To me it's unsatisfying that you have to offload the work to some part of the brain that you have no strong conscious connection with. It's like letting someone else do the work.
In my view, you really master something if you have conscious control over it. Perhaps that is what Federer was trying to do.
> you really master something if you have conscious control over it.
Quite the opposite - you master something when you can do it automatically, i.e. without conciously controlling it. The conscious mind has many limitations, one is that it's way too slow to handle real-time events - you can't consciously think about what actions to perform when you suddenly skid your car in a curve, or when you're performing the high jump on a sports field. The other main problem with the conscious mind is that it can't multi-task. So you use your conscious mind to practice, carefully, slowly at first, one part at the time, until, finally, your unconscious (or automated) trained sections of your brain can do it for you, and all the conscious mind has to do is to sit back, relax, and be the conductor. Or just watching.
Yes, that's a common view, and you worded it nicely. I think you didn't get that I'm taking about the next level of mastery.
The problem with training a neural net (or part of your brain) is that it is fuzzy. You don't know why it works, just that by trying hard enough, it often works. I'm saying that this is from a certain perspective unsatisfying. Also, talented people often do things automatically, without understanding why, and they have a hard time explaining things to a beginner.
I'm far from a master, but when I make a pot on the pottery wheel I'm thinking of the shape of the pot; when I teach someone I'm telling them to think mostly of the position of their hands, the feel of the clay, the speed of the wheel, ... etc.
Your're thinking of the shape of the pot. You're not thinking about the angle and other factors of your hand or other technical details. The student, on the other hand, has to concentrate on the mechanics of it. When that's automatic then you can think about the artistic part of it instead.
As you said, it's not mindless, just at a different level. You focus on what you want to achieve, not about the grits and details of how to do it. You're not really conscious about the latter.
In my view, you really master something if you have conscious control over it. Perhaps that is what Federer was trying to do.