Almost 50 years ago in my book Beyond Jogging: The Inner Spaces of Running, I wrote a chapter about the Future of Sport.
It is probably high time I have revised it.
Some things are changed in perspective; others have already come true, and others are recognized realities. This short article for SportsEdTV provides insights into the impending potential which probably certainly become part of our daily sports experience. Some might be in evolution and difficult to recognize.
Of course, in sports and overall life we have lived a half-century since this chapter was first written; championship athletes are probably better than ever and the mental training I had foreseen is being practiced more abundantly. In the 1970s sport had not yet been tarnished with dope scandals and the likes of Lance Armstrong, Ben Johnson, Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, and others were not front-page news. Drugs being tossed into this mix contributes to the blurred lines of my viewpoint; because now it is a cat and mouse game with the drugs able to mask their utilization. This is a battle for the future!
Performance was being explored then for other goals, that were in many ways more alarming. With drugs, there was the realization of being able to train hard with less fatigue, but it has many side effects, like hostility to others and long-term dangers such as brain cancer. Rather, I believe knowing the self and the day-to-day ups and downs of your true self are hard to accept but it is truthful.
The language of sport has only slightly evolved, and the foresight of my good friend, Michael Murphy, and his corresponding examination of his insights in the introduction and afterword of Beyond Jogging are intriguing to most but not apparent and not yet realized.
I will attempt to follow the main points of the chapter in Beyond Jogging, although the vantages at present might be skewered in new directions. For instance, the athlete of the future will be still using a whole array of new methods, orientations, and approaches to sport and concentrate on a fresh sense of the mind. These will always be exponentials as many more mental strategies for reaching a clear mentality will be discovered and probed for effectiveness. Calling on all the research as far back as the East German’s hidden potentials programs and expansive human potentials techniques, athletes and especially recreational athletes will have little use for performance enhancements and get better insights into themselves.
