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25-Jul-2004 MADMAN, PROPHET or GENIUS ? ou L’EMPÊCHEUR DE TOURNER EN ROND |
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| The first time I
heard the name of Joe Shaw, I was interviewing Tim Garner. He mentioned
the 120, an exercise that Joe invented years ago. The minute I got home, I
did some research, found some articles (the main one was on SquashPlayer,
funnily enough), started to look into brain waves, etc, and thought that
Mr Shaw was well worth knowing. While preparing an article on John White, I naturally contacted Joe, and asked him for a few comments on John, and also if he wouldn’t mind giving an interview, as I am writing a series of articles on coaches (Mr Malcolm Willstrop coming up very soon, watch this space…). His answer was that he was retired and didn’t think that anybody was interested in his lifework. I was. So he gave me several links to different pieces of information, his complete life story (which I summarised), his resources (on David Palmer's website) and other documents. And I read, and read. And read. Yes, I know, I’m sure that a lot of you do know all about Joe’s program, but I didn’t. And it’s fascinating. Well, it is unless you are a “turn up to the club, get on court, hit the ball, shower, bar” kind of player, of course. Because Joe’s method is “heavy”, to say the least. He did a lot of research, a lot of studies, went deep into all the subjects he thought relevant for the development of an elite sportsman. Imagine a gigantic onion (sorry Joe, but that’s the first image that came to my mind…). Layers and layers and layers… Every time you proudly detach one, there’s another one under it… not to forget that, if you cut it the wrong way, it can actually make you cry…. So here is what we are going to do. Joe’s resources are so rich, so full of unusual concepts that I truly believe that, if you read them all at once, you just can’t digest it (yes, a bit like an onion…). So, every week, we’ll present to you his program, step by step. You can also read the whole program by going onto David Palmer's website, where Joe originally published them, once every fortnight. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to converse, laugh and learn with the Man. Here are some extracts of our conversations. Also, I extracted a few pages of his life story, fascinating once again, to say the least. And to finish, every day we will present to you on Kaleidoscope, “the mental tip of the day”, extracted from Joe’s resources. So I am just hoping that, like me, you’ll be…completely Shawed! |
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