Best in their fields tell
how it’s done
An
academic framework for highs, lows of peak performance
BY DIANE MANUEL
I knew what I had to
do," gymnast and Stanford junior Kerri Strug said
about her approach to the final rotation of events in the
1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
"I was not supposed
to fall on the first vault," Strug told the audience
that filled the Arrillaga Family Sports Center auditorium
for the opening session of the "Limits of
Performance" symposium Friday night. "When I
did, it was like, 'Let's get back on track here.'
"I was concerned
about my ankle, but I was also one of [coach] Bela
[Karolyi]'s girls. So I put myself on automatic pilot,
and said, 'OK, one more time.'"
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On her second vault, Strug
delivered a performance that handed the Olympic gold
medal to the U.S. women gymnasts -- and rated a big
bear-hug from Karolyi.
"But what would have
happened if you'd smacked him?" author and sports
personality George Plimpton wanted to know. "He
wasn't a very nice man, was he?"
Strug paused for a few
moments, then turned to Plimpton.
"No, I'd have to
disagree," she said. "We had too much respect
for him. We couldn't have questioned him."
The exchange was one of
many moving moments as world-class athletes and coaches
shared reminiscences of athletic performances with a
world-class surgeon, a record-setting Congressman and a
leading authority on the concept and problems of
performance. The second of the spring-quarter symposia
sponsored by the Presidential Lectures and Symposia in
the Humanities and Arts, it was a continuation of the
talk world chess champion Garry Kasparov gave on the same
topic on April 22.
Noting that he had once
played Kasparov in a set of eight concurrent chess
matches on eight different tables, Plimpton said he'd
experienced the thrill of being able to shout
"check" at the best player in chess history.
But Kasparov, he added,
had merely looked at the board where Plimpton claimed to
have achieved checkmate and asked, "What is this
mess?"
The world champion then
removed Plimpton's bishop with a pawn, and the matches
continued.
The highs and lows of peak
performance were the focus of the panelists' discussion,
which was given an intellectual framework by the first
speaker, Mihaly Csikszentimihalyi, professor of human
development and education in the department of psychology
at the University of Chicago.
Csikszentimihalyi talked
about his research on complex performances in everyday
life, and how data led him to believe that people got the
most enjoyment from free-time activities in which they
overcame obstacles or stretched their abilities and
skills.
The more complex a
performance, the more psychic energy it requires,
Csikszentimihalyi said. He described that energy as
"the most important and most scarce resource in
human life."
Csikszentimihalyi's
studies of creative individuals in a variety of fields,
from classical music to rock climbing, have shown that
all share a similar "flow experience" when they
are performing at their mental and physical peak.
"There's a time when
you can essentially relinquish your control over your
skills and experience spontaneity,"
Csikszentimihalyi said. "Composers talk about
watching their hands move automatically while they are
working, and rock climbers speak about feeling one with
rock surfaces."
The "flow
experience" that Csikszentimihalyi has identified is
what many athletes describe as "being in the
zone," other panelists said.
Plimpton, in his talk
about "The X Factor," said basketball great
Bill Russell had told him about a particular game that
stood out in his career, when both teams were
"playing in the zone" and Russell felt as if he
were "flying over the court like a skyhawk"
enjoying the beauty of the play below.
Plimpton also spoke about
how boxers Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston had prepared for
fights by visualizing victory over their opponents.
He said former President
George Bush must have employed a similar strategy when he
invited Plimpton to play horseshoes at the White House.
Prior to throwing each ringer, Plimpton said, Bush would
whisper "Unleash Chiang," apparently in
reference to freeing Chiang Kai-shek, or "Remember
Iowa," referring to the primary where he'd been
soundly defeated by Bob Dole.
After talking with
athletes from many continents, Plimpton said, he'd come
to believe that whichever player had the "X
factor," the mental or strategic advantage, would
come out the winner.
"I also realized you
have to practice the sport itself," he said of his
unsuccessful attempts to out-X-factor the competitive
former president at horseshoes.
Norman Shumway, professor
emeritus of cardiothoracic surgery at the medical school
and a pioneer in the development of heart and lung
transplantation, spoke about the kind of performance that
takes place in an operating room.
"It's to a small but
usually appreciative audience of one," he said.
With accompanying slides,
Shumway walked the audience in the Arrillaga auditorium
through the history of transplantation, from early
experiments with dogs in 1959 to the first human heart
transplants in 1968.
The development of the
immunosuppressant drug cyclosporin A was the key to
long-term survival of heart patients, Shumway said, with
the result that the five-year survival rate for heart
recipients now is close to 70 percent.
Congressman Jim Ryun, who
has represented the second district of Kansas since 1996,
participated in the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Olympic Games,
winning a silver medal in the 1500-meter run in '68. In
1965 he set the high school mile record of 3:55.3, which
has not been broken to date.
Ryun introduced his
remarks about "Running Toward the Goal" with a
black-and-white ABC videotape of a race he'd won in
Bakersfield in 1967, when he set a 3:51.3 record for the
mile by staying 50 yards ahead of his closest competitor
throughout the race.
Ryun said he believed in
"God-given talents," but added that those
talents had to be developed through setting goals and
finding a coach who could provide encouragement and
guidance. SR
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