Flying Can Not Be Taught

But it can be learned. You are a pilot: it is a state of mind as much as a seat in the cockpit. You will not master the myriad skills by just reading about them or dreaming about them or talking about them. You must train. Thankfully there are smart ways to train. Only when ready should you go up in the sky and practice.

The FAA's Aviation Instructor's Handbook contains this wonderful picture on the second page:

The caption is "Learning cannot be achieved in this manner." (FAA, 1977.)  Once I got over the scary image, I read that, "'Learning' and 'knowledge' cannot exist apart from a person." Wow. Deep stuff. So how did Sam teach flying?

Of course he used the normal instructor stuff that is laid out in many publications (such as that excellent FAA manual), but he knew that the student was more important than the master. He excited students. He created a safe environment in which to learn. And he set an absolute example of attention to detail.

Whatever the student's background or previous flying experience, from his actions and not-so-gentle words, Sam made it clear that complete concentration and respect for the wing and the wind were required. No skipping steps. He knew he could not condense Marine Corps or Zen temple training into ten minutes, but he could require all paperwork for a flight to be filled out completely. A real weather briefing. A thorough review of risks. A well-paced preflight briefing. You came to treat airplanes as something very special.

He called the cockpit his dojo, his training place. It's where the Zen master contemplates. It's where the warrior trains. It's where the student learns. Sam told me to never believe the old 'flying is safer than driving' line; he repeatedly said the best chance for killing yourself is by making a couple of mistakes in the cockpit. Always treat entering the cockpit with respect. It is here that we determine our immediate fate. It is here we work magic. It is always another chance to grow.

There are many great books and videos on how to fly, but the essence of becoming a pilot is learnt the way Zen or martial arts is transmitted: master to student with the student going off to practice alone. It is the only way. The cockpit must become your dojo. You must trust a master and then practice with complete focus. Practice again and again.

In the mid-1990's the USAF Chief of Staff directed the air force research laboratories to investigate the human attributes that enable a pilot to develop and maintain Situational Awareness (SA), which was seen as crucial to flying success. Armstrong Laboratory at Brooks Air Force Base completed a study of 171 active-duty F-15 A/C pilots (at the time the premier air superiority fighter) at several front line squadrons, with pilot ages ranging from 24 to 45 years (Carretta, Perry & James, 1996). They compared an extensive test battery with supervisor and peer ratings of SA. This was a huge undertaking, carefully conducted with a rigorous scientific research methodology. It found no predictive power when looking at psychomotor or personality measures. Statistical analysis showed the fighter pilots with higher general cognitive ability based on items like working memory and spatial reasoning did tend to have slightly better rankings of SA. But what accounted for an amazing 92.5% of the variability in SA rankings was something pretty simple. It was flying experience measured in number of F-15 hours! The study concluded the best way for F-15 pilots to acquire more of the seemingly magical SA was to have them spend more time flying in the F-15 . I'm too old and fat to fly an F-15, but I can use the results to become a better pilot in whatever aircraft I want: I fly it more! Sure it sounds obvious. But now we know nothing else the USAF can think of has been proven to be better. If I really want to get better, I must fly more.

You must also fly before you reach the cockpit; train the mind before entering the dojo. Sit in a chair and go through all the actions and motions of normal, abnormal, and emergency checklists and procedures. Do it till you know where to look, what to do. Do this in real time. Sports psychology studies have shown that this mental practice is most effective when you picture yourself actually accomplishing the feat from your mind's eye, not watching yourself from the outside looking in. Don't just talk through a procedure: imagine actually doing it. The university crowd sometimes call all this Visual Motor Behavior Rehearsal, or VMBR. But whatever you want call it, the powerful thing is that it really works. Psychologists Jacqueline Golding and Steven Ungerleider surveyed 1,200 track and field athletes who had made it to the OlympicTrials, specifically comparing those who qualified for the games and those didn't quite make the cut. There were many similarities. They all had 'the right stuff.' In fact there were nearly identical in every respect except for one thing:

 Those athletes who actually made the team and competed in the Olympics were doing more mental practice in the final stages of preparation than their less-successful colleagues. . . . We learning for our studies with Olympians that mental preparation and the timing of mental preparation are the keys to who succeeds.  (Engerleider, 2002.)

Do not cheat yourself. Drill yourself repeatedly. Make the images of flight as realistic as possible by including all your senses, in full color and clear detail. The mechanical motions and the cockpit flows will become second nature. See the wind. Think of a Samurai warrior endlessly exercising with his sword. It is long hours alone. Only you can do this for yourself. Practice regularly as it may take months before seeing improvement. However the result will eventually be close to perfection.

In your mind's eye, right now, pretend that you have been given a big ripe yellow lemon. Imagine yourself examining the lemon, looking at it closely, feeling its dimpled texture, smelling its distinct sweet tart aroma. Now, see yourself taking a sharp kitchen knife and cutting the lemon into four juicy quarters—watch for that juice squirting out!—then taking one of those moist quarters and putting it into your mouth and taking a huge bite.

Did your lips pucker up? Was your mouth watering? Consider that your body was maybe producing saliva, a physical reaction, to a lemon that only existed in your head. The outer world has been controlled by the inner mind. Sam told me that as far as how your mind translates meanings and trains reactions, there is no real difference between an imagined event and a real event that you physically experience. As MIT's Kathleen O’Craven and Nancy Kanwisher reported in highly cited paper in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, there is a:

Striking correspondence between imagery and perception by demonstrating that many of the same regions that are selectively activated during perception of a particular class of stimuli are also activated during imagery of that same stimulus class. . . . At a macroscopic level, the neural instantiation of a mental image resemble the neural instantiation of the corresponding perceptual image. (O'Craven & Kanwisher, 2000.)

This is powerful stuff. It means you can either imagine eating the lemon or really eat the lemon—in many ways your brain will consider that the same thing is happening. Chair flying is using mostly the same bits of brain that get used when you are in a simulator or flying an aircraft.

When you spend time flying the chair, train yourself to just do what is required. Do not day-dream. And absolutely do not sabotage yourself by allowing thoughts of negative outcomes to pollute your mind. Positively do the right procedures, keep your imagery detailed and in the present. Never sit and think 'don't do this' or say 'I won't flip this switch before checking this gauge.' It is important to picture good performance. Not for some rah-rah half-baked feel-good  positive dreaming pseudo-reason. But for real tested and proven concrete performance reasons. In one example (of the many that have been published) the subjects that had mentally practiced dart throwing by thinking about darts landing towards the centre of the board had a 28% improvement in actual dart throwing performance. The group that was told to practice by imagining darts barely hitting the board had a 3% decline in actual dart throwing performance (Powell, 1973.) The lesson is clear—imagine great landings. Don't think about sliding off the runway, but rather mentally practice safe go-arounds.

We are setting up and strengthening patterns in your brain, affecting what neurobiologists call long-term potentiation. This is a long-lasting enhancement in efficacy of the synapse between two neurons, the very building blocks of the mind. You are rewiring your brain. We used to think this was a figurative saying, blithely saying "you are building your mental muscle, it's like you are rewiring your brain." But since the 1990's neuroscience has discovered that this is real. A large collection of different studies have shown the adult brain can significantly change, resulting in new and modified connections between neurons (Ellison, 2007.) . Even new neurons can be added, something thought impossible just a few years ago. Doing VMBR wrong will set you up for failure. Practice the correct procedure until it it second nature. Then practice until it is your only nature.

If you could not fly the chair, Sam would cancel the lesson. Waste of time to be in the air he would say, if you are not prepared. People did not like to look him in the eye when he calmly said this. They knew they had tried to cheat the sky. And the sad look of disappointment in Sam was too much to handle.

As it was, his left eye was normally slightly off focus—not enough to be readily perceptible, but enough to be disconcerting. It was focused ever so slightly to the center, giving his steady blue eyes a penetrating quality, almost as if he were looking at you from two vantage points at once.

Klaus Schrodt, three-time world aerobatic champion, told Plane and Pilot magazine that, "mental preparation is very necessary. The entire flight has to be imagined, seen, felt, smelled, heard. The actual flight needs to be a copy of the mental preparation." Neuroscientists know that this is because the shape and strength of your neurons and their synaptic connections—the very nature of your brain—is changed by visualization. Fran Tarkenton, the famous Minnesota Vikings quarterback, said that a few days before an important game he would, "run whole blocks of plays in my head and try to visualize every game situation, every defense they're going to throw at me." Legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus wrote that, "I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head." World champion alpine skier Maria Walliser said in an interview, "there's never enough chance to practice. But I can run the course in my mind hundreds of times till I'm perfect. I think about how I enter each turn, each jump, each ice patch. On race day I must have no doubts."

Olympic gold medalist and four-time world record holder discus thrower Mac Wilkins said about inner practice, "it boils down to the fact that if you're trying to accomplish something, a particular athletic movement, if you can't visualize it then it's pure chance you will be able to perform the movement. If you visualize it and can really see it . . . you have a clear target to aim for and a much better chance of realizing that target." Nicole Haislett won several gold medals swimming in the Olympics, she told Steven Ungerleider in an interview, "I played the race over and over in my head in order to see myself winning and winning strong. I would visualize a constant routine, see myself accelerating off the wall, my perfect turns, my kick, and my finish. Visualization was very important to me."

Four-time Olympic gold medalist Janet Evans said about inner practice, "I continue to visualize all my races days and weeks before they happen. I have never been to a competition . . . where I didn't see myself win in my mental images before I got there." Olympic marathoner Nancy Ditz said once, "Rather than always hoping for the best to happen . . . you must ask yourself what is the scariest of most intimidating part of your race . . . and then visualize it in a positive light. If you have had something awful happen to you, visualize it and change the scenario. You have the power to change the outcome." Sprinter and hurdler Shirley de la Hunty reports:

I enjoyed thinking out the bio-mechanics of how to run faster, clear the hurdles better and to work the scientific side of it. I learned how to generate intense concentration and intense adrenalin and was also able to adjust my body balance so as to get the maximum out of my run. . . . For hours in my room I'd mentally rehearse this. There's not much room for error. I ran 11.3 seconds for 100m and I was just delighted with that. It stood as a world record for nine years. (Hemery, 1986.)

Kirby Chambliss, captain of the U.S. Aerobatics Team, a three-time winner of the National Aerobatic Championship, and a full-time B737 captain for Southwest Airlines, put it this way in an promotional TV interview:

I think the better your visualization skills are, if you can make yourself think that you are in the airplane, and you walk through it and you go I'm going to see this reference here, and that reference there, that you're going to go up there and it's like you've already flown that flight. So you're probably going to end up beating the next guy. Because it is so mental—and that's the challenge. And when I say beating the next guy, usually when I don't win a competition the guy that beat me was myself.

Military pilots are taught to practice for a jet that costs a hundred million dollars with a dollar store toilet plunger for a control stick and a wobbly metal folding chair for the zero-zero ejection seat. U.S. Navy Blue Angel Mark Dunleavy says that, "in the preshow briefing demo pilots have eyes closed, visualizing as the boss is giving the calls; sometimes you'll see them move their hands for the controls of the jet in a way that's appropriate for the maneuver being executed. They'll actually 'fly' the entire demonstration in the brief." Go to an aerobatics meet and you may be lucky enough to see Patty Wagstaff, in a quiet corner, with eyes closed, head moving and arms waving. Looks like t'ai chi on drugs. In real time, she is visualizing her entire routine, playing the piece in her mind, chair flying. If she feels the need after flying the same routine hundreds of times, I think we should not question the value of chair flying.

The motor skills—you realize that even soaring in a glider requires motor skills—and mind to eye to hand coordination skills of flight can only become second-nature by training. It's just like learning skiing or golf or Judo: you can not just read about it. You must train. Visualize. Mentally and physically practice. Then with full concentration, respectfully play with your skills in the air. Sam always said that amateurs practice until they get it right, but that professionals practice until they can't get it wrong.

That you get better at something if you practice is of course pretty obvious. There is a more to this subject than just that idea however. Hermann Ebbinghaus was a German psychologist who pioneered the experimental study of memory in the late 19th century, formalizing the learning and forgetting curves. One of his major findings was that if we continue to practice something that we are already perfect at, then performance is improved at a later date (Mazur, 2006). This is the now accepted idea that vigorously overlearning something pays a dividend in the future, even if it cannot be seen right now.

If we practice enough, complex tasks become automatic, and they actually occur in different parts of the brain away from conscious awareness. Martial artists have known this for centuries, and the earliest scientific paper I've found on the subject was published in 1899. (It studied how telegraph operators gradually went from sending individual letters to being able to send and receive whole words, phrases, and then other groups of words  (Bryan, 1899.)) Cognitive psychologists now call this well studied process automatization, but are still unsure exactly how it occurs. One widely held view is that during the course of practice, implementation of the various steps becomes more efficient. Then each of the steps is combined into integrated components, and then the components are integrated so that an entire process becomes a single highly integrated procedure. A newer possibility is that automatization occurs as we store knowledge about specific responses to specific stimuli in the brain (Logan, 1988).

What we do know is that practice makes real brain changes. New synaptic connections between neurons in the brain are made by experience. Rats that spent just four 10-minute periods in an enriched environment have been shown to have small, but significant, increases in brain weight (Ferchmin & Eterovic, 1980). Other studies have shown significant increases in the number, size and complexity of synaptic connections with exposure to learning experiences (Jones & Schallert, 1994). It used to be thought that once the building block of the brain, the neuron, dies that it can never be replaced. If you went to medical school in the eighties or nineties this is what you were still being taught. But recently it has been repeatedly shown that neurogenesis can actually occur during a learning experience (see for example Gould, Beylin, et al., 1999). This is a huge step forward in neuroscientific understanding of the brain, and in our own ideas of our personal potential. As adults we can grow new neurons. There is hope for all of us that can't go back and study more in grade school!

 An article in the Journal of Neuroscience showed how several small regions of the brain used in motor and auditory functioning are different in size between professional musicians and both amateurs and non-musicians. There are many studies showing similar results, but in addition to the complex brain scan images this one included some particularly clear graphs:

For brain region fans: PrecG L is the left precentral gyrus, HG L is the left Heschl's gyrus and SPC R is the right superior parietal cortex. The vertical lines show a measure of the range of values found in the study, while the solid bars are the averages (Gaser & Schlaug, 2003). Another study used 3D-surface renderings from the latest in brain scanners to actually see external changes in brain structure due to a lifetime of practice in different types of musical instruments. Sixty-four brains were examined and changes in the Omega Sign (an anatomical landmark of the precentral gyrus associated with hand movement representation) were clearly detected with type of instrument played. These pictures (with a white line along the central sulcus added for folks not used to looking at the brain) show typical results. See how string players have a straight valley while piano players develop a curvy valley:

The changes in left and right sides of the brain were consistent across the 64 brains studied (Bangert & Schlaug, 2006). Only very recently have we been able to see the powerful changes in the brain that practice makes. Practice a lot and we expand our brains in the regions we use most. You don't get the brain expansion just by reading a book or practicing a little once a month. The brain change doesn't happen from some teaching, it happens from real learning and practice.

It's not just sport or musical skills that change us as we practice. Expert pilots make decisions differently from beginners. A study of expert pilot aeronautical decision making suggested that training could be improved by explicitly building the experiential situational repertoires of students (Stokes, Kempler & Kite, 1997). In addition to conventional complex flight simulators they recommend simple 'event-based simulators' to actually practice decision making rather than just learning ideas and rules in ground school. We can do this ourselves. We think though situations in our mind on the ground before it happens in flight.

Whatever parts of the brain get bigger or however they connect better; it has been proven that there is a lawful, direct relationship between the amount of time spent in high-quality practice and the resultant level of achievement. Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson—who literally wrote the book on how people acquire expert performance in the arts, sciences, sports and games (Ericsson, 1996)—found that successful performers are distinguished by the amount of intensive, deliberative practice they devote to their disciplines. Interestingly many of the characteristics of what Ericsson observed as high quality practice are the same factors that generate in-the-zone sensations. Ericsson found that good practice includes challenge, clear goals, and rapid feedback. The long hard work of practice eventually becomes its own reward.

The Japanese have a word for orderly, gradual and continuous improvement. It is Kaizen, a culture of sustained improvement that focuses on eliminating waste in all systems. The five Japanese ideas that define Kaizen are Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu and Shitsuke. In English we can make them Sort, Straighten, Scrub, Systematize and Standardize.  Kaizen can improve a fast-food kitchen, a computer programming team, or a cockpit.

Seiri (sort): Separate out all the things that are unnecessary and eliminate them.
Seiton (straighten): Arrange the essential things in order so that they can be easily accessed.
Seiso (scrub): Keep machines and working environments clean.
Seiketsu (systematize): Make cleaning and checking a routine practice.
Shitsuke (standardize): Standardize the previous four steps to make the process one that never ends.

Take a good look at your paperwork procedures, your cockpit routines, even your mental disciplines. Discover what is waste and remove it. Organize what is left. Look after your tools. Make these steps a constant practice.  Much of flying can be boring routine, but by applying Kaizen we can make the routine a safer more efficient smoother routine, and keep the boredom away by staying active in the process of improvement. Only you can do this. It's an inner art of simplification, honing the aeronautical craft, making every aerial task graceful.

At my previous airline I received several checkrides with a former Marine Corps F-4 hell-for-leather hardcore nutcase I will call Bill (that being his name). He believed that he should be allowed to come down to the crew room and give surprise oral exams at any time. He loved to intimidate examinees, sick stuff like getting a pink failure slip out of his briefcase and placed on the table so it was 'handy.' Have a problem with a question and he'd quietly look at his watch slowly shaking his head. Bill would stare straight at you from under his steel-gray close-shaved high-and-tight haircut and tell you that his granddaughter is taking one of your flights next week. And that he loves his little granddaughter a lot. Maybe he'd show you her picture. "Do you think she deserves a captain who knows the entire electrical system or just part of it?" You'd look down, only to see on his finger a gaudy skull ring with a snake coming out of an empty eye socket, and wish with everything you had that you could go back in time and study harder.

That was Bill's intent. To push. Hard. To see that you never gave up. In the simulator session you'd go to your breaking point. He wanted to inspire confidence in the airplane and yourself, but also let you know that both the airplane and the pilot have limits. A Samurai swordsman would recognize Bill's rides as a shugyo. A severe training event that the warrior staggers away from feeling purified. You should train as if you are going to face a shugyo at any time.

Sam would demonstrate something once, with such ease and precision—paradoxically in complete control yet relaxed—that the student would spend a month practicing the one maneuver. He said that you don't really have a new skill until you have performed it correctly nine times. It's not in you until then. Practice it smooth and sure, until there is no doubt. Someone can not teach it to you, only you can learn it.

So maybe Sam didn't teach me to fly, but he sure did show me a lot of neat things.

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself

— Chinese Proverb

Seamanship is an entirely different matter. It is not learned in a day, nor in many days; it requires years.

— Jack London

Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire.

— William Butler Yeats

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself.

— Galileo Galilei

Skill comes by the constant repetition of familiar feats rather than by a few overbold attempts at feats for which the performer is yet poorly prepared.

— Wilbur Wright

For me, winning isn't something that happens suddenly on the field when the whistle blows and the crowd roar. Winning is something that builds physically and mentally every day that you train and every night that you dream.

— Emmitt Smith

What the mind generates, the body fulfils. It's probably 90% of the game at top level. All those that get there physically can play the game, the ones that are able to stay there and perform at a high level for a long period of time are the ones that can do it mentally.

— Greg Chappell

Why do some people who are born with so much, achieve so little, while some who are born with so little achieve so much? The answer is desire. You must have a great desire.

— Lou Holtz

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

— Bruce Lee

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.

— Albert Einstein

Given enough time, any man may master the physical. With enough knowledge, any man may become wise. It is the true warrior who can master both . . . . and surpass the result.

— Tien T'ai

Before every aerobatic performance, I go through a ritual that is aimed entirely at making certain the focus is there. I isolate myself from everybody for an hour and literally try to become the performance. So far, it's never happened, but if I ever found my head wasn't where it was supposed to be during that hour, I wouldn't fly. As simple as that. If it's not there, I know I will die, and I never let myself forget that.

— Sean D. Tucker

Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win.

— Nadia Comaneci

It would be extremely difficult to race downhill at 88 miles per hour without a mental blueprint of very specific images of the course.

— Picabo Street

By game time I'd already seen the whole game ten times over, exactly what was going to happen, like a video that I was part of, where I would see the ball and I'd see opponents driving at me, or I'd see teammates wide open who I'd be passing to, or I'd see how a center was going to guard me. I'd see his shots so I'd know how to go for the rebound, or how I was going to cut a guy off if he was penetrating. I'd seen it all before.

— Bill Walton

We all visualize on the way to altitude. That's part of the training . . . We do twelve jumps in a day—that's only 12 minutes of skydiving, but if you visualize every time you go to altitude, that's another two hours. The benefits of visualization are no secret.

— Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld

I sail the course over and over in my mind, slowly building up the picture until it is 3-D, in full colour and I can even imagine the smells and noises. I leave nothing out . . . . By the time the start gun goes, I am taking on something that I feel I already know intimately.

— Pete Goss

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit.

— Aristotle

Lying in bed at night, for a while I'll be looking at myself doing something at full speed, doing it correctly and simulating the situation in my mind as close to the game as possible. . . . Sometimes your sub-conscious comes in and you do something bad, so you repeat it without the error.

— Peter Sterling

You start getting the science right behind you when you walk it and soon before I start to ride, I will find a completely quiet place, shut my eyes and think. Starting from the beginning, I'll go right through and see every bit of land I'm going to cover and every single approach at each fence, like a film.

— Lucinda Green

You can teach a student a lesson for that day but if you can teach him to learn by creative curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.

— C. P. Bedford

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful after all.

— Michelangelo

If someone asked me what a human being ought to devote the maximum of his time to, I would answer, "training." Train more than you sleep.

— Masutatsu Oyama

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses—behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

— Mohammed Ali

First, master the fundamentals.

— Larry Bird

Merely to copy the actions of your instructor is not enough. You must develop your knowledge of flying and your reactions until piloting is an instinctive series of movements.

— Dick Merrill

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

— Marcel Proust

The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what interests you and that you can do well, and put your whole soul into it—every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.

— John D. Rockefeller III

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