Does the Zone Exist?
Damien Lafont
Is the Zone real? If it is what are its characteristics? Is there one Zone or are there many? In this article let's review some surprising opinions from some the world's top researchers and athletes across multiple sports.
The subject of the Zone has been intensively studied by psychologists, neuroscientists, and anthropologists, among others. It has been explained as a function of genetics, environment, motivation, hypnosis, and even parapsychology.
Some researchers compare the psychological characteristics of winning athletes with those of athletes who fail. Others ask athletes to recall the feelings and sensations they experienced during great moments of competition.
But professional athletes are often reluctant to discuss the idea of the Zone. And one study by researchers at Cornell and Stanford found that athletes sometimes incorrectly report being in the Zone when they are experiencing intense feeling and sensation, but without measurable performance correlates.
Can the Zone be consciously created? Keith Henschen, a psychologist at the University of Utah believes so. If athletes create the right conditions, they create the zone. But Bob Rotella a psychologist who works with golfers believes "It happens when it happens. Self-transcendence cannot be produced by force of will."
Flow
Hungarian professor Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi believes that the Zone cannot be quantified by research, sampling methods, or numbers. He defines the Zone as a flowing state in which the athletes lose self-awareness.
There is a perfect correspondence between the demands of the activity and the capacity of the athlete which makes the experience completely enjoyable. There are no scientific instruments that can measure this confluence of chemical, mental, and kinesthetic events.
Researcher Susan Jackson found that reaching the zone is less a matter of talent, and more a matter of perception. What we think we can achieve will determine our experience more than our ability.
Jackson argues that changing this perception of what we are capable of requires high levels of self-confidence and that self-confidence can be increased by thinking about past successes.
Yuri Hanin, who led Finland's Research Institute for Olympic Sports, has a different opinion. He believes anxiety and doubt are a fundamental part of the zone experience. Each athlete has an ideal level of "competitive anxiety" at which he performs at his peak. Without this anxiety his level of performance decreases.
As former All Pro basketball player Bill Walton put it, the uncertainty when facing a challenging opponent ignites heightened mental states. "What really brings the intensity is knowing that the opponent can beat you."
Concentration
Some athletes describe the Zone in terms of heightened concentration. They are able to stay focused by concentrating on present action and ignoring what has previously happened or any future expectations. This total immersion in the present is what golfer Tony Jacklin has described as a "cocoon of concentration."
Tom Kite, one of the best golfers of the early 1990s, says of the Zone, "When it happens you are in total control. Nothing bothers you."
This means a sense of power, confidence, and calm that frees the athlete from the fear of failure. Former NBA player Byron Scott says: "All you can hear is this little voice inside you, telling you 'shoot' every time you touch the ball. Because you know it's going in."
As Chris Evert put it: "You can't miss anything. It's like you anticipate way ahead of Time where the ball is going and you also know where you're going to hit the ball before you hit."
Perhaps the most bizarre reported aspect of the Zone is transformation of time. In the heat of the game, time can slow down, giving the perception that we have all the time in the world.
Chris Evert recalls, "Everything seems slower, so you have more time to adjust."
Bill Walton says: "Everything slows down except you, and you feel like you're operating at a different speed and at a different level than anybody else."
Time can even be suspended as Roger Bannister reported after running the first sub four minute mile: "The world seemed to stand still, or did not exist. There was only a great unity of movement and aim."
Golf coach Gail Smirthwaite believes another important and often overlooked component of the Zone is self-esteem. "Low self-esteem will make it almost impossible for someone to be able to create the 'flow state' on demand, because they do not have the belief that they can achieve the success they seek."
In her book Modified Consciousness, Christine Le Scanff describes an amnesia that some athletes experience that makes it difficult or even impossible to describe a Zone performance.
Bob Trumpy, a former all pro tight end, is a good example: "It was like being in a tunnel and being blinded by a bright light. When I came out of the other end of the tunnel, I was in the end zone and my teammates were celebrating. But I didn't remember what I did."
Le Scanff notes that detachment can give an athlete increased tolerance: "Sport allows an athlete to achieve an altered state of consciousness because of the secretion by the body's own biological drugs. Beta-endorphin has analgesic power fifty times higher than that of morphine."
Love
Finally, Johnny Miller, winner of over twenty titles on the golf pro tour, boils it down to love: "I think love is the secret. I really believe it." "I think the Zone is really being in harmony with what you're doing. Wanting to do it, wanting to do it for the right reasons, not for money or for greed or for power." "If you love what you are doing and just can't wait to play, it's going to be fun."
As this sampling establishes, the term Zone itself may border on the nebulous. The evidence show that what we loosely call the Zone can comprise very different experiences for different athletes. In the next article let's focus more specifically on what tennis players and the coaches and psychologists who work with them have to say about the characteristics of the zone and how it is created and emerges. Stay Tuned.
