Myztek
Smash Ace
Concentration/Focus: A lesson for life and Smash
I want to begin this with the conversation that spurred my thoughts on it: The other day I was playing Melee with a friend of mine, Iori. Iori is the best Smash Bros. player in my area. As we were playing, Iori would continually make comments about things that were happening in the match. He always does this, so in the past I had never really thought much of it, but something hit me this time. Often he would commentate on something, such as a combo, and I wouldn't even remember it happening. After one of the matches had finished, I turned to Iori and asked, "Iori, would you say you're a pretty concentrated person?" He simply replied, "Yes." I continued with, "Do you ever have scattered thoughts a lot? Is it hard for you to focus on something?" Iori said "No. I have a one track mind all day."
After that brief conversation, I had a bit of a eureka moment, and it was a good feeling. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about what separates the best players from average players. I thought I had pretty much nailed it with my previous topic "Zoning/Spacing and Other Fundamentals." [which I still highly recommend reading], but I honestly feel like the realization I made is the root of anything we are successful with in life.
So what is concentration? I'm sure that most of you have been told throughout your life that "You can do anything you put your mind to!" or "You need to concentrate more in school!" - among other various things. A lot of us, myself included, have always taken phrases such as these to mean "Try harder!" or "You can do better than that." Which can be instantly dismissed with a thought like "Well, obviously. I know I have to try harder to perform better." However, concentration goes much deeper than this. It's not just about trying harder. It's about making the task at hand the only thing that exists in your mind, and this is far from easy.
Whenever you hear talk of someone who is at the top of their game, often times you'll hear remarks about their impenetrable focus. Single-pointed concentration is a trait that anyone at high-level possesses. It's an ability to ignore the crowd, ignore the fact that your friends are watching you, ignore the pressure presented by these things, ignore the fact that the person you're playing against is supposed to be better than you, and ignore everything besides the actions taking place in the game. The problem, however, is that every day, every time we do something, our conscious mind is jumping around and giving attention to thoughts that aren't relevant to what we are trying to accomplish. This is what causes poor concentration - we feed thoughts that distract us, which in turn causes us to lose focus and perform poorly. An easy example would be going into a match thinking you're going to lose. If you go into a match with this mentality, then that thought will pass through your mind repeatedly while you are playing. It distracts you from what your focus should be; which is watching your opponent's character and searching for mistakes, making note of why and when you get punished so you can avoid it, trying to find habits in your opponent's play-style that you can take advantage of, etc.
So why is it so hard to focus? It takes a lot of energy. It's not easy. A lot of us can only maintain solid concentration for a very short period of time before our minds begin to wander and our subconscious/unconscious mind begins to take over. This brings me to my next point, which is basically a theory of sorts that I have come up with:
Conscious vs Subconscious thinking
Let's say there are two types of thinking: Conscious and subconscious (or unconscious if you prefer). Conscious thinking is somewhat hard to define, but it's basically thinking actively. When you're thinking about something consciously, you give it full attention, you're focused on it, fully aware of it, and you remember it better when you're finished concentrating on it. The subconscious can be thought of like this: It's storage for all the thoughts that you have thought about consciously, and usually the preferred method of thinking because it takes little to no energy. A Smash-related example of this would be learning how to drill shine with Fox. If you're learning it for the first time, you won't be able to do it well, or at all, right off the bat. However, once you've consciously thought about it, have focused on it, and have practiced it numerous times, it becomes second nature. Why? You've ingrained this ability into your subconscious. You no longer have to focus on it to be able to do it. You can simply think to yourself, "I'm going to do a drill shine." and you can do it. Whereas, before you had practiced and focused on it, you would have to focus on each movement; from the short hop, to the fast fall, to the L-cancel. Thus, tech skill and game knowledge are important. Once you've ingrained tech skill and game knowledge into your subconscious, you can aim your conscious thinking to more important things.
The issue for a lot of players is that they are focusing on the wrong thing, or they aren't focusing at all and letting their subconscious do the work (aka auto-pilot). A lot of people prefer to play on auto-pilot, because it's easier to do and takes less mental energy. This is also a reason for poor performance when people are heavily focused on tech skill. Instead of focusing on the things that matter, like what they can do to counter their opponent, they are focused on doing their flashy tech skill properly. The key is not only to focus, but to focus on the right thing, and clear the thoughts from your mind that take away from your focus.
I feel as though I could go rather deep into this subject, but I hope that this gets my main point across. Concentration is a key component to success that many of us lack, and sometimes we unknowingly lack it. Improvement can be made exponentially faster if focus is aimed at the correct things, and you will perform better in your matches if you can clear your mind of the pressure and thoughts that do nothing but distract you from playing at your best.
EDIT: I forgot to throw this in, but if you're looking to improve your concentration, there are numerous articles and suggestions for exercises to help with this. Among which are things like meditation, visualizing things, etc. Too many to list.
I've hidden the original article, but left it in tact in case anyone wants to read it. Here is the new one!
The Importance of Focus: Types and Explanation
I've already defined concentration, but I'll reiterate first. Concentration is the ability to clear your mind of all thoughts aside from what you are currently doing. Every source I've read since writing the original post has reaffirmed the ideas I've been having, so I'm going to try my best to relay the knowledge I've gained in a manner that can be related to Smash.
Why is concentration so important? If our concentration is harnessed and aimed properly, we can put ourselves "in the zone." Everyone has had a time when they felt as though they were in the zone. You're on top of your game, and you feel as though you are playing flawlessly. So why aren't we always in the zone? Why do we have times when we're in a slump or we feel as though we just can't play well at all? Let's cover a few things before we get to that answer.
There are a few different types of concentration: Internal, external, narrow, and broad. These come together to form four combinations of focus. Narrow-internal, broad-internal, narrow-external, and broad-external.
I'll define these things before I continue
Internal / External: This determines whether your focus is taking place in your mind, internally, or if your focus is taking place outside of your mind, externally. An example of internal focus would be trying to think of a way to approach your opponent or contemplating strategies before going into a match. An example of external focus would be one such as seeing your opponent miss a tech, then immediately punishing it, or seeing your opponent roll, then punishing it. So, basically, internal focus is using your mind/thoughts to find an answer or plan for something. External focus is reacting to visual cues or your surroundings. The important difference here is that external focus takes little to no thinking, only reaction, whereas internal focus requires you to spend mental energy in your mind looking for a solution.
Narrow / Broad: Then comes narrow and broad focus. Whether you're focused internally or externally, your focus is also either narrow or broad. Narrow focus takes a very limited number of options into account. Broad focus takes a very broad number of options or possibilities into account. Easy enough, right? So how do these all tie together? I'll explain each.
Narrow-internal: This type of focus takes place in the mind, as it is internal, and considers a very limited number of things. An example would be trying to find out why you're getting punished for a specific action. For the sake of a visual, imagine that every time Falco comes at your with a down-air, you try to shield grab it and get shined. You can narrow your thinking down to that single action and then figure out why it's happening and what to do about it. A simple solution would be not trying to shield grab, and, instead, rolling away, waiting, or whatever solution you come up with. The point is, this requires internal thought to find a solution. Once you've learned a solution, however, you no longer have to narrowly think about it. You can simply act. But we'll get into that a bit deeper soon.
Broad-internal: This is basically the same as narrow-internal, only you are thinking about the "bigger picture" or a larger number of options and trying to come up with a plan or solution for it. A quick example off the top of my head would be: You have a lot of trouble with a certain matchup. Currently, you don't know why, nor can you think of just one specific reason you are losing. Thus, you analyze the matchup as a whole (which makes it broad) and try to come up with a better approach in the matchup.
Narrow-external: In this type of focus, you pay attention to a small number of options, or maybe just one option, and react to it. This takes no thought. Simply, you see an action take place, and you immediately react to it. Example: Your opponent has missed a tech and is lying on the ground of the stage. You watch intently and wait for your opponent to either perform a get-up-attack, roll, or just stand up. You are only watching for a limited number of options here. Again, I stress that this is external. Internal and conscious thinking are not required to react to visual cues. It's basically automated.
Broad-external: Just like narrow-external, only you are taking a large number of options into account. An example could be that you and your opponent are standing in positions where either one of you could do a number of things. Your opponent could run away, approach, shield, throw out attacks, jump, wavedash, roll, etc. But the fact of the matter is, you don't have to consciously think about it. You just have to watch, wait, and react appropriately. This is why limiting your opponent's number of options is so important. The less options you have to watch for, the more likely you are able to react properly.
Okay, hopefully I've made this easy to understand so far. I'm going to breach a few more relevant things to clear everything up.
So why is it important that there are internal and external types of focus? Ideally, we want to remain in an external type of focus while we're playing. This is the key to being "in the zone." You lose yourself in the game. Your inner self doesn't exist when you're in the zone. All of your mental energy is concentrated externally. This is good, because when we eliminate internal focus, we have also eliminated the possibility of thoughts like "Wow, I'm not playing well today." or "I keep messing up my techs!" or "I can't believe I'm winning right now. This can't be right?" or "The crowd is really pissing me off." or whatever other internal thought you may have. Whenever you are required to switch your focus to internal, you have essentially left the zone. It doesn't matter if you are using narrow-internal focus to figure out why you're getting hit by f-smashes repeatedly. You are still leaving the zone to use internal focus to find a solution to a problem. And, often, when we switch to internal focus, we open a gateway to other internal thoughts that spring forth from association. If you are switching to internal focus, even to figure out a better way to win the match, you open the possibility of getting frustrated with yourself, nervous, anxious, and so on. But, if you can clarify your internal focus to a point that you don't let other thoughts creep into your mind, then it is all for the good of the match. You are still leaving "the zone" to do so, but the key here is to be able to internalize a solution, incorporate it into your game, and seamlessly re-enter external focus. This is adaptation at its finest.
This, also, is why being good at tech skill and controlling your character is very important. This is also why people advocate experience so much. If you are able to do these things without thinking, and if you have a ton of experience with the best reactions for given situations, then you don't need to shift your focus to an internal one to figure out what you should do or to make sure you're not messing up your tech skill.
Being externally focused also improves your reaction time. If there is no internal thought taking place trying to figure out what you should be doing, then you can perceive a situation more intently. The best example, or analogy, that I've come across for this is the following: Imagine that your mind is a camera with the ability to take 60 "pictures" per second. If you are 100% externally focused, then all 60 of those "pictures" are of the external situation. This allows you to catch a roll or tech better - among other things. Whereas, if you have internal thoughts crossing your mind, you can miss some of these external "pictures." These internal thoughts, especially the irrelevant ones such as worry, are the reasons for poor concentration, distraction, and weaker performance.
I hope this helps, and I hope I've given a clear explanation. Get in the zone and win, my friends! Improved focus helps in Smash and in life.
lol
