Monthly Archives: August 2011
Gatorade – A Sports Drink or a Mouthwash
What is it about Gatorade that has athletes so hooked? Is it the taste? The feel of an ice-cold beverage quenching their thirst? An increase in performance? Or could it possibly be the amount of sugar that makes up these drinks? Scientists at the University of Birmingham carried out a series of experiments1 that offer some insight as to how the sugary component of the drink may be linked to improvements in performance. In one study, two groups of cyclists were timed for a 40 km bike ride. One group was given a drink filled with carbohydrates and electrolytes (much like Gatorade) and the other group got a regular drink with …
There are no such thing as hot streaks
Over at his blog, The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer has a post that references one of the most interesting and baffling studies on athletes ever performed. In 1985, Amos Taversky and Thomas Gilovich, two absolute giants in the field of cognitive psychology, looked at the shooting performance of the Philadelphia 76er’s, the Boston Celtics and the Cornell University men’s basketball team to see if what had happened over a player’s previous shots had any future, predictive effect on his next shot–are players on a shooting streak more likely to stay on that streak? Here’s what they found: Over 90% of basketball fans believe that a player has a better chance of …
Tags: Athlete Confidence, basketball, Basketball Shooting, Hot Hand
Sport-specific memory and information chunking
One of the most interesting distinctions to think about when we’re talking about athletes and cognition is the difference between the reactive, lighting-quick decision making that happens on the field, and the slower, more deliberate though involved in what often gets called “strategy”. Both are important, but both are different. In some ways the divide mirrors the difference between implicit or procedural memory–skills that we execute without thinking consciously about them, like riding a bike–and explicit or declarative memory, which are memories that we call forth, like remembering the capitol of California. Th high-speed recognition of anticipatory cues, discussed a few weeks ago, is a skill that falls more into the …
Tags: chunking, expert vs. novice, memory, The Athletic Brain
The science behind choking
Free throw shooting in basketball offers one of the best opportunities to look at the effects of pressure on athletic performance. Most NBA players can stand around in an empty gym and knock down free throw after free throw. It’s one of those skills that has been so refined by deliberate practice that it’s basically performed on autopilot. But it’s a different story to put that same player in a pressure-packed situation, in front of a crowd, with the game on the line. In research conducted by Art Markman at the University of Texas, it appears that NBA players are more likely to choke in critical, late-game situations: The highest pressure …
Tags: Choking, Expertise, neurofeedback, Neuroscience, Plasticity, Quiet Brain
The 10,000 hour rule and expert athletic performance
Some of the oldest and most prominent cliches that athletes are fed on a day-in, day-out basis revolve around practice (e.g. “practice makes perfect”). Like a lot of cliches, these sayings are boring but turn out to be true. Recently, research surrounding the concept of practice and expertise has begun to be supported by neuroscience. Best selling books like Malcolm Gladwells’ Outliers and Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code have taken aim at traditional conceptions of talent, arguing that rather than an innate predisposition toward greatness, the limiting factor in expertise and achievement is actually grit, tenacity and the willingness to put in countless hours practicing a skill. Specifically, K Anders Ericcson …
Tags: 000 Hours, 10, Deliberate Practice, Expertise, K. Anders Ericsson, Training
Do athletes have superior decision-making abilities?
The idea that athletes might be better at making high-speed decisions that are specific to their sport is an intuitive one, based on what we know about the brain and how it changes with deliberate practice. The last few posts have focused on just how athletes’ brains may change as they acquire expertise, and how it is often difficult to truly measure these differences. A recent study published in The Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine points to some very interesting potential differences in the way that athletes and non-athletes make high-speed decisions. Groups of college students, half of them division I varsity athletes, half of them pulled from …
Tags: High-Speed Decision Making, Neuroscience, Research, Training
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