Page 95 - The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin_Neat plip book

performance without hearing a thing, because she kno ws how the no tes sho ul d
feel coming out, even if her primary moni tor—her ears—ar e tempo rarily

unavailable.
So I know what a properly delivered straight right feels like. Now I be gi n to
slowly, incrementally, condense my movements whi le maintaining tha t feeling.
Instead of a big wind-up in the hips , I coil a little less, and then I release the

punch. While initially I may have thr own my straight from nex t to my ear,
now I gradually inch my hand out, starting the punch from closer and closer to
the target—and I don’t lose power! The key is to take small steps, so the bo dy
can barely feel the condensing practice. Each little refinem ent is moni tored by

the feeling of the punch, which I gained from mont hs or years of training with
the large, traditional motion. Slowly but sur ely, my body mechan ics ge t more
and more potent. My waist needs little movement to generate spe ed. My ha nd
can barely move and still deliver a powerful blow. Eventual ly I can de liver a

straight punch that looks nothing like a straight punch . If you’ ve ever watche d
some of the most explosive hitters in the boxing world, for ins tanc e Mike
Tyson or Muhammad Ali, you’ve seen fight s wher e kno ckout s look compl etely
unrealistic. Sometimes you have to watch in slow motion, over and over, to see

any punch at all. They have condensed large circles int o very small one s, and
made their skills virtually invisible to the u nt rained eye.
The chessic manifestations of this phen omenon are qui te int eresting. Fo r
example, arguably the most fundamental ches s pr inci ple is cent ral cont rol. At

all levels of play, the competitor who dominat es the middl e of the che ssbo ard
will usually have an advantage becaus e from thi s placement his or her pieces
can influence the entire battle. Cur ious ly, if you study the games of some very
strong Grandmasters, they seem to compl etely disregard thi s princ ipl e. The

British star Michael Adams might be the clearest case in point . His pi eces are
often on the flanks and he appear s to casual ly give oppo ne nt s cent ral
dominance—and yet he wins. The secret beh ind thi s style of pl ay is a pr ofound
internalization of the principles beh ind cent ral dominat ion. Micha el Ada ms

knows how to control the center witho ut appear ing to hav e any thi ng to do
with the center. He has made the circles so small, even Grandm asters canno t
see them.

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