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I'm a little shocked that this is considered newsworthy in athletics, but that's more than offset by its potential impacts in other physical, but non-athletic s

by bmelton 11y ago

I'm a little shocked that this is considered newsworthy in athletics, but that's more than offset by its potential impacts in other physical, but non-athletic skillsets like surgery. Every kid who's ever done little league knows that the big secret to baseball is actually heeding the advice of keeping your eye on the ball. Every football game we watch reinforces this -- the wide receivers who prematurely turn to look upfield before catching the ball seem to drop the ball an inordinately large amount, compared to those who don't. Anquan Boldin, when asked if the cold weather made it harder to catch footballs responded (in the suave, Lando Calrissian way that he speaks) "You catch the ball with your eyes." But, like fine motor control, the key is in doing this consistently. It's easy to know that you need to keep your eyes on the ball, but it's hard not to take that for granted. When I was playing billiards competitively, it was easy to realize that making a good shot meant doing all the little things right -- get in a comfortable stance, keep your elbow still, as if hanging from a wire attached to the ceiling, etc., etc., but however easy it was to know to do all those things, in the heat of the moment, it was hard to relax enough to do them without overthinking, becoming tense, or screwing it up in any of a hundred other ways.

ZenoArrow 11y ago
> "I'm a little shocked that this is considered newsworthy in athletics" Something that is common sense isn't automatically accepted as scientifically significant.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  Or that common. It's also something that will be forgotten. Just because we knew at age 10 the secret to success in something, doesn't mean we knew it (consciously), or that we'll know it at age 30 or 40. Getting back into athletics these past couple years, there's a lot that I remember doing well as a kid that I struggled with greatly even though I'm stronger and faster now than I've ever been. Slowly details that I internalized and forgot 20 years ago are coming back to me.
- bmelton 11y ago
  Fair, and true. Also, on second reading, I think "shocked" far over-states my emotions on the matter. Bewildered is perhaps more appropriate. I think the discord comes from the disconnect that the common sense had not already been scientifically validated. "Eye on the ball" is so pervasive at every level of sports, and with the funding, I perhaps (naively) assumed that sports science was more advanced than it was, leading me to the (incorrect) assumption that this was scientific canon masquerading as common sense, and not the other way around.
  - Jtsummers 11y ago
    In trying to find more, a researcher on the topic (Dr. Joan Vickers) has a book from 2007 on the topic. The research has been around for a while, these are just newer results, it seems. http://www.amazon.com/Perception-Cognition-Decision-Training-Quiet/dp/0736042563 http://www.amazon.com/Perception-Cognition-Decision-Training...
  - TillE 11y ago
    The sciencification of (professional) sport is fairly recent, probably around 20-30 years. There's the famous story of Arsene Wenger coming to Arsenal in 1996 and giving his players diet plans, something unprecedented in England at that point. There was plenty of time before that for mediocre conventional wisdom to spread and become entrenched. But sometimes it's right.
espinchi 11y ago
They admit most of this is obvious, All of this might seem obvious—after all, “keep your eye on the ball” isn’t exactly a new idea, but then goes on to add that it’s only recently that scientists have had the technology to fully grasp the value of intense visual focus. Also, apparently it's a difficult skill to master. I'll try applying this to soccer shots in my game tonight :). (Demostration of effectiveness for penalty kicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXqmisYKpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXqmisYKpc)
bitbckt 11y ago
> But, like fine motor control, the key is in doing this consistently. "Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect."
the_cat_kittles 11y ago
its maddeningly true that knowing to do all the simple things does not result in actually doing them in the heat of the moment. i'm interested if anyone has done some work on why that might be the case- what is the barrier that prevents the way we know we should be doing something from actually happening? the simplest example of this disconnect from my experience is keeping my gaze on the golf ball as i putt, and not turning to watch it as i hit the ball. my guess would be the disconnect is that while doing any one thing consciously is easy, there are several things that have to happen at the same time for it to go right. if i have to spend my energy thinking about looking at the ball, it draws bandwidth away from other tasks like aiming, timing, tactile sense etc. so it needs to happen more automatically, which is what practice seems to create. i think the key idea is efficiency i.e. how little effort it takes to do something the right way. i guess you need to get your mind and body to do the right little things by default, not by conscious effort. i wonder if the difficulty in getting yourself to do something "the right way" is that you unfortunately have an opinion about how to do it already. its like you have a bunch of little processes that already think they are optimizing the action, and you somehow need to convince them there is a better way. i guess the convincing comes from experiencing the positive results, but i can see how its tricky because you generally have to temporarily get worse to get better.
- mhb 11y ago
  Your description is exactly how Gallwey addresses these issues in The Inner Game of Tennis (published in 1974). There appears to also be an Inner Game of Golf. http://theinnergame.com/products/books/the-inner-game-of-tennis/ http://theinnergame.com/products/books/the-inner-game-of-ten...

by bmelton 11y ago

ZenoArrow 11y ago

> "I'm a little shocked that this is considered newsworthy in athletics" Something that is common sense isn't automatically accepted as scientifically significant.

Jtsummers 11y ago
Or that common. It's also something that will be forgotten. Just because we knew at age 10 the secret to success in something, doesn't mean we knew it (consciously), or that we'll know it at age 30 or 40. Getting back into athletics these past couple years, there's a lot that I remember doing well as a kid that I struggled with greatly even though I'm stronger and faster now than I've ever been. Slowly details that I internalized and forgot 20 years ago are coming back to me.
bmelton 11y ago
Fair, and true. Also, on second reading, I think "shocked" far over-states my emotions on the matter. Bewildered is perhaps more appropriate. I think the discord comes from the disconnect that the common sense had not already been scientifically validated. "Eye on the ball" is so pervasive at every level of sports, and with the funding, I perhaps (naively) assumed that sports science was more advanced than it was, leading me to the (incorrect) assumption that this was scientific canon masquerading as common sense, and not the other way around.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  In trying to find more, a researcher on the topic (Dr. Joan Vickers) has a book from 2007 on the topic. The research has been around for a while, these are just newer results, it seems. http://www.amazon.com/Perception-Cognition-Decision-Training-Quiet/dp/0736042563 http://www.amazon.com/Perception-Cognition-Decision-Training...
- TillE 11y ago
  The sciencification of (professional) sport is fairly recent, probably around 20-30 years. There's the famous story of Arsene Wenger coming to Arsenal in 1996 and giving his players diet plans, something unprecedented in England at that point. There was plenty of time before that for mediocre conventional wisdom to spread and become entrenched. But sometimes it's right.

espinchi 11y ago

They admit most of this is obvious, All of this might seem obvious—after all, “keep your eye on the ball” isn’t exactly a new idea, but then goes on to add that it’s only recently that scientists have had the technology to fully grasp the value of intense visual focus. Also, apparently it's a difficult skill to master. I'll try applying this to soccer shots in my game tonight :). (Demostration of effectiveness for penalty kicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXqmisYKpc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXqmisYKpc)

bitbckt 11y ago

> But, like fine motor control, the key is in doing this consistently. "Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect."

the_cat_kittles 11y ago

its maddeningly true that knowing to do all the simple things does not result in actually doing them in the heat of the moment. i'm interested if anyone has done some work on why that might be the case- what is the barrier that prevents the way we know we should be doing something from actually happening? the simplest example of this disconnect from my experience is keeping my gaze on the golf ball as i putt, and not turning to watch it as i hit the ball. my guess would be the disconnect is that while doing any one thing consciously is easy, there are several things that have to happen at the same time for it to go right. if i have to spend my energy thinking about looking at the ball, it draws bandwidth away from other tasks like aiming, timing, tactile sense etc. so it needs to happen more automatically, which is what practice seems to create. i think the key idea is efficiency i.e. how little effort it takes to do something the right way. i guess you need to get your mind and body to do the right little things by default, not by conscious effort. i wonder if the difficulty in getting yourself to do something "the right way" is that you unfortunately have an opinion about how to do it already. its like you have a bunch of little processes that already think they are optimizing the action, and you somehow need to convince them there is a better way. i guess the convincing comes from experiencing the positive results, but i can see how its tricky because you generally have to temporarily get worse to get better.

mhb 11y ago
Your description is exactly how Gallwey addresses these issues in The Inner Game of Tennis (published in 1974). There appears to also be an Inner Game of Golf. http://theinnergame.com/products/books/the-inner-game-of-tennis/ http://theinnergame.com/products/books/the-inner-game-of-ten...