In physical preparation, you hear talk all the time of 1-rep maxes, vertical jumps, agility tests, readiness indicators, and more. Makes good sense, these are many of the factors we as prep-coaches can definitely quantify and control. In terms of factors that we can influence, when was the last time you heard talk about the role and training of vision and reactive ability?
What if what made the difference in a match was not an athlete deadlifting 20 more pounds or running a few hundredths faster in a 20 yard dash, but rather, their ability to track a moving ball, or make a critical pass to a team mate they saw in the peripheral field?
As we progress as an industry, and are able to quantify (and subsequently train) more aspects of the athlete other than sheer mechanical ability, our knowledge of training “transferables” also improves.
Welcome to part 3 of 4 of my series on “high transfer” factors to athletic qualities that produce winning team sport environments.
In part 1, we talked about practice time logged and movement fluency
In part 2, we talked about the importance of process based players, mental resiliency and coachability.
In this piece, we’ll cover:
- Vision
- (selective) Hindbrain Dominance
- Confidence
Vision and Spatial Coordination
When we think of players with great skill, say the lights-out shooter in basketball, the tennis ace or the baseball MVP, we think of great skill, but how is that skill quantified?
One part that stands out is vision.
In every athlete who demonstrates great skill, a common denominator revolves around the ability to see the ball, and let the body respond to it. Our visual field of focus is actually only the width of your thumb placed at arms length in front of your body. How you can place and use this focus will determine how well you can engage your body in your sport. I’ve worked with several athletes who were very physically gifted, but very unable to utilize this tracking ability in their field of vision.
Raw vision in the 20/20 sense has a huge genetic component, but this doesn’t mean that game-speed vision can’t be improved.
I believe that vision training will be an important aspect of training nearly any athlete who plays a ball sport in the near future; especially fast paced ball sports, such as tennis and baseball.
In working with tennis players, and seeing limitations in the mechanical visual tracking of athletes, and then hearing how they commonly miss corresponding shots is definitely more than a coincidence.
The best players see the ball better.
Take a look at Federer below, hitting a ball that no doubt it traveling towards him upwards of 100mph. Despite the speed, he has the visual ability to put his focus right on the ball. (This ability to truly “see” the ball all the way to contact point is debated, and we do definitely know that the ability to visually pick up on subtle cues, and subsequently predict and react, when the ball is farther away is critical) Lesser players cannot do this.
The below graph is an amount of speculation on my part, early ideas often are as such. That being said, If I had to put together an equation for great skill ball sport players, such as tennis, baseball, point guards, water polo goalkeepers and quarterbacks, there are three factors that I feel are key players:
This even goes so far that studies have shown that you will not be a professional baseball hitter unless your vision is close to 20-15 or better. 20-20 is “good” but not good enough for baseball.
Ophthalmologist, and professional baseball consultant Daniel Laby has said “”If you come in and you’re 20-20 and you’re playing major-league baseball, we’re not going to leave you there because that’s not going to be good enough”.
Even in tennis players, those athletes who I find have left-right tracking issues still are often better than average in regular straight ahead vision. The best water polo goalkeepers I work with have great vision and incredible tracking abilities.
So how do you train vision? This is an area I’m a baby in, slowly learning more each year, but to learn more, check out some great resources such as slowthegamedown and Z-health. It can be improved!
To sum up this area, physical preparation coach and visual trainer Jeff Moyer speaks as follows: “I think that (vision training) has played a role in sport practice and will trickle down into physical prep the more people understand what “it” really is, as long as they aren’t solid into this companies that are selling the latest and greatest. Just like physical preparation, “sports vision training” to me is a system built from the athlete’s needs and the needs of their sport/position. It’s vision training along with motor learning/control. Various forms of psychologies and neuroscience and physiology. Just like physical preparation, it falls along the transfer of training spectrum.”
Vision training is much more than just playing whack-a-mole on the light board, it is infusing vision and tracking into motor skills, and incorporating real game scenarios such as fatigue and its effect on the process, into the mix.
Hindbrain (Subconscious) Dominance
We’ve been talking about the subconscious for some time in this article series, but haven’t gotten down to the crucial details, so that’s what this point is all about.
Good players are “smart”, right? Well, it depends on your definition, but yes. There are multiple types of intelligences in life, and sport, and obviously, a conscious and intellectual knowledge of one’s sport and related movement library is of value, and in some cases, such as a football quarterback, very important.
There is, however, there is an intelligence that is more important when it comes to being a truly good athlete: The ability to switch “off” the conscious mind (as much as needed) in gameplay, and allow the power of the subconscious mind to control the body.
Quickly, some differences and definitions between the conscious and subconscious mind:
Conscious Mind: In charge of volitional movements, small capacity, can only hold 5-7 bits of information at a time and process around 50.
Subconscious Mind: Can process 200,000x more data than conscious mind. The seat of our emotions which can control our behavior, and is “present” focused.
Conscious vs. Subconscious: Which are you playing with?
Further getting into the differences:
Conscious mind = cerebral cortex. Layer 2.5 mm thick that surrounds the brain, lots of folds and divots to increase surface area.
The unconscious specializes in the present. The conscious specializes in analyzing the past/future. A key to performance is the quietness of the conscious mind, so one’s subconscious can do the job.
From a cultural perspective, we have known about this idea, what many call “playing in the zone” for some time. A basketball player who has drained multiple three pointers in a row has been deemed “unconscious!”. What this means, is that this player’s frontal lobe isn’t interfering with their ability to play their sport through the subconscious.
What we have seen in expert musicians is that their conscious brain activity is minimal when playing a complex piece. They too are “unconscious”.
The conscious brain activity of an expert musician during recital is minimal.
The only dunk I ever landed in a high school basketball game was also in the midst of a steal and dash down the court with two players sprinting hard behind me. I don’t even remember anything between stealing the ball and hanging from the rim afterwards.
I had also missed over a half-dozen “bunny” dunks prior to that where it was just me, the open court, and the rim. With only the open basket in front of me, my frontal cortex overloaded and I paralyzed my jumping ability. In practice and pickup, however, I could dunk in the course of game situations regularly.
This was a representation however, not just of my lack of being able to dunk when it counted, but many team sport plays in general. I was always considered a much better basketball player than I often played, but this was very situation dependent.
My frontal brain got in the way.
If you can’t tell, based off of all the articles I write, that I am predisposed to thinking quite a bit.
You don’t see the best athletes in the world digging into the complexities of what they do, researching and writing articles. This would be counterproductive to how they are wired. Save that for the coaches. The athletes know how to be in the present and play from their subconscious.
The key to ultimate performance is hindbrain dominance (or ability to enter a state of hindbrain dominance) This is characterized by, as we have already covered, having fun, enjoying the process, not just “grinding”.
Getting into the subconscious is the opposite of “grinding” in many cases.
Grinding indicates the use of willpower (which is limited), the engagement of the conscious to over-ride the subconscious. This is synonymous with what we know as “choking”.
When the conscious mind is busy, you choke. When you play, you just do it.
Great coaches design practices around teaching the hindbrain to deal with real game situations. Sometimes this doesn’t even happen by design, such as the Brazilian sub-game of futsol, which is akin to soccer, but on a much smaller field which forces faster decision making and reactions. You don’t think about all the possibilities in this environment, you just play, and your subconscious records the result to make you better.
In the retention test, the conscious mind’s wrapping around how to play or perform a skill is of minimal use compared to hardwiring to our subconscious..
We can also look at the case of British table tennis legend Desmond Douglas, who grew up playing on a table where he was cramped against it with no room to move. His environment forced his brain to react with lightning speed, and he may have had the fastest playing style in the world.
As motor learning experts explain, we are a product of our environment. The subconscious mind does an incredible job of adjusting to the environmental constraints placed on it.
We are a product of our playing environment
Just think, you can have 10 million bits of information working for you with the subconscious, or 5 bits with the conscious mind.
Coaches should place athletes in such environments to spur on good results, and high-pressure retention, which is only a result of programming the hindbrain.
Other ways to get into the subconscious are devoted distraction strategies, such as described by Timothy Gallwey in “The Inner Game of Tennis”. That single book has had such a tremendous impact on every skill game I play these days, I often wish I could go back in time having a knowledge of “hacking” into the zone.
Before I learned how to distract my conscious brain, it would often take me a week to get my shot back playing basketball when I would get into pickup games. Now, by simply paying attention to how my index finger feels as I release the ball, I get my shot back within minutes, rather than days. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
The other means by which to hack into the subconscious is meditation. Even if you don’t want to go full on yogi, simply having moments of total silence, and a focus on breathing is important for learning to let go of the conscious mind. I often have dedicated time periods to the concept of silence at the end of lifting sessions where athletes will simply quiet down and focus on their breathing.
We know that sleep is a critical part of the motor learning process (it’s the stage where our motor learning pieces from the day are “assembled”), and I also believe that dedicated silence in beneficial in the same regard.
For more information on the subconscious mind and performance, be sure to check out Harry Carpenter’s Q&A on the topic.
Confidence
As far as athletic success goes, confidence and winning go hand in hand. Ever wonder why the greats have also been notorious trash talkers? It’s the Mohammad Ali effect; you can talk yourself into accomplishing your goals.
Trash talk is also often dished out in the present sense.
In the book “Psyche”, Judd Biascotto talks about the phenomenon of Psychic Driving, where you simply keep repeating to yourself the athletic reality you want to accomplish.
It is the same thing Muhammad Ali did, with phrases such as “I should be a postage stamp, that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked!”. A special note on Ali, not only did he have great self-talk, but he also created narratives and stories with it that furthered its effects.
“I should be on a postage stamp! That’s the only way I’ll ever get licked!”
Something I’ve found of the subconscious, skill acquisition, confidence and success is that the more the narrative resonates with the soul, the greater impact it has. Stories, pictures, and elements that have a strong connection with the athlete are critical. Ali used his creativity to fully harness his trash talk and his mentality.
By talking as if you have already accomplished your goal, it becomes more of a reality, and by letting your opponent know about it, you can gain the double advantage of boosting your own psyche while mentally handicapping your opponent. The NBA greats who were so well known for this didn’t need a sports psychologist to tell them it worked either, they just knew it and made it a reality.
This is where motivational speaking and athletics have common ground, because if you cannot program your brain with what you want to accomplish, be it wealth, love, happiness or athletic success, then you will never have it.
If you want to dunk, then tell yourself over and over again throughout the day that you have a 40-inch vertical jump and crack the concrete as you take off. If you want to have more service aces in tennis, then tell yourself that the strings on the racket are screaming when you hit the ball, and that you serve rockets Elon Musk would love the blueprints for.
As you warm up for a game, repeat over and over again what it is you will accomplish in that game, or better yet, use the present tense and say what you have accomplished.
For some, confidence comes easy, but for those whose early formation in life has left residual beliefs that harm their ability to perform, some reprogramming is necessary.
In my own competition, particularly high school basketball, I had one severe Achilles heel in my playing. If I knew that the other team could match me as an athlete, and had players who could jump as high as me or run faster than me, I was done. Stick a fork in me, I would score 2-4 points and have double the turnovers.
To me, my athletic ability and hustle was my advantage, and in my mind, I wasn’t as good of a shooter, passer, and ball handler than my peers, but I could outrun, outwork, outdefend and outjump the majority of my competition.
Against poorer “athletes”, I would beat them to the ball, block shots, steal passes and shut down offense, but more than this, I would just generally play well. (This also lends the idea that I was a type of player whose physical/mechanical feats would transfer well to my game, since I derived so much from jumping higher, running faster, etc.)
I would make my shots and make good decisions on the floor, and act with patience. Against athletic teams, not only would I be tentative with anything athletic, but all other parts of my game would shut down.
The truth of it all was that I feel deep into my conscious mind when this scenario existed, and the self-doubt that encapsulated all other parts of my game shut me down from literally any strength I did have. In reality, I was a much better shooter and passer and mover than I ever gave myself credit for.
Back to that game my high school team got its ass kicked (talked about in Part I), scoring about 40 points total… I had 16 of those. Because, not only was the other team not fast and explosive, but also I had little pressure on me due to lower expectations on my own playing ability since our team was tanking. I played from my subconscious and had the game of my life to date.
If, back in time, I could see my weakness in confidence and understand how to counter it through awareness and self-talk, those lousy games would have certainly been different.
Stay tuned for Part IV.
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