Tag Archives: Decision making
Basketball And The BAM Project
Imagine an NCAA basketball coach trying to create a game plan for their first March Madness game with absolutely no video footage of their upcoming opponent. Sure, he has their roster with player names, height/weight and positions. He also has a set of specific stats that show the performance of each player and the team during the season. Yet, there is no opportunity to see the team play as a unit, how they move the ball, or their communication. The resulting game strategy would be full of educated guesses and assumptions based on just the macro picture of the roster and the micro world of data and statistics. Welcome to the …
Tags: Athletic Intelligence, basketball, Brain Activity Map, Choking, Coaching, Decision making, Neuroscience, sports and neuroscience
Peyton Manning Relies On Top-Down Attention
This article by Axon Sports originally appeared at our partner National Football Post, the leader in football news and analysis. Whenever Peyton Manning takes the field, the superlatives come fast and furious from football commentators. As well they should, the future Hall of Fame QB has proven his superior cognitive and physical skills repeatedly over his 15 seasons. However, back in week 2 of the NFL season when the Broncos met the Falcons for a Monday Night Football game, the importance of a well designed and disguised defense was on display. The Atlanta defense highlighted the importance of cognitive skills in football, as the ability to force bad decisions was shown …
Tags: Decision making, Earl K. Miller, Football, High-Speed Decision Making, National Football Post, Peyton Manning
Elite Soccer Players’ Brains Excel At Planning And Problem Solving
Coaches and commentators often refer to an athlete’s ability to “see the field” or be a play-maker. Rookies at the next level can’t wait for the game to “slow down” so their brains can process all of the moving pieces. What exactly is this so-called game intelligence and court vision? Can it be recognized and developed in younger players? For the first time, neuroscientists at Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet have found a link between our brain’s “executive functions” and sports success. When in the middle of a heated game on the field or court, our brains are accomplishing the ultimate in multitasking. Moving, anticipating, strategizing, reacting and performing requires an enormous amount …
Tags: Decision making, Executive Functions, Field Vision, Game Intelligence, Predraq Petrovic, Problem Solving, soccer, sports vision, The Athletic Brain
Teaching Your Brain How To Play Soccer
When describing what’s wrong with today’s youth soccer coaching, Michel Bruyninckx points to his head. “We need to stop thinking football is only a matter of the body,” the 59-year old Belgian Uefa A license coach and Standard Liège academy director recently told the BBC. “Skillfulness will only grow if we better understand the mental part of developing a player. Cognitive readiness, improved perception, better mastering of time and space in combination with perfect motor functioning.” We’re not talking about dribbling around orange cones here. Bruyninckx’s approach, which he dubs “brain centered learning” borrows heavily from the constructivist theory of education that involves a total immersion of the student in the …
Tags: Athletic Intelligence, Brain Training, Decision making, High-Speed Decision Making, Michel Bruyninckx, soccer, The Athletic Brain
Top Tennis Players Simply See Better
For most of us mere mortals, if an object was coming at us at 120-150 mph, we would be lucky to just get out of the way. Top tennis players, like Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal, not only see the ball coming at them with such speed, but plan where they want to place their return shot and swing their racquet in time to make contact.
Tags: Decision making, High-Speed Decision Making, Leila Overney, Nadia Cerminara, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, sports vision, Tennis
What If Xavi Made Even Better Decisions?
When Xavi Hernandez receives the soccer ball in his offensive half of the field, the Barcelona maestro has a world of decisions waiting for him. Hold the ball while his teammates arrive, make the quick through pass to a slicing Lionel Messi or move into position for a shot. The question that decision researchers want to know is whether Xavi’s brain makes a choice based on the desired outcome (wait, pass or shoot) or the action necessary to achieve that goal. Then, could his attitude towards improvement actually change his decision making ability? Traditionally, the decision process was seen as consecutive steps; first choose what it is you want then choose …
Tags: Decision making, Emotional Regulation, expert vs. novice, High-Speed Decision Making, Lionel Messi, Mistake Management, Plasticity, Xavi Hernandez
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