In 2004, in a world without information… I was in physical education college… I like sports… when I saw marathon runners on TV, I thought they suffered a lot running… I thought they felt a lot of pain from a lot of effort… I I ran on the beach and tried to run as much as I could, even though I was suffering a lot I ran… I didn’t understand why runners ran fast… I thought they must have a resistance that few people have… then I took a sports psychology class from a master professor in Cuba in this matter… he explained in class that athletes don’t “exceed their limits” there is a technique to be faster… marathon runners have a technique to work their larger muscles more and so they don’t get tired running, eating well. Then I understood… I took a public exam, then university entrance exams and saw that you can’t go beyond your body’s limits and that’s how it’s more efficient… there’s no point in killing yourself studying, training, etc.
good of this matter…Those who use memory techniques retain information well and in all performance sports… my Educational Psychology professor changed my way of thinking about sports… really, if you study too much, do too much exercise… it’s bad for your health and leads to low performance … even without being a psychologist, I graduated in sports psychology interested in the knowledge… according to the university… it started in the last century in the USA and became important throughout the world… most sports teams have a psychologist specialized in sports… there are many theories , research, statistics… the law says that only if an athlete wants to, he can go to a specialist… if the athlete doesn’t want to, the team has to respect the decision… include nutrition, sample graphs seeing the athletes who sought out the sports psychologist before the consultation and then… I see that it’s no wonder that these professionals are in demand… my teacher was a psychologist on the Unisanta swimming team, which has national champion athletes and even Olympic medalists… I really like this subject… have many book good of this matter
Hello 
Thank you for your contribution.
I was hoping you could clarify the message you want to share.
I am doubting because your exact wording is about the excessive focus on training, but I also seem to catch a hint of you saying that technique is better than training.
If it is the first one, I would mainly like to comment on this bit:
This is a phrase I would say should be banned. Not because it is false, but because it is both obvious and useless.
Let me give you some other similar phrases to show what I mean.
- If you spend too much money, you will go broke.
- If you drink too much water, you die of water poisoning.
- If you step off a ledge that is too high, you will fall to your death.
These things all seem incredibly obvious, but they should not scare us away from spending money, drinking water or stepping off ledges. These are all things we need to do responsibly if we do them. Spending some cash on a sandwich is not wrong if you have it to spare, drinking something is not wrong if you have to hydrate, and stepping off a curb is not wrong if you have to cross the street.
The key word is ‘too’. Too much, too high, too heavy, too bold, you are already proclaiming that the action performed or state of being is excessive, which can indeed lead to a negative outcome.
I would much rather see actual useful phrases. I know that stepping from a curb is well within my capability, and that stepping off the edge of the grand canyon like a disney lemming will kill me. How will I know where the height of the ledge goes from safe to dangerous, and from dangerous to deadly?
Similarly, overtraining is not good. However, I know that an easy workout once a week will not harm me. I also know that doing fifteen high-intensity workouts a week will hurt my body. How do I know where harmless exercise stops and harmful exercise begins?
This part is where I am unsure of your message. Are you saying here that we should focus on technique, rather than on studying and training?
If so, I would like to ask you to read a book by Harry Lorraine or Dominic O’Brien, learn about the techniques, and instantly join the world championships to display the sole performance of technique. I can tell you that it will not work. By the time you are finished memorizing everything, they are probably already setting up the next world championships.
Technique is important, but it is not the key to winning. I even remember a research done on running coaches (since you started on that subject) that had the coaches rating the performance of runners based on their technique alone. The coaches failed. Technique plays a role, but you also need to take things like endurance, strength, gear, nutrition, mindset, pacing and training into account. Your technique will fail if anything else is not in the right balance.
Since we are here on a forum about memory, I would like to add that this also counts for memory. Surely technique is important, but what about the other parts? You need to be able to endure the mental challenges, you need to be able to create strong images, you need to be familiar with the gear (including any memory palaces -and the likes- that you use), you need to be fed and hydrated, you need the right focussed mindset, you need to stick to a comfortable memorization pace, and you need to train to improve and grow comfortable on those aspects. Knowing the techniques will fail you if you are not equipped to apply them.
@Mayarra
Maia, sorry for my bad English… sports psychology will say that discipline, rest, nutrition and technique will lead to good performance… in my case, in 2004 I saw runners, marathon runners running 10 km in 28 minutes and I was going to run on the beach and it was 56 minutes… I tried to try really hard, but all I did was overtraining… then in the sports psychology class it proved to be the opposite… not if it was 2004, a time of little Internet, little information, the media was just TV. . psychology helped me, but not everyone needs psychology… it’s just a help for athletes and also helps with leisure… but I agree with everything you said… in the past I only had 8 TV channels, sometimes Internet with few news… the press deifying athletes… and I did overtraining… today just search Google and it finds everything… 2004 things, the media, information were very different… the Internet revolutionized information…
Maia, another thing… here in Brazil there are public exams and entrance exams… I see that people study too much, they cut out their sleep to study to have a good profession… the logic is the opposite, studying little (without ovetraining)… I see that people who study too much, rest poorly… they need psychological advice to calm down… they would need a coach, someone… in my course it was said, in a survey in the USA that 60% of athletes had or are overtraining… In these cases, they need the team to advise on how to be a champion is leisure is health. @Mayarra
Magime, i understand… well, I just reproduced what I studied… I’m not a scientist to research the matter… @user_7e
No worries
I do see a hint of truth in this, as performance requires both training and rest. I wouldn’t say study little, but I do agree that balancing study and rest is key.
Spaced repetition concepts even build in this in order to solidify knowledge into the long term memory.
Could you really though? Surely you can go far, the human body and mind are pretty resilient, but if you can do it, does this sole act of doing it not show that it is within your limit in that situation?
Limits are not fixed, they shift. These shifts can be because of external reasons, like while I can surely run a sub-50 minutes time on a 10k run, I can’t do it if that run goes uphill. Shifts can also be the result of training, in which case the limits you go beyond are not your current ones, they are your former ones.
I do agree with the core of your message here, but is progressive overload “too hard” and “too much”, or is it “harder” and “more”?
Progressive overload does not mean to go and completely overload, it means to gradually increase the intensity through adding weight, duration, or frequency. If you bench 250 pounds, you move up to 255, not to 500. If you run 5 miles, you do 6, not 50.
i agree, @Mayarra
Yes… the mind and muscles have the same logic… the more you work, the more your capacity gradually increases… the overtraining I’m referring to is the mind being prepared for 1 hour of studying and doing 2 hours… then the mind will procastinate… sometimes this can occur due to anxiety or lack of information… as in research in the USA that 60% of athletes in various disciplines have already overtrained… then performance slows down, and the body’s defense mechanism are going to do something to stop that sequence… injuries, irritations… to get back to normal… a sport psychology study says that champion athletes have something in common… they don’t overtrain… they are resilient people and there is always a good social relationships… combined with good techniques…