Want to see how uncreative I am? Take a look at my 1st attempt at my Creative Essay. Theme: Creativity and me.

Injecting a little bit of creativity into an increasingly uncreative game of Badminton

Badminton is an indoor racquet sport played by either two opposing players (singles) or two opposing pairs (doubles). Early versions of the game have been documented as early as 2000 years ago in ancient Greece but the modern game of badminton has its roots in England with the establishment of the Badminton Association of England which also published the first official set of rules. Today, Badminton is governed by an international body (International Badminton Federation) and is enjoyed in more than 156 countries by more than 50 million players.

Is Badminton creative? I believe that before we can answer that question, we must first define creativity. Unfortunately, such is the nature of creativity that there is no single definition for it. Personally, I am an advocate of the 5 P’s of creativity which are the creative process, press, product, persuasion and person. From my perspective, Badminton is definitely creative. It involves an environment whereby players attempt to outwit each other on court using creative techniques and often, the result is an exhilarating and entertaining spectacle. All these however came crashing down the day the sports science and commercialization got introduced into the game.

Sports science is the study and application of scientific principles and techniques with the aim of improving sporting performance . As Badminton increases in popularity, so too do the number of countries obsessed with winning and many have resorted to science to help them gain a competitive edge. During training, technical strokes that once used to be an art form have been dissected, analyzed and taught to players as the ‘correct technique’ enabling them to maximize their ‘efficiency’. Footage of opponents is scrutinized before matches and their plays charted statistically. Players are instructed to specifically follow a detailed tactical plan to exploit an opponent’s weakness. All these extreme measures undertaken to ‘improve’ the sport has in fact severely stifled creativity in the arena.

Having been a Badminton player for almost two-thirds of my life, I have countless experiences during trainings whereby coaches impart to me the ‘correct’ techniques, the ‘correct’ footwork and during matches the ‘correct’ tactics’. It was only recently that I discovered something was amiss with the way I was being taught. During a particularly exhausting match, I realized that I wasn’t even thinking about playing. I was just taking every shuttle as they came. And the surprising part was I won more points playing that way. I felt inclined to at least reflect upon this incident and what I came up with was rather surprising to myself.

I realized that what I demonstrated in the court at that time was creativity. When I am physically exhausted, my brain was flooded with waves of electrical pulses indicating fatigue. These signals block out logic and reason but incidentally freed my mind to be creative. I hit shots that went against my teachings just because I felt that it was the right thing to do. I also formulated an array of shots against him that I have never before done in my life. My opponent was caught numerous times because everything I did was unexpected. I still lost the match, but I gained an important insight. Creativity is a powerful tool. So why didn’t I realize this earlier? And now that I did realize the power of creativity, how would I apply it?

The application of creativity can be an arduous task but its application can be applied to all facets of Badminton. Beginning with training, I realized that I had to unlearn everything I have been taught and relearn them with a fresh perspective. The end result was the same but the process was definitely different. Instead of doing repetitive drills on court to improve stamina and dexterity, I realized that the desired results can be achieved by playing something totally different like soccer. Instead of practicing tried and tested technical shots, I experimented with various other unorthodox strokes which ultimately not only increased my array of shots but also increased my understanding of how shots are made.

The application of creativity doesn’t end with training. It actually begins with training. I set out to explore the effects of creativity with different facets of Badminton. Mental preparations are a huge aspect in any athlete’s life and visualization techniques are one of the most powerful tools. This follows a study conducted by Anna Issac in 1992 where she discovered that visualization techniques improved athlete’s performance for both training and competition.

I believe the secret behind the success of visualization is creativity. Creativity allows the mind to picture images to stimulate the brain. Visualization works differently for everyone because everybody gets stimulated differently. Before a crucial match, I like to visualize myself playing the actual match itself and running through all the possibilities for different shot placements. I find that this increases my awareness on court and allows me to be able to predict the unpredictable shots that an opponent might throw at me. This view is further expounded by Roure at el who concluded a study on the automatic nervous system (ANS) and suggested that mental imagery may help in the construction of schema which can be reproduced, without thinking, in actual practice .

To conclude, I believe that creativity will be the foundation on which all my future learning can be based upon. As I inevitably age, so too will I have to make the transition in my playing style. From a high-energy fast paced game into a slower but more creative style of play revolving around both visualization and thinking of new ways to catch opponents. Less brawn and more brains. Just as Henry David Thoreau once said “The world is but a canvas to the imagination” , so too am I limited only by my ability to be creative.
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Melissa said that if she was my teacher she would give me a big fat 0. Small wonder there. It totally sucked. Attempt number 2 was in my opinion, MUCH BETTER.

Playing with myself

I have to admit that I was initially very skeptical about Creative Thinking because to me creativity was something that one either had or didn’t have. That impression changed fairly quickly after my first lesson. SMU in its quest to be different embraces a fusion of different cultures and that includes thinking differently. Too often in our lives we have been educated by the system on the ‘right’ way to think, analyze, approach and solve problems. Creative Thinking made me realize just how constricted my horizon was and urged me to explore the other various forms of thinking. In short, thinking outside the box.

Creative thinking is not only being receptive to new ideas and perspectives. It also involves looking at old things in new ways. Following that, I intend to take a rather important aspect of my life shed some new fresh perspectives on it. I have been playing Badminton for a substantial part of my life. To me, it’s more than just a physical game. The mental aspect of Badminton is what makes it and so many other sports worldwide so intriguing.

Different players view the mental aspect differently. To coaches, mental strength is what makes or breaks an athlete. To scientists, the mental is nothing more than a hotbed for experimental forms of visualization techniques to assist the athlete in improving performance. To me, the mental is simply me against myself. The mind controls the physical aspect of the body. So all the physical and technical aspects of training become redundant if my mental refuses to coordinate and drive everything like a well oiled engine.

But there is definitely more to the mental aspect of badminton than being simply a coordinator of the body. There are times in a player’s life when he decides upon placement of a particular shot and immediately regrets it. Why did he place that shot there? Was his subconscious mind overriding the logical reasoning of his brain? The answer might just lie in metacognition .

Metacognition is the process of ‘thinking about one’s own thinking”. Badminton takes on a whole new dimension when this concept is applied. When I play a game of Badminton, the sensory glands in my brain are forced to process a flood of information including fatigue, pain, sound, heat and light. On top of this, it has to coordinate movement, analyze information and strategize all at the same time. When I make real time decisions during a rally, I often question my ability to make accurate judgments. Am I really able to process so much information and come up with answers in a split second or is something else coming into play? I believe that at least half of the time, I have been using my feeling to play.

It is no big secret that most athletes perform differently during competitive environments as compared to training. The reason attributed to this phenomenon is what most coaches call form. Form by itself is just a word that describes how well an athlete plays. The meaning attached to form is something I call feeling. Feeling is the innate ability of an athlete in his current environment to conjure up magical shots that he has never before done in his entire life. But what exactly is feeling? It is easy to describe but more difficult to define. When a player places a shot, all he knows is that the shot will go in a definite direction. But he will never know for certain exactly where or how the shot will end up. To better aid him, he uses his feeling to hit the shot. So what is feeling again? I believe that feeling bears its roots in our subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is indeed a very powerful tool. The notion of the subconscious is considered to be the deepest level of consciousness that we ourselves are not directly aware of but which still affects our conscious behavior. So while we are actually playing a game of Badminton, we think we are using skills acquired during trainings. But when we play, we inevitably use our feelings. So are we really playing using our subconscious minds? And then again, how do our subconscious minds tell us what to do? It could be possible that all those repetitive drills during training sessions somehow happen to get ingrained into our memory. We repeat an action over so many times it becomes a reflex. Like an instinct. The name that scientists have called this phenomenon is called muscle memory.

Muscle memory makes repeating a certain action easier especially if a person hasn’t done so for extended periods of time. It still doesn’t explain why we instinctively place shots that go beyond our logical reasoning. Ultimately, the answer might just lie in the way I think. Before I play a match, I have in my mind a scenario of how I would like the match to be played out. I anticipate certain plays that the opponent might make against me and think of possible counters. This whole thought process is called visualization and strategizing. When I think up a strategy, I am actually merely second guessing an opponent. But it is really my mind that does the second guessing against itself. My mind unfortunately makes assumptions based on its own weaknesses. In short, when I play an actual match, my subconscious mind is merely reacting to a situation based on my own personal feelings of wanting to win the rally. It overrides the more logical reasoning of my brain because it is making up plays that can never ever be replicated in real life for every rally is unique.

In analyzing my own subconscious behavior, I have come to a conclusion. I am my own worst enemy. My brain ultimately fears itself more than any other opposition. The next time I play a game of badminton, I must realize that I am not only playing with an opponent. I am also playing with myself.