The Perfect Punter: Chapter Seven - The opposite of pilates?

The Perfect Punter / Perfect Punter / 16 September 2009 / Leave a Comment

"When I’ve done pilates on the morning of a big football night or race meeting, I’ve punted really well – just gung ho enough, just sensible enough – in short, balanced and as a result, confident."

Dave Farrar's quest for balance takes him to some strange places and brings him into contact with some unlikely characters...

Two Mondays ago, I found myself lying on my front with my arms stretched behind me and my face about a foot away from a pensioner's vagina. Tempting though it is to stop the column there and keep you wondering, we were both fully clothed and she had her legs wide open for a reason. Any puerile snickering stops right here, I promise, and there'll be more of that, but not too much more, in a moment.

Last week's survey threw up three words which best describe the state that we aim to get ourselves in before a good day's gambling. Confidence came out on top, with balance and instinctiveness fairly close behind, and I'm going to start dealing with confidence next week. But emotional and physical balance is vital to the punter I want to be. The word topped my list, and so it's the first state that I want to deal with.

On my bad gambling days, and there have been many over the years, I've lost sight of what I was trying to do. The most obvious example of this, and one that you'll all recognise, is when you chase your losses. A day at the races, a Champions League night, and three or four bets either have gone, or are going, the wrong way. And you see a big minus figure in that day's P and L, and decide that you have to do something about it.

This is one of the most dangerous mindsets that any gambler can be in, it's well on the path to addiction, and comes about because of a lack of balance. Firstly, the desire to either have a winner or balance up your bank will lead you to back a favourite, take a short price about a team which is already leading, and increase your stake. It's relying on an apparent safety net which isn't there and it goes against everything that you know deep down about gambling, the truisms of value and common sense.

Losing balance leads you to strike bets that you otherwise wouldn't, and occasionally you'll get lucky, but over the piece it's a really quick way to something approaching despair. What would you rather be? Two hundred quid down after the fifth race and annoyed, or £400 down after the sixth and furious? Thought so.

Before you sit down at your computer, or place your first bet of the day at a racecourse, you have to get balanced. You have to reach a state of mind in which you clearly know what your plan is and you will implement and not be shaken off track. I've started to trade a lot more now, and I know that it's not the most popular way to bet in the world, but it's working for me. Bit by bit maybe, but it's working. My plan at the start of any day is to make sure that I take advantage of every positive situation that I'm in and clearly judge how to deal with the negative ones. Clearly. With clarity, which comes with balance.

Last week I said that the ideal punting state could be roughly described as "the opposite of pissed", and a few of you have said that this rings true. We'll all merrily tell each other that "you shouldn't bet with a hangover", it's one of the oldest rules in gambling, but very few of us try to go to the opposite end of the scale, and rather than not bet when our senses are dulled, try and heighten them before we bet: the opposite of pissed.

I'm all for trying anything to find out what works on your behalf, and so I asked a particularly well adjusted, calm and well balanced female friend of mine how she does it, and she told me that she put it down to Pilates.

I knew vaguely that Pilates was to do with breathing and stretching, and had always been tempted, but somehow I felt that the day is too short, that it would be full of nightmares in Lycra and there's an overriding danger that it's, for want of a better word, bollocks. But in a try anything spirit I went along to a class, and within 15 minutes, despite the presence of two Lily Allens, a Beyonce and a young Olivia Newton John, I found myself face to face with a highly privileged view of, say, Rita Fairclough.

And, childishness aside, it works, it really works. The Pilates ethos is all about the way that breathing and the control of your core muscles (put simply: the ones under your stomach) can increase your flexibility but also the sharpness of your mind and your sense of balance. It can be a bit dull, and the classes can seem to last forever, but I've been for two weeks now and, when I've done it on the morning of a big football night or race meeting, I've punted really well - just gung ho enough, just sensible enough - in short, balanced and as a result, confident. I'll come back to this later on in Perfect Punter, as I really believe that there's something in it, that this process can help us towards the sense of balance that we need.

But here's something for starters, and if you've read this far, I suspect that you'll actually try it. (Remember, it can't make you any worse at punting, only the same or better.)

Next time you have an afternoon's punting coming up, and you want to prepare properly, either stand up or sit up straight in your chair (it's even better to lie down but I'm not expecting you all to go that far just yet) and breathe in and out several times really deeply. As Joe Pilates (yes, that is his real name) said: "Squeeze out the lungs as you would wring a wet towel dry."

When you've done that a few times, start focusing like mad on your stomach muscles, and as you breathe out, pull them in tightly while still standing or sitting straight. Just those muscles, nothing else. Keep them pulled in, and keep breathing in and out deeply. Stop when you feel like it, or the muscles start to feel uncomfortable, and then walk around for a couple of minutes to loosen up. That, in a massively simple nutshell, is the basis of the whole practice. And it's amazing how muscles send messages to mind and you start to feel balanced and ready.

That's it for starters, and as I always say at the end of this column, you can laugh it off and think I'm pretentious, or mad, or both. And I know it seems to be stretching probability. But just imagine if all of the things that I throw your way, or even just some of them, really do end up making you a better gambler. How mad would you be to ignore them?

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