Upon entering any competition most athletes are proficient in preparing their bodies; Right nutrition, warming up the body/muscles, pre-game skills, etc.; however the pre-game mental warm up and preparation is often lacking or not nearly paid attention to enough. Beach volleyball is unique in the mental aspect and demands upon a player. As you go through a game small errors can lead to rhythm changes, momentum shifts, and possible compounding errors which can quickly lead to a loss that could have been prevented with a couple of quick, in the moment mental adjustments. These quick adjustments which I call “Resets” actually start before you even step on the court or into competition.
To be able to quickly make a mental adjustment in the middle of a match you must first enter the match with a “quiet mind” (clean, blank slate if you will), and deeper sense of self awareness. Much like a computer our brains work on neural pathways and connections. When your computer/brain is bogged down with too many applications (distracting thoughts) running at once, your efficiency to perform tasks (motor planning and executive functioning) become compromised. We know this in the computer world because we start to see error messages. Loading information is slow (buffering), and eventually a crash can happen. When your computer is rebooted and Reset everything runs smoother and more efficiently.
Amazingly, we are able to perform this same action with our brains.