Out of 60 bowlers neurotyped over the last 3 years, only 5 have been type 1 dopamine dominant. I was one of them! This is also closely linked with testosterone levels and muscle fibre make up. Over the last 3 years of coaching, from age group to IPL I have come to acknowledge a few things tied into neurotyping. I feel that you see less “natural talents” in the modern era. Most naturally talented athletes in-fact develop outside the system/structure, academies and the confines of a rigorous structured training programme.
I didn’t start weight training until 18 and was never part of an academy. I played two professional sports. I spend Sunday afternoons bowling on the road for hours at a traffic sign or kicking the ball down the field on my own! On a different level take the West Indies bowlers in the 70s. They developed the athletic qualities through unstructured play, bowling itself, jumping and running on various uneven surfaces [they developed stiffness in their tendons which is key to bowling quickly]. There was certainly no ‘high performance centres’ around anywhere in the 70s. High performance was ‘free play’ with your mates at a level of intensity most professionals and amateurs would only dream of practicing with now.
There was no large TV screens, mobile phones, app based games and various electronic gadgets to keep them entertained and keep them indoors away from ‘free play’. There are two main reasons for lower dopamine levels in my opinion.
- Lazy parenting [poor parenting despite best intentions]
- Structured and constrained practice with a focus on competition
Parents don’t stimulate their kids enough when they are between 0 and 12 months old. This leads to a underdeveloped vestibular, proprioceptive and visual systems . They are never optimized. They are desensitized. Here is a question to all coaches: ‘how hard is it now to motivate your players to run in and bowl quickly through the pain barrier?’ I suggest, very hard.
People call it the ‘snow flake’ generation where I see it as the ‘dopamine numb’ generation!
Here is an article I wrote a while back on the generation of ‘fragile’ bowlers and the demise of anti -fragility:
The Anti-Fragile Chaos Monkey
I just read about how great Amazon US-EAST crash of April 21, 2011 brought down most of their customers who depended on that zone, including big one’s like Reddit and Quora. But Netflix remained up. How did that happen?
It turns out that Netflix had made themselves “antifragile” by employing tool they called “Chaos Monkey.” What Chaos Monkey would do was to simply regularly and randomly “crash” various Netflix servers. (“Crash is in quotes because when it is being done on purpose by the machine owner, it is not clear whether it really should be called a crash or not.)
By continually crashing their own servers, the Netflix engineers could keep on learning how keep uncrashed portions of their network up and running in the face of part of the network going down. And so when Amazon US-EAST crashed, Netflix run on, unfazed.
This is what Nassim Taleb is talking about when he says person or organization that tries keep all fluctuations damped down becomes fragile, and very vulnerable to big fluctuation. The companies that tried to keep all of their servers up and running all the time went completely out of operation when Amazon crashed from under them. But the company that kept itself ready with lots of little crashes could handle the big crash.
So:
- If you run on a treadmill, the first time you step unevenly on pothole, you tear a ligament.
But, if you run on uneven surfaces, your ligaments are stronger, and you can handle the new stress. - If you try to keep from ever feeling down with antidepressants, the first time you get really walloped by a crisis, you commit suicide.
But, if you learn to deal with lots of smaller ups-and-downs, you are more prepared for .big one - If are a central bank that tries to keep growth constant and all you the crash.                                              But,if you accept lots of small downturns, you clear out bad investments in small doses and may avoid big crashes.
I could keep going, but you get the idea, I suspect.
__________
I see parallels with coaching fast bowlers
Problem
We are not developing anti fragile young bowlers. Young bowlers are now missing games for minor issues. Everything about the current environment for fast bowlers is utopian. Everything is perfect. Young bowlers are made to feel they’ve achieved greatness by joining a county academy. They get a ‘signing on photo with the chief executive, provided with full club kit and demand sponsorship deals from equipment companies. They cannot bowl when fatigued and others govern their workload, which has no flexibility for individuality (this is a world wide issue). Young athletic fast bowlers are discouraged to play other sports from a very young age for fear of injuries, sometimes even before decisions have been made on whether they will be selected for the academy pathway. This only delays the inevitability of injuries due to a lack of athletic robustness further down the line. The majority of their bowling is done indoors in stable environment with a hard fixed surface that has no fluctuation and also provides a false impression on pace and bounce for every bowler.
Answer
Apart from changing the current culture, which takes time, I recommend bowlers, are exposed to ‘CHAOS MONKEY session. These sessions take them out of their comfort zone but in a controlled manner and pre planned ‘overload’ Coaches are aware of the training spike while bowlers are made to adapt. Examples can be bowling after a physical session so fatigue is the organismic constraint, bowling with various weighted balls so task constraint or bowling outside on poor quality grass in the middle of winter so the environment is the constraint.
“Coaching programmes that dampen down natural fluctuations are developing fragile bowlers that become very vulnerable outside a stable environment”
TV screens and phones offer such a STRONG stimulation of the dopaminergic receptors that when a child (with an unstable nervous system) uses these too much they will desensitize their dopamine receptors
Add to that they are entered into highly structured play and encouraged to become specialists too soon and never develop their creativity – “CREATIVITY is the key to talent”
Credit- Christian Thibaudeau [diagram copyright]
According to @thibarmy – “Dopamine dominance used to be in 15-20% of the population. Now I’m guessing (educated guess) that’s it’s 5% or less.”
I believe athletes reach the top level ‘in spite’ of the system not because of it. Parents are key in this development and what they do at key stages of the nervous system development can have a positive or negative impact on their development and ultimate success in sport.
The other key stake holders in the process are the academies and age group structures. It’s beyond the scope of this article but I genuinely believe there should be no competitive cricket before 11 years of age and no representative cricket before 16 years of age.
Sport is a vital part of a child’s life. The benefits of sport and exercise goes beyond any physical capacities
‘According to researchers, there is an optimum amount of dopamine that should be present within the brain. This optimum amount can help improve cognitive performance on tasks, researchers report’– Source: Leiden University
‘The study participants were better at their tasks if the level of dopamine in their brains was artificially increased’
If we get it right, there is no need to artificially increase dopamine levels, we simply ‘LET THEM PLAY when they are young.
About Steffan Jones
Steffan Jones is the former Somerset, Northamptonshire, Kent and Derbyshire fast bowler who forged a career out of getting the best out of himself physically. He is an ex-pro cricketer of 20yrs, and is the last dual pro between rugby & cricket. Steffan is recognized as a global Fast-bowling performance expert.
Steffan is currently one of the small number of people in the world who hold an ECB level 3 qualification as well as a UKSCA accreditation in strength & conditioning. He is the leading coach in England on teaching and using heavy ball contrast training for fast bowler development.
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