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I would strongly recommend the short book The Inner Game of Tennis: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003T0G9E4/
I once created a reading group of this book, it is that good, especially with the kinds of frustrations you are feeling.
The Inner Game of Tennis is a book that was recommended to my roughly 20 years ago by a lifer of a pool player, even has his own nickname. His recommendation was based on similar problems that I was having back then. I have passed on his recommendation dozens of times and I still own a copy. It's a quick and easy read and applies to your situation. It doesn't really "fix" anything but there are many similarities between tennis and billiard games (and boxing too!) and it addresses some of the difficulties of the mental performance side.
If you want to work on your mental game I'd suggest this book.
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
You can almost just replace tennis with pinball and it's still very accurate. The book applies to just about any sport.
More on the psychology side, but I'd recommend https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Ugly-Mental-Warfare-Tennis-Lessons/dp/067188400X
Ya I’m trying to convince myself that it means literally nothing to win or lose and to care about having a clean fun race and I think that might actually help make me faster. It’s always when you turn off that nervous “fucking win already” mindset that you find your groove I find. I had a good start today and then some bad splits and shit races and then a fourth in the second top split so I’m happy. I’m going to start imagining the other people as people just there to have fun and see if that helps. IRacing has revealed that I’m a really competitive person and I think I need to figure out how to fix that since, as you can see, it makes this less fun and more of a meaningless competition. If you’re interested, I’m reading a good book that is a classic book of sport performance and it has really great advice on how to improve yourself without resorting to the negative mantras:
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
It’s about tennis but it applies to all sport and even performing arts. It might help.
The book "The Inner Game of Tennis" touches upon a lot of this (altho, its about a different sport). I think it will resonate with you.
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
This is a book that has been going around in the Valorant community and is probably worth a read. It is designed to help you make sure you are always playing the best to your ability. You can probably borrow it from your library if you need to, a lot of libraries have e-books nowadays too that you can place a hold online for.
This is going to sound a bit stupid, but read "The Inner Game of Tennis"
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
It's not even really about tennis but about mastering the "inner voice" that's telling you what to do. It teaches you techniques about how to let that go and find an inner calm before you play. Basically, letting your body (in this case your hands) make the decisions while you become a passive observer to what's happening.
It's kind of hard to explain but IMHO it deals with exactly what you're talking about.
Generally because idi*ts infuriate me, glad you noticed.
You claim "22g per 100g". Glad you finally noticed it is "cups", after hours on end. Both 8g and 17g are far less than the 31g chicken and tuna offer.
Here you can buy his book and read his full diet, that while it includes many fruit and vegies, it has *daily intake of meat* in it. Still trying to argument that "so many athletes go vegan" by giving a non-vegan as an example, trying so hard to be dense?
https://www.amazon.com/String-Theory-Wallace-Library-Publication/dp/1598534807/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1X6M9F0YIBKRD&keywords=string+theory+david+foster+wallace+on+tennis&qid=1654429841&sprefix=string+theory+%2Caps%2C209&sr=8-1 Amazing essays on different aspects of tennis. Often referred to as the greatest tennis writing ever.
This book is about turning off the analytical part of your brain and letting your body do what it knows how to do. Changed my game.
The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679778314/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_SM70F0EZE8A66Y2SYPK3
I am reading this famous book about how to manage your concentration and nerves and self-doubt and it’s helping my racing:
It applies to any performance sport or art. Otherwise I do some deep long breaths and stretches before I start the race right after qualifying and then concentrate on breathing during races
Edit: I wouldn’t advocate for less practice. Yes more racing helps but you do need confidence and that comes from feeling like you know the track
It might sound weird, but The Inner Game of Tennis is one of the best books I’ve read to help with goaltending.
The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance https://www.amazon.com/dp/0679778314/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_PbwcCbKMP5KRC
It talks a lot about ways to get out of your head and stay in the moment. Ultimately you’ll hit a point where your body knows what it needs to do, and you just need to stop your mind from focusing on it.
I had a bad game last week where I let in a stupid soft goal. I banged my stick on the ice and was mad at myself. I thought I shrugged it off but a few seconds later they beat me on another soft goal, and a few seconds after that I got beat on a saveable one-timer. In sixty seconds I had mucked things up royally.
Between periods I joked with my team that the next time I stopped playing for 60 seconds I would just burn our timeout.
Consistency is the hardest thing to get down.
Just remember that you’re not defined by the worst game you ever played, but you’re also not defined by the best game you’ve ever played. What defines you is how those games average out over time.
During competition, less thinking is better. You want to pay attention to things happening on your lanes, and you want to be aware of yourself while you're bowling. But, you don't want to be up there trying to make your body do different things. That is what practice is for.
However. Most people only bowl once a week and practice time is hard to come by. If you have time to practice once or more a week great. Isolate what you want to work on for the day and do that. But, if league night is your only time you get to bowl during the season, you will have to decide how much you are willing to let your average dip. The goal being to bring it up higher later.
Also, I would get rid of the wrist device, unless you medically need it. The inner game of tennis is also a good read. Different ways to practice, improve, and clear your mind.
Yeah you're exactly right, a cancel is kind of like skipping the recovery of your attack by starting up another attack.
I can give you one big piece of advice that really helped me improve at fighting games. It's gonna sound pretty weird.
Do as little thinking as possible, even when you're playing against someone.
When you mess up a combo, don't think, "ugh I messed it up again" or "man, I keep doing that". Just keep playing. Likewise, when you finally land that combo you've been practicing over and over, don't think, "FINALLY!" or something like that. Just keep playing.
If you have the knowledge of what you want done, your body will naturally fix errors to that without you even thinking. In fact, thinking will actually make it slower for your body to adapt. The only thing that thinking stuff like, "I know I need to do this, but I keep doing that" will accomplish is making you frustrated. Just feel it out.
When you hear those cool kung fu quotes like empty your mind, this is more or less what they're referring to.
The time that you do want to think is when you're trying to figure out a complicated problem or when you're learning something new. Like you just lost a match to someone spamming the same move over and over. You'd want to go into training mode and think, "Okay, how do I beat that move?". Don't think that during a match though, unless you're not trying to win and just trying to figure out how to beat something. When you're too focused on fixing one thing in the middle of the match, the rest of your gameplay gets way worse. Either think about that stuff in between matches or in training mode.
It's a bit more complicated than this, there's a lot of subtle aspects to it. If you're interested in this topic, I'd recommend reading a book called "The Inner Game of Tennis".
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
If you have 2000+ hours in the game you definitely have the muscle memory for aiming and game knowledge decently solid already, but a big thing I find is that the mental side of my game can make me play from godly to dogshit. I think the mental side of the game is pretty underrated to everyday players unlike aiming/smokes/etc., and this book is a huge help for achieving what's called "effortless play". If you've ever felt very calm in a game and just hit ridiculous shots without thinking about them too much, you know what it feels like. Great book on a topic that's not valued as much as it should be.
Read this - I'm not kidding. I read this while in Fresh Meat, and after I finished it (in two days), I walked in the warehouse as a different skater. Never looked back.
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance-ebook/dp/B003T0G9E4
Nice, looks like one I'll add to my ever growing tbr list. We share similar tastes so I'd like to recommend you a few things:
Nottinghill Editions - publisher of modern essay writing
Kenzaburo Oe - Nobel prize winning author, for me he's writes the perfect novel
Library of American - similar to EL but only publish American authors, bit more expensive but most volumes are omnibuses
LOAs recent special edition of DFWs tennis writing link
Atlas of an anxious man
If you are serious about tilt, these two books are probably the highest rated books on this topic:
https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance/dp/0679778314
https://www.amazon.com/Mental-Game-Poker-Strategies-Confidence/dp/0615436137
Those two books apply to more than just Brawlhalla, of course.
Awesome reply, I'll definitely check out Inner Game of Tennis and Gladwell's article. For other's who might be interested but lazy, here's some links:
Thanks!
yes and no
you do have the talent to be a top notch infantry player.
situational awareness: angle coverage and position which derives from thought, thinking about what youve done and how it has worked, and what you intend on doing next.
twitch: aim/mouse sensitivity
honestly most of aim is your mouse sensitivity so once you get your equipment right, you are able to be you, plenty of you tubes devoted to that subject, if you havent read any go find them.
IF you are having trouble letting your inner twitch killer out, and just cant seem to learn
try this book: https://www.amazon.com/Inner-Game-Tennis-Classic-Performance-ebook/dp/B003T0G9E4?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect
I forgot to mention this, but I warmly recommend Zona: A Book About a Film About a Journey to a Room by Geoff Dyer. It's a beautifully written and arguably unclassifiable book (it's not film criticsm per se, nor it is an essay or even strictly speaking non-fiction; "personal stream-of-consciousness meditation" is the best I can offer) about the film, scene for scene, and about experiencing the film. It's amazing, and Dyer is an incredible writer.
Sounds like he needs to work on his mental game. Have him check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Inner-Game-Tennis-Performance/dp/0679778314
It is a short read and you can find a pdf of it online. It uses tennis as an example to talk about mental fortitude in competition in general.
I agree completely. I just found a couple of postures where I was shrugging my shoulders. Worked it out in a couple of sessions, but it was definitely bad form for ~20 years that was limiting options and leaving openings.
I highly recommend the book The inner game of tennis Really opened my eyes to how willfully ignorant we can be about ourselves when it's so easy to spot inefficiencies in others.
Read this book and you will play like a pro. Trust me.
The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003T0G9E4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1
I think I agree with you, although its kind of hard to tell. Also, for whatever reason tennis has had a strangely high number of very good black players considering that it is (or at least used to be) such a wealthy sport. Arthur Ashe was a top level player despite the fact that for a long time the only people he could practice against were other black players, who frankly weren't that good. Then when a lot of other players were boycotting South African tournaments because of apartheid he decided to go play there to draw attention to how arbitrary apartheid was. He is almost certainly the best philanthropist tennis player of all time but the only people who seem to know about him are tennis fans.
edit: I got most of this info from this book, which might be interesting to you based on the fact that you know who Althea Gibson is.
Already been done. It's called Playing to Win by David Sirlin. http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/
P2W is IMO slightly less useful than Winning Ugly by Brad Gilbert