Page 31 - iNET magazine.June.2021
P. 31
Has Your
Mental
Model
Stalled?
by Stuart Gethner
n 1954, Yogi Berra married Marilyn Monroe. The mile there needed to be perfect conditions. They
Cleveland Browns won the NFL Championship (it donned those conditions to be a 68-degree day with
Iwas not called the Super Bowl, yet). And on May no wind, on a hard, dry clay track.
6, 1954, Robert Bannister broke the four-minute mile.
This feat was considered the Holy Grail of athletics at So, it came as a surprise that Bannister broke the four-
that time. Runners had been chasing this record since minute mile on a cold track that was wet. He defied
the 1800s. what all the experts were saying needed to be done.
The best coaches and resources were trying to figure Just forty-six days later, John Landy broke the four-
out how to achieve this goal. minute mile. One year later three more broke it in
the same race. Over the last half-century, more than
Everyone was dialed into producing ideal models to fourteen hundred runners have conquered a barrier
break this barrier. Rumor has it some tried having that had once been considered hopelessly out of
tigers chase their fastest runners, and that did not reach.
work. Others tried using trainers to put together the
perfect routine. Even to demonstrate the correct What’s the point?
posture and the best possible runner’s stance
powering out of the starting gate. The March 2018 edition of The Harvard Business
states that after reviewing Bannister’s feat, they
In fact, Bannister was mocked and criticized because concluded that mental models count as much
he was a full-time student who did not use coaches as, if not more than, spreadsheets and scientific
or trainers. He was considered a lone wolf. No way calculations.
could he outperform those around him with their
professional staff. In their book, The Power of Impossible Thinking,
Yoram Wind and Colin Crook ask, “How is it, that
The experts even determined to break the four-minute so many runners smashed the four-minute barrier
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