[mpzoFeJs]

This is interesting because it's very similar to my nephew's inability to catch a football when he "thinks about catching it".

We'll toss a football around and when he thinks he's "on" (that is - being watched or judged by his father or some other adult) he tends to try too hard and thinks too much about catching the ball.

What I do with him is to carry on a "chatty" kind of conversation and then without warning I'll flip the ball to him - and he almost always catches it. He's even made some rather impressive fingertip catches.

I've tried to explain to him that he should not think about catching the ball because thinking about it is preventing him from simply reacting and doing what his hands already know how to do. So whenever we play catch and I see him "pressing", I'll start talking about something else and then throw him the ball when he doesn't expect it. When he catches it (which he almost always does in that situation) I tell him "Nice catch!" and remind him that he knows how to do this, he just has to stop thinking about it.

dusklose's 5-iron shot reminded me of this and I think it points out the same thing -- that when we "try" to do something, the results are always more disappointing than when we just "let" ourselves do what we already know how to do.


-JP