
Attentional focus effects on running economy and kinematics - bookofjoe
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30307374
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derrida
I would expect that the type of attention is important. In meditation, when
first instructed to focus on their breath, a lot of people alter their breath
patterns. The practice is getting the attention that rests with the natural
breath. Then knowing the quality of that attention, it's possible to see other
phenomena without interferance.

My guess is these runners didn’t have this attentional skill.

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m0zg
Musicians have known this since the beginning of time. The only way to play a
fast passage flawlessly is by not thinking about what your hands do. Once you
start thinking, you're screwed.

Martin Miller explains why here, incorporating the recent neuroscience finding
about latencies inherent in human perception and motor throughput:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ft6p6dqWWY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ft6p6dqWWY)

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ctchocula
> Musicians have known this since the beginning of time. The only way to play
> a fast passage flawlessly is by not thinking about what your hands do. Once
> you start thinking, you're screwed.

Thanks, as a new piano learner that intuitively makes sense to me. However, my
friend who's a much better piano player than me told me that you can't master
a song unless you've memorized it. After a piano player has memorized a song,
don't they naturally look down on their hands and think about what they're
playing? I'm wondering how your conjecture jives with memorized pieces, so any
insight there would be awesome.

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m0zg
You don't memorize (or think about) individual finger movements or notes, you
memorize chunks of movements/notes. Watch the video, it's not a "conjecture",
it has a solid grounding in science and it's not specific to the guitar.
Looking at your hands is pointless anyway when playing at speed because what
you see with your mind has happened 100-120 milliseconds in the past, and by
the time you react to it, all hope is lost. So you're better off not looking.
This is also the reason why you can't stabilize coffee in a cup if you look at
it carefully when carrying the cup: it simply can't be done latency-wise.

Likewise hearing and touch have their latencies as well, although they are
lower than that of vision, but even so, 60ms of proprioceptive latency
(+whatever decision and motor latency you need to incur to close the loop)
limits how fast you can realistically play. So the way fast things are played
is you only control "key points" and let your motor memory sort of interpolate
in between. Key points form a closed loop, stuff in between is fire-and-
forget.

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heavenlyblue
There's a good example outside music which is related to this: standing
upright while your eyes are closed (to make it more complex you should keep
one of your legs off the ground e.g. as in yoga).

If you start thinking about what you should do - you will most certainly start
falling, since you begin to overcompensate for your micro movements.

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klyrs
As a fiddler, I understand this perfectly. If I can just play and listen to
the music, it's almost easy. There's a bowing pattern which is particularly
vexatious... if I so much as see my wrist in the mirror, I notice the curious
alternation, and I completely lose it. Neurologically, this makes sense to me
too -- muscle memory goes all the way down to our extremities; it seems like
the attention snaps my arm out of autopilot.

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hahajk
I’m always surprised how much a small typo early in a reading can affect my
opinion of what might otherwise be a very well-done paper.

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mhb
Yes. It is generous of you to call it a typo.

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Noumenon72
It might still be worthwhile, if focusing improves your unconscious breathing
later. I'm always trying to do things a little different to see what I can
learn.

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bookofjoe
Yes! Take a new route, try a different sequence in routines, jar the everyday
off its tracks: I do this as much as possible to get a glimpse of roads
otherwise not taken and parallel worlds.

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darkerside
Were these trained or untrained runners? I'd be shocked if trained runners
lost efficiency when focusing on running technique.

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bo1024
I wouldn't be shocked. (Disclaimer: only read the abstract.) My guess: when
focusing on technique, you control your limbs more carefully through the whole
range of motion, so you're engaging a bunch of extra muscles more than when
just relaxing.

