Source: Coldrack/flickr
In 1994, a British racing driver named Mark Hughes had “one of the greatest days in my life” when he began a race right at the back of the grid, with 25 other cars in front of him. Somehow he managed to overtake 23 cars, finishing third. While driving, Hughes felt a strange sense of detachment, as if he was watching from outside his body. He also felt a peculiar sense of timelessness. As he described it, “It’s funny and it sounds weird but it felt unconnected to time … It’s not really time …You felt you could go back, analyse and have a look.”1
Many racing drivers have reported similar experiences. The Finnish driver Mika Häkkinen reported that, when driving at his best, “Everything becomes like slow motion — even though you’re going at unbelievable speed around the Monaco track.”2 The Scottish driver Jackie Stewart, who competed in Formula 1 during the 1960s and 70s, even suggested that time expansion is the essential prerequisite for success in racing. As he wrote, “At 195 mph, you should still have a very clear vision, almost in slow motion, of going through that corner — so that you have time to brake, time to line the car up, time to recognize the amount of drift.”3
Time Expansion in Other Sports
Time expansion experiences, as I refer to them, or TEEs for short, are common in other sports too. The American sprinter Steve Williams — who equalled the men’s 100- and 200-metre world records in the 1970s — described how, when he was running well, “10 seconds seems like 60. Time switches to slow motion.”4
In my own research, I cite the experience of an ice hockey player for whom “The play which seemed to last for about 10 minutes all occurred in the space of about eight seconds [of measured time].” Similarly, a man described a game of table tennis that suddenly “turned into slow motion … I could see the ball and its flight and spin perfectly, anticipating its precise bounce, and position my body, arm, hands and wrist to hit perfect returns.”5
Easy Access to Time Expansion
In my book, Time Expansion Experiences, I suggest that a tiny proportion of extraordinary athletes have easy access to time expansion experiences. One example is the baseball player Ted Williams, whose career ran from 1939 to 1960. Williams is usually regarded as one of the greatest hitters (if not the best) ever, with the highest on-base percentage in baseball history (.482). He claimed to be able to see the stitches on the seam of the ball as it flew toward him at 100 mph. He described how the ball sometimes appeared to grow, so that it seemed like a beach ball floating toward him in slow motion.
This may also be true of the contemporary footballer Lionel Messi, usually described as the best player of modern times. Messi is renowned for his “impossible” goals that seem to defy the laws of physics. He threads through tiny spaces between groups of opponents, curls the ball more acutely than any other player, accelerates and decelerates with impossible rapidity, all while keeping the ball fixed at high speed. As the ex-footballer Rio Ferdinand commented insightfully of Messi, “I just feel that in his own eyes and his own vision, the game just slows down for him. He plays in slow-motion because it comes to him so easy and so naturally.”
Explaining Time Expansion Experiences
In my view, the key to understanding TEEs is altered states of consciousness. Our normal time perception is linked to our normal state of consciousness. In some mildly altered states (such as flow) time passes very quickly. But during intense altered states, time usually expands dramatically, or seems to disappear altogether. This is why radical time expansion is a common feature of psychedelic drugs, and of accidents and emergencies. The sudden shock of an accident may disrupt our normal psychological processes and functions, causing an abrupt shift in consciousness.
In sport, intense altered states occur due to what I call “super-absorption.” Absorption normally makes time pass faster, as in flow. However, when it becomes especially intense, over a long period of sustained concentration, the opposite occurs. In some cases, an athlete builds up concentration gradually over the course of a game or contest. A racing driver or a golfer may concentrate hard for hours, eventually attaining a state of intense absorption. Here the game is akin to a meditation, in which a person gradually focuses their mind, attaining deeper states of stillness and well-being. In other cases, an athlete shifts quickly into super-absorption during a critical period of a game — for example, when they (or their team) are losing and making a concerted effort to catch up or in the final minutes of a game when scores are tied or close.
It’s as if, at a certain pitch of concentration, we pass through a portal into a different domain, like a ship passing through an estuary into the wide ocean. And in this different domain, time expands dramatically.
Many factors contribute to sporting ability — for example, physical fitness, strength, technical skill, and tactical knowledge. But perhaps the main key to extraordinary sporting ability is the capacity to enter an altered state of consciousness, through intense absorption. And the most important feature of this altered state — in terms of contributing to a higher level of performance — is time expansion.
