"Donadoni rues Italian 'mistakes' against Dutch"
"Mental errors cost Demons in regional quarterfinal"
"Mental mistakes doom Rays in loss to Cardinals"
If
you are a frequent visitor to my site, you may have noticed a
customized Google news feed on the right-hand side of the page. At the
top are different phrases to
select to get relevant news stories (i.e. the "Sports Science"
selection will list stories on just that.) Every day, there is always a
new variety of stories linked to the phrase, "mental mistakes" (the
list from 6/10/08 is displayed above). Either the writer recaps a game,
calling out the mistakes or a coach or player claims that mistakes were
made. It has become sort of a throwaway phrase, "...we made a lot of
mental mistakes out there today, that we need to avoid if we want to
get to the playoffs..." The million dollar question then is HOW to
reduce these mental mistakes. And, to answer that, we need to define
WHAT is a mental mistake?
In a previous post, I introduced the "Sports Cognition Framework", which is a trio of elements needed for success in sports. These three elements are:
- decision-making ability (knowing what to do)
- motor skill competence (being physically able to do it)
- positive mental state (being motivated and confident to do it)
Most
of the time, a mental mistake is thought of as a breakdown of
decision-making ability. The center fielder throws to the wrong base,
the wide receiver runs the wrong route, or the defender forgets to mark his
man, etc. These scenarios describe poor decisions or even memory lapses
during the stress of the game. They are not necessarily the lack of
skill to execute a play or the lack of confidence or motivation to want
to do the right thing. It is a recognition, in hindsight, that the best
option was not chosen. In addition to glaring negative
plays, there are also missed opportunities on the field (i.e. taking a
contested shot on goal, instead of passing to the open teammate).
So,
back to the payoff question: HOW do we reduce mental mistakes and poor
decisions? Just as we practice physical skills to improve our ability
to throw, catch, shoot, run, etc., we need to practice making decisions
using a a training system that directly exposes the athlete to these
scenarios. Dr. Joan Vickers, who we met during our discussion of the Quiet Eye, has created a new system which she calls the "Decision-Training Model", and is the focus of the second half of her book, "Perception, Cognition, and Decision Training".
As opposed to traditional training methods that separate skill training
from tactical decision making training, the Decision-Training model
(D-T) forces the athlete to couple her skill learning with the
appropriate tactical awareness of when to use it. So, instead of an
"easy-first" breakdown of a skill, and then build it up step by step,
D-T begins with a "hard-first" approach putting the "technique within
tactics" demanding a higher cognitive effort right up front. The theory
behind D-T is that the coach is not on the field with the player during
competition, so the player must learn to rely on their own blended
combination of skill and game awareness. Research from Vickers and
others shows that D-T provides a more lasting retention of knowledge,
while more traditional bottom-up training with heavy coach feedback
delivers a stronger short-term performance gain, but that success in
practice does not often translate later in games. Practice and training
need to mirror game situations as often and as completely as the real
thing.
There are three major steps to Decision-Training (p. 167):
1.
Identify a decision the athlete has to make in a game, using one of the
seven cognitive skills (anticipation, attention, focus/concentration,
pattern recognition, memory, problem solving and decision making)
2.
Create a drill(s) that trains that decision using one of the seven
cognitive triggers (object cues, location cues, Quiet Eye,
reaction-time cues, memory cues, kinesthetic cues, self-coaching cues)
3.
Use one or more of the seven decision tools in the design of the drill
(variable practice, random practice, bandwidth feedback, questioning,
video feedback, hard-first instruction, external focus of instruction)
This post was just to serve as an introduction to D-T. Dr. Vickers and her team at the University of Calgary offer full courses
for coaches to learn D-T and apply it in their sport. Combined with the
visual cues of the playing environment provided by the Quiet Eye gaze
control, D-T seems to offer a better tactical training option for
coaches and athletes. Coming up, we will continue the discussion of
decision-making in sports with a look at some other current research.
Please give me your thoughts on D-T and the whole topic of mental
mistakes!
Coaching Youth Sports
Was Your Child Born To Be A Sports Superstar?
Of all of the decisions parents face regarding their children's future, choosing between shoulder pads or running shoes for their Christmas present seems trivial. Well, according to Kevin Reilly, president of Atlas Sports Genetics, this is a decision you should not take lightly.
"If you wait until high school or college to find out if you have a good athlete on your hands, by then it will be too late," he said in a recent New York Times interview. "We need to identify these kids from 1 and up, so we can give the parents some guidelines on where to go from there."
In
December, Reilly's company began marketing a $149 saliva swab test for
kids, aged 1 to 8, to determine which variant of the gene ACTN3 is in their DNA. According to a 2003 Australian study,
ACTN3 was shown to be a marker for two different types of athletic
prowess, explosive power or long endurance. While everyone carries the
gene, the combination of variants inherited, one from each parent,
differs.
Science of success
The R
variant of ACTN3 signals the body to produce a protein,
alpha-actinin-3, which is found exclusively in fast-twitch muscles. The
X variant prohibits this production. So, athletes inheriting two R
variants may have a genetic advantage in sports requiring quick,
powerful muscle contractions from their fast-twitch muscle fibers.
In the ACTN3 study, Dr. Kathryn North and her lab at the Institute for Neuromuscular Research of the University of Sydney looked at 429 internationally ranked Australian athletes and found significant correlation between power sport athletes and the presence of the R variant. All of the female sprint athletes had at least one R variant, as did the male power-sport athletes. In fact, 50 percent of the 107 sprinters had two copies of the R variant.
North's team also noted that the elite endurance athletes seemed to be linked to the XX variation, although only significantly in the female sample. In 2007, her team pursued this link by developing a strain of mice that was completely deficient in the alpha-actinin-3 protein similar to an athlete with an XX allele. They found the muscle metabolism of the mice without the protein was more efficient. Amazingly, the mice were able to run 33 percent farther than mice with the normal ACTN3 gene.
Cloudy future
Additional research is showing mixed results, however.
In 2007, South African researchers found no significant correlation between 457 Ironman triathletes, known for their endurance, and the XX combination. This year, Russian researchers at the St. Petersburg Research Institute of Physical Culture also failed to establish the XX-endurance performance link among 456 elite rowers but did find the RR connection among a sample of Russian power sports athletes.
So, can we at least find the next Usain Bolt among our kids?
"Everybody wants to predict future athletic success based on present achievement or physical makeup. But predicting success is much more difficult than most people think," Robert Singer, professor and chair of the department of exercise and sport sciences at the University of Florida warns in the book "Sports Talent" (Human Kinetics Publishers, 2001) by Jim Brown.
"There are too many variables, even if certain athletes have a combination of genes that favors long-range talent," Singer said. "A person's genetic makeup can be expressed in many different ways, depending on environmental and situational opportunities. Variables such as motivation, coachability, and opportunity can't be predicted."
Destiny?
Just
as we assume that kids that are at the 99 percent percentile in height
are destiny-bound for basketball or volleyball, having this peek into
their genome may tempt parents to limit the sports choices for their
son or daughter.
Even Mr. Reilly expressed his concern in the Times article: "I'm nervous about people who get back results that don't match their expectations," he said. "What will they do if their son would not be good at football? How will they mentally and emotionally deal with that?"
For those parents that are just not ready to discover the sports
destiny of their child, or just want to save the $150, there is a much
simpler alternative. Hold your son or daughter's hand, palm up. Measure
the lengths of their index finger and their ring finger. Divide the
former by the latter. According to John Manning, professor of
psychology at the University of Central Lancashire, if the ratio is
closer to .90 than 1.0, you may have a budding superstar.
Manning explains in his aptly named new book, "The Finger Book" (Faber and Faber, 2008),that the amount of a fetus' exposure to testosterone in the womb determines the length of the ring finger, while estrogen levels are expressed in the length of the index finger. According to Manning's theory, more testosterone means more physical and motor skill ability.
The digit ratio theory, as it is known, has been the subject of more than 120 studies to find its effect on athletic, musical and even lovemaking aptitude.
Don't worry if the ratio is closer to 1.0, which is by far the norm. Plus, you will be able to relax, enjoy your kids' sports events and only worry about their genetic disposition to being happy.
Please visit my other articles on LiveScience.com and Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
Why Pro Athletes Attract Trouble
As first seen on LiveScience.com
and Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
From the "athletes behaving badly" department (in the past month, anyway):
• NHL bad boy (Sean Avery) was suspended for six games for a crude remark.
• Six NFL players were suspended for allegedly violating the league's drug policy.
• Another NFL player (Adam "Pacman" Jones) returned to his team's roster after being suspended, again, for an off-field altercation.
• Oh, and NFL receiver (Plaxico Burress) accidentally shot himself in a nightclub with a gun he was not licensed to carry.
Despite the 24/7 media coverage of each of these incidents, sports fans have become accustomed to and somewhat complacent with hearing about athletes and their deviant acts.
In fact, new statistics reveal that bad behavior is clearly evident among high school athletes, particularly in high-contact sports.
It starts young
Besides the highly publicized stories, there are thousands more across the nation involving amateur athletes taking risks both on and off the field. From performance-enhancing supplements to referee/official abuse to fights, guns and recorded crimes, the image of sports as a positive influence on athletes may need a second look.
Granted, in a population of any size there will be a few bad apples. However, these actions have become so prevalent that academic researchers have created a branch of study called "deviance in sports" attached to the sports sociology tree.
They are asking questions and challenging some assumptions about cause and effect. Is there a connection between sports participation and deviance? Does the intense competition and battle on the field shape a player's off-the-field lifestyle? Since success in sports brings attention and prestige to athletes, does the risk of losing that status cause a need to take risks to maintain their "top dog" positions?
In their new book, "Deviance and Social Control in Sport," researchers Michael Atkinson and Kevin Young emphasize the confusing environment surrounding athletes. They describe two types of deviance: wanted and unwanted.
Owners, players and fans may know that certain behaviors are literally against the rules but are at the same time appreciated as a sign of doing whatever it takes to win. Performance-enhancing drugs are not allowed in most sports, but athletes assume they will improve their performance, which helps their team win and keeps fans happy. Fights in hockey will be, according to the rule book, penalized, but this deviance is assumed to be wanted by fans and teammates as a sign of loyalty.
However, related bad behavior can quickly turn on a player to being socially unwanted.
Abuse of drugs that don't contribute to a win, (marijuana, cocaine, alcohol), will transform that same player into a villain with shock and outrage being reported in the media. In the Sean Avery example, a hockey player fighting to defend his teammates on the ice can then be suspended from the team and criticized by those same teammates for an off-color remark.
Real statistics
Most athletes who make it to the professional level have been involved in sports since youth. Sports sociologists and psychologists often look at the early development years of athletes to get a glimpse of patterns, social norms and influences that contribute to later behaviors.
In a recent American Sociological Review article, Derek Kreager, assistant professor of sociology at Penn State University, challenged the long-held belief that youth sports participation is exclusively beneficial to their moral character development.
With the focus on teaching teamwork, fair play, and self esteem, sports are often cited as the antidote to delinquency. But Kreager notes that other studies have looked at the culture that surrounds high school and college athletes and identified patterns of clichés, privileges and attitudes of superiority. For some athletes, these patterns are used to justify deviant behavior.
In fact, his most recent research attempted to find a cause-and-effect link between deviant behavior and specific sports. Specifically, he asked if high-contact, physical sports like football and wrestling created athletes who were more prone to violent behavior off the field.
Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, more than 6,000 male students from across 120 schools were included. The data set included a wide collection of socioeconomic information, including school activities, risk behaviors and at-home influences. Kreager's study analyzed the effects of three team sports (football, basketball, and baseball) and two individual sports (wrestling and tennis) on the likelihood of violent off-field behavior, specifically, fighting.
To isolate the effect of each sport, the study included control groups of non-athletes and those that had a history of physical violence prior to playing sports.
For team sports, football players were 40 percent more likely to be in a confrontation than non-athletes. In individual sports, wrestlers were in fights 45 percent more often, while tennis players were 35 percent less likely to be in an altercation. Basketball and baseball players showed no significant bias either way.
"Sports such as football, basketball, and baseball provide players with a certain status in society," Kreager said. "But football and wrestling are associated with violent behavior because both sports involve some physical domination of the opponent, which is rewarded by the fans, coaches and other players. Players are encouraged to be violent outside the sport because they are rewarded for being violent inside it."
Video Games Move From The Family Room To The Locker Room
From: Video Games Move From The Family Room To The Locker Room
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
It sounds like a sales job from a 12 year old; "Actually, Dad, this is not just another video game. Its a virtual, scenario-based microcosm of real world experiences that will enhance my decision-making abilities and my cognitive perceptions of the challenges of the sport's environment." You respond with, "So, how much is Madden 09?" With over 5 million copies of Madden 08 sold, the release of the latest version two weeks ago is rocketing up the charts. Days and late nights are being spent all over the world creating rosters, customizing plays and playing entire seasons, all for pure entertainment purposes. Can all of those hours spent with controller in hands actually be beneficial to young athletes? Shouldn't they be outside in the fresh air and sunshine playing real sports? Well, yes, to both questions.
Playing video games, (aka "gaming"), as a form of learning has been receiving increased recent attention from educational psychology researchers. At this month's American Psychological Association annual convention, several groups of researchers presented studies of the added benefits of playing video games, from problem-solving and critical thinking to better scientific reasoning. In one of the studies by Fordham University psychologist Fran C. Blumberg, PhD, and Sabrina S. Ismailer, MSED, 122 fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders' problem-solving behavior was observed while playing a video game that they had never seen before. As the children played the game, they were asked to think aloud for 20 minutes. Researchers assessed their problem-solving ability by listening to the statements they were making while playing. The results showed that playing video games can improve cognitive and perceptual skills. "Younger children seem more interested in setting short-term goals for their learning in the game compared to older children who are more interested in simply playing and the actions of playing," said Blumberg. "Thus, younger children may show a greater need for focusing on small aspects of a given problem than older children, even in a leisure-based situation such as playing video games."
Also, in a recent article on video game learning, David Williamson Shaffer, professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madision and author of the book "How Computer Games Help Children Learn",
argues that if a game is realistically based on real-world scenarios
and rules, it can help the child learn. “The question though is,"
Shaffer said, "is what they are doing a good simulation of what is
happening in the real world?" Shaffer explains the research happening
on this topic at his UW lab, named Epistemic Games:
Support for this new era of learning tools is coming from other interesting people, as well. George Lucas of Star Wars fame has an educational foundation, Edutopia, which has shown recent interest in simulation learning. Here is their introductory overview and accompanying video:
There are some words of caution out there. In a recent article, educational psychologist Jane M. Healy, author of "Failure to Connect: How Computers Affect our Children's Minds and What We Can Do About It," urges educators to proceed carefully. "The main question is whether the activity, whatever it is, is educationally valid and contributes significantly to whatever is being studied," she says. "The point is not whether kids are 'playing' with learning, or what medium they are playing in — a ball field or a Wii setup or a physics lab or art studio — but rather why they are doing it. Just because it is electronic does not make it any better, and it may turn out not to be as valuable."
If we accept that there is some validity to teaching/learning with video game simulations, how can we move this to the sports arena? Obviously, there is no substitute for playing the real game with real players, opponents, pressure, etc., but more teams and coaches are turning to simulation games for greater efficiency in the learning process. If the objective is to expose players to plays, tactics, field vision and critical thinking, then a gaming session can begin to introduce these concepts that will be validated later on the field during "real" practice. This homework can also be done at home, not requiring teammates, fields, equipment, etc. As mentioned in the videos above, another driving factor in the use of games is to reach this young, Web 2.0 audience through a medium that they already know, understand and enjoy. The motivation to learn is inherent with the use of games. The "don't tell them its good for them" secret is key to seeing progress with this type of training.
One of the best examples of video game adaptation for sports learning is from XOS Technologies
and their modified version of the Madden NFL game. In 2007, they
licensed the core development engine from EA Sports and created a
football simulation, called SportMotion,
that can be used for individual training. With the familiar Madden
user interface, coaches can first load their playbook into the game, as
well as their opponent's expected plays. Then, the athlete can "play"
the game but will now see their own team's plays being run by the
virtual players. Imagine the difference in learning style for a new
quarterback. Instead of studying static X's and O's on a
two-dimensional piece of paper, they can now watch and then play a
virtual simulation of the same play in motion against a variety of
different defenses. With a "first-person" view of the play unfolding,
they will see the options available in a "real-time" mode which will
force faster reaction and decision-making skills. To take the
simulation one step further, XOS has added a virtual reality option
that takes the game controller out of the player's hands and replaces
it with a VR suit and goggles allowing him to physically play the game,
throw the ball, etc. through his virtual eyes. Take a look at this
promotional video from XOS:
XOS is winning some high praise for its system, including none other than Phillip Fulmer, Head Coach of the University of Tennesee football team.
“We’re leading the nation by taking advantage of this cutting-edge
technology and we couldn’t be more pumped about it,” Fulmer said. “UT
football has a long and storied tradition of success and because we
look to pioneer groundbreaking concepts before anyone else, we’ll
proudly continue that history. The XOS PlayAction Simulator begins a
new chapter for UT and we’re pleased to add it to our football training
regiment.” Albert Tsai, vice president of advanced research at XOS
Technologies, says, “We’ve basically added functionality to popular EA
video games such as customizable playbooks, diagrams and testing
sequences to better prepare athletes for specific opponents.
Additionally, the software includes built-in teaching and reporting
tools so that coaches Fulmer, Cutcliffe and Cooter can analyze and
track the tactical-skill development of the team. At the same time, the
Volunteers can experience immediate benefits because the familiarity
with the EA SPORTS brand requires little to no learning curve for their
players.”
So, the next time your son (or daughter!) is begging for 10 more minutes on the Xbox to make sure the Packers destroy the Vikings once again (sorry, a little Wisconsin bias), you may want to reconsider pulling the plug. Then, send them outside for that fresh air.
HGH - Human Growth Hoax?
Athletes, both professional and amateur, as well as the general public are convinced that human growth hormone (HGH), Erythropoietin (EPO) and anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS)
are all artificial and controversial paths to improved performance in
sports. The recent headlines that have included Barry Bonds, Marion
Jones, Floyd Landis, Dwayne Chambers, Jose Canseco, Jason Giambi, Roger
Clemens and many lesser known names (see the amazingly long list of doping cases in sport)
have referred to these three substances interchangeably leaving the
public confused about who took what from whom. With so many athletes
willing to gamble with their futures, they must be confident that they
will see significant short-term results. So, is it worth the risk?
Two very interesting recent studies provide some answers on at least
one of the substances, HGH.
A team at the Stanford University School of Medicine, led by Hau Liu MD,
recently reviewed 27 historical studies on the effects of HGH on
athletic performance, dating back to 1966 (see reference below). They
wanted to see if there were any definitive links between HGH use and
improved results. In some of the studies, test volunteers who received
HGH did develop more lean body mass, but also developed more lactate
during aerobic testing which inhibited rather than helped performance.
While their muscle mass increased, other markers of athletic fitness,
such as VO2max remained unchanged. “The key takeaway is that we don’t
have any good scientific evidence that growth hormone improves athletic
performance,” said senior author Andrew Hoffman, MD, professor of endocrinology, gerontology and metabolism.
Both Liu and Hoffman cautioned that the
amounts of HGH given to these test subjects may be much lower than the
the purported levels claimed to be taken by professional athletes.
They also pointed out that at a professional level, a very slight
improvement might be all that is necessary to get an edge of your
opponent. Hoffman also added an insightful comment, “So much of
athletic performance at the professional level is psychological.” If
an athlete takes HGH, sees some muscle mass growth and isn't 100% sure
of its performance capabilities, might he assume he now has other
"Superman" powers?
That is exactly the premise that a
research team from Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney,
Australia used to find out if HGH users simply relied on a placebo effect.
Sixty-four participants, young adult recreational athletes, were
divided into two groups of 32 and tested for a baseline of athletic
ability in endurance, strength, power and sprinting. One group
received growth hormone and the other group received a simple placebo.
It was a "double-blind" study in that neither the participants nor the
researchers knew during the testing which substance each group received.
At the end of the 8 week treatment, the athletes were asked if they thought they were in the HGH group or the placebo group. Half of the group that had received the placebo incorrectly guessed that they were on HGH. Not too surprisingly, the majority of the "incorrect guessers" were men. Here's where it gets interesting. The incorrect guessers also thought that their athletic abilities had improved over the 8 week period. The team retested all of the placebo group and actually did find improvement across all of the tests, but only significantly in the high-jump test.
Jennifer Hansen, a nurse researcher and Dr. Ken Ho,
head of the pituitary research unit at Garvan have not released the
data on the group that did receive the HGH, but they will in their
final report coming soon.
So, let's recap. On the one hand, we have a research review that claims there is not yet any scientific evidence that HGH actually improves sports performance. Yet, we have hundreds, if not thousands, of athletes illegally using HGH for performance gain. Showing the effect of the "if its good enough for them, its good enough for me" beliefs of the public regarding professional athlete use of HGH, we now have research that shows even those who received a placebo, but believed they were taking HGH not only thought they were improving but actually did improve a little. Once again, we see the power of our own natural, non-supplemented brain to convince (or fool) ourselves to perform at higher levels than we thought possible.
Liu, H., Bravata, D.M., Olkin, I., Friedlander, A., Liu, V., Roberts, B., Bendavid, E., Saynina, O., Salpeter, S.R., Garber, A.M. (2008). Systematic review: the effects of growth hormone on athletic performance.. Annals of Internal Medicine, 148(10), 747-758.
Sideline Raging Soccer Moms (and Dads!)
From: Sideline Raging Soccer Moms (and Dads!)
Sports Are 80 Percent MentalVisit any youth soccer field, baseball diamond, basketball court or football field and you will likely see them: parents behaving badly. Take a look at this Good Morning America report:
These
are the extremes, but at most games, you can find at least one adult
making comments at the referee, shouting at their child, or having a
verbal exchange with another parent. Thankfully, these parents
represent only a small percentage of those attending the game. Does
that mean the others don't become upset at something during the game?
Usually not, as there are lots of opportunities to dispute a bad call
or observe rough play or react to one of these loud parents. The
difference is in our basic personality psyche, according to Jay Goldstein, a kinesiology doctoral student at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. His thesis, recently published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology
(see reference below), hypothesized that a parent with
"control-oriented" personality would react to events at a game more
than a parent with an "autonomy-oriented" personality.
According to Goldstein, defending our ego
is what usually gets us in trouble when we feel insulted or take
something personally. At youth sports games, we transfer this pride to
our kids, so if someone threatens their success on the field, we often
take it personally. The control-oriented parent is more likely to
react with a verbal or sometimes physical response, while an
autonomy-oriented parent is better able to internalize and maintain
their emotions. This "control" vs. "autonomy" comparison has also been
seen in research on "road rage", when drivers react violently to
another driver's actions.
Goldstein and his team focused their
research on suburban Washington soccer parents back in 2004. They
designed a survey for parents to fill out prior to watching a youth
soccer game that would help categorize them as control or
autonomy-oriented. Immediately after the game ended, another survey
was given to the parents that asked about any incidents during the game
that made them angry on a scale of 1, slightly angry, to 7, furious.
They were also asked what action they took when they were angry.
Choices included "did nothing" to more aggressive acts like walking
towards the field and/or yelling or confronting either the referee,
their own child, or another player/parent. 53% of the 340 parents
surveyed reported getting angry at something during the game, while
about 40% reported doing something about their anger.
There was a direct and significant
correlation between control-oriented parents, as identified in the
pre-game survey, and the level of angry actions they took during the
game. Autonomy-oriented parents still got mad, but reported less
aggressive reactions. As Goldstein notes, “Regardless of their
personality type, all parents were susceptible to becoming more
aggressive as a result of viewing actions on the field as affronts to
them or their kids. However, that being said, it took
autonomy-oriented parents longer to get there as compared to the
control-oriented parents.”
So, now that we know the rather obvious
conclusion that parents who yell at other motorists are also likely to
yell at referees, what can we do about it? Goldstein sees this study
as a first step. He hopes to study a wider cross-section of sports and
socio-economic populations. Many youth sports organizations require
parents to sign a pre-season "reminder" code of conduct, but those are
often forgotten in the heat of the battle on the field. Maybe by
offering the same type of personality survey prior to the season, the
"control-oriented" parents can be offered resources to help them manage
their tempers and reactions during a game. Since referees were the
number one source of frustration reported by parents, two solutions are
being explored by many organizations; more thorough referee training
and quality control while also better training of parents on the rules
of the game which often cause the confusion.
Sports contests will always be emotional, from kids' games all the way up to professionals. Keeping the games in perspective and our reactions positive are tough things to do but when it comes to our kids, it is required.
Goldstein, J.D., Iso-Ahola, S.E. (2008). Determinants of Parents' Sideline-Rage Emotions and Behaviors at Youth Soccer Games. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(6), 1442-1462. DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00355.x
Brains Over Brawn In Sports
From: Brains Over Brawn In Sports
Sports Are 80 Percent MentalSometimes, during my daily browsing of the Web for news and interesting angles on the sport science world, I get lucky and hit a home run. I stumbled on this great May 2007 Wired article by Jennifer Kahn, Wayne Gretzky-Style 'Field Sense' May Be Teachable. It ties together the people and themes of my last three posts, focusing on the concept of perception in sports.
Wayne
Gretzky is often held up as the ultimate example of an athlete with
average physical stature, who used his cognitive and perceptual skills
to beat opponents. Joining Gretzky in the "brains over brawn" Hall of
Fame would be pitcher Greg Maddux, NBA guard Steve Nash and quarterback
Joe Montana. They were all told as teenagers that they didn't have the
size to succeed in college or the pros, but they countered this by
becoming master students of the game, constantly searching for visual
cues that would give them the advantage of a fraction of second or the
element of surprise.
Kahn's story focuses on two sport scientists that we have met before. Peter Vint, sport technologist with the US Olympic team, who I highlighted in the post, Winning Olympic Gold With Sport Science, comments on this, "In any sport, you come across these players. They're not always the most physically talented, but they're by far the best. The way they see things that nobody else sees — it can seem almost supernatural. But I'm a scientist, so I want to know how the magic works." So, Vint and his team continue to search not only for the secret to the magic, but how it can be taught.
Vint acknowledges the work of one of his fellow sport scientists, Damian Farrow, of the Australian Institute for Sport, who was part of the discussion roundtable mentioned in my post, Getting Sport Science Out Of The Lab And Onto The Field.
He is also fascinated with the
perceptual abilities of elite athletes. In his own sport, tennis, he
wanted to know how expert players could return serves much better than
novice players. Similar to the research we looked at in an earlier
post about tennis, Federer and Nadal Can See the Difference,
Farrow designed an experiment that would try to identify the cues that
players might need to instinctively estimate the speed and direction of
a serve. He had three groups of players, expert, non-expert but
coached, and non-expert/non-coaced novices, wear ear plugs to block out
the sound of the ball hitting the racquet as well as occlusion glasses
that could block vision with the touch of an assistant's button. By
changing the point of the serve at which the glasses would go black,
and the players would be "blind", he could try to isolate the action of
the server that the expert players might be tuned into that the novices
were not. The decisive point was immediately before impact between the
racquet and the ball. Arm and racquet position at that point seemed to
let the expert players estimate the direction of the serve more
accurately than the novices.
But Vint and Farrow are not satisfied just knowing what an expert knows. They want to understand how to teach this skill to novices. From his own competitive tennis playing days, Farrow remembers that if he consciously focused his mind on things like arm position, racquet angle, etc., he would be miss the serve as his reaction time would drop. He understood that players need to not only learn the cues, but learn them to the point of "automaticity" through implicit learning. You may remember our discussion of implicit learning from the post, Teaching Tactics and Techniques in Sports. Malcolm Gladwell, in his best-selling book, Blink, calls this implicit decision-making ability "thin slicing" and gives examples of how we can often make better decisions in the "blink" of an eye, rather than through long analysis. Obviously, in sports, when only seconds or sub-seconds are allowed for decisions, this blink must be so well-trained that it is at the sub-conscious level.
For Vint and Farrow, the experiments continue, looking at each sport, but beyond the raw physical and technical skills that need to be taught but often times are the only skills that are taught. Understanding the cognitive side of the game will provide the edge when all else is equal.
Teaching Tactics and Techniques in Sports
Teaching Tactics and Techniques In Sports
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
You
have probably seen both types of teams. Team A: players who are evenly
spaced, calling out plays, staying in their positions only to watch
them dribble the ball out of bounds, lose the pass, or shoot wildly at
the goal. Team B: amazing ball control, skillful shooting and superior
quickness, speed and agility but each player is a "do-it-yourselfer"
since no one can remember a formation, strategy or position
responsibility. Team A knows WHAT to do, but can't execute. Team B
knows HOW to do it, but struggles with making good team play decisions.
This is part of the ongoing balancing act of a coach. At the youth
level, teaching technique first has been the tradition, followed by
tactical training later and separately. More recently, there has been
research on the efficiency of learning in sports and whether there is a
third "mixed" option that yields better performance.
Earlier, we took an initial look at Dr. Joan Vickers' Decision Training model as an introduction to this discussion. In addition, Dr. Markus Raab of the Institute for Movement Sciences and Sport, University of Flensburg, Germany,
(now of the Institute of Psychology, German Sport University in
Cologne), summarized the four major models of teaching sports skills
that agree that technical and tactical skills need to be combined for
more effective long-term learning. Each of the four models vary in their
treatment of learning along two different dimensions; implicit vs.
explicit learning and domain-specific vs. domain-general environments.
Types of Learning
Imagine two groups of boys playing baseball. The first group
has gathered at the local ball diamond at the park with their bats,
balls and gloves. No coaches, no parents, no umpires; just a group of
friends playing an informal "pick-up" game of baseball. They may play
by strict baseball rules, or they may improvise and make their own
"home" rules, (no called strikes, no stealing, etc.). In the past, they
may have had more formal coaching, but today is unstructured.
The second group is what we see much more often today. A team of
players, wearing their practice uniforms are driven by their parents to
team practice at a specific location and time to be handed off to the
team coaches. The coaches have planned a 90 minute session that
includes structured infield practice, then fly ball practice, then
batting practice and finally some situational scrimmages. Rules are
followed and coaching feedback is high. Both groups learn technical and
tactical skills during their afternoon of baseball. They differ in the
type of learning they experience. The first group uses "implicit"
learning while the second group uses "explicit" learning. Implicit
learning is simply the lack of explicit teaching. It is "accidental" or
"incidental" learning that soaks in during the course of our play.
There is no coach teaching the first group, but they learn by their own
trial and error and internalize the many if-then rules of technical and
tactical skills. Explicit learning, on the other hand, is directed
instruction from an expert who demonstrates proper technique or
explains the tactic and the logic behind it.
An interesting test of whether a specific skill or piece of knowledge
has been learned with implicit or explicit methods is to ask the
athlete to describe or verbalize the details of the skill or sub-skill.
If they cannot verbalize how they know what they know, it was most
likely learned through implicit learning. However, if they can explain
the team's attacking strategy for this game, for example, that most
likely came from an explicit learning session with their coach.
Types of Domains
The other dimension that coaches could use in choosing the best
teaching method is along the domain continuum. Some teaching methods
work best to teach a skill that is specific to that sport's domain and
the level of transferability to another sport is low. These methods are
known as domain-specific. For more general skills that can be useful in
several related sports, a method can be used known as domain-general.
Why would any coach choose a method that is not specific to their
sport? There has been evidence that teaching at a more abstract level,
using both implicit and explicit "play" can enhance future, more
specific coaching. Also, remember our discussion about kids playing multiple sports.Based on these two dimensions, Dr. Raab looked at and summarized these four teaching models:
- Teaching Games for Understanding (TGFU)
- Decision Training (DT)
- Ball School (Ball)
- Situation Model of Anticipated Response consequences of Tactical training (SMART)
The TGFU approach, (best described by Bunker, D.; Thorpe, R. (1982) A model for the teaching of games in the secondary school, Bulletin of Physical Education, 10, 9–16), is known for involving the athlete early in the "cognition" part of the game and combining it with the technical aspect of the game. Rather than learn "how-to" skills in a vacuum, TGFU argues that an athlete can tie the technical skill with the appropriate time and place to use it and in the context of a real game or a portion of the game. This method falls into the explicit category of learning, as the purpose of the exercise is explained. However, the exercises themselves stress a more domain-general approach of more generic skills that can be transferred between related sports such as "invasion games" (soccer, football, rugby), "net games" (tennis, volleyball), "striking/fielding games" (baseball, cricket) and "target games" (golf, target shooting).
Decision Training
The DT method, (best described by Vickers, J. N., Livingston, L. F., Umeris-Bohnert, S. & Holden, D. (1999) Decision training: the effects of complex instruction, variable practice and reduced delayed feedback on the acquisition and transfer of a motor skill, Journal of Sports Sciences, 17, 357–367), uses an explicit learning style but with a domain-specific approach. Please see my earlier post on Decision Training for details of the approach.
Ball School
The Ball School approach, (best described by Kroger, C. & Roth, K. (1999) Ballschule: ein ABC fur Spielanfanger [Ball school: an ABC for game beginners] (Schorndorf, Hofmann), starts on the other end of both spectrums, in that it teaches generic domain-general skills using implicit learning. It emphasizes that training must be based on ability, playfullness, and skill-based. Matching the games to the group's abilities, while maintaining an unstructured "play" atmosphere will help teach generic skills like "hitting a target" or "avoiding defenders".
SMART
Dr. Raab's own SMART model, (best described in Raab, M. (2003) Decision making in sports: implicit and explicit learning is affected by complexity of situation, International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 1, 406–433), blends implicit and explicit learning within a domain-specific environment. The idea is that different sports' environmental complexity may demand either an implicit or explicit learning method. Raab had previously shown that skills learned implicitly work best in sport enviroments with low complexity. Skills learned explicitly will work best in highly complex environments. Complexity is measured by the number of variables in the sport. So, a soccer field has many moving parts, each with its own variables. So, the bottom line is to use the learning strategy that fits the sport's inherent difficulty. So, learning how to choose from many different skill and tactical options would work best if matched with the right domain-specific environment.
Bottom-Line for Coaches
What does all of this mean for the coach? That there are several different models of instruction and that one size does not fit all situations. Coaches need an arsenal of tools to use based on the specific goals of the training session. In reality, most sports demand both implicit and explicit learning, as well as skills that are specific to one domain, and some that can transfer across several sport domains. Flexibility in the approach taken goes back to the evidence based coaching example we gave last time. Keeping an open mind about coaching methods and options will produce better prepared athletes.
Of course, we are always interested in your thoughts and opinions! Please add your comments.
(2007). Discussion. Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 12(1), 1-22. DOI: 10.1080/17408980601060184
Single Sport Kids - When To Specialize
From: Single Sport Kids - When To Specialize
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
So,
your grade school son or daughter is a good athlete, playing multiple
sports and having fun at all of them. Then, you hear the usual warning,
either from coaches or other parents; "If you want your daughter to go
anywhere in this sport, then its time to let the other sports go and
commit her full-time to this one." The logic sounds reasonable. The
more time spent on one sport, the better she will be at that sport,
right? Well, when we look at the three pillars of our Sports Cognition Framework,
motor skill competence, decision making ability, and positive mental
state, the question becomes whether any of these would benefit from
playing multiple sports, at least in the early years of an athlete
(ages 3-12)? It seems obvious that specific technical motor skills,
(i.e. soccer free kicks, baseball bunting, basketball free throws) need
plenty of practice and that learning the skill of shooting free throws
will not directly make you a better bunter. On the other end, learning
how to maintain confidence, increase your focus, and manage your
emotions are skills that should easily transfer from one sport to
another. That leaves the development of tactical decision making
ability as the unknown variable. Will a young athlete learn more about
field tactics, positional play and pattern recognition from playing
only their chosen sport or from playing multiple related sports?
Researchers at the University of Queensland, Australia
learned from previous studies that for national team caliber players
there is a correlation between the breadth of sport experiences they
had as a child and the level of expertise they now have in a single
sport. In fact, these studies show that there is an inverse relation
between the amount of multi-sport exposure time and the additional
sport-specific training to reach expert status. In plain English, the
athletes that played several different (but related) sports as a child,
were able to reach national "expert" level status faster than those
that focused only one sport in grade school . Bruce Abernethy,
Joseph Baker and Jean Cote designed an experiment to observe and
measure if there was indeed a transfer of pattern recognition ability
between related sports (i.e. team sports based on putting an object in
a goal; hockey, soccer, basketball, etc.)
They recruited two
group of athletes; nationally recognized experts in each of three
sports (netball, basketball and field hockey) who had broad sports
experiences as children and experienced but not expert level players in
the same sports whose grade school sports exposure was much more
limited (single sport athletes). (For those unfamiliar with netball, it
is basically basketball with no backboards and few different rules.)
The experiment showed each group a video segment of an actual game in
each of the sports. When the segment ended the groups were asked to map
out the positions and directions of each of the players on the field,
first offense and then defense, as best they could remember from the
video clip. The non-expert players were the control group, while the
expert players were the experimental groups. First, all players were
shown a netball clip and asked to respond. Second, all were shown a
basketball clip and finally the hockey clip. The expectation of the
researchers was that the netball players would score the highest after
watching the netball clip (no surprise there), but also that the expert
players of the other two sports would score higher than the non-expert
players. The reasoning behind their theory was that since the expert
players were exposed to many different sports as a child, there might
be a significant transfer effect between sports in pattern recognition,
and that this extra ability would serve them well in their chosen sport.
The
results were as predicted. For each sport's test, the experts in that
sport scored the highest, followed by the experts in the other sports,
with the non-experts scoring the poorest in each sport. Their
conclusion was that there was some generic learning of pattern
recognition in team sports that was transferable. The takeaway from
this study is that there is benefit to having kids play multiple sports
and that this may shorten the time and training needed to excel in a
single sport in the future.
So, go ahead and let your kids play
as many sports as they want. Resist the temptation to "overtrain" in
one sport too soon. Playing several sports certainly will not hurt
their future development and will most likely give them time to find
their true talents and their favorite sport.
Source:
Abernethy,
B., Baker, J., Côté, J. (2005). Transfer of pattern recall skills may
contribute to the development of sport expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19(6), 705-718. DOI: 10.1002/acp.1102
The Coach's Curse - Mental Mistakes
From:
The Coach's Curse - Mental Mistakes
Sports Are 80 Percent MentalSee The Ball, Be The Ball - Vision and Sports
From: See The Ball, Be The Ball - Vision and Sports
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
The
whistle blows and Shaq goes to the line again after being fouled on
purpose for the fourth time. And, again, we watch as he takes that
awkward stance, looks at the basket and then clanks one of the back of
the rim. We wonder how hard this can be... just aim and shoot! Isn't it
that simple? Well, not exactly. In our introduction to this series I mentioned the research of Dr. Joan Vickers and her concept of the "Quiet Eye". In her book, Perception, Cognition and Decision Training, she describes this visual targeting pathway:
"...the
visual pathway begins when information is registered on the eye's
retina by the focal and ambient systems, then travels to the back of
the head along the optic nerve and radiates to the occipital cortex, where visual information is registered as billions of features. These then race
in parallel fashion both to the top of the head to the parietal cortex
(dorsal) and along the sides of the head to the temporal (ventral)
areas. There is an integration of information in the somatosensory cortex as the
information goes to the frontal cortex, where the goals and intentions
reside and plans are formulated for the specific event that is
occurring. The flow of information then goes to the premotor and motor
cortex at the top of the head before going down the spinal cord to the
effectors." P.26
This same process repeats
constantly during any athletic event and it is the most critical
determinant of the outcome of the game. Just think about the types of
visual work that needs to be done by an athlete (as defined by Dr.
Vickers):
1. Targeting Tasks - being able to fixate on a target,
fixed or moving, to be able to throw, kick or send an object towards
it. (i.e. Shooting or passing a baseball, football, basketball, soccer
ball, hockey puck, etc.)
2. Interceptive Timing Tasks - being able to recognize, track and finally control an object as it comes at you (aka "catching")
3.
Tactical Decision Making Tasks - being able to take in an environmental
scan of the field/court and recognize patterns of all the moving
objects (i.e. a quarterback scanning his receivers and choosing the
best option for a pass).
All
of these scenarios require the athlete to focus or "gaze" on the right
points in the environment and ignore the rest of the scene. Dr.
Vickers' work has been to observe athletes of different skill levels,
expert and non-expert, and define the "best practices" of visual
control so that the non-expert athletes can be coached to better
performance. Her research lab uses "eye-trackers" (see photo) to
monitor the focus and gaze of the athlete's pupils as they perform
their skills. For example, she has found that expert baseball hitters
focus on the release point of the ball exclusively, rather than random
fixations on the pitcher's arm, head, jersey, etc. She found that
expert golf putters focus on a specific point on the cup, then a
specific point on the back of the ball and remain fixated on the point
on the ball after the ball has left the putter blade. Novices allow
their gaze to wander from the ball to the hole, without a very specific
focal point on either the cup or the ball. The term "Quiet Eye" comes
from these observations that expert performers have consciously chosen
points in their space to focus on rather than allowing their eyes to
wander and fixate on multiple points (i.e. a "noisy" eye).
So,
why does the Quiet Eye work? When we fixate on key points in our field
of vision, how does this help our neuromuscular systems perform better?
The subconscious part of our brain may be recognizing a pattern that we
have seen and experienced before and directing our movements based on
this information. Some have called this "muscle memory", meaning our
brain has learned through repetition and practice how to throw a ball
to a moving receiver at that distance and speed, and so, when presented
with a similar scenario, knows what to do. Think about when you shoot a
jump shot and sometimes you get that sensation, as soon as it leaves
your hand, that the ball is going in. Your brain may be telling you
that, based on past experience, when you've executed the same aim and
same muscle movement then the ball has gone in.
This takes us back to the discussion we had in our previous post on baseball fielding
regarding theories of perception-action combinations. The Information
Processing model claims that we perceive the environment first through
our senses, primarily our vision. Then, we access our memory to find
the rules, suggestions and knowledge that we have gained from past
experiences and these memories guide our action in the moment. The
Ecological Psychology model removes the memory access step and claims
that our perception of the environment leads directly to our actions,
as there is not enough time to access our lessons. If that is true,
then how does the Quiet Eye help us? It seems the Quiet Eye is what we
need to connect the current scenario (standing on the free throw line
looking at the basket) with our lessons learned from the past (how we
made this shot hundreds of times before). Research continues on this
question and I'm sure we'll come back to this in future posts.
Next
time, I will take a look at Dr. Vickers' "Decision Training Model",
which builds on the Quiet Eye theory to train athletes to improve their
tactical in-game decision making. We will look at the athletes who are
known as having good "vision of the field" and how to raise everyone's
game to that level.
Baseball and the Brain - Fielding
From: Baseball and the Brain - Fielding
Sports Are 80 Percent MentalWith the crack of the bat, the ball sails deep into the outfield. The left-fielder starts his run back and to the right, keeping his eyes on the ball through its flight path. His pace quickens initially, then slows down as the ball approaches. He arrives just in time to make the catch. What just happened? How did this fielder know where to run and at what speed so that he and the ball intersected at the same exact spot on the field. Why didn't he sprint to the landing spot and then wait for the ball to drop, instead of his controlled speed to arrive just when the ball did? What visual cues did he use to track the ball's flight (just the ball? the ball's movement against its background? other fielder's reaction to the ball?)
Just like we learned in pitching and hitting, fielding requires extensive mental abilities involving eyes, brain, and body movements to accomplish the task. Some physical skills, such as speed, do play a part in catching, but its the calculations and estimating that our brain has to compute that we often take for granted. The fact that fielders are not perfect in this skill, (there are dropped fly balls, or bad judgments of ball flight), begs the question of how to improve? As we saw with pitching and hitting (and most sports skills), practice does improve performance. But, if we understand what our brains are trying to accomplish, we can hopefully design more productive training routines to use in practice.
(Mike Stadler, associate professor of psychology at University of Missouri, provides a great overview of current research in his book, "The Psychology of Baseball". I highly recommend it for the complete look at this topic. I'll summarize the major points here.)
One organization that does not take this skill for granted is NASA. The interception of a ballistic object in mid-flight can describe a left fielder's job or an anti-missile defense system or how a pilot maneuvers a spacecraft through a three dimensional space. In fact, a postdoctoral fellow at the NASA Ames Research Center, Michael McBeath , has been studying fly ball catching since 1995. His team has developed a rocket-science like theory named Linear Optical Trajectory to describe the process that a fielder uses to follow the path of a batted ball. LOT says the fielder will adjust his movement towards the ball so that its trajectory follows a straight line through his field of vision. Rather than compute the landing point of the ball, racing to that spot and waiting, the fielder uses the information provided by the path of the ball to constantly adjust his path so that they intersect at the right time and place. The LOT theory is an evolution from an earlier theory called Optical Acceleration Cancellation (OAC) that had the same idea but only explained the fielder's tracking behavior in the vertical dimension. In other words, as the ball leaves the bat the fielder watches the ball rise in his field of vision. If he were to stand still and the ball was hit hard enough to land behind him, his eyes would track the ball up and over his head, or at a 90 degree angle. If the ball landed in front of him, he would see the ball rise and fall but his viewing angle may not rise above 45 degrees. LOT and OAC argue that the fielder repositions himself throughout the flight of the ball to keep this viewing angle between 0 and 90 degrees. If its rising too fast, he needs to turn and run backwards. If the viewing angle is low, then the fielder needs to move forward so that the ball doesn't land in front of him. He can't always make to the landing spot in time, but keeping the ball at about a 45 degree angle by moving will help ensure that he gets there in time. While OAC explained balls hit directly at a fielder, LOT helps add the side-to-side dimension, as in our example of above of a ball hit to the right of the fielder.
The OAC and LOT theories do agree on a fundamental cognitive science debate. There are two theories of how we perceive the world and then react to it. First, the Information Processing (IP) theory likens our brain to a computer in that we have inputs, our senses that gather information about the world, a memory system that stores all of our past experiences and lessons learned, and a "CPU" or main processor that combines our input with our memory and computes the best answer for the given problem. So,IP would say that the fielder sees the fly ball and offers it to the brain as input, the brain then pulls from memory all of the hundreds or thousands of fly ball flight paths that have been experienced, and then computes the best path to the ball's landing point based on what it has "learned" through practice. McBeath's research and observations of fielders has shown that the processing time to accomplish this task would be too great for the player to react. OAC and LOT subscribe to the alternate theory of human perception, Ecological Psychology (EP). EP eliminates the call to memory from the processing and argues that the fielder observes the flight path of the ball and can react using the angle monitoring system. This is still up for debate as the IPers would argue "learned facts" like what pitch was thrown, how a certain batter hits those pitches, how the prevailing wind will affect the ball, etc. And, with EP, how can the skill differences between a young ballplayer and an experienced major leaguer be accounted for? What is the point of practice, if the trials and errors are not stored/accessed in memory?
Of course, we haven't mentioned ground balls and their behavior, due to the lack of research out there. The reaction time for a third baseman to snare a hot one-hopper down the line is much shorter. This would also argue in favor of EP, but what other systems are involved?
Game Highlights
Again, I have just touched on this subject, see Prof. Stadler's book for a much better discussion. Arguing about which theory explains a fielder's actions is only productive if we can apply the research to create better drills and practices for our players. My own layman's view is that the LOT theory is getting there as an explanation, but I'm still undecided about EP vs. IP . So many sport skills rely on some of these foundations, hence my "search for the truth" continues! As with pitching and hitting, fielding seems to improve with practice. As we move forward, we'll look at the theories behind practice and what structure they should take.
Baseball and the Brain - Hitting
From: Baseball and the Brain - Hitting
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
Ted Williams,
arguably the greatest baseball hitter of all-time, once said, "I think
without question the hardest single thing to do in sport is to hit a
baseball". Certainly, at the major league level, where pitches can
reach 100 miles per hour, this is believable, but even at Little
League, High School
and College/Minor leagues, the odds are against the hitter. Looking at
batting averages, 3 hits out of 10 at-bats will earn a player millions
of dollars in the bigs, while averaging 4 or 5 hits
out of 10 at the lower leagues will earn you some attention at the next
level. As most of you know, Williams was the last major league player
to hit .400 for an entire season and that was back in 1941, almost 67
years ago! In my second of three posts of the Baseball and the Brain
series, we'll take a quick look at some of the theory behind this
complicated skill. 
Again, my main reference for these ideas is "The Psychology of Baseball" by Mike Stadler.
Some questions that come to mind regarding hitting a pitched baseball:
-
What makes this task so hard? Why can't players, who practice for years
and have every training technique, coach and accumulated knowledge at
their disposal, perform at a consistenly higher level?
-
What can be improved? Hand-eye reaction time? Knowledge of situational
tendencies (what pitch is likely to be thrown in a given game
situation)?
A key concept of pitching and hitting in baseball was summed up long ago by Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn, when he said, “Hitting
is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.” To sync up the swing of the
bat with the exact time and location of the ball's arrival is the
challenge that each hitter faces. If the intersection is off by even tenths of a second, the ball will be missed. As was discussed in the Pitching post,
the hitter must master the same two dimensions, horizontal and
vertical. The aim of the pitch will affect the horizontal dimension
while the speed of the pitch will affect the vertical dimension. The
hitter's job is to time the arrival of the pitch
based on the estimated speed of the ball while determining where,
horizontally, it will cross the plate. The shape of the bat helps the
batter in the horizontal space as its length compensates for more
error, right to left. However, the narrow 3-4" barrel does not cover
alot of vertical ground. So, a hitter must be more accurate judging the
vertical height of a pitch than the horizontal location. So, if a
pitcher can vary the speed of his pitches, the hitter will have a
harder time judging the vertical distance that the ball will drop as it arrives, and swing either over the top or under the ball.
A
common coach's tip to hitters is to "keep your eye on the ball" or
"watch the ball hit the bat". As Stadler points out in his book, doing
both of these things is impossible due to the concept known as "angular
velocity". Imagine you are standing on the side of freeway with cars
coming towards you. Off in the distance, you are able to watch the cars
approaching your position with relative
ease, as they seem to be moving at a slower speed. As the cars come
closer and pass about a 45 degree angle and then zoom past your
position, they seem to "speed up" and you have to turn your eyes/head
quickly to watch them. This perception is known
as angular velocity. The car is going a constant speed, but appears to
be "speeding up" as it passes you, because your eyes need to move more
quickly to keep up. This same concept applies to the hitter. The first
few feet that a baseball travels when it leaves a pitcher's hand is the
most important to the hitter, as the ball can be tracked by the
hitter's eyes. As the ball approaches past a 45 degree angle, it is
more difficult to "keep your eye on the ball" as your eyes
need to shift through many more degrees of movement. Research reported
by Stadler shows that hitters cannot watch the entire flight of the
ball, so they employ two tactics. First, they might follow the path of
the ball for 70-80% of its flight, but then their eyes can't keep up
and they estimate or extrapolate the remaining path and make a guess as
to where they need to swing to have the bat meet the ball. In this
case, they don't actually "see" the bat hit the ball. Second, they
might follow the initial flight of
the ball, estimate its path, then shift their eyes to the anticipated
point where the ball crosses the plate to, hopefully, see their bat hit
the ball. This inability to see the entire flight of the ball to
contact point is what gives the pitcher the opportunity to fool the
batter with the speed of the pitch. If a hitter is thinking "fast
ball", their brain will be biased towards completing the estimated path
across the plate at a higher elevation and they will aim their swing
there. If the pitcher
actually throws a curve or change-up, the speed will be slower and the
path of the ball will result in a lower elevation when it crosses the
plate, thus fooling the hitter.
Game Summary
As
in pitching, our eyes and brain determine much of the success we have
as hitters. We took a quick look as it relates to hitting a baseball,
but the same concepts apply to hitting any moving object; tennis, hockey,
soccer, etc. In future posts, we'll look at practical ways to improve
this tracking skill and the hand/eye/brain connection. As usual,
practice will improve performance, but we want to identify the unique
practice techniques which will be most effective. Tracking a moving
object also applies to catching, which we'll look at next.
Baseball and the Brain - Pitching
From: Baseball and the Brain - Pitching
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
As promised, we begin our look at the three most important technical skills of baseball: Pitching, Hitting and Catching. Each of these skills apply to other sports as well, but I thought we'd stick with the current season of baseball as the sport du jour. Again, my focus for "80 Percent Mental" is to look at sports cognition in a generic sense across all sports, occasionally digging deeper into individual sport specialties. The practical side of this is to understand how our brains and nervous system perform these skills that we often take for granted, so that we can brainstorm (yuk-yuk) on new ways to teach, practice and perfect these skills.
Pitching/Throwing
Pitching a 3" diameter baseball 46 feet (for Little League) or 60 feet, 6 inches over a target that is 8 inches wide requires an accuracy of 1/2 to 1 degree. Throwing it fast, with the pressure of a game situation makes this task one of the hardest in sports. In addition, a fielder throwing to another fielder from 40, 60 or 150 feet away, sometimes off balance or on the run, tests the brain-body connection for accuracy. So, how do we do it? And how can we learn to do it more consistently?
Questions that come to my mind regarding pitching/throwing skills and baseball include:
- Why can't a pitcher control ALL of his/her pitches? Why do some not only miss the strike zone, but are wild?
- Is the breakdown physical in the muscle sequence of the throw or is it in the connection between eyes, brain and body?
Again, one the best references I have found on this is "The Psychology of Baseball" by Mike Stadler, published by Gotham
Books. Prof. Stadler digs into many of these topics and I will
paraphrase from his findings. I won't do it justice here, so please put
it on your reading list.There are two dimensions to think about when throwing an object at a target: vertical and horizontal. The vertical dimension is a function of the distance of the throw and the effect of gravity on the object. So the thrower's estimate of distance between himself and the target will determine the accuracy of the throw vertically. Basically, if the distance is underestimated, the required strength of the throw will be underestimated and will lose the battle with gravity, resulting in a throw that will be either too low or will bounce before reaching the target. An example of this is a fast ball which is thrown with more velocity, so will reach its target before gravity has a path-changing effect on it. On the other hand, a curve ball or change-up may seem to curve downward, partly because of the spin put on the ball affecting its aerodynamics, but also because these pitches are thrown with less force, allowing gravity to pull the ball down. In the horizontal dimension, the "right-left" accuracy is related to more to the "aim" of the throw and the ability of the thrower to adjust hand-eye coordination along with finger, arm, shoulder angles and the release of the ball to send the ball in the intended direction.
So, looking at our first question, how do we improve accuracy in both dimensions? Prof. Stadler points out that research shows that skill in the vertical/distance estimating dimension is more genetically determined, while skill horizontally can be better improved with practice. Remember those spatial organization tests that we took that show a set of connected blocks in a certain shape and then show you four more sets of conected blocks? The question is which of the four sets could result from rotating the first set of blocks. Research has shown that athletes that are good at these spatial relations tests are also accurate throwers in the vertical dimension. Why? The thought is that those athletes are better able to judge the movement of objects through space and can better estimate distance in 3D space. Pitchers are able to improve this to an extent as the distance to the target is fixed. A fielder, however, starts his throw from many different positions on the field and has more targets (bases and cut-off men) to choose from, making his learning curve a bit longer.
If a throw or pitch is off-target, then what went wrong? Prof. Stadler collects many different studies that review the possible physiological/mechanical reasons for "bad throws". Despite all of the combinations of fingers, hand, arm, shoulder and body movements, it seems to all boil down to the timing of the finger release of the ball. In other words, when the pitcher's hand comes forward and the fingers start opening to allow the ball to leave. The timing of this release can vary by hundredths of a second but has significant impact on the accuracy of the throw. But, its also been shown that the throwing action happens so fast, that the brain could not consciously adjust or control that release in real-time. This points to the throwing action being controlled by what psychologists call an automated "motor program" that is created through many repeated practice throws. But, if a "release point" is incorrect, how does a pitcher correct that if they can't do so in real-time? It seems they need to change the embedded program by more practice.
Another component of "off-target" pitching or throwing is the psychological side of a player's mental state/attitude. Stadler identifies research that these motor programs can be called up by the brain by current thoughts. There seems to be "good" programs and "bad" programs, meaning the brain has learned how to throw a strike and learned many programs that will not throw a strike. By "seeding" the recall with positive or negative thoughts, the "strike" program may be run, but so to can the "ball" program. So, if a pitcher thinks to himself, "don't walk this guy", he may be subconsciously calling up the "ball" program and it will result in a pitch called as a ball. So, this is why sports pscyhologists stress the need to "think positively", not just for warm and fuzzy feelings, but the brain may be listening and will instruct your body what to do.
Game Summary
I've only touched the surface for this topic. We'll see some of these themes in the hitting and catching posts that are coming up. One useful takeaway here for youth coaches is that some players will have a genetic advantage in throwing and may be your "natural" pitchers. As we dig deeper into these topics, we will be able pull out more practical tips for players and coaches.
