"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!
Sports Cognition
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.
Inside An Olympian's Brain
From: Inside An Olympian's Brain
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
Michael Phelps, Nastia Liukin, Misty May-Treanor and Lin Dan are four Olympic athletes who have each spent most of their life learning the skills needed to reach the top of their respective sports, swimming, gymnastics, beach volleyball and badminton (you were wondering about Lin, weren't you...) Their physical skills are obvious and amazing to watch. For just a few minutes, instead of being a spectator, try to step inside the heads of each of them and try to imagine what their brains must accomplish when they are competing and how different the mental tasks are for each of their sports.
On a continuum from repetitive motion to reactive motion, these four sports each require a different level of brain signal to muscle movement. Think of Phelps finishing off one more gold medal race in the last 50 meters. His brain has one goal; repeat the same stroke cycle as quickly and as efficiently as possible until he touches the wall. There isn't alot of strategy or novel movement based on his opponent's movements. Its simply to be the first one to finish. What is he consciously thinking about during a race? In his post-race interviews, he says he notices the relative positions of other swimmers, his energy level and the overall effort required to win (and in at least one race, the level of water in his goggles.) At his level, the concept of automaticity (as discussed in a previous post) has certainly been reached, where he doesn't have to consciously "think" about the components of his stroke. In fact, research has shown that those who do start analyzing their body movements during competition are prone to errors as they take themselves out of their mental flow.
Moving up the continuum, think about gymnastics. Certainly, the skills to perform a balance beam routine are practiced to the point of fluency, but the skills themselves are not as strictly repetitive as swimming. There are finer points of each movement being judged so gymnasts keep several mental "notes" about the current performance so that they can "remember" to keep their head up or their toes pointed or to gather speed on the dismount. There also is an order of skills or routine that needs to be remembered and activated.
While swimming and gymnastics are battles against yourself and previously rehearsed movements, sports like beach volleyball and badminton require reactionary moves directly based on your opponents' movements. Rather than being "locked-in" to a stroke or practised routine, athletes in direct competition with their opponents must either anticipate or react to be successful.
So,
what is the brain's role in learning each of these varied sets of
skills and what commands do our individual neurons control? Whether we
are doing a strictly repetitive movement like a swim stroke or a
unique, "on the fly" move like a return of a serve, what instructions are sent from our brain to our muscles? Do the neurons of the primary motor cortex (where movement is controlled in the brain) send out signals of both what to do and how to do it?
Researchers at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT led by Robert Ajemian designed an experiment to solve this "muscles or movement" question. They trained adult monkeys to move a video game joystick so that a cursor on a screen would move towards a target. While the monkeys learned the task, they measured brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare the actual movements of the joystick with the firing patterns of neurons. The researchers then developed a model that allowed them to test hypotheses about the relationship between neuronal activity that they measured in the monkey's motor cortex and the resulting actions. They concluded that neurons do send both the specific signals to the muscles to make the movement and a goal-oriented instruction set to monitor the success of the movement towards the goal. Here is a video synopsis of a very similar experiment by Miguel Nicolelis, Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University:
To back this up, Andrew Schwartz, professor of neurobiology at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and his team of researchers wanted to isolate the brain signals from the actual muscles and see if the neuron impulses on their own could produce both intent to move and the movement itself. They taught adult monkeys to feed themselves using a robotic arm while the monkey's own arms were restrained. Instead, tiny probes the width of a human hair were placed in the monkey's motor cortex to pick up the electrical impulses created by the monkey's neurons. These signals were then evaluated by software controlling the robotic arm and the resulting movement instructions were carried out. The monkeys were able to control the arm with their "thoughts" and feed themselves food. Here's a video of this experiment in action:
"In our research, we've demonstrated a higher level of precision, skill and learning," explained Dr. Schwartz. "The monkey learns by first observing the movement, which activates his brain cells as if he were doing it. It's a lot like sports training, where trainers have athletes first imagine that they are performing the movements they desire."
It seems these "mental maps" of neurons in the motor cortex are the end goal for athletes to achieve the automaticity required to either repeat the same rehearsed motions (like Phelps and Liukin) or to react instantly to a new situation (like May-Treanor and Dan). Luckily, we can just practice our own automaticity of sitting on the couch and watching in a mesemerized state.
AJEMIAN, R., GREEN, A., BULLOCK, D., SERGIO, L., KALASKA, J., GROSSBERG, S. (2008). Assessing the Function of Motor Cortex: Single-Neuron Models of How Neural Response Is Modulated by Limb Biomechanics. Neuron, 58(3), 414-428. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2008.02.033
Velliste, M., Perel, S., Spalding, M.C., Whitford, A.S., Schwartz, A.B. (2008). Cortical control of a prosthetic arm for self-feeding. Nature, 453(7198), 1098-1101. DOI: 10.1038/nature06996
Play Better Golf By Playing Bigger Holes
From: Play Better Golf By Playing Bigger Holes
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
Here are some quotes we have all heard (or said ourselves) on the golf course or at the ball diamond.
On a good day:
"It was like putting into the Grand Canyon"
"The baseball looked like a beach ball up there today"
On a bad day:
"The hole was as small as a thimble"
"I don't know, it looked like he was throwing marbles"
The baseball and the golf hole are the same size every day, so are these comments meaningless or do we really perceive these objects differently depending on the day's performance? And, does our performance influence our perception or does our perception help our performance?
Jessica Witt, an assistant professor of psychological science at the University of Virginia has made two attempts at the answer. First, in a 2005 study, "See the Ball, Hit the Ball", her team studied softball players by designing an experiment that tried to correlate perceived softball size to performance. She interviewed players immediately after a game and asked them to estimate the size of the softball by picking a circle off of a board that contained several different sizes. She then found out how that player had done at the plate that day. As expected, the players that were hitting well chose the larger sized circles to represent the ball size, while the underperforming hitters chose the smaller circles. The team was not able to answer the question of causality, so they expanded the research to other sports.
Fast forward to July, 2008 and Witt and her team have just released a very similar study focused on golf, "Putting to a bigger hole: Golf performance relates to perceived size". Using the same experiment format, players who had just finished a round of golf were asked to pick out the perceived size of the hole from a collection of holes that varied in diameter by a few centimeters. Once again, the players who had scored well that day picked the larger holes and vice versa for that day's hackers. So, the team came to the same conclusion that there is some relationship between perception and performance, but could not figure out the direction of the effect. Ideally, a player could "imagine" a larger hole and then play better because of that visual cue.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University may have the answer. In a study, "The Functional Impact of Mental Imagery on Conscious Perception", the team led by Joel Pearson, wanted to see what influence our "Mind's Eye" has on our actual perception. In their experiment, they asked volunteers to imagine simple patterns of vertical or horizontal stripes. Then, they showed each person a pattern of green horizontal stripes in one eye and red vertical stripes in the other eye. This would induce what is known as the "binocular rivalry" condition where each image would fight for control of perception and would appear to alternate from one to the other. In this experiment, however, the subjects reported seeing the image they had first imagined more often. So, if they had imagined vertical stripes originally, they would report seeing the red vertical stripes predominantly.
The team concluded that mental imagery does have an influence over what is later seen. They also believe that the brain actually processes imagined mental images the same way it handles actual scenes. "More recently, with advances in human brain imaging, we now know that when you imagine something parts of the visual brain do light up and you see activity there," Pearson says. "So there's more and more evidence suggesting that there is a huge overlap between mental imagery and seeing the same thing. Our work shows that not only are imagery and vision related, but imagery directly influences what we see."
So, back to our sports example, if we were able to imagine a large golf hole or a huge baseball, this might affect our actual perception of the real thing and increase our performance. This link has not been tested, but its a step in the right direction. Another open question is the effect that our emotions and confidence have on our perceived task. That hole may look like the Grand Canyon, but the sand trap might look like the Sahara Desert!
Witt, J.K. (2008). Putting to a bigger hole: golf performance relates to perceived size. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15(3), 581-585.
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.
Getting Sport Science Out Of The Lab And Onto The Field
From:Getting Sport Science Out Of The Lab And Onto The Field
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
You are a coach, trying to juggle practice plans, meetings, game prep and player issues while trying to stay focused on the season's goals. At the end of another long day, you see this in your inbox:
MEMO
To: All Head Coaches
From: Athletic Director
Subject: Monthly Reading List to Keep Up with Current Sport Science Research
- Neuromuscular Activation of Triceps Surae Using Muscle Functional MRI and EMG
- Positive effects of intermittent hypoxia (live high:train low) on exercise performance are not mediated primarily by augmented red cell volume
- Physiologic Left Ventricular Cavity Dilatation in Elite Athletes
- The Relationships of Perceived Motivational Climate to Cohesion and Collective Efficacy in Elite Female Teams
Just some light reading before bedtime... This is an obvious exaggeration (and weak attempt at humor) of the gap between sport science researchers and practitioners. While those are actual research paper titles from the last few years under the heading of "sport science", the intended audience was most likely not coaches or athletes, but rather fellow academic peers. The real question is whether the important conclusions and knowledge captured in all of this research is ever actually used to improve athletic performance? How can a coach or athlete understand, combine and transfer this information into their game?
David Bishop of the Faculty of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of Verona has been looking at this issue for several years. It started with a roundtable discussion he had at the 2006 Congress of the Australian Association for Exercise and Sports Science with several academic sport scientists (see: Sports-Science Roundtable: Does Sports-Science Research Influence Practice? ) He asked very direct questions regarding the definition of sport science and whether the research always needs to be "applied" versus establishing a "basic" foundation. The most intriguing question was whether there already is ample research that could be applied that needs a good translator/professional to interpret for and communicate to the potential users - coaches and athletes. The panel agreed that was the missing piece, as most academic researchers just don't have the time to deliver all of their findings directly to the field.
In a follow-up to this discussion, Bishop recently published his proposed solution titled, "An Applied Research Model for the Sport Sciences" in Sports Medicine (see citation below). In it, he calls for a new framework for researchers to follow when designing their studies so that there is always a focus on how the results will directly improve athletic performance. He calls for a greater partnership role between researchers and coaches to map out a useful agenda of real world problems to examine. He admits that this model, if implemented, will only help increase the potential for applied sport science. The "middleman" practitioner role is still needed to bring this information to the front lines of sports.
The solution for this "gathering place" community seems perfect for Web 2.0 technology. One specific example is this online community, iStadia.com. Keith Irving and Rob Robson, two practicing sport science consultants, created this site two years ago to fill this gap. Today, with over 600 members, iStadia is approaching the type of critical mass that will be necessary to bring all of the stakeholders together. Of course, as with any online community, the conversations there are only as good as the participants want to make it. But, with the pressure on coaches to win and the desire of sport scientists to produce relevant knowledge, there is motivation to make the connection.
Another trend favoring more public awareness of sport science is the recent surge in media attention, especially related to the upcoming Beijing Olympics. In an earlier post, Winning Olympic Gold With Sport Science, I highlighted a feature article from USA Today. This month's Fast Company also picks up on this theme with their cover article, Innovation of Olympic Proportions, describing several high-tech equipment innovations that will be used at the Games. Each article mentions the evolving trust and acceptance of sport science research by coaches and athletes. When they see actual products, techniques and, most importantly, results come from the research, they cannot deny its value.
Bishop, D. (2008). An Applied Research Model for the Sport Sciences. Sports Medicine, 38(3), 253-263.
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.
Cristiano Roboto - The Soccer Playing Robot
From: Cristiano Roboto - The Soccer Playing Robot
Sports Are 80 Percent Mental
Back in April, 80 teams of researchers from 15 countries got together to compete in the 2008 RoboCup German Open,
a soccer tournament where the "athletes" are all totally autonomous
robots like the one pictured above. Four players and a goalkeeper per
team play on a 20x14 meter field and are independent of any human
remote control. They need to have sub-systems that "see" the field,
opponents and the goal; have locomotion logic to move forward, sideways
and back; some tactical logic to sense an opponent and avoid "it"; and
targeting to kick the ball in the direction of the goal. You can see
some brief clips of the robots on the pitch here.
Try the second video to see the most game highlights. The discussion is
in German, if any of you speak it, but the game clips are what to focus
on. The more practical future applications of these sub-systems is to
program robots to do more meaningful tasks like search and rescue
operations in dangerous areas, (fire, earthquake, enemy zones), using
the same visual, locomotion, search algorithms that guide the robot on
the soccer field. In fact, there is a RoboRescue competition as well.
What
struck me most about watching these robots was the complexity of the
logic that needs to be programmed. The visual system that must learn
the field, the sidelines, the dimensions of the goal, the difference
between a teammate and an opponent. The tactical system that must be
"goal" directed, (pun intended). It must learn that the object of the
game is to put the ball into the opponent's goal and stop the ball from
entering your own goal. The constant motion sensor to understand where
they are on the field, when to dribble, when to stop, when to aim and
when to kick. The researchers/programmers in this competition are some
of the brightest minds in the world, yet when you watch the video, you
might have the same reaction that I did; that this is an impressive
start, but they still look rather rudimentary.
Thinking about
the topics we cover here, we often take for granted all of the logic
and skills that human athletes demonstrate every day. I'm thinking
especially of our kids that can easily surpass the performance of these
robots, even as young as 3 years old. My fascination, and probably
these researchers, is HOW we are able to do these tasks so easily. If
we understand more about the "how", then we can also design better
practice environments to advance those skills even faster.
Source: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (2008, April 4). Soccer Robots Compete For The Title. ScienceDaily. Retrieved May 29, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080401110128.htm#
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.
