Page 134 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

tournament immediately fell apart. I blew myself out and had nothi ng left for
the rest of the competitions.

In short, I was a mess. I had learned as a boy ho w to deal with di straction in
a given moment, but the larger di stractions of my life were overwhe lming me.
In an isolated situation, I could overcome the issues —I ’ve always be en abl e to
bring it for the big game—but the ki nd of reckl ess intensity this required

sapped me. At a high level the chess world has many big games and in long,
grueling tournaments they tend to follow one another, over and over, for da ys
and weeks at a time. I knew how to block out my issues in a spr int , but in
marathons I ran out of gas. Consistency became a critical probl em. On da ys

that I was inspired, I was unstoppab le. But other day s I woul d pl ay ba d che ss.
The time had come for me to learn the science of long- term, healthy, self-
sustaining peak performance.
In the fall of 1996 my father read about the spo rts psychologi st Jim Lo ehr,

who ran a performance training cent er called LGE in Orlando , Florida . LG E
(recently renamed the Human Performance Ins titut e) was founde d by Lo ehr,
the esteemed sports nutritionist Jack Groppel , and the no-no ns ens e phy sical
trainer Pat Etcheberry as an environm ent in whi ch the phy sical and ment al

sides of the pursuit of excellence conv erged. By the time I fi st went do wn to
LGE in December of ’96, it was already becoming a mecca for athl etes who
wanted to hone their performance ski lls, pr ofessional ize thei r nut ritiona l
patterns, work out sophisticated everyday training rout ines to opt imize

growth, and balance public and personal lives. World- class tenni s pl ayers,
golfers, NFL and NBA stars, Olympi c athl etes, top CEOs, FBI SWAT teams,
basically any kind of elite performer coul d be found on a given da y worki ng
out in the high-tech gym, meeting with spo rts psychologi sts, or cha tting with

one another about the similarities of thei r exper iences.
I’ll never forget my first afternoon in the LG E weight room. I was worki ng
with a trainer, having tests done on me to determine my exact level of fi ne ss. I
was using muscles I never knew existed, pus hi ng my phy sical limits far be yond

what I would have known was safe or possibl e—and I loved it. This was my
first exposure to physical training at as hi gh a level of pr ofessiona lism and
sophistication as I had been condi tioni ng my mind for so many years. The re I
was, sprinting on a high-tech stationar y bike, sweating up a storm, ho oke d up

to all sorts of monitors, when a guy slapped me on my back. I tur ne d around to
see Jim Harbaugh with a big smile on hi s face. At the time, Jim was the star