While the off season is relatively short here in Norcal, there's always stuff to work on.
I have a laundry list of things I want to do to the race car "while I have time", but I also work on the driver in the off season. A few months back I spent a lot of time trying to find mental exercises that I can use to sharpen my skills while not on the race track. So here's one technique that I practice called "soft eyes". Read up on it at http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/softeyes.htm or Google search for it.
I practice on the street (safely, mind you). I try to soften my visual focus and use all of my peripheral vision to track the cars around me. See everything. All at once. In low resolution. I started off by trying to track everything in front of me, then added the rearview mirror, and then finally stretched it to encompass both side mirrors. I switch back and forth between focus and soft eyes. Switching back automatically is the hardest part, and takes effort to build the habit. Once I could do that every day, I started to do it and added random math problems (let's count out the powers of 13 or 17 or 29) to the exercise to simulate the kind of stuff I do during a race. I'm not adding numbers in my head during a race, but I'm always thinking. It could be strategy, or observing and storing where I could set up to pass someone on the next lap. Or even stealing someone else's line and figuring out why they're faster than me.
The more I train my brain to do the "easy" stuff automatically, the more I can use my brain to figure out the hard stuff. So I practice, and practice some more.
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1 comments:
Laz, having been a world class skeet shooter who trained under another world class skeet shooter I can tell you that regarding what you are calling "soft eyes" it was taught to me using your typical cat as an example. If you ever watch a cat sitting in a field all crouched down in the ready position you will notice he is not looking all over the place. Instead he is simply remaining unfocused on the entire area (field). For this reason, when there is any movement whatsoever and regardless how small, the cats eyes will react locking in on it at an amazing speed. If you practice this method you will get good at it. You can also try an experiment that can show you how well this works by focusing on an object and really staring at it. But when you do focus on an object you might not even see someone walk by or a car move someplace else. This means that you eyes have to "Un-focus" as if being ripped away and then your subconscious has to look and search for what has moved and then it still has to focus and adjust. All this takes a huge amount of time. While you are still un focusing and locating the object that moved the cat has already pounced on it. This same method can be included in race cars as well.
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