The Overdependence on Biomechanics

Tiger Smith, a Warwickshire player who represented England in the early nineteen hundreds, once told me that good batting is a combination of mechanics and intellect. He was echoing the sentiments of C.B Fry who wrote a book, Batsmanship, in 1912 in which Fry said: ?In actual play, a perfect stroke is the combined result of perfect mechanism and perfect timing; and this combination must be preceded by perfect selection.? Today these key factors are known as biomechanics and perceptual and cognitive expertise (mental skills).

Ability and good mechanics are necessary for high-quality performance but they do not guarantee it. They just indicate potential. But, when they are combined with good perceptual and cognitive skills and effective motivation, performance automatically improves.

Without motivation learning and performance are substandard. In fact, some experts contend that performance is the product of skill and motivation. Skill without motivation is just as damaging to performance as motivation without skill.

Motivation is a poorly understood and badly managed factor in sport. Some people see it as just psyching up players to perform, but there is more to it than that. Motivation is goal directed behaviour. It arises from arousal and choice in the individual ? a desire to expend time, energy, and effort to a particular goal or task in exchange for some expected result, standard or reward.

The motivational qualities of the stick and carrot are well known but many people are unaware of the motivational power of learning, information feedback, curiosity, novelty, variety, affiliation, challenge and enjoyment. These latter factors ought to be included in all practice sessions and competitions.

Basically, there are two types of motivation ? extrinsic motivation which comes from things and people on the outside, and intrinsic motivation which comes from within the athlete. Most people now agree that intrinsic motivation is the more powerful and that it has a greater impact on performance.

Peter Thomson, five-time British Open Golf Champion is a supporter of that point of view. Many years ago he said to me:

High achievers in sport are sometimes very desperate people crying out for love, recognition and public acclamation.

However, there are other motives such as winning or trying to make a living. I suppose the purest motive is to win for yourself and experience and enjoy that quiet inner feeling of satisfaction and sense of achievement. That is the noble end. This motive seems to be the most powerful and keeps you going longer.

Some performance experts now say that the motivation to learn and improve performance, and the commitment to spend many hours at practice trying to master the basics of the game may well prove to be the most important attributes to have on the road to excellence in sport.

To be good at your sport you must be committed to put in the hours and effort at practice. Recent research has shown that it takes at least 10,000 hours of practice over a ten year period to become competent in your sport. From a very young age, elite athletes have a powerful drive to master their sport.

What are some of these perceptual and cognitive skills and what does research tell us about their impact on learning and performance?

Perceptual and cognitive skills are about knowledge, preparation, expectations, concentration, self talk, self confidence, decision-making, and handling pressure. They are also about anticipating your opponent?s intentions, seeing the ball early in its flight, picking up its line and length, deciding what stroke to play and placement of the ball.

Reports on current research (Sports Psychology: Contemporary Themes, 2004) have shown that good players have better perceptual, cognitive and motivational skills than ordinary players. These elite players also recall and recognize game situations and patterns of play more quickly and accurately and they identify and deal more successfully with the priorities and challenges that they face in the game.

Another finding is that good players use visual cues more effectively to improve their performance. They know what to look for and where to look for it. They are much better than the ordinary players at anticipating and reading their opponents? intentions by looking at their postures and body language. Good batsmen do this well. And so do good bowlers. Lance Gibbs, the great off-spinner used to look at the batman?s grip before he started his run-up. If he spotted a tightening of the grip he would assume that the batsman wanted to have a go at him and he would then flight the ball accordingly.

Research has also shown that the good players have better knowledge of the different variables and probabilities in the game than the lesser players and that they spend more time on the strategic and tactical aspects of the game.

Concentration is the strength of the best players. They know what to concentrate on, when to turn it on, when to turn it off, and when to lock it in to block out distractions.

Some of today?s coaches spend very little time on the perceptual and motivational skills. Instead, they spend a disproportionate amount of time teaching the mechanics of the game in highly structured practice environments. Their mantra seems to be, ?Get the mechanics and drills right and everything else will fall into place,? These things are very important. But, looking at the results of current research one might well ask if those coaches can?t do better.

Coaching in sport should be about creating the right environments (structured and unstructured) in which players can satisfy their needs and desires while learning the package of mechanical, motivational, perceptual and cognitive skills that are necessary for success.

The highly structured approach to coaching with its great emphasis on mechanics crept into West Indies cricket ten to fifteen years ago. During that time, West Indies cricket plummeted from dizzy heights to new lows. West Indies domination of the game in the seventies and eighties is now a very distant memory.

In the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties West Indies cricket culture was very different. In those days, players learned the game in less structured and more creative environments. Youngsters played on the roads, beaches and village pastures where they emulated their heroes and strived to realize their dreams. The rough grounds, poor pitches and the unpredictable behaviour of the ball forced them to concentrate harder and watch the ball longer and more closely. Emphasis was on getting wickets, scoring runs and protecting their wickets. They also had to look after their often unprotected feet, legs, hands and head. To survive they had to be physically and mentally tough. This was the environment in which West Indian youngsters developed their perceptual, cognitive and motivational skills, as well as their unique and exciting mechanical skills.

Times have changed and we cannot turn back the clock. But, innovative coaches and players ought to be able to re-create some of those challenges by designing game situations, manipulating training environments and re-structuring practice sessions to enhance the learning and improvement of the players? perceptual and motivational skills.

Off the field, modern video and computer technology can be used creatively to improve various components of those skills - anticipation, concentration, awareness, reaction times, reading the play, judging line and length, decision-making and sports vision. Presently this technology is used mainly to give feedback to players about things that have already happened, and for planning. I believe that this technology can be taken a step further and be used as a training tool to improve the mental skills of their players.

What does current research say about learning in structured and unstructured environments?

Structured learning or explicit learning is a conscious and verbal process. Unstructured or implicit learning is an unconscious and instinctive process that is hard to verbalise. Players use both methods to learn their skills but those who learn implicitly retain their skills longer and handle pressure much better. The explicit learners acquire their skills quicker, but their skills often desert them in the heat of competition. Under pressure they tend to lose touch with the important concentration demands in the situation and focus on the mechanics of their game. They often suffer from the ?paralysis by analysis? syndrome. A number of effective implicit learning techniques are now available ? mental imagery and mental rehearsal, analogue learning, errorless learning, withholding outcome feedback and guided discovery.

Research has also shown that coaching methods that are too structured, prescriptive and dogmatic often create obstacles to the learning of movement and technique. The less structured guided discovery, on the other hand, improves implicit or instinctive learning. It increases players? awareness and responsibility and guides them to identify and correct their own performance problems. It teaches them to think for themselves, manage pressure better and improve performance without being too dependent on the instructions and augmented feedback of the coach.

The goal of good coaching should be to help players realize their full potential by increasing their motivation, awareness, responsibility, independence, knowledge, self belief, and tactical and technical skills. Coaches should focus on future possibilities rather than past limitations and see their players as what they can become ? ?human becomings? ? rather than on what they have been ? ?human beings?.

They should also understand that internal obstacles are greater barriers to learning and performance than external ones and that the internal ones are more difficult to handle. First-rate coaches are often reluctant to prescribe or provide solutions for their players. They prefer to challenge the players to find their own solutions. Finally, it may be harder for teachers and coaches to give up unnecessary instructing and controlling than it is to learn to coach.

* Dr. Rudi Webster is a former first class cricketer who now serves as Director of the Shell Cricket Academy of St. George's University. This article appears by special arrangement with the ChappellWay Web site.