-
Hi Mark,
My guess is that it’s a little bit of both. But there are always going to be physical things to work on…
The bigger question is how do things go in the practice room? Because if you play to a certain level in the practice room, and then change for the worse in performance, this is an indicator that it’s more mental than physical.
Have you ever tried doing something pretty technically intensive (whether it’s playing a video game, cooking something complicated, driving in bad weather) while carrying on a conversation with someone? Doesn’t usually go so well, right? Something suffers – either the conversation or the activity. Same with performing. If you have all this unhelpful task-irrelevant dialogue going on in your head as you perform, it’s going to be tough to perform at the level you normally do.
Regarding your second question, often it can be helpful to change things up occasionally by pushing the tempos way past your comfort zone, and focusing on speed over accuracy. There are some indications that this results in quicker learning than focusing exclusively on accuracy over speed.
