Habits, Health And Performance
A bad habit suggests an inherent tendency to action and also a hold, command over us ..... It overrides our formal resolutions, our conscious decisions. When we are honest with ourselves we acknowledge that a habit has this power because it is so intimately a part of ourselves. It has a hold upon us because we are the habit. Prof. John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct Now we have established some of the mechanisms influencing performance we can look at how we can start to change. As discussed in previous sections the habits acquired through conditioning make us do what we do. To change, we need to recognise the force and nature of habit before we can begin to address them. Habit And FunctionA man takes his car to a garage with a faulty gearbox. The mechanic identifies the fault and replaces a number of components. A few months later the man returns with the same problem, so again the mechanic replaces the suspect parts. Not long afterwards the same car is towed into the garage after a breakdown. The mechanic assumes there must be a design fault with this model but cannot recall seeing many similar faults. If the design was suspect then everyone would have the same problem, therefore it must be something the driver is doing wrong. He replaces the gearbox and asks the driver if he could accompany him on a drive.The mechanic notices how poorly the man drives the car particularly when changing gear. He suggests to the driver that a few lessons might help to improve his habits. The driver follows this advice and eventually the problems with the gearbox cease. He did not learn to drive like this. His bad habits developed gradually due to lack of attention to his driving whilst pre-occupied with other matters. He had never been a passenger to observe how other people drive. The mechanic could not identify the root of the problem by just looking at the car - he had to observe the driver and car in action to diagnose the cause. We know that habits can be harmful to health. The end result of more obvious habits such as smoking and over-eating are easy to see. But what about the habits we do not know we have? Applying excessive effort to everything we do can be just as damaging. Resisting ChangeChange, by definition, requires us to go into the unknown. Keep doing the same things and we will keep getting the same results. If we do not venture outside the known there can be no real change due to dependence on the same habitual patterns. Alexander would remind his pupils that, “You can’t do something you don’t know, if you keep on doing what you do know!” We trust what feels right to perform an act, even when the outcome falls far short of our expectations. A test later in this section will highlight how we can only trust our feelings to differentiate between familiar and unfamiliar, not between right and wrong.Most training methods fail to recognise this. Each individual, including the coach, will have different ideas of what feels right or wrong when giving or following instructions. As we do not generally perform movements that feel wrong we remain trapped by the boundaries of habit. So paradoxically, we have to do something that initially feels wrong or different, in order to change. The fact that fitness fads and fashions come and go is testimony to our extraordinary ability to cling to the comfortable and familiar. What we fail to get from one, we look for in another. We hope that something will turn up with the magic formula that will change everything. Yet until we personally take the responsibility upon ourselves to change, nothing will be able to do it for us. Every New Year we make resolutions we believe will change our lives, yet few will get through the first week before breaking them. A sizeable proportion of the people who come to Alexander often do so to help with a persistent problem that may have been troubling them for years. Many people in this category are then put off by the technique because ‘it is different’ to anything they have done before. During the lesson they may be asked to stop doing something they have always felt necessary. I have often informed a pupil that they are stiffening their back, to which they reply ‘I have to do this to protect it’. Because this is contrary to their existing idea of what is right and proper they assume the new way is wrong. Over the last two decades we have seen the coming and going of aerobics, Callanetics, Step and more recently Tae-Bo and a resurgence of interest in Pilates. We have imported methods from the East to meet an increasing appetite for something new and give them a western flavour to make them acceptable to our palate. It has happened to martial arts and now more recently yoga. These ‘watered down’ versions promise quicker results and lose the philosophy in the process. These systems become popular because they appear to have all the answers. We rush to embrace their ways only to eventually be disappointed (again). Once the initial interest fades and the results begin to disappear we begin the search for the next panacea, yet if we do not address the basic habits that influence our actions we will ultimately have changed nothing. It will be interesting to see what magical solution the next fitness fad offers where others have failed. Window of OpportunityThere is a brief moment before action when we have the ability to control our response, a sort of window of opportunity. Although we may wish to believe otherwise we rarely use this moment to our advantage. Instead we allow the response to be determined by an automatic and subconscious process. The successful outcome of all actions is dependent on factors that may, or may not, work in our favour. Successful athletes obviously have moments where conditions are favourable, yet there is still an unknown factor fundamental to their performance - habit.We rarely give a thought to how we move. This is not to be confused with technique. Technique is the veneer on top of how we apply ourselves to an act. Actions that look and feel the same can be achieved with varying amounts of effort and muscular activity. Lack of attention to the act allows many unnecessary movements to become associated with the habitual pattern, often without us noticing the deterioration. Habit is a word we usually associate with specific practices we wish to stop, such as smoking or drinking. The Oxford Medical Dictionary defines habit as: -
Habit is a constant factor influencing all thoughts, decisions and movement. How many of our decisions are based on reason rather than habitual reactions? Probably a lot less than we would like to think. Habit has implications for our health, fitness, performance and ability to function. We are conditioned by how we act in our environment. Every thought or action is in direct response to stimuli. With repetition, we start to associate a response to a certain stimulus creating a conditioned reflex in the process. The Folding Arms experiment earlier in this book shows how we can be led and restricted by habit. When we do what feels right we are using the usual habitual patterns. The habitual way feels familiar and the new way feels unfamiliar. Our feelings cannot tell us whether a pattern is useful or harmful, only whether it is usual or unusual. This is pertinent to performance-enhancing exercises. It may feel good simply because it closely matches our existing habits. Our potential for development will be limited if we stay within the comfortable confines of habit. This is why we may have to do something that initially feels wrong in order to change what may be a performance limiting habit. The next time you are about to fold your arms see if you can prevent the usual habitual pattern and adopt the opposite fold. You may find this is difficult. A subconscious process of pattern recognition (gestalt) triggers the habitual response. My folding arms pattern may be activated when a number of conditions are present, such as (a) I am sitting down and (b) I am bored and finally (c) I have just learnt that the train will be late. The triggers may be unique to each individual but the process is the same. The habitual response is activated when a number of preconditions are met. We become aware of our response only when feedback from the sensory mechanisms inform us that movement has occurred. This represents the difficulty of changing a habit. Recognition of pattern starts a response. We only become aware of it after it has begun. By this time, our response has initiated another set of events of which the corresponding feedback activates the next habitual act in the chain. If we do not veto the initial response the habitual chain reaction is allowed to run.
Friend or FoeHabit is essential for development and progression. If we had to continually think about how to walk and perform other repetitive tasks, we would not be able to attend to more complex acts. Habit only becomes a problem when the activated habitual response is not appropriate to the situation. This is the case for the majority of adults and leads to a proliferation of poor habits.Performance and confidence suffer when poor habits dominate leaving the athlete with little control over vital aspects of their game. Attempts to regain form can be slow or unsuccessful if the underlying habit at the root of the problem remains unchanged. Changing a HabitTo successfully eliminate a habit we must change the condition that allows that habit to exist. In 1985 Benjamin Libet, a neuroscientist at the University of California, made a discovery in the field of human movement and awareness that can help shed some light on the area we need to focus if we wish to change a habit.The subjects in the experiment were asked to flex their wrist and note the time they made the decision to move. Electrodes attached to their wrists would verify exactly when the movement occurred. Libet also measured the electrical activity in the brain that occurs before action, called the readiness potential (RP), involved in planning movement. Libet found the electrical activity started before the subjects became aware of their intention to act. The subjects became aware of their intention after the RP started and before the motor act, see diagram below. He concluded that the process to act is initiated unconsciously. However, we can consciously ‘veto’ the act in the two fifths of a second between becoming aware of the intention and the actual execution. It is important to appreciate the implications of Libet’s experiment when wishing to change or improve technique. Just thinking about an activity or situation that involves the technique in question initiates the habitual chain of events. Libet said, Visualisation and other ‘mental’ techniques do not prevent activation of the habitual response. The ability to veto and select a response appropriate for the moment requires overcoming the problem of end-gaining. If we can learn how to stop and think before we act, we can consciously make a choice to select and execute our response. We need to recognise the habit that leads to poor movement and what constitutes inappropriate preparation for that movement. To get a practical experience of the 'window of opportunity try my chair challenge - it's not as easy as it first sounds.
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