The Zombie Mode

I just finished reading an interesting book, The Three Pound Enigma – The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock Its Mysteries by Shannon Moffett. In the Chapter called “Mining the Brain” she interviews Dr. Christof Koch and Francis Crick. Crick is famous for his work with James Watson on the discovery of the helical structure of DNA. Basically he devoted much of the remainder of his career to the study of brain function. How does this all relate to movement and coaching? Well over the past several years I have been convinced that to better understand movement and train movement that we need to better understand brain function. There has been an explosion of research in this area. Much of it is way to complex for a dumb old coach like me to understand. But at times I am able to cull bits and pieces from my reading and research. As I was reading this book, it was late at night and I was dozing off, when this concept jumped off the page at me. The concept is that of the “Zombie Mode.” Koch and Crick have determined that most what happens is our brain occurs at an unconscious level. In scientific terminology these are called cortical reflexes but they have termed them the Zombie Mode. What appealed to me about this concept is the fact that I have heard some of the great coaches that know (who were not into brain research) in essence say the say thing. One coach I know calls it pushing the button. You push one button and it turns on a cascade of movement. They point our that the ”Zombie Reflex” is faster than our conscious mind. They use the example of Tennis. “If you play tennis well, most of it is totally at the zombie level. The ball approaches at high speed and your body executes the right sequence of motion to intercept the ball with your racket and return it. There is almost no delay between sensing the ball and reacting to it. It’s all smooth motion, egoless thoughtless.” They point that a combination of the “zombie reflex” and slower stereotyped responses are what enables us to run complex movement schema.

It seems that our goal as professional working with movement is to first recognize this phenomenon, second to put the body in positions to activate this phenomenon. In my opinion the foundation for these action is developed early, that is why we need to get moving, allow them to explore movement and test their limits. Food for thought