Change in Scope - Again

When I started this blog way back in 2007 it focused on soccer because I was coaching it at the time. In 2014 I changed and expanded the scope to cover other sports. I did this because there are lessons we can learn things like mental toughness and how to overcome challenges by studying how champions in other sports perform.

The main focus moving forward will be on tennis, primarily because I'm currently playing every day (sometimes twice). I also coached a local boys high school varsity team for six years. When I'm not reading related to my other blog, Thinking Objectively, I'm reading about tennis and watch the Tennis Channel almost all of the time. My goal is to continuously improve my game.

My goal with this blog is to share ideas that I come across in YouTube or books. Occasionally I'll share an insight that is all my own!

The Power of Unlearning: Serena Williams' Story

The Power of Unlearning: Serena Williams' Story

Here is a key paragraph.

Unlearning is the process of letting go, reframing, and moving away from once-useful mindsets and acquired behaviors. It’s not forgetting, removing, or discarding knowledge or experience; it’s a conscious act of letting go of outdated information and actively taking in new information to inform effective decision-making and action.

I have some experience with this from surgeries. In 2012 I had rotator cuff surgery then double knee replacements in June of 2018. In both cases I was unable to play tennis for several months. When I returned to practicing I used this as an opportunity to work on aspects of my game. I think it worked because people commented on how my tennis had improved from the last time they played with me.

Rafael Nadal on Doubt

The Tennis Channel previewed an upcoming 60 Minutes interview of tennis player Rafael Nadal by Jon Wertheim, Tennis Channel commentator and Sports Illustrated executive editor. Nadal ended 2019 with a number 1 ranking in the world and with 19 Grand Slam titles, only one behind Roger Federer. The clip starts with Wertheim asking Nadal to talk about the importance of doubt in his game. Nadal: “If I don’t feel doubt I’m going to be in trouble. Doubt is very important to my success.” Wertheim expressed surprise at Nadal’s answer because Wertheim thought top performers wouldn’t claim doubt as their strength. Nadal’s reply: “If you don’t have doubt it probably means you’re being arrogant. I think it [doubt] is good for me because I feel alert. Tennis is a sport where things can change very quickly.”

I think what Nadal refers to isn’t doubt in oneself but doubt in the outcome, maybe even doubt in how well you will perform that day against that opponent. I also think Nadal is saying that you can’t assume you’re going to win a match against someone whom you’ve beaten before. By avoiding overconfidence you stay alert and not allow yourself to be lured into complacency. As is commonly said in professional sports that’s why the games are played: the outcome is not guaranteed. The underdog can sometimes win if they’re having a good day and the presumed winner is having an off day or doesn’t adjust to something their opponent is doing differently.

In an interview after the 2017 French Open Nadal also said that doubt drives him to improve the weaknesses in his game. This reflects his belief in an growth mindset in which you think you can improve with thoughtful effort as opposed to a closed mindset which believes our talents are set in stone and can’t be expanded. You think either you’ve got what it takes or you don’t. Nadal applied this open mindset when he changed his service motion before the 2019 Australian Open to boost the speed and penetration of his serve.

On the other hand if the doubt we feel reflects a fundamental lack of belief in one’s abilities it would undermine our performance in the heat of competition. It can make it even more likely that we will choke under pressure.

I’d summarize it this way. Doubt about outcome keeps us on our toes while competing and drives us to improve. However doubt in ourselves makes it more likely we won’t step up to the challenge.

Learning is optimized when we fail 15% of the time -- ScienceDaily

Learning is optimized when we fail 15% of the time -- ScienceDaily

As a junior varsity high school tennis coach I tell the players that they should look at losing matches as an opportunity to learn what they can do to improve their game. (I tell myself that too when I play tennis matches.) If the players can learn from losses they still win in the long run even though they lost the latest match. (I’d also say they can also learn from wins by looking at what they can improve. I do this by keeping a journal in which I rate whether I improved in technique, tactics and mental parts of my game and rate what needs to be improved.)

The Science Daily article links to a paper titled The Eight Five Percent Rule for optimal learning that is fairly technical. The Science Daily article summarizes:

Educators and educational scholars have long recognized that there is something of a "sweet spot" when it comes to learning. That is, we learn best when we are challenged to grasp something just outside the bounds of our existing knowledge. When a challenge is too simple, we don't learn anything new; likewise, we don't enhance our knowledge when a challenge is so difficult that we fail entirely or give up.

So where does the sweet spot lie? According to the new study, to be published in the journal Nature Communications, it's when failure occurs 15% of the time. Put another way, it's when the right answer is given 85% of the time.

So we optimize our learning if we fail about one out of six times. Good to know!

I believe these results parallel what it takes to achieve a state of mind that is called Flow, a concept identified by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist. The Wikipedia entry describes flow as “the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting loss in one's sense of space and time.”

I say that there is a connection between optimal learning and flow because achieving a flow state requires facing a task that challenges you without being daunting. The Positive Psychology website explains: “an optimal Flow state was created when people tackled challenges that they perceived to be at just the right level of ‘stretch’ for their skill sets. In other words, neither too tough nor too easy as to be boring.”

Putting together the findings on optimal learning and flow it appears that both need a “Goldilocks” challenge: one that stretches you to achieve flow and reveals what you need to improve for the next time.

Lessons from the NFL AFC Championship

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I know many people outside of New England are tired of seeing the New England Patriots playing in the Super Bowl. There are a lot of reasons why the Pats dominate so much but I believe we can apply a couple things Tom Brady said in the post-game interview of the 2019 NFL’s AFC Championship (in which the New England Patriots beat the Kansas City Chiefs 37-31). We can apply these ideas not just to sports but how we live. I’ve provided his response to a reporter’s question with key words in bold.

Q: How do you stay so calm in the biggest moments, especially when your team is down and you have to drive the team right back?

BRADY: “Part of playing sports is just staying in the moment. We always say one play at a time and you can’t make up for things that happen in the past. You just have to think about what you are going to do moving forward. Start of the fourth quarter, they scored. We are up three to start the fourth quarter. What a great opportunity to be against this team and to be ahead three in the fourth quarter with a chance to win is pretty sweet. They blew so many teams out this year. It is just a great opportunity for us, and we took advantage of it.”

His first point, staying in the moment, is key. I’ve seen players and teams get desperate or angry when losing or when calls go against them then try for plays or shots that aren’t part of their normal repertoire. They’re upset about what just happened then try to make up for it by hitting the ball harder or going for shots they don’t “own.” For instance, in tennis (the sport with which I’m most familiar because I play it almost daily) I’ve seen players go for a shot or an angle that they normally wouldn’t try if they were ahead. Instead, they often end up making an unforced error, which only makes things worse. (I know because I’ve done it!) 

As Brady says it’s better to forget about past mistakes or calls that go against you and focus on two things: stay in the moment while thinking of what you’re going to do next. One tip I use in tennis after making a mistake is to tell myself, “Next time” while making a couple shadow swings on how I wanted to hit the shot that I just missed. “Next time” means I’m telling myself I’ll do it better the next time I have the chance. This attitude implicitly represents a focus on the process rather than the results. It also reflects their confidence in themselves. And, it also means that their self-esteem isn’t tied to the outcome. Sure, it doesn’t feel good to lose but someone like Brady or Federer just use the loss as motivation to learn from what happened and try to improve. (This also reflects something I’ve written about in a previous post: the difference between having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset.)

Later Brady said that the Pats had a “great opportunity” when starting the fourth quarter with a three point lead over a team that was seeded #1 and had beaten other teams by large margins. I find it interesting that he didn’t say it was a challenge or that they were nervous. This is one of the qualities I’ve noticed with champions like the Brady, the Patriots or, switching to tennis again, Roger Federer. They are unflappable.  They see facing a tough opponent as an opportunity to excel rather than a challenge for which they might not be good enough.

So what accounts for this calmness? I’d say these factors: focus on the present, confidence in yourself without tying the outcome to your self-esteem and a process-oriented mentality. 

Tennis Reminders (Updated)

In an earlier post, Can I? versus I Can!, I shared results of research on how people performed when they asked themselves the question “Can I do this?” versus coaxing themselves with “I can do this!” I mentioned that I apply this by asking myself “Can I play well today?” then answering “Yes!”

At the end of that post I also mentioned that I also use the acronym LIFE³ as part of my pre-match routine to remind why I’m playing: to Learn, Improve, have Fun and to Express myself, to Explore my capabilities and to Exercise.

The final pre-match self-talk covers key reminders on the techniques I want to use. I use two phrases, one for groundstrokes and one for serving. For groundstrokes I say, “Watch me Catch Butt.” This actually contains three reminders in one. Watch: reminds me to watch the shadow of the ball. Why the shadow? To narrow my focus to something specific on the ball, not the ball itself. (I actually don’t watch the ball over its entire flight. More on that in a later post. Hint: has to do with something called saccadic eye movements.) Catch: reminds me that on my forehand I’m holding my left arm across my body and basically parallel to the baseline as if I’m going to catch the ball. This forces me to turn my upper body, which sets up the coil needed to generate power. On the backhand I pretend I’m going to catch the ball with the butt of my racket. On volleys Catch reminds me to set up my racket as if I’m catching the ball with it. Butt: reminds me to pull the racket through contact to help generate racket speed.

Finally, when serving, I use the word UP to remind myself that I’m hitting Up on the ball and to Pronate.

By the way, in case you were wondering, here is a little background on my tennis playing ability and experience. When I’ve taken tennis lessons in the past couple years I’ve asked the four different instructors how they’d rate me on the NTRP (National Tennis Rating Program) scale. All of them say I’m at least a 4.0, maybe a little higher. Of course, all of them say this is based on what they see during lessons and that the rating could change depending on how I play in actual matches.

I constantly study the game by watching YouTube videos, reading many books and subscribing to a bunch of email newsletters of pros and instructors such as Wil Hamilton, Clay Ballard, Brent Abel, Peter Freeman, Ramon Osa, Jorge Capestany, and Ian Westermann. For the last three years I also have kept a tennis journal in which I rate myself whether I made incremental improvement in technique, tactics and my mental/emotional state. The journal also records observations on areas that need to be worked on for the next match.

I also use the Babolat POP wrist sensor to track my strokes. The POP collects average and maximum speeds of groundstrokes and serves, the kinds of groundstrokes (top spin, slice or flat) and gives an overall rating based on spin, speed and style. (I record this information in a spreadsheet to look for trends.)

All of this information aims to show that even though I might not be a 4.5 or higher rated player my constant study has resulted in my game continuing to advance. I believe I’m playing better now at the age of 67 than I have ever played before in the 50+ years that I’ve played this sport. And I’m not done!

UPDATED 1/2/2019

Since writing this a year ago I've tweaked and added to my pre-match routine. The UP reminder for serving now is PUPSS which stands for Point at the toss, hit Up, Pronate, start the serve take back Slowly and try to keep my body Sideways longer. I added these to my pre-serve reminder because I was finding myself starting the take back too fast then stopping or slowing down and my body was opening to the court too early which I think caused my first serve to go into the net too often.

The following might sound hokey but I also ask why am I playing. The answer is LIFES. This stands for to Learn more about the game and myself, to Improve, to have Fun, to Explore, get Exercise, have Excitement and Express myself with Style. The Style reminder is to get me to focus on playing smoothly and on the process of hitting the ball rather than the results. I got this idea after reading Gabriele Wulf’s Attention and Motor Skill Learning in which she describes the results of her research on the difference between having an external focus rather than an internal focus in performing athletic skills.

Here is how Amazon summarizes her book. “Attention and Motor Skill Learning challenges traditional views that the method of learning a motor skill involves focusing attention on each part of the skill and internalizing proper execution. Instead, author Gabriele Wulf argues that the learning of new motor skills suffers when attentional focus is on the coordination of movements. When attention is directed to the desired movement effect, however, performance levels rise. Not only is a higher level of performance often achieved faster with an external rather than an internal attention focus, but the skill is retained better.”

Her book discusses experiments she conducted with people doing a variety of skills such as standing on a balance bar and trying to keep it steady. The internal group was told to try to keep their feet as steady as possible while the external group was told to try to keep two lights that were on the balance beam as steady as possible. The external group consistently did better than the internal group and maintained this advantage when tested days or weeks later.

You could argue that my emphasis on making my shots with style actually is an internal focus but I would say it’s more of an external focus. By thinking about making my strokes with smooth style I’m thinking about the result, not on the mechanics of how to play with style. And I’m thinking mostly about how the forehand, backhand or serve look when they’re completed rather than the whole stroke. Bottom line: I think it works, at least for me!

What Separates Champions From ‘Almost Champions’? -- Science of Us

What Separates Champions From ‘Almost Champions’? -- Science of Us

I’m going to start of with a long series of quotes from an article in The Cut titled “What Separates Champions From ‘Almost Champions’?

It’s the perennial million-dollar question of nature versus nurture, sure. But the difference between the greats and the almost-greats (which, by the way, applies well beyond sports) also appears to be at least partially driven by one specific thing — how each group responds to adversity. The greats rise to the challenge and put in persistent effort; the almost-greats lose steam and regress.  

For a recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, talent development researchers Dave Collins, Aine MacNamara, and Neil McCarthy examined the differences between athletes who overcame adversity and went on to become world-class (what they call super champions) and those who struggled in the face of hardship (the hearthbreakingly named “almost champions”) . Whereas super champions were playing in premier leagues and/or competing on national teams (think: Olympics), almost champions had achieved well at the youth level but were playing in the less prestigious leagues as adults. 

The researchers found that super champions were characterized “by an almost fanatical reaction to challenge.” They viewed challenges in a positive light — as opportunities to grow — and overcame them thanks to a “never satisfied” attitude. This runs in contrast to almost champions, who blamed setbacks on external causes, became negative, and lost motivation.
.... 

Super champions were driven from within. Their primary concern was self-improvement. They held themselves to high standards, but judged themselves against prior versions of themselves, not against others.
Almost champions, however, were focused on external benchmarks, like national rankings or how they compared to rivals, a mind-set the researchers speculate why almost champions got discouraged during rough patches.  

....... 

World-class performers, then, don’t rely on either nature or nurture, but on a combination of the two — and they are really good at nurturing their nature. All of which suggests the recipe that gives rise to super champions is worth emulating: Individuals who demonstrate persistent effort follow their interests; practice foremost to get better, not to outdo others; derive satisfaction from within; and feel constantly supported, but not pressured, in their journey toward achievement. If these criteria are in place, experiencing failure doesn’t weaken motivation — it bolsters it. In the words of Michael Joyner, an expert on human performance at Mayo Clinic, “With enough persistent effort, most people can get pretty good at anything.”

These results touch on a number of topics I’ve covered in previous posts: having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset, focusing on the process rather than results, focusing inwardly on how you’re performing per your own standards instead of worrying about how you’re being perceived externally by your opponent or your friends, engaging in deliberate practice to improve, not just repeating what you already do well and not pushing yourself in practice and having grit as a personal quality. The Cut article doesn’t specifically touch on all of these points while I think they’re all implicitly involved.

I figure someone reading all of this might ask how studying world-class performers applies to us. How many of us really fall into that category? I know it will sound arrogant or obnoxious but I like to think I applied these ideas when designing and delivering presentations when I was working, in my tennis game and in other areas of my life such as relationships, etc. While I’ll probably never climb to the A level of players at the clubs where I play I do know my game has continually improved thanks to my constant investment into getting better. I like to think I’m now a B+ player! ;-) That’s why I believe the quote at the end of the article is key, which is why I’m repeating it below.

In the words of Michael Joyner, an expert on human performance at Mayo Clinic, “With enough persistent effort, most people can get pretty good at anything.”

Amen!