 habit of losing confidence in Self 2, and trying to take over. This usually results in a significant degradation of performance. Learners in the grip of their Self 1, Gallwey observes, tend to be stiff and awkward, attempting through sheer force of will to make their bodies do the right thing. Learners being guided by their Self 2, in contrast, find that successful execution seems to come naturally, almost without their having to make any conscious effort.
Gallwey’s argument is presumably meant to be taken as a metaphor, but it may be closer to the literal truth than anyone would have thought. Daniel Willingham, a Psychologist at the University of Virginia, has done a series of experiments showing that subjects playing a simple video game can learn to improve their performance in two different ways: by being explicitly taught the underlying patterns that control the game, or by implicitly learning those patterns through practice. What is interesting is that these two modes of learning seem quite separate and distinct, as evidenced by the fact that subjects who learned implicitly often cannot describe the patterns to which they are clearly responding. What is even more interesting is that the brain activity of subjects who are playing the game using implicit knowledge is different in location and character from the brain activity of subjects playing the game using explicit knowledge. In other words, Gallwey’s Self 1 and Self 2 may turn out to describe real components of the brain. Of course, a careful scientist would feel compelled to attach a long list of caveats to a statement like that, but I prefer, for the moment, to just enjoy the crazy long-shot possibility that a pop-psych metaphor might actually turn out to be an accurate psycho-physiological theory.
Gallwey’s general prescription for success at learning tennis is all about learning how to “quiet” Self 1 and “trust” Self 2. Three key things need to be done, according to Gallwey, in order to accomplish this goal.
The first requirement is to de-emphasize technique, which is the verbal description of how to perform a skill. Technique is the province of Self 1. In a traditional tennis lesson, the learner is loaded up with technique right from the start: Keep your wrist locked! Keep your elbow straight! Turn sideways to the ball! Get your racquet back early! Keep your eye on the ball! Transfer your weight as you swing! Swing low to high! Follow through! Self 1, in possession of all of this theory, wants to put it into practice immediately. Self 2, however, will go through a gradual process of learning from experience with or without the theory. So Self 1 gets impatient and tries to take over from Self 2, and that’s where the trouble starts. Gallwey’s conclusion is that the less Self 1 knows, the less likely this is to happen.
The second requirement is to de-emphasize ego. The involvement of the ego creates pressure. We’ve all experienced this: When you become focused on the need to succeed–especially when others are watching you and you realize that failure would be embarrassing–you suddenly begin to feel as though even the simplest, most familiar actions have become very difficult to execute. In sports, this effect is called “choking”. According to Willingham, choking is what happens when people lose faith in their unconscious abilities and revert to their conscious, explicit mode of control–in other words, when Self 1 takes over from Self 2. Gallwey’s advice to the learner is to cultivate a Zen-like detachment from the ego (“letting go of the self” and so on).But not everyone is able to suppress their own ego in this way. What is of more practical import, in my opinion, is Gallwey’s prescription for the coach, which is to avoid expressing too much focus on success and failure. This is important because it is more or less the opposite of traditional coaching wisdom.
The third requirement is to pay attention to the outcomes of actions. Most people think they do this already, but for the most part they are wrong. One of Gallwey’s most interesting observations is that 