I’m fascinated by superstar players in sports – how they almost seem to see things in slow motion despite the frenetic pace of a game and can seemingly adjust in mid-air.
Some of that enhanced performance comes from having “seen” so many similar “field” situations in the past (i.e., they’ve put in their 10,000+ hours). Thus, they almost automatically know what’s going to happen in advance (e.g., the defensive player is moving to the right and can’t stop, or that ground ball is going to hop waist-high, not knee-high).
And I’m sure that hyper-acute awareness, combined with instant reaction times to subtle changes in circumstance, plays a key role.
But I’m suspecting that some degree of enhanced performance also relates to extraordinarily fast contextual processing – to a point that what passes in an instant for the casual observer can actually be “seen” unfolding with elongated broadband perception by the superstar. (Maybe that’s also true for the referees, with whom we frequently have differing perceptions? Or maybe not!)
Focus and anticipation are additional key factors in recognition, processing and reaction.
What’s frustrating to the avid fan – not to mention to the star or superstar athlete … or to the coach – is inconsistency. Why does it all happen to near perfection some of the time and NOT all of the time … in particular, at extremely crucial times? How could the highly ranked and rated University of Kentucky basketball team – which has had strokes of brilliance throughout the season – struggle so much against unranked teams so late in the season – and especially on their home court? Competing teams always seem to take the floor against Kentucky already “pumped” to the max!
In “Top Dog”, Bronson and Merryman point out that elite performance in everything from chess to highly exacting surgery to world cup dog handling to soccer is associated with an anticipatory rise in testosterone, plus a continuing rise of T-levels during performance. However, this is not necessarily the case with chess Masters playing in local or regional tournaments, where they have much lower angst about the competition and where they occasionally lose.
It almost seems that “fast-tracking” individuals go “off-line” when not sufficiently challenged … a kind of “tortoise versus hare” problem:
· Relaxing to a fault against lesser opponents
· Daydreaming in slow traffic
· Texting while driving
· Etc.
We understand that the testosterone rise is not a “triggering” or “initiating” event but a “sustaining” response to neural “prepping”. However, it suggests that whatever testosterone is doing is an excellent marker of whatever else is happening. More simply put, if an elite competitor is not UP for a game – whatever that means and however it happens – the chance for success is markedly diminished.
So the job for an elite player, and for his or her coach, is to figure out how to consistently move the ready-meter UP for peak performance. How do they get the adrenalin and testosterone flowing and lock-in the anticipation, the visioning, the hyper-acute awareness, the focus, the penetrating, broadband perception and the super-speed contextualization? More to the point, how do WE do it?
I can’t wait to finish the book! Stay tuned. Quartermaster
