The Calcutta Cup

Ever had the feeling that someone has been watching a different match to you? This was certainly the case when I turned on the radio after watching the England – Scotland match to hear Matt Dawson say how great England were in the second half. Really? They had two try- scoring opportunities, one from a Scottish mistake which they took, and one from a diagonal kick which was well covered. A good defensive effort certainly, but hardly a great performance, I would have thought. Although England was defensively strong as usual, they would still have lost the game if they’d been playing a side that wasn’t as good at butchering chances as the Scots. Fortunately, if you wanted to know what was going wrong, Jonathan Davies showed the answer. He pointed out when Scotland had a 4-on-3 situation, instead of exploiting it, they went through a pre-determined move with a decoy runner. When their deep runner came through, Strettle was able to come off his wing and make the tackle. And it’s not just the backs that need to know how to pass the ball. In the same match, Richie Gray makes a great break, but then passes the ball behind Strokosch. Then Ross Rennie tries to pass too late when there’s a clear overlap, so his pass is caught up with Foden’s tackle. And on one of the rare moments when England had the chance to create something, a simple pass from Robshaw would have put Ashton clear, but instead he fires the ball above his head. All this suggests teams that are not being put under pressure in their training, but are going through a series of worked moves. You can’t do all the players’ thinking for them, and you certainly can’t see for them. They need to be drilled in looking for space and exploiting it, not putting on some kind of demonstration of synchronised rugby. In football, the players at Barcelona are given the responsibility to change their tactics during a match to respond to the opposition’s tactics. Their players start learning this from the age of 11. The next day saw an example of a player who hasn’t yet had all the vision coached out of him. George North makes a powerful run to the outside shoulder of Gordon D’Arcy, and then offloads like Sonny Bill Williams out the back of his hand to take out three Irish defenders. Good anticipation from Davies and a nice running angle means a try that proved to be the difference between the two sides. The message is simple: let your players think for themselves; let them look for themselves; put them in challenging situations often enough, they’ll make the right decisions eventually. If you don’t, you can’t complain when they mess it up. David Donner

Olympic Countdown - Diving

At the World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai in July last year, the Mexican pair of Sanchez and Garcia completed a dive which involved 4½ inward somersaults. With a degree of difficulty of 4.1, it’s the hardest dive in the world. When everything’s spinning in a whirl, is vision important, or do the divers rely on an internal clock to tell them when to prepare for entry into the water? Divers actually use a “visual spotting” technique. They’re able to fixate on objects such as the diving board, the water or the ceiling which tell them how many somersaults and twists they’ve completed, and when it’s time to kick out of the dive. When they practice on the trampoline, divers can learn this technique by placing a brightly-coloured object on the side of the trampoline, and this same object can be placed at the end of the diving board when practising diving into water. A “somersault simulator” is an apparatus something like a gymnast’s high bar to which the athlete is safely attached when performing somersaults. This provides the kind of controlled environment that could be used to see if performance can be improved when bright objects are placed on the floor and elsewhere for visual spotting. I know of only one attempt to do this (by Naundorf et al in 2002) which was inconclusive, but I think the potential is there of the right kind of targets are used in the right places. It’s probably a bit late for these Olympics, though. David Donner

Olympic Countdown - Cycling

Are your eyes deceiving you? It’s not uncommon for researchers to give false information to their subjects to see what effect this can have, but it seems particularly prevalent when cyclists are being tested. In a recent experiment, Professor Kevin Thompson of Northumbria University used this idea to see if trained cyclists could go quicker than they ever had before over a 4,000m time trial. Using stationary bikes, the cyclists did two time trials to establish a baseline time. In the third and fourth trials, the cyclists raced against an avatar (a figure cycling) which they were told represented their baseline performance. In fact, this was only true for the third trial. On the fourth trial, the avatar was programmed with 2% more power, which correlates to 1% more speed. They found that the cyclists were up to 5 seconds faster than their baseline when racing against the accurate avatar, and up to 10 seconds faster when racing against the deception avatar. This suggests that we keep something in reserve even when we feel we’re going flat out. In another similar experiment, Dr Jo Corbett of Portsmouth University asked cyclists to race a 2,000m course as fast as possible in front of a computer screen showing an avatar of themselves doing the ride on a virtual course. On the fifth occasion they had to do this exercise they were told to race against another cyclist behind a screen whose avatar was also projected on to the same virtual course. In reality, however, they were actually racing against their own best time. On this fifth race, 12 out of the 14 participants were significantly faster in the fifth race, when they believed they were racing an opponent, even though they had been apparently completely exhausted in the other races. The difference was a final burst of speed which ensured their victory, and their average speed increased from 38.4km/h to 39km/h. It seems that competition allows athletes to dip into these hitherto untapped sources of energy. To test this idea, Professor Thompson repeated his experiment using two groups of cyclists. One group was told that they would be racing against an avatar that had either 2% or 5% more power, which meant either 1% or 2% quicker than their own best time. The other group was deceived. They were told that they were racing against an avatar that matched their best time, although in reality they were also racing an avatar that was either 1% or 2% quicker. The group that knew they were racing quicker avatars soon gave up trying to match the avatar’s speed, whether it was 1% or 2% quicker. The deceived group matched the avatar’s speed when it was 1% quicker. But 2% was too much, and they gave up about halfway through, and some ended up with a time that was worse than their best effort. And there are other ways of deceiving athletes that might eke out improved performances. Earlier this year, Dr Paul Castle and others from the University of Bedford engaged 7 cyclists in 30-minute stationary trials under three different conditions. In the control trial, the room temperature was set at 21.8°C (71.2°F). A second “hot” trial was held in a room at 31.4° (88.5°F). In the final trial, the temperature was displayed as 26.0°C (78.8°F), but was in reality 31.6°C (88.8°F), the hottest of the three. As expected, the cyclists performed worse in the hot trial (31.4°C) than in the control (4% less distance). But in the deception trial, they cycled slightly further in the time than they did in the control, even though they were actually cycling in temperatures marginally higher (31.6°) than in the hot trial. The researchers even found that the skin temperature of the participants was 0.5°C lower in the deception trial than in the hot trial. So, incorrect information from the conscious brain can lead to subconscious effects that can improve performance. But it also suggests that negative beliefs about conditions such as the weather will have a deleterious effect: if you think it’s going to be too hot or too cold to perform well, it probably will be. The final experiment looked to explain why cyclists doing, say, 40km, will generally lose speed towards the end, but will often do a really quick last 2,000m. This is when their muscles should be most tired. A team in South Africa led by Professor Tim Noakes told cyclists that they would do four 30-second trials, one 33-second trial and one 36-second trial. However, on some trials the clock was programmed to run more slowly, so they were actually doing two 30-second trials, two 33-second trials (one of which they thought was 30 seconds) and two 36-second trials (again, one of which they thought was 30 seconds. You might expect the cyclists to ride with more power initially on the deception 36-second trial compared with the informed 36-second trial. But in fact their power output was the same on both trials until the 33-second point, after which power fell significantly for the last three seconds of the deception trial. This shows again that information from the conscious brain can affect performance, this time in a negative way, overriding muscle fatigue. It seems that the subconscious brain pre-determines the amount of effort that will be required for the task. In the deception trial, it took three seconds before it realised that the expected duration had passed, and then it recalculated the intensity to a lower level for the remainder of the task by reducing the nervous stimulation to the muscles. This shows that the fatigue is largely caused by mental processes, i.e. a perception in the brain, sent from the subconscious to the conscious brain, rather than muscle fatigue. And this is why you can pick up speed towards the end of a 40km bike ride, when the conservative energy-saving policy of the subconscious brain can be overridden in the knowledge that there’s not much further to go, and a recalculation can take place. In fact the brain is constantly calculating and re-calculating the power output required (and therefore the pace) in response to the distance left to race and the cyclist’s physical state, which the brain is trying to protect. This also explains the benefits of interval training, which mixes high-intensity exercise with recovery breaks. It seems to work because you learn that going faster than you think you can doesn’t do any harm. And when you’re feeling fatigued towards the end of a race, this knowledge may also enable you to relax and keep going longer and faster than you would have thought possible. David Donner

Train As You Play

England’s early exit from the rugby World Cup was all too predictable, especially as most of their play has been, well, all too predictable. There are the usual calls to sack the manager, sack the board, drop this or that player, but I suspect the problems with English rugby go rather deeper, and I was reminded of a story my son told me a while ago. My son went to a very traditional prep school. Both academically and in sport, the boys were divided in the elite and the rest. This produced some outstanding results, both in terms of scholarships and in winning matches. But it didn’t necessarily bring out the best of those outside the elite. Fortunately for my son, he was strong academically and a reasonable all-round sportsman. But in rugby, he was not quite strong enough to train with the elite players on the playing field. Here, the boys were drilled endlessly, so the backs could pass the ball down the line with dazzling speed and immaculate handling. Instead, my son was with the rest in the Council park, where there was very little coaching, and the main aim was to try and get them to burn off as much energy as possible. And this is how my son learned to pass the ball to his left, but never to his right. One day, however, he was told to join up with the elite players, where he found himself playing centre in a practice match. Sure enough, he soon found himself with a problem as he received a pass from his left. He couldn’t pass left as there was nobody behind him. And he could pass right because…..he couldn’t pass right. So he did the only thing he could do, which was to run straight ahead. After a few strides, he looked up to find there was nobody anywhere near him, and ran in unopposed to score a try. All the other players had assumed he was going to pass down the line, because that’s what everyone else had always done. Afterwards, the headmaster came up to him and asked “How did you learn to sidestep like that?” Of course, he didn’t like to tell him the real reason. I saw a similar look of bemusement from the England players at the end of the first half against France. Jaws open, looking at each other trying to work out what was going wrong. I suspect that the plan was to sit back, let Johnny knock over a few penalties, and wait for France to self-destruct. This wasn’t an entirely unreasonable game plan, given France’s recent history. But it was fatally undermined when we donated them a load of points at the start. (Out of all the coaching staff, isn’t there someone who knows the laws, preferably with refereeing qualifications, who can coach them how to play without infringing all the time? If necessary, get them to practise with a “fussy” referee). And when things didn’t go exactly to plan, it all seemed to fall apart. Passes were thrown to the air, to the ground, and on more than one occasion to players who weren’t expecting it. They look like a team for whom every effort has been made to make them feel comfortable, from first class hotels to rigid game plans. As soon as a side takes them out of their comfort zone, they don’t know what to do. And I think this starts early. Writing in the Sunday Times recently, Stephen Jones talks of players as young as 12 being sucked into county and then national representative sides where all the emphasis is on preparation and endless drills rather than just playing. They don’t learn the skills of probing for an opposition’s weakness because they don’t play an opposition often enough .Their play becomes blinkered and formulaic. Of course, if they were coached from a sports vision perspective, they’d be encouraged to see what’s really happening on the field, and react to it instinctively. Do we have coaches who could do that? David Donner

Olympic Countdown - Canoe Slalom

Canoe slalom provides an excellent opportunity to study the use of imagery in sport because competitors are not allowed to practise on the actual course before a competition. Research (MacIntyre & Moran 1986; White & Hardy 1998) has shown that imagery is regularly used in both training and competition by canoe slalom participants. MacIntyre, Moran and Jennings (2002) have even suggested that elite performance in canoe slalom could be related to the ability to use imagery, even though it didn’t distinguish elite from intermediate groups. MacIntyre & Moran (2207) studied 12 canoeists, all of whom had finished in the top 10 at either the World Championships or Olympics, with more than half being medallists. What was surprising was the range of things they used imagery for. As well as being used to learn the course, imagery was employed as part of their pre-race routine, to review their performance after the race, to imagine how they might overcome particular difficulties during the race, to imagine how they might adapt another competitor’s actions to their own performance, to learn new techniques, to remember previous successful performances as a way of overcoming a slump in performance, to get them in the most appropriate frame of mind, and to help when returning to the sport after injury. Sometimes, they were able to imagine what the performance felt like in their muscles, as well as having a visual image, and many felt this was an important element of their imagery. These athletes were able to analyse their imagery to quite an advanced level. They recognised hat imagery could be negative as well as positive, for instance if they imagined themselves making a mistake. But they also devised strategies to overcome these negative images, such as “re-winding” the imagery and “replaying” it without the mistake. Some athletes found that discussing with the coach their imagery of completing the course helped them to overcome negative imagery. In some sports, coaches themselves have used imagery, for instance to imagine what an opposition coach might do in a match. It may be that canoeing coaches are able to compare their image of the performance with the athlete’s. It’s generally recommended that athletes should imagine a perfect performance, but these elite canoeists were more likely to visualise an average performance as a base from which they might try to improve, or maintain performance in more difficult conditions. I think coaches in many sports could learn from this more subtle approach to imagery and visualisation. It would help obtain a more effective review of performance, as well as prepare the athlete for a variety of situations, such as poor weather, or a better than expected performance by a competitor. David Donner

Olympic Countdown - Boxing

If someone is trying to punch someone else in the face, it shouldn’t be a surprise that eye injuries are quite a common result, even with head guards. The most serious injuries are when damage to the retina occurs. Tears can lead to detachments and a lot of vision can be lost. Sugar Ray Leonard is one of the highest profile boxers who were forced to retire as a result of a detached retina. But trauma to the front of the eye can disrupt the drainage system of the fluid within the eye. Pressure can build up and the nerves at the back of the eye can get damaged in a form of glaucoma. Cataracts can also form at a much younger age than normal. Eye damage like this is especially likely if the trauma is caused by the thumb, as it fits neatly inside the eye socket. Modern gloves have the thumb strapped to the rest of the glove, but this still leaves part of the thumb protruding. Bianco et al (2004) studied over a thousand boxers, amateur and professional. 40.9% were found to have mild or moderate signs of eye damage, with 5.6% having serious eye problems. This compared with 3.1% of non-boxers who were found to have similar-looking eye problems. One idea to try and combat the problem was the invention of “thumbless” gloves. Unfortunately, they didn’t prove popular with boxers as it didn’t feel as if they were forming a proper fist. This could result in more hand injuries. Recently, however, a solution may have been found in the invention of the “hidden thumb” glove. A strap inside the glove enables a fist to be formed internally, but nothing sticks out externally. Let’s hope it catches on. David Donner

Olympic Countdown - Basketball

Several international rugby forwards have developed their handling skills by playing basketball, including Simon Shaw and Courtney Lawes. I often think that it would help goalkeepers dealing with crosses as well.

Vickers (1996) found that elite basketball players concentrate their gaze on just one part of the target, such as the front of the hoop. In contrast, the gaze of lesser players tends to wander all around the target. But there’s a problem: at some stage the ball gets in the way.

There are actually two shooting styles. In the low style, the ball is brought up and blocks the view of the hoop on release. Players with this style must get all their information before the ball blocks their view. In the high style, the ball is brought up above head height before being released, allowing the hoop to be viewed as the shot is taken. These players can get “Quiet Eye” information right up to the moment when the ball is released.

Intuitively, one would have thought that the high style would have been more effective, but researchers so far have failed to find one method to be better than the other. This could be because laboratory conditions aren’t tough enough, for instance there are no opponents.

Or it could be that both styles are effective as long as you focus on one specific part of the target, and you do it as late as your preferred style allows.

David Donner