The King's Speech

svincenz · March 2, 2011, 4:09pm

There were some key concepts:

Relaxation - Teaching the athlete to relax when executing skills. In the movie you could see a heavy emphasis on relaxation exercises.

Distraction - Having the athlete perform skills be not focusing on the task at hand. Charlie often tried to “trick” the athlete into doing the proper technique (moving it to the hind-brain from the fore-brain). In the movie, this was demonstrated with the use of headphones and music when reading Shakespeare out loud.

And there was the whole discussion of credentials and formal schooling that was brought up against Lionel – when all that really matters is practical experience and results.

It is interesting how a lot of knowledge is passed on from wartime. Lionel had honed his craft by working with returning soldiers from WWI. Famed sprint coach Bud Winter learned his techniques for relaxation while training fighter pilots to relax (and catch up on their sleep) in WWII.

Beautiful N2, thanks a lot.