Why playing challenging material is important

Jennifer Mackerras (teaches Alexander Technique in Bristol) playing recorder

“I just want to play freely – I don’t want to feel uncomfortable”

Often as musicians, we find ourselves playing challenging material – something that is just a little beyond where we feel comfortable. That’s certainly true as we are learning an instrument. I think it’s also true in other areas: I’ve found while training for my next 10km race, often the running that my training programme requires involves me feeling a bit pushed.

And we can have ambivalent reactions to that feeling of discomfort when playing challenging material. Working with amateur musicians, particularly, I often hear the desire to feel comfortable while playing. People want to play easily – they want it to be flowing. They want to be able to ‘switch off’ a little bit and enjoy themselves. They certainly don’t want to feel ‘on the edge’!

Certainly, we don’t want to be ‘on the edge’ all the time. I think it’s important that we rest, and that we take the time to revisit material so that we CAN take a step back and enjoy our music-making (or training…).

On the other hand, I’ve read some material recently that gives good solid evidence for why playing challenging material – at least some of the time – is important for our growth and creativity.

Playing challenging material helps us gain mastery

When we work on playing challenging material, we are effectively improving our ‘neural networks’. Particularly with complex physical skills like driving a car, playing sports, dancing, or playing a musical instrument, there are too many lines of thought happening at once for them all to be controllable in working memory. When we practise we link parts of the skill together into ‘chunks’ that enable us to streamline how many things we actually need to process. [1]

Mastery in pretty much any field could be defined (in part) by how effectively the performer in question has created ‘chunks’ that help them carry out their skill. Psychologist Adriaan de Groot found this when he studied the ability of novice and master chess players to recreate a chess board from memory. The masters could do it easily, but only if the boards resembled patterns from a real game. If the pieces were random, they did no better than the novices. The chess masters didn’t have better memories – they simply had more experience of more boards. They could divide what they saw into chunks for easy use. [2]

If we work on creating chunks of information by consistently working on challenging ourselves with new and trickier material, we can improve our performance, too.

Playing challenging material helps us expand our limits

The improvement of mastery from creating chunks alone can help us expand our limits so that we can do/play more challenging material. But we may be expanding our limits in another way, too. In her book Cure, author Jo Marchant describes the ‘central governor’ theory of physical exertion: the concept that we all have a ‘limiter’ in our brains that prevents us from exerting ourselves beyond safe levels. Many believe that particular kinds of physical training – like short-burst high intensity interval training – help to retrain the central governor so that we can exert ourselves a little further.[3] But what if this is true on a psychological level, too?

Psychologist Wendy Mendes studies the effect of changes of attitude to stressful situations on our sympathetic nervous systems. Mendes has found that, put very simply, how we mentally approach a challenging situation determines how stressed we get. If we look on a challenging situation as scary, we will have a larger and longer-lasting adrenaline response than if we look on the same situation as exciting.[4]

As FM Alexander found when investigating his own vocal problems, we can often have inaccurate concepts of what it is that we are doing. We can think we are doing an activity in a certain way, but actually be doing it very differently to how we imagine! [5] This is equally true of activities or material we find challenging. What if the challenge isn’t actually in the activity itself, but exists purely in the way that we perceive it?

If, therefore, we accustom ourselves to testing our limits by playing challenging material, we are improving our ability to mentally approach challenge. We will be better able to cope under pressure.

Accept the challenge, but accept it wisely

A bit of a challenge, then, is a good thing. It helps us achieve mastery, and enables us to expand our concept of where our limits might lie. It gives us experience that will enable us to cope better under pressure. Just remember to be mindful that the challenge you accept is also realistic. A newbie mountain climber should probably not choose Everest for their first major challenge. Even a relatively skilled pianist might be biting off more than they can chew if they choose some works by Liszt (or virtually anything by Alkan!).

So make sure the challenge pushes you a bit, and then work at it. The results might astonish you.

 

[1] Oakley, B., A Mind for Numbers, Penguin, Kindle ed., p.55.

[2] Katwala, A., The Athletic Brain, London, Simon & Schuster 2016, p.33f.

[3] Marchant, J., Cure, Edinburgh, Canongate, 2016, p.80.

[4] ibid., p.171.

[5] Alexander, FM., The Use of the Self, London, Orion, 1985, p.33.

“I’m not used to this” – how careful practice overcomes stage fright

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Is stage fright normal, instinctive, and something you are born with? Or is it a learned, rules-based set of behaviours? And if this is so, can we learn new rules, so that practice overcomes stage fright?

This is an argument that occupies a lot of my working hours, because many of my students would prefer to believe that stage fright is, if not wholly, then certainly almost entirely an instinctive thing that one is born with. I, on the other hand, have come to believe that stage fright is learned. Though some people may be more predisposed than others, stage fright is largely a rules-based set of behaviours.

Why do I believe this? Because I keep encountering evidence that seems to suggest that rules play a determining role in stage fright. This week, for example, while driving through town I was lucky enough to catch a radio broadcast of one of the BBC Proms, in which the Camerata Nordica played a  gorgeous selection of British music by Britten, Tippett, and Walton. The most fascinating section of the concert for me (from a professional perspective) was when a viola player from the Camerata Nordica, Catherine Bullock, came forward to play the solo part in a late Britten work called Lachrymae. She was interviewed by BBC presenter Clemency Burton-Hill prior to performing, and was described as “inching towards the front of the stage.”

This is a portion of the short interview that followed:

Burton-Hill: What’s it like to step out of the orchestra and come to the front of the stage, as it were?
Bullock: Well obviously it’s quite scary. [laughs nervously] I’m an orchestral musician by trade, I’m not used to this.*

I was so astonished I had to stop the car! Ms Bullock is an accomplished, experienced musician. Her performance of the work following the interview was one of great depth and beauty. She has been onstage as a performer many, many times. And yet she was very nervous. Why?

Ms Bullock gives us the answer: she is an orchestral musician by trade. She is accustomed to being part of an ensemble, and so even though it is still performing, because she is used to doing it, it doesn’t bother her unduly. Being a soloist, on the other hand, is not something she is accustomed to, and it therefore is a cause for concern and worry. Put simply, she has a belief (borne of experience) that ensemble playing is normal, but solo playing is not. She has not had sufficient experience to describe herself as a practiced soloist.

I see this frequently with my students when they are faced with performing in a sphere they are not used to. A person used to teaching classes of teenagers is nervous about giving an after-dinner speech. An accomplished speaker is terrified of his first choir performance. An actor who specialises in improv experiences nerves doing a scripted play. I’m sure you have your own version of this.

So how do we deal with it? How do we ensure our nerves and our beliefs about what is normal don’t get the better of us?

  1. Accept that nerves are normal. When we do something out of our comfort zone, nerves are normal. That’s our primitive lizard brain preparing us to fight or flee. Typically, if we just accept that some nerves will happen, the extent and duration of the nerves aren’t as long.
  2. Knowledge is power. Knowing that we are being tripped up because we are doing something a little different is helpful. But knowing that, logically, it isn’t that different a situation to our comfort zone also helps.
  3. Practice overcomes stage fright. How did we end up with a comfort zone, whether it be speaking, teaching, or improv? Typically, by just getting on and doing it! The first time we try anything, we are likely to feel fear. The more familiar we are with an activity, and the more times we have success, the less stressful we are likely to find it.
    So if you are about to do something new, like performing your first solo, find a nice small friendly audience to play to first. They’ll enjoy it, and you’ll get some valuable experience under your belt. FM Alexander advised teachers of his work to set up for students a series of situations or a “a process which ensures that the pupil’s experiences will be, with rare exceptions, satisfactory experiences, which make for confidence.”**

Doing activities outside of our usual sphere is likely to be unsettling, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly frightening. If we take care of ourselves, we can rise to the challenge with enthusiasm, and succeed magnificently.

 

* Taken from http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b039c5f6/Afternoon_on_3_Proms_2013_Repeats_PSM_5_Camerata_Nordica/#programme-info, accessed 5 September 2013. It should remain available to listen to for a few more days, but only for UK residents, I fear…
** FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, Irdeat complete ed., p.339.
Image by Tina Phillips, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Re-evaluate: what to do if you venture too far out of your comfort zone

This is the sixth part of a short series on how to go about pushing your comfort zone and trying new stuff. Week 1 was about why it’s a good idea to leave your comfort zone. In week 2 we explored how our fear of getting it wrong can hold us back, and how to move past it. Week 3 was all about starting from where you are instead of waiting for perfect timing or conditions. Week 4 was about finding and practicing all the elements that will make up your activity. And last week we learned about the Trust Gap.
This week? What to do if you discovered you’ve ventured too far out of your comfort zone.

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I was never a brave person when I was young. Not physically brave. So there were lots of things that I have simply never tried. One of those was skating. My son had tried ice skating last year and really enjoyed it. So this winter, for my birthday, I decided that it would be fun for the family to go ice skating. My son would have a great time, and I would get to move out of my comfort zone and try something completely new.

But as the day approached, I began to realise that I was making a big mistake. I had a sense that I was moving a little too far outside of my comfort zone. I had a growing awareness that this activity was not one that felt comfortable for me.

One of my friends on Twitter, the lovely Paula White, had a similar thing happen to her recently. She had entered a triathlon, but discovered during the course of training that she had taken on a larger challenge than she was comfortable with. Training sessions, especially in the pool, were becoming anxiety-producing affairs. But Paula is intelligent, brave and resourceful. So she did the only sensible thing. She decided not to do the triathlon.

Sometimes we set ourselves goals, and decide to push our comfort zones. But sometimes we set those goals a little too ambitiously. Or once we start the process we’ve decided is best for achieving our goal, we discover that it involves many more steps than we thought at first. Or we may even discover that our desire to achieve our goal is eclipsed by other priorities.

In those instances, deciding to step away and re-evaluate is A Good Thing.

FM Alexander was very clear about what made for a successful pattern within education (and life):

Confidence is born of success, not of failure, and our processes in education and in the general art of living must be based upon principles which will enable us to make certain of the satisfactory means whereby an end may be secured, and thus to command a large percentage of those satisfactory experiences which develop confidence…*

In other words, when we are constructing a plan that takes us outside of our comfort zone, we should be aiming for a series of successful experiences that build confidence. If we are having a consistent series of unsuccessful experiences that leave us feeling anxious or unhappy, there’s something wrong. Either we need to change the way we’re going about the activity, or we need to re-adjust our expectations of what we want to achieve.

So if you’re feeling anxious about leaving your comfort zone, don’t be alarmed at first. But take note of the anxiety. If you are consistently finding that your experiences of the process to achieve your goals are filled with unhappiness and negativity, then maybe you need to re-evaluate.

Remember: there is no shame in quitting, just as there is positive benefit in being wrong and making mistakes. Knowing when to quit is just as important a skill as knowing when to continue. So if you feel as if you’re too far outside your comfort zone, stay “in communication with your reason,”** and make sure you re-evaluate. A little fear is good, but a whole lot? Maybe not so much.

* FM Alexander, Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, IRDEAT edition, p. 425.
** FM Alexander, Man’s Supreme Inheritance, op.cit., p.159.
Image by renjith krishnan, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Trust Gap: why we never quite feel performance ready

This is the fifth part of a short series on how to go about pushing your comfort zone and trying new stuff. Week 1 was about why it’s a good idea to leave your comfort zone. In week 2 we explored how our fear of getting it wrong can hold us back, and how to move past it. Week 3 was all about starting from where you are instead of waiting for perfect timing or conditions. Last week was about finding and practicing all the elements that will make up your activity.
And this week? We stare into the depths of the trust gap!

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I’ve experienced it as a musician. I’ve experienced it as an actor and workshop leader. I certainly experienced it as a newbie runner. I bet you’ve probably experienced it too. The gnawing fear – just as you’re about to start the performance/talk/whatever – that you’re not quite performance ready.

You’ve practiced. Golly, you’ve practiced. You’ve worked hard on what you’re about to do. But at that moment, that critical moment as you move from not doing into doing, you experience a particular kind of fear.

I don’t know how this is going to turn out.

And sometimes that feeling is stronger than at other times. In my own experience, I have felt least worried about being performance ready when I’m doing something I do a lot. When I run Alexander Technique workshops, for example, the uncertainty is only momentary. And it doesn’t bother me much when I go onstage with my recorder quintet.

But when I’m doing something that is new, or when I’m doing something familiar but in a new context, I notice that the uncertainty over being performance ready is much stronger. For example, in the final week before the Bristol 10k, every training run was plagued with recurring thoughts along the lines of ‘Am I ready?’ or ‘Will I be able to make it?’ And I know a lot of people get very concerned when they start having the ‘performance ready’ jitters. They take it as a sign of something bad. I have worked with a lot of young actors, and they almost invariably think it’s a bad sign.

It’s not a bad sign.

It’s normal.

The point is, whenever you are about to go into an activity, whether it is running or acting or playing a musical instrument or hitting a tennis ball or picking up a cup of tea… Ultimately, you never know quite how it is going to turn out. Pretty much all singers will tell you that they can sing the same song, even in the same venue at pretty much the same time of day, and it will be different every time. Same with tennis balls and cups of tea.

You can do the preparation. You can get yourself to a very high standard of performance readiness. But you will never know quite how it will turn out. There will always be a chasm between preparation and performance. Practice can make the chasm smaller, but you will always need to make the jump.

And that’s the fun. That’s where the magic happens!

But it’s also where the fear happens. Because we worry about it going all wrong. We don’t want to feel the pain of failure, so we are tempted to do more than we need to in order to feel good. We are tempted, in short, to move beyond our training and lost the very sense of being performance ready that we fought so hard to attain.

This is the way FM Alexander put it:

I must be prepared to carry on with any procedure I had reasoned out as best for my purpose, even though that procedure might feel wrong. In other words, my trust in my reasoning processes to bring me safely to my “end” must be a genuine trust, not a half-trust needing the assurance of feeling right as well.*

The chasm between ‘performance ready’ and performance is just a trust gap. If we trust in our preparation, we will be fine.

What comfort zones are you preparing to leave? Are you ‘performance ready’? And will you maintain the trust in your hard work and planning?

*FM Alexander, The Use of the Self, IRDEAT edition, p.427.
Image by federico stevanin, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Practice the little things! Hunt for hidden assumptions when leaving the comfort zone.

This is the fourth part of a short series on how to go about pushing your comfort zone and trying new stuff. Week 1 was about why it’s a good idea to leave your comfort zone. In week 2 we explored how our fear of getting it wrong can hold us back, and how to move past it. Last week was all about starting from where you are instead of waiting for perfect timing or conditions. This week is about finding hidden assumptions and practicing all the elements that will make up your activity.

 

This time I have for you a cautionary tale about the dangers of hidden assumptions, and the vital importance of remembering to practice the little things.

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This is a water bottle. It is, in fact, the bottle that I received at the end of the Bristol 10k. Like all the other runners, I received a similar one during the race, about halfway through.

Some of them poured the water over their heads.

Most of them drank from the bottle.

I didn’t do either of those things. I did something far sillier.

You see, when I was training for the run, I never ran for very long. The longest time period was about an hour. And because I was training in my local park very close to my house, I never bothered to take a water bottle out with me. If I got thirsty on a longer run, I would just detour back home and grab a glass from the cupboard and pour myself some water.

But during the race, I wasn’t close to home. And I couldn’t detour for a nice, civilised glass. When I got the water bottle, I very quickly realised something.

I hadn’t practiced drinking while running.

Oops.

The water went over my cheeks. It went down my chin. It went down my front. It went pretty much anywhere except my mouth.

I looked like an idiot.

It had simply never occurred to me to practice drinking while running. But during the race it became clear that it was part of the race plan that I hadn’t thought about at all. I discovered that I had hidden assumptions about my ability to drink on the run. And I was wrong.

And it’s the little things that get you. When I was coaching a student recently for some practical exams, the student had thought about everything… Except for the order in which he was going to speak to the participants in the test, and how he was going to order his time in the simpler stations that formed part of the test procedure. It seems like a small thing, but it could be vitally important.

It is really tempting to concentrate on the big things, like the training runs. And they need attention. But the little things need attention too. Why?

1. Little things are part of a whole. Part of the way we handle big new experiences is to break them up into easier-to-handle pieces. Each piece is important. If we haven’t prepared all the small pieces, we haven’t fully prepared the whole. In fact, if we’ve neglected a little thing, it frequently indicates that we have hidden assumptions lurking, and they might have large consequences.

2. Little things can throw us off course. Especially if we’re doing something new, or trying to react to a difficult situation in a new way, we have enough to think about already just putting our newly formed plans into action. We don’t need surprises. And FM Alexander would suggest that if we leave an opening for ourselves to be caught off guard, we are more likely to depart from our reasoned plans and fall back to more instinctive unreasoned patterns of behaviour.*

So, more than a month after the race, I keep the water bottle. It is a reminder to me of how little things really do matter.

What little things do you need to take account of today?

 

* FM Alexander, The Use of the Self, IRDEAT edition, p.417; p.433.

Start where you are! Why waiting for perfect conditions or timing can keep you stuck

This is the third part of a short series on how to go about pushing your comfort zone and trying new stuff. Week 1 was about why it’s a good idea to leave your comfort zone. Last week we explored how our fear of getting it wrong can hold us back, and how to move past it. This week is all about starting from where you are instead of waiting for perfect conditions.

Jen's kitchen timer

This is my kitchen timer. It has a magnet on the back, and lives on my fridge. It’s the timer I use when I make cakes or muffins so that I don’t walk away and burn the house down. It makes very loud beepy noises.

It’s also an essential part of my running training kit.

When I downloaded my training plan from the runbristol website, I very quickly noticed that it didn’t really expect me to do just  long runs. The designers of the plan had cleverly included interval training, too. This, most weeks I was expected to do 10 minutes or so easy running, then 5 or more repetitions of, for example, 4 minutes fast running and 90 seconds recovery.*

There was no way I was going to be able to keep track of that with my wristwatch. But because I believed for so long that I was No Good at Sport, I didn’t own a stopwatch, and I didn’t have the spare cash to buy one. So how was I going to manage it?

The plan expected ownership of a stopwatch, but I didn’t live in that world. I did not have the perfect conditions. What was I going to do? What would you do?

I could have given up altogether: “This is just too hard. I was wrong to think I could run.”

I could have ignored the plan and not done the interval training. “I’ll be fine with just the long runs. I hope.”

But both these options are a kind of defeat. It would be allowing a lack of the perfect conditions to determine my actions. But conditions are so rarely perfect. Timing is so rarely perfect. Sometimes we just have to begin with what we have.

Hence the kitchen timer.

I would go out for my interval training with my little kitchen timer in my hand. It made very loud beepy noises. People did occasionally stare. But it worked for me, and I was content with that.

So often we hear ourselves or others using a lack of perfect timing or perfect conditions as a reason for not trying something new, or as an excuse to not follow through on a dream we have. We find ourselves stymied by the ‘received wisdom’ on the ‘right’ path to take to achieve a goal – if we don’t fit neatly on that one true path, we feel tempted to give up.** But with a little imagination we can so often find a way to overcome such obstacles.

There is no perfect time.

There are no perfect conditions.

There is only now.

So find your equivalent of my kitchen timer, and start inventing your route to your goals.

 

* This is seriously good for your fitness levels, by the way.
** FM Alexander believed that we are taught from childhood to believe in rigid rules and ‘correct’ mental outlooks, and that it was a major cause of later mental and physical difficulties. See Man’s Supreme Inheritance, IRDEAT complete edition, p.74.

No one will die – leaving a comfort zone and fear of the new

This is the second part of a short series on how to go about pushing your comfort zone and trying new stuff. Last week we looked at why it’s a good idea to leave your comfort zone. This week we’re exploring the relationship between leaving a comfort zone and fear of the new; how our fear of getting it wrong can hold us back, and how to move past it.

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Last week I told you about how I decided to move past my belief that I was No Good at Sport, and chose to enter the Bristol 10k. I recognised that I had a belief that was limiting me and set myself a goal to help challenge it. But what happened next? Which of these two stories do you think is more true?

Story 1: Jen organised a training programme and stuck to it. She was at all times completely confident of achieving her goal because she was doing the necessary work. On the day of the race, she found it easy.

Story2: Jen didn’t know where to start. She did some research and found training plans and advice. She tried to follow them, but found it hard work, physically and emotionally. Many times she felt like quitting, and she was terrified of getting it wrong and making a fool of herself. Even on the day of the race, she wasn’t completely certain she’d make it.

Worked out which one is the truth yet? Yep, the second. I was leaving a comfort zone and fear of the new was a major problem for me. I felt scared almost every time I went out to train.

The truth of it is that people stay in their comfort zones because they are, well,  comfortable. People like being comfortable. When you try to challenge a belief or behaviour in yourself that you don’t like, you pretty much need to expect it to feel uncomfortable. It may feel odd. It may even feel wrong.

We need to expect it not to feel good. Sometimes you’ll surprise yourself because it will, but more often than not you’re going to be dealing with levels of discomfort.

So we recognise that leaving a comfort zone and fear are very closely related. How do we deal with the discomfort? Here are my five big tips:

1. Make sure you’ve chosen a goal that is challenging but still realistic. I, for example, as a non-runner, did not choose to make the London Marathon my first ever race! I chose something that was not going to be easy, but that was still achievable.

2. Have a plan to follow. Do some research, find out how other people typically go about achieving the goal you’ve set, and then modify that to your own circumstances. I was lucky and found a ready-made training programme that I could adapt easily.

Sometimes planning is trickier, and you may not be sure of all the variables you need to consider. in those situations, sometimes it can help to talk to someone who specialises in planning and reasoning. If you need help with the planning aspect of your goal, contact me and I’ll see if I can help you out, or at least point you in the direction of someone else who can.

3. Have a good support network. I had a friend who was incredibly supportive, and who actually ran the race with me. I also had friends and family helping me find the time to train, and just generally cheering me on. Support isn’t essential, but it sure makes things easier.

4. Accountability. If you are worried you might quit or find excuses to dodge the discomfort of trying the new activity/behaviour, you may want to set some consequences to help you stay on track. For example, a friend may ring you each week to check on progress. Or you might try using Stickk, a new website that was created to help people stick with their goals.

5. Be kind to yourself. Recognise that sometimes your ‘lizard brain’ (limbic system) is going to catch up with you and cause you to feel panicked. Just keep breathing, remember that everything is fine and no one is in imminent danger of dying, and let it pass.

This week, if you haven’t yet chosen a goal for the activity or behaviour you want to try/change, set one! Start working out how you are going to achieve it. Do some research. Set some consequences for bailing out. And start. Setting up your support network. And be kind to yourself.

Image by John Kasawa, FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Should you go out of your comfort zone?

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Jen at the 10k

Should you go out of your comfort zone and try new stuff? If so, how do you go about it? Today is the beginning of a four week series on why trying new things is good, and how to do it well.

May 5 was a big day for me. It was the day of the Bristol 10k – a 10km run/jog/stagger along the roads of some of the most picturesque bits of my home town.

10km may not seem like much to some of you. To me, it’s a big deal. I only started running seriously in February. I had never before taken part long-term in any sporting activity. I was not fit, not even close to it.

And yet I decided to take part. Why?

Well, it all comes back to the fundamental basis of the work which I teach, the life-changing discoveries made by FM Alexander. You see, Alexander’s work starts with one simple but all-important question:

“Could it be something I was doing… That caused my problem?”

When you start to take that question seriously, you are led to reconsider basic ideas you hold. For example, a plumber student of mine began to question whether he really needed to grip the wheel of his van as tightly as he did in order to keep it on the road.

But then, you see, you start to realise that there is a tremendous value in questioning ideas and mental attitudes that you believe to be true of yourself. You start to question all sorts of things.

I began to question my long-held view that I am No Good at Sport. I began to question my idea that Other People could run, but that I Could Not. These beliefs began to look like easy answers. They were a comfort zone that enabled me to stay away from activities that challenged my view of myself. I realised that the only way to know if my belief was true was to test it out.

And that’s the reason why I took a step outside of my comfort zone, and entered the Bristol 10k.

Your task for this week?

Simple. As you go about your week, keep a mental lookout for any ideas or mental attitudes you hold about yourself that you think may warrant closer examination. Like me, you might believe that you’re No Good at sport. Or maybe art. Or singing. Or speaking in public.

When you think you have found one or two (or more), decide which one you would most like to change, and begin to think about ways you could challenge it. Next week, I’ll give you some tips on how to go about it.