t win, teams win,” said Doc Rivers, former Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers and Philadelphia 76ers head coach; and current head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.
With this new mindset, the responsibility for the level of confidence and, therefore, performance, could be placed at a higher level, a more effective level: at the system level, the social or community level. What if we really begin to locate, measure, and hold the larger entity with the responsibility and burden of performance? Then, confidence would no longer be held at the level of the individual athlete.
For example, if an individual athlete were no longer the locus of confidence, he/she would also no longer be individually responsible for exhibiting, maintaining, and evaluating their level of confidence at a micro level. What if their swagger or the vibe they project was no longer the measuring stick? What if their individual play, through the ebb and flow of individual performance, mistakes, missteps and moment-by-moment was no longer the unit of measure or all to praise or ridicule? What if confidence were managed at the macro level?
Experts in the field have concluded that Confidence is affected by six factors:
● Performance Accomplishments
● Involvement in the Success of Others
● Verbal Persuasion
● Imagery Experiences
● Psychological States
● Emotional States
You may notice that Bandura’s four factors of self-efficacy are included in this list of six confidence factors. Performance accomplishments are the strongest contributor to sports confidence. However, if we only see this happening or only evaluate this factor at the individual level, through individual scores, individual statistics, and individual accomplishment, we leave much to chance and leave much collective confidence on the table. Particularly, only team success should breed confidence, while only repeated team failure should diminish it. Individual self-confidence would then have little to do with it.
Individuals who experience success while being involved with the success of others can also significantly bolster collective confidence. It is contagious, regardless of the individual talent levels of the teammates. Verbal persuasion involves attempting to change the attitudes and behavior of those around us, and this includes changing their self-confidence.
In sports, coaches often try to boost confidence by convincing individual athletes that the challenge ahead is within their individual capabilities: ‘I know you’re a great player so keep your head up and play hard!’ However, if confidence is not centered on the individual but the collective group, the task is more manageable and, once again, relies on contagion.
Imagery experiences have to do with athletes recreating multi-sensory images of successful performance in their mind. This imagery also should be team rather than individually focused. Imagery that is focused on the team is more likely to be successful and less dependent on the abilities of accurate evaluation by the individual.
Through creating such valuable team mental representations, mastery of a particular team task is far more likely. If the responsibility for confidence mistakenly lies with the individual, then, the physiological state of anxiety can quickly reduce feelings of confidence. This anxiety in turn can affect performance through phenomena such as muscular tension, palpitations and butterflies in the stomach. The psychological and emotional states that negatively affect performance at the individual level can be controlled more easily if the responsibility for confidence lies with and is
shared by the team and the entire organization.
When we look closely at the concept of confidence in this way, it is much easier to manage and master.