Show SPORT LIGHT i i subconscious conscious mind mand Is Es greatest coach L h by GRANTLAND RICE JUCH IS THE MAIN factor in W WHICH sport competition direct thought or the subconscious mind how much success belongs to quick brain work and how much to intuition to help settle this issue we called in the patriarch of b brain r a I 1 n waves the same being john kieran who in his day was a high class com grantland rice at fordham and who needs no further comment when it comes to a matter of brain action the subconscious mind according to kieran does most of the work the brain cant work with the speed needed to handle too many situations for example a jockey has less than a fifth of a second on many occasions to decide whether he must go inside or stay outside A ted williams will 0 wait until the ball is within et of the plate before he decries to swing or not to swing that is another fifth of a second decision some brains of course work faster than others but there are few that can work with split second speed in mak ing a decision subconscious action takes over or intuition or whatever you want to call it t both eddie arcaro ar aro and ted atkinson bear out this angle in regard to racing ill be moving up arcaro said and suddenly theres an opening to the left I 1 time to size things up your intuition acts for you and sometimes your intuition can be wrong you can use your brain in mapping out a race in advance but once you get into fast action youve got to depend a lot on your refi reflexes exes or your intuition which are the products of experience in fact I 1 think this is where experience C counts aunts most amean ly mean in giving you the right intuition boxum bixl g follows the same line A younger fighter in his prime sees ad an opening and punches at practically the same instant or he sees a punch coming and ducks later on he is just as smart his brain is just as good as it was years before but his subconscious action has slowed down his intuitive action has gone rusty so he punches for the opening too late or he quite duck in time joe louis for example had as good a brain in 1948 as he had in 1933 1938 but though he kept catching walcott in 1948 his subconscious reactions were too slow to land a knockout knock out punch applied appl aed to golf nw now golf is a game J kieran continued that should be played with a subconscious mind entirely but it the ball moving so there is the deadly temptation to start thinking what club to use etc this is when the trouble begins remember that round watts gunn had in the amateur at oakmont in m 1925 1 think watts lost the first five holes I 1 know he was being murdered then suddenly he seemed to settle into a trance and he won the next 15 holes 15 holes in a row 7 1 I tallied talked to him later and watts admitted he remember a thing that had happened in those 15 holes 1 I never thought of anything he said 1 I just kept swinging the club head I 1 was in a sort of mental groove there was certainly no conscious effort in anything gunn did he went sailing through until he met bobby jones in the final round where neither conscious nor subconscious effort was of any use heres another thought along these lines kieran reported ive known a lot of baseball and smart I 1 say their brains were too agile although they had their share of good sense ive seen these fellows make few mistakes they were generally where they should have been be en some instinct seemed to guide them |