- When you're working towards your audition process,
don't forget about mental training.
The reason that the East Germans
and the Soviets were doing so much better
during the eighties in the Olympics than the US teams,
had to do with the fact that over 50% of their training
was done just in their mind.
As the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.
And I would take at least an hour a day,
to just look inward, process all that you wanna have,
and make the concept of what you want to say musically,
incredibly strong, so strong that when you go ahead
and put that instrument up to your body, it just flows out.
Because the first, middle and last great credo
of all great artistry, instrumental artistry.
Is that the art form must and shall,
precede and dictate the craft.
If you can continue to work on that art form,
it gives you extra time to perfect inwardly,
inside your mind.
Remember a golfer can hit a hole in one
a hundred times in a row, in their mind.
They can envision their swing,
they can envision their stance, they can see the course,
they can see the flag, they can see the green.
They can imagine the trajectory of the ball
after it's hit, they can see its bounce,
they can watch it roll along the green
and see it go right into the hole.
And they do, great, great athletes,
what great athletes do to prepare to win,
is no different than what we must do.
And with the level of competition,
the numbers of players going into our industry,
it's very important to use some of the very same
mental toughness training skills,
so that we also can be competitive,
and even better than that,
so that we can have enough control of our environment,
so that we're able to demonstrate what we do
and be very realistic about our abilities.