A week or so ago I stumbled upon the poem “My Heart Leaps Up” by William Wordsworth (don’t ask me how I ended up reading poems at 2 AM on my phone). And my mind got snagged on the line “The Child is father of the Man”. Being a person that cannot separate any thought from the creeping infection of fighting games, I spiralled into grumblings of habits and the makings of player-tendencies. What follows is a text hopefully turning this gibberish into something at least semi-coherent.

To begin with I would like to explain what specifically made that line stand out to me, though it will probably seem incredibly obvious when pointed out. As players we are all the products of our habits, habits that tend to be formed extremely early on in our of playing and competing lifetimes. These habits range from small in game actions to wider habits like our practice regimens. With time these habits begin to calcify and become harder and harder to break, which is partly a reason why I believe it generally takes such a long time for people to become legitimate tournament threats.

The Two Selves

In his book The Inner Game of Tennis, Timothy Gallwey writes about separate instances of the mental self, dividing them into two instances, Self 1 and 2. Gallwey describes Self 1 as the conscious mind and “teller” while Self 2 that resembles the unconscious mind is the “doer”. Gallwey considers the relationship between these two selves to be absolutely key to both improving and being able to perform in clutch situations. Going so far as to call it the prime factor determining one’s ability to translate knowledge of technique into effective action.

To keep this from becoming incredibly long winded, Gallwey describes the typical relationship between Self 1 and 2 as one where Self 1 invariably invades territory it doesn’t have any business occupying. That is to say conscious thought about what to do next and how to execute it doesn’t really have any place in a competitors mind during high stakes competition. According to Gallwey when players “enter the zone” they have fully activated Self 2, he calls this “Not being aware of giving yourself a lot of instructions”, if this sounds familiar it is a very old concept found it many martial arts and Buddhist teachings, if you’ve ever seen Enter the Dragon you might remember this line from Bruce Lee.

“When the opponent expand, I contract. When he contracts, I expand. And, when there is an opportunity, I do not hit — it hits all by itself.”

Comparing this to a line from “The Inner Game of Tennis” cements the similarity

“He’s not trying to hit the ball, and after the shot he doesn’t think about how badly or well he made contact. The ball seems to get hit through a process which doesn’t require thought.”

Nary a thought could enter.

The focus of Gallweys literature very much becomes Self 1, he finds that through the process of quieting it a person can regress back to something he calls “natural learning”. In this type of learning the shedding of instruction from Self 1 allows Self 2 through observation to intuitively grasp what the body is doing. An example could be to fix a certain tennis shot like a backhand.

We run into a bit of a snag when it comes to applying this thought process to competitive games however, especially those that require specific manual dexterity (e.g. muscle memory). Not only are the rules for most competitive games less self-explanatory and more comprehensive than something like tennis, they are also separated from the physical experience through a controller. This means something like natural learning can only occur once a player is incredibly well versed in all the games rules and situations, something that can take years. This means that Self 1 has to take a more leading role in the development of a natural game-plan. The aim for anyone attempting to compete at the highest level or any level at all really should be for Self 1 to not have to interfere during competition. The thought here is that Self 1 should already have spent the time in advance and committed the information needed for Self 2 to act to procedural memory.

This separation of tapping into Self 1 and Self 2 for different times is something most top players come to inhabit naturally over time. As one attends competitions/tournaments one instinctively tends to learn how to control one’s emotions and nerves while the flip-side could be said for playing to learn. If one aims to keep winning one has to follow along with the ever growing knowledge-base any one game will require to not instantly lose out to new strategies. However one can often see the middling players struggle quite a lot with either one of these aspects of playing. Very seldom do we see an up and comer exhibit both a breadth of knowledge as well as great clutch. And when we do, they tend to go ever so quickly from the realm of being and up and comer into becoming a real contender.

The Faster Track

Ultimately I believe you can achieve this separation much quicker and perhaps without the need of travelling to quite as many tournaments. I believe the best way to get to this point is to purposely separate your practice for Self 1 and 2 from each other. Competitive games (fighting games especially) require a lot of information to be put to procedural memory. I don’t believe this can be accomplished without spending a lot of time non-judgmentally practicing and playing specifically to learn. On the flip-side only doing this doesn’t really prepare your mindset for playing solely to achieve victory. This is why it’s very important to not neglect training Self 2 as well. Finding time to break down your routine with separate baseline outlooks will let you gain the benefit of both playing to learn and playing to win.

You could aim to train both of these aspects at the same time, but it is from my experience pretty much impossible. Self 2 will inevitably change direction to rely on already rote strategies in the aim to secure the win, while Self 1 will lament itself for failing to perform the actions or game-plans it told itself to do. You could think of Self 1 and 2 as two athletes in a relay race, for the team to achieve their goal one of the runners have to hand over the baton. Another thought might be to play as you always do but record and analyze your matches, while this is an extremely strong tool for leveling up it doesn’t stop Self 2 from influencing the way the games are played out.

Conflicting interests can lead to varying degrees of success.

How

What follows is a pretty basic outline for how you can structure your Self 1/2 practicing. You shouldn’t take any of the specifics in mind really, you can create a regimen that follows the general thought while specifically suiting your needs more closely.

Self 1 Practice

The first step in the process of using Self 1 to learn is to let go of judgement. To look at the game as if you were an umpire, see it as objectively as possible. It can seem like one is already doing this but it is rarely the case. Even remarks that start out as observations can quickly sour with repetition, and if the mind is free to judge it will slowly start to group events and in turn judge itself. These self-judgements can quickly turn into self-fulfilling prophecies, crippling the player because of judged observations. Just as Self 1 can be used to very positively influence the effectiveness of Self 2 it can also do so negatively. If Self 1 keeps repeating how badly it deals with a certain strategy, Self 2 will play the role of the bad player to a tee.

A key to getting gainful practice time in for Self 1 is to combine watching new material, practicing new strategies/execution and lastly playing matches with the aim of implementing them smoothly. In the time spent honing Self 1 it is essential to disengage your ego and accept that you will lose matches in an order of magnitude more often than you regularly do. A way to massage the ego into accepting this is to recognize that this is not time spent competing but akin to time spent in a classroom. The want to win has no place here, your goals should strictly be familiarizing yourself with the stuff that needs to be put into procedural memory.

You will naturally know when a strategy has fermented long enough in this stage when you no longer have to consciously make yourself execute it, at this point you a free to look at new things to incorporate.

Self 2 Practice

This is where you strictly play to win, as dirty as you think necessary and disregard playing to learn entirely. Something I found as an intermediate player who learned to play almost entirely from long sets offline vs the same players, was that my clutch and comeback-factor was very underdeveloped, especially so in last round situations. Because of my practice regimen it had become incredibly easy for me to just mentally leave the current game to start preparing for the next, there were no real repercussions for this after all. It became very apparent to me how lacking I was once I started playing in more tournaments and money matches.

To practice this I actually turned to online sets with the specific goal to absolutely never give up on a round. This turned out to be very mentally exhausting, but since I had decided to set this time aside for it specifically it didn’t really phase me, since I knew it didn’t sour any other practice I had intended.

Just as with Self 1 practice it is imperative that you make sure to not judge your performance, win or lose. The goal is to strengthen your mental fortitude and broaden your defense vs any and all types of players, keeping a cool head is vital. Learning how to not get jittery or upset and clutch victory from the jaws of a crushing defeat is an incredibly strong tool to have in your arsenal.

To up the ante for this kind of practice you could play ranked games against random players and only allow yourself a set amount of losses, or in a game with rematch options only allow yourself one or two games vs the same opponent.

Armed Self 2

Through the combined effort of different variations of isolated Self 1 and 2 practice you can end up with an armed Self 2 ready to compete. The Self 1 practice should if properly executed have armed your Self 2 with potent weapons to approach the game at a technical level. While the Self 2 practice has made sure you don’t freeze up the moment something unexpected happens, and will give you a more naturally freed up mind to fully immerse yourself into the match.

No witty captions to be found here.

Now obviously nothing can truly prepare you for the tournament experience, it comes with its own challenges and nerve wracking moments. But hopefully by using a conscious method of practice once you get yourself seated for your match you will find yourself at home.

I leave you with this excerpt from The Unfettered Mind, a book collecting letters from famous Buddhist monk Takuan Sōhō sent to various prominent martial artists in feudal Japan.

“The beginner knows nothing about either his body posture or the positioning of his sword, neither does his mind stop anywhere within him. If a man strikes at him with the sword, he simply meets the attack without anything in mind.

As he studies various things and is taught the diverse ways of how to take a stance, the manner of grasping his sword and where to put his mind, his mind stops in many places. Now if he wants to strike at an opponent, he is extraordinarily discomforted.

Later, as days pass and times piles, in accordance with his practice, neither the postures of his body nor the ways of grasping the sword are weighed in his mind. His mind simply becomes as it was in the beginning when he knew nothing and had yet to be taught anything at all. “