This is a fact: Whatever your specification is, or something you are trying to improve at, if you learn any other different skill, even totally unrelated to your specific skill you are trying to improve, you will get better at that specific skill.
Here is a simple example: If you are a tennis player who doesn’t know how to play chess, or you don’t know how to ice skate, roller-blade or kayak and you learn this skills, your tennis game will improve.
Practicing your primary specific skill should still be the priority, in these case it is practicing tennis, but learning another skills too will improve your tennis game even further.
This same applies to mental skills like playing chess, learning a foreign language or learning to play guitar, piano or violin. By learning how to figure skate, ski or snowboard you get better at all those mental skills at the same time too.
I know it sounds unbelievable, but if you don’t know how to play chess and you learn it, it will improve your tennis game.
If you are a great swimmer and you are not getting any faster in 100 butterfly, learning a foreign language and practicing playing piano can improve your time in 100 fly.
For less competitive people who are not looking to improve their athletic skills, when they learn any kind of new skill, it will improve their efficiency in walking, stair climbing, driving, gardening and other day to day activities.
I am not making this up. This is a fact any athletic coach will confirm to you.
Do you want to improve your mental performance? Lets say you already have great memory, or you are trying to learn a new language or become better at math. Pick up a ping pong and practice it and get better at it. At the same time your math and your memory will get even better too and every other mental skill with it.
This applies to any kind of skillful activity.
So why is playing violin not part of proffesional tennis players workout?
It actually is and isn’t.
Professional performance tennis player or any other professional athlete already practices for more than 5 hours every day all kinds of skills like service, volley, overhead and so on – skills related to his specific athletic orientation. After 5 hours of intense practice on tennis court he goes to the gym to do some strengthening exercises, then he stretches for 30 minutes and puts some ice on hurting joints. After that he meets coach at the video room and they analyze the workout or other players game he might be facing soon, they talk about a tactic and so on.
After 8 hours of some form of playing, analyzing, talking tennis and conditioning, professional athlete comes home and wants to have a little bit of life beside tennis. The last thing he wants to do is to spend an extra 1 hour playing soccer, playing piano, or learning Spanish just because he has to to improve his game even further. Even do, these skills would help improoving his game. But he is already practicing his specialization on such a high time consuming level, that he prefers to do some fun stuff or rather to spent time with his family. Life is not only about tennis for him and he wants to do something not related to his performance increase.
But, if he suddenly starts enjoying figure skating and he will hang out with his friends on the ice-skate ring on his time off learning Triple Axel, it will improve his tennis game.
What I am trying to say here is, that there are virtually no limits to your improvement at anything with lots of practice and learning new skills forever. It only depends on how much time you have and your willingness to struggle through learning new skills. And that could be very discouraging, hard and unpleasant.
Constantly learning new skills creates certain brain interconnections of nerves responsible for these skills and that will improve every single one of them at the same time.
So if you think, you already did maximum for your physical and mental performance, you’re wrong. In fact, you are just at the beginning. The time you stop learning new difficult physical and mental skills, you stop increasing your overall performance. And if you stop trying completely it will deteriorate fast at every level.
Sorry to remind you these simple fact, but yes, these process never ends. And it is a hard work you have to go through to maintain and improve your performance.
Example of new skills to learn to improve your overall performance:
- Ice skating
- 3 ball juggling
- Chess playing
- Guitar, piano and other instrument playing
- Ping pong playing
- Tennis playing
- Learning Spanish, Chinese or other language
- Learning how to swim all 4 strokes – Breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly, free style
- Windsurfing
- Surfing
- Learning to dance all kinds of dances
- Rollerblading
- Painting
- Writing
- Basketball playing
- Gymnastics
- Yoga
- And many, many others.
Right now, learning playing guitar, learning kite boarding, and getting better at playing chess, possibly learning Spanish is on my list of new activities to learn. The vision that all of these new skills when practiced and improved will improve the performance in skills I already have keeps me going.
I know it is time consuming and not everybody has time to do that. But I urge you to try to find that time. 30 minutes per day is good, one hour is better to set for learning a new skills. It’s necessary and very important.
If you are one of those people that have plenty of time and you are bored, stop wasting that time and start learning and practicing and you’ll increase your overall mental and physical performance. Beside, your brain and your body is begging you to do just that. They want to struggle and learn to stay healthy, fit and performing on theirs highest levels possible.