3. Personal Study
The off-field, or away from physical training, forms of deliberate practice. This is often facilitated and delivered to maximally affect performance by the support staff outlined above. The personal and team study of the sport is key in building a winning psychology. This is paramount for the evolution and maintenance of the tactical facet of performance. A vast part of tactical training in the elite is cognitive in the way that they are working the mind in terms of finding answers and then turning this into thinking in a process-orientated, solution-focussed manner when in performance. This is the area that psychiatrist to the British Cycling team, Dr Steve Peters, spoke of in terms of preparing his athletes. No chimps, no emotion, only trust in the solution and its components (The computer). Dr Peters gave us a fantastic insight into the mind of the winner and the cognitive processes engaged in by athletes such as Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton in their quest for gold. This is probably the area that is most forsaken in the not quite elite competitors and in our developmental stage athletes. It is an area that is developable and these skills are learnt skills not natural ones as many may have us believe. Not only does Ericsson (World authority on expert performance) allude to the fact that this attitude and mindset is learnt and that it is a requirement of the expert but Dr Peters summarised with insights into how this can be taught. Dr Peters gave anecdotal examples with regard to the development, and ultimately the automation, of such preperational and competition relative psychological traits, characteristics, behaviours and processes in the elite. The result is automisation of skills and tactics and the entering of the zone or flow state of performance.

“I do something nobody else does in the peloton and that’s study, I study footage, I study how other riders were, I study moves they do, how quickly they accelerate off the wheel, how fast they finish, how aggressive they are. I’ve just done it to the point where I don’t have to think so, I know it (my performance), its instinctive you know and that’s it just studying for hours and hours.

There are so many calculations ahead, is there a tail wind? Who’s behind me? Who’s left? How many people in front of you? How wide the road is? Is there a corner? Is it straight? How much energy have I got left by trying to be there at the finish? It is less instinct and more pre race, making a lot of calculations, I know what I’ve got to do, and those calculations I make before the race.

I’ll bring up an example in the Giro de Italia this year. Quite funny the commentator at the end, I beat a guy by a wheel length. The commentators saying, ‘ohhhhhhhhhhh you only won by a wheel there you know’. I won and he is watching the TV and he can’t see the things I’m doing in my head at the finish. It was a straight finish the last kilometre, block headwind, a real strong headwind finish, now me and Alessandro Petacchi and another young Italian was behind me. Now what Petacchi usually does is try and jump early but I saw this day that it’s a block headwind. If I go too early I’m going to die, if I leave it too late they’re going to jump me and block me and then I can’t get past. If I go early they are still in my slipstream so they can come round me last minute, so what I’ll do is open the sprint up to get them sprinting earlier. So with 200 to go, which is too far for me to go full gas because they’ll sit behind me and come round me last minute with the headwind, I will jump. So 200 to go I jumped so it looks like I’m opening up the sprint, that kind of freaks everybody into starting their sprint. What I did, I started but at 70% so they think I’m dying, or if they don’t go now they’re thinking the guys are going to come from behind them so they think I’m lagging. They all went so that puts them in the wind then out of my slipstream, then when they went in the wind I went again. I started to go 100% and when I did then they came along side me. I then went 100% and I won but I only won by a wheel because I had to do all that. There is so much mentally going into this but the thing that’s important is that I’m winning. That is why I do this work (psychological mental preparation) because I want to win.”
(Mark Cavendish)

“I never liked watching picked or selected clips from an analyst or a coach, they tend to show you the winger dribbling at you several times or in your danger area. I always liked to see half an hour or maybe the first hour of a match. I’m not really interested in the player I’m facing when he’s on the ball, that’s obvious. What I’m looking at is who gives him the ball? What movements does he make to get on the ball? How do they give it him? Is it a straight pass? Will the deliverer pick their head up? When do they give it him? Does he follow you back? Analysts don’t show you all that. I paid a lot of attention to this kind of detail. When I was in the youth team I even got in my car and drove to watch Leeds youth team three weeks before we played them. I would say that preparation has been the key to my career, if any element of this is wrong, I am in trouble!”
(Gary Neville)

We often talk of anticipation and decision making in sport, we often here anecdotes of instinctive decisions or of people naturally knowing what to do. Decision making is born of prior knowledge and this prior knowledge appears through study and dedicated preparation to training, the game or the race. This work is an absolute necessity in the deliberate practice of the elite athlete and the above examples show us how and why.

4. Visualisation before competition
The final piece of the preparation jigsaw. Visualisation on the back of all the correct preparation extends and cements confidence, reduces anxiety, increases expectancy and facilitates decision making. Visualisation also assists the clam execution of skills and tactics when the athlete is actually inside the race, competition or match.

“I’ve just always done it; I’ve always been a perfectionist. You get a book with every race you do and it explains the last 3 kilometres and it talks you through it. Now we have Google street view and every finish, I walk through the finish on Google street view and it just takes you hours to look through and if you have traffic islands the race has to split through the traffic islands. The road is sharper there, is there a pavement that jags out? I’ve never ever in my career gone the wrong way at the finish because I study it, I make sure I know it. Before we had Google street view I used to get one of the masseurs who was at the finish to walk it because they had five hours to kill while we were racing, and relay it back and anything, say there’s a roundabout and it looks straight, it’s a roundabout and the chances are one side is faster than the other, one side kicks out more than the other so which side of the roundabout do I go on? and make sure that we know every single thing and not just I know, every one of my team mates knew exactly the same thing. I visualise and imagine sprinting all the time, even when I’m training I see all the races I’m doing.”
(Mark Cavendish)

“I would always relax and visualise my performance, yes everybody does that, I would hope they do? (questions himself), don’t they? I always come out on top as well!

Yes always visualise before the game, In fact I think Terry Venebles was the first person who taught me that. He said that we should have always played the game in our minds before you go in and that you should always feel like you had already played it once. I have a repetition of thought and imagery of what will be my inside pass, my outside pass, a long one over the top, I see myself overlapping, the area I will be in, I wake and think about the game, how it is going to be and what I will do.”
(Denis Irwin)

5. Elite Mental Attitude and Winning Mindset
The general personality traits or characteristics of the elite athlete. The thought processes, self talk, outward talk, encouragement and advice within the dressing room or the team going into the actual game or the race. The expectancy of a standard, the support of team mates coupled with the drive and will to sacrifice for the goal.

“Either I win or I have the biggest crash of my career trying, the biggest single thing is winning.

If I do something I do it to the best of my ability and not just the best of my ability it actually had to be the best, I have to be better than everyone.

I want to win, don’t show me a line on a graph, I want to see finish lines, that is the only line that matters to me.”
(Mark Cavendish)

“With the right preparation and people you can win a match before you’ve even won if that makes sense?

Even when we are behind you just know United are going to win.

Give positives, re structure everything you say, negative talk does not exist in the United dressing room. An example might be Becks playing against Julian Dicks, you don’t go to Becks and say he’s going to nail you today, watch yourself, just be careful. You say Becks, pass and move today get on the ball, don’t hang on to it, pass and move and he’ll (Dicks) be tired in half an hour. There is a way of telling people things before a game.”

In the Man United dressing room you talk about Man United, respect the others but don’t talk about them.

We have an unbelievable mindset in there, we never ever give in, never say die, always think you can win the game all the time, and it shows in our performances, the number of times we come back or score in the last minute, that’s no accident, it is a mind-set instilled by the manager.”
(Gary Neville)

“It’s about winning at Man United, there is no other mode of thinking, you win and then you move on, we basically went to win every game, every team talk is about us and how to win the game following from what we’d done in training.”
(Denis Irwin)

Although not by any means the entirety of the constructs of elite performance, the facets outlined above give a key insight into many habits and characteristics of the elite. This work certainly confirms that the speakers, Mark Cavendish and Dr Steve Peters, and their subject matter is definitely something we can learn from. The speakers portrayed consistency with the habits of the truly elite and serial winning athlete and were consistent with evolutionary research in the area. The most pertinent and growing areas being that of preparation, mental practice and decision making facilitation within the elite. Confirmation of yet another truly leading session and a performance pertinent lesson in preparation and competing at the highest levels.

David Horrocks is an ex-professional footballer who had spells at Blackburn Rovers, Blackpool, Rochdale and Accrington Stanley. He is now PhD researcher from the University of Central Lancashire studying serial winners and expert performance; and has worked with Burnley FC, Chelsea FC, Bolton Wanderers FC, Manchester United, The FA, The Premier League and The Football League, as well as professionals in Rugby, Golf, Boxing, Cycling and FTSE top 100 Businesses. He also writes for the British Psychological Society’s national magazine The Psychologist.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
STEVE PETERS: THE BRAIN BEHIND THE MEDALS
PROZONE ANALYSIS: FIFA TURF STUDY
KEVIN GOODFELLOW: SPORTS DATA MANAGEMENT – A KEY TO ANALYTIC ADVANTAGES

The world’s most renowned and acknowledged researcher on expert performance and elite status, Karl Anders Ericsson, defines elite as follows: “Those who are at the true pinnacle of their field, i.e. the very top, those who are acknowledged for being so by their peers and counterparts, those who are consistently present in such an elevated position and those who evolve over time so as to remain in such positions.” However we appear even in sports research to often refer to papers or books where scientists worked with competitive sporting population samples, collegiate athletes or with premiership teams finishing top third at best and appearing infrequently in an odd cup final or competitors who improved to take a bronze at a Commonwealth Games. Firstly let us not pour scorn on such achievements as they truly are at the higher echelons of human performance but are they the pinnacle and the true elite? Ultimately somebody beat them and that somebody, latest research confirms, just happens to be doing certain things slightly differently, and these are the people we need to examine. These are the traits, characteristics and habits we need to instil as automatic into our current almost there athletes and our developmental stage potential athletes. Now don’t be misled, the current volumes of available research are of great importance. Such work shows quantifiable improvements can be made and through what means and measures such improvements may be facilitated. However it is of great importance that such studies are only treated as a base for potential integration when we transfer to the true elite. Ultimately only a combination of existing research and the evolutionary knowledge of the elite will lead us to more definitive prescriptions in terms of the creation and maintenance of sustained elite performance and serial winners.

This leads us to my work to date, and that is the development, training, maintenance and lifeworld of the world scale, serial winning athlete. The work to date is across the sports of golf, football, cycling and soon boxing. A fascinating session from the Leaders event pitched Mark Cavendish against my subjects to date in terms of my research in this field and the clarity of information divulged and documented from the serial winners analysed thus far. Surprise, surprise, Cavendish did not let us down, and was in fact a perfect mirror of many athletes I have spoken to who got to the very top. Cavendish, just as those in other sports had that deliberately obtained marginal difference we all seem to be looking for. Two of my subjects to date have agreed for their names to be disclosed in any publications to assist scientific research and help push sporting boundaries further. Those athletes are two former Manchester United footballers Gary Neville and Denis Irwin, two true gentlemen and fascinating subjects in terms of the lifeworld of a serial winner.

So what are these people engaged in, who with, how, where, when, why and what did their early childhood consist of to facilitate and underpin this road to excellence. The latest sport specific research suggests that the actual formulation of the elite sports person starts with the following lifeworld. Parental influence, opportunities for play, socialisation, hobbies, interests and early childhood habits, environment, neighbourhood, culture, opportunities for learning, competition, support mechanisms in the educational and early child development years and intrinsic desire. All these appear to have been present in the young athlete child, are the foundation, and are arguably the most important facet of any accumulated hours the future may bring. However what appears key across all subjects is that once this base has been established it is then not the accumulation of hours that leads to expertise or battery contact time but the quality of learning and the extended and consistent target driven nature of actions that facilitates progression to elite status. This encompasses both the way people behave physically and also the way people think and use their relaxation or social time along with any activity that engages their brains in relation to these intrinsic desires. This is the deliberate practice theory and not the 10,000 hours theory and the two must not be confused. Long hours and repetition are a necessity, this is not under debate however progression and being outside the comfort zone is what takes this repetition to expert status and therefore additional hours must not be demanded in sacrifice of progress. Ericsson himself in later papers confirmed that hours of practice per se do not make the difference, length of experience is a weak correlate with performance, and it is no longer necessary to discover knowledge through physical experience. A key point that Ericsson does make is that to develop expertise athletes must be able to engage in training where they get immediate feedback, opportunities for correction, repetition, reflection, and progress in competition is monitored. Examples of the way top athletes behaved in the early years are outlined below with the aim of taking academic research to coaches and players through anecdotal evidence. Hopefully this may clarify many of the aforementioned points with regard to early years, hours of practice and the requirement for the quality, compressed or targeted nature of practice.

“I had blinkers on, football was absolutely everything, football took up every single minute of my day, you know, I would train morning, afternoon and go back in the evening. You just did everything that you could.”
(Gary Neville)

“When I was still at school players started to come into the system at United from other areas of the country during the holidays. There was Sav, there was Becks from London, Casp there were lads coming from Ireland and all over the place. I judged myself against these and realised I had to work harder. I had to practice more and target myself to get to and beyond these lads if I wanted to play for United.”
(Gary Neville)

“I played sport all the time, I grew up playing Irish sports I was more interested in them (Irish sports) at the time (in his youth). I played hurling, Gaelic football, and soccer predominantly, I also played chess at a very high level”
(Denis Irwin)

“It rains 300 days of the year in the Isle of Man, and it’s windy, if you don’t like cycling, you’re not going to cycle there (Isle of Man). You have to really like cycling to want to get up and go out and ride every single day. I was lucky that I liked cycling and that is what I did.”
(Mark Cavendish)

“As a kid I enjoyed cycling, I was good at it and if you enjoy it you get better at it and it’s a snowball effect, I was lucky, I loved cycling, but I had to be the best and I had to make sure I was the best. I always rode my bike to the shop and messed about with my friends on a bike. I heard about a race on the Isle Of Man when I was young and I went down to it. I was on a bmx and everyone else was on mountain bikes. It was only a little kids race and I got smashed and I was last. My mum, she was laughing and joking with me you know and I was like, the other guys have got bikes and I’m on a bmx. I said if I had a bike with gears I could compete with them, I want a bike with gears, a mountain bike.”
(Mark Cavendish)

Following this insight into the birth and development of elite athletes we will now take a closer look at the extended lifeworld of such performers. We will look at how they enter and maintain the stages of consistent and serial winning performance and what tools they may use to facilitate this standard.

1. People
The use of support staff or specific coaches. Managers, researchers, psychologists, psychiatrists, fitness coaches, tactical coaches, technical coaches, scientists, analysts, technologists, masseurs, physios, doctors etc. Only with the correct blend and amount of people around the athlete will the serial winning nature be achieved. Leave any one out and run the risk of being the also ran.

“I make sure I do everything right, make sure I am surrounded by the best people and that they do everything right, you need the best at everything, having the right group of people around you is important.”
(Mark Cavendish)

“Every little thing, there’s always little things at United just to help you along and it’s there for you if you want, there is a lot of support, there is even more support now.”
(Dennis Irwin)

“I would do eye exercises and work on my peripheral vision. The boss brought in Gail Stephenson from Liverpool University. Attention to detail, it’s just like stretching your calves or hamstrings.”
(Gary Neville)

2. Training
The daily habits of the actual physical, game or competition related training, and the continual development of the athlete. The personal demands on the self and on support people and team members or colleagues that will facilitate performance through daily and weekly competition specific physical routines.

“I would always do something specific to the game I’m going into. I would think right, what do I need to do in training tomorrow night as we do when playing in Europe. It could be mimicking movement, getting to know the feeling. It is important that you feel you’ve been there before. It might be getting someone to run at me who is quick and jinky, it might just be thinking about this or jockeying and mimicking the movements you expect in the game. If I’m up against someone tall and physical I would work on my heading, if I can annoy them (opponent) and talk them off their game and get them in a physical battle I would bear that in mind as that might be what I want from this particular opponent to enable me to defeat him. What else does he do (opponent)? Do I need to watch more video of him, have I got tonight’s training session right? I would always understand beforehand exactly what I needed to do to defeat an opponent.”
(Gary Neville)

“My biggest thing is looking forward, it’s about setting goals, and once you achieve that goal you set a new one. If you look back too much on what you did you stop and everything will fall down in front of you. The word lucky should not have been invented. In your training and amongst your team you work on eliminating failure, lucky is somebody who’s trying to get there. If you want to get there you will get there you know there’s no luck. There’s nothing else to it, you know if you eliminate all them paths that do not lead to the target, get rid of them, block them and you will make it, you will win, that’s it, simple as that.”

“It took 3 years planning to win the world championships in Copenhagen, it’s not just a case of rolling up and having a go at it.”
(Mark Cavendish)

Continued in Part 2…

David Horrocks is an ex-professional footballer who had spells at Blackburn Rovers, Blackpool, Rochdale and Accrington Stanley. He is now PhD researcher from the University of Central Lancashire studying serial winners and expert performance; and has worked with Burnley FC, Chelsea FC, Bolton Wanderers FC, Manchester United, The FA, The Premier League and The Football League, as well as professionals in Rugby, Golf, Boxing, Cycling and FTSE top 100 Businesses. He also writes for the British Psychological Society’s national magazine The Psychologist.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
STEVE PETERS: THE BRAIN BEHIND THE MEDALS
PROZONE ANALYSIS: FIFA TURF STUDY
KEVIN GOODFELLOW: SPORTS DATA MANAGEMENT – A KEY TO ANALYTIC ADVANTAGES

MN: Ok Steve, that’s pretty clear where you are at and it links closely to your training and experience. But my MSc sport psychology students at Liverpool are from quite a different background. What do you think would be the most important advice you could give to one of my young students who are just coming out of the masters programme, and what would you say is most important for them to acquire to become effective as sports psychologists in the future?

SP: I think in any of these fields where you’ve got psychological issues the more experience you get the better you become. Once you have the textbook ideas which you start with you need to modify them to meet the situation. You will also begin to get more and more tools in the toolbox this way. My advice to trainees, and I’ve got some sport psychologists working alongside me who are picking parts of my model and using it, is to go round different experts, develop your skills base and what you can apply. But crucially, get as much experience as you possibly can so that you improve yourself because I think it is the clinical experience in the field that gives your expertise and credibility.

MN: So are you saying also that the development of the person, given that they are part of the tool if you like, is really important?

SP: I do, yes. I don’t want to get too heavy, but if you’ve got a psychologist who is showing signs of stress and is unable to focus, which may be understandable, but ultimately it’s unhelpful. This is because we have to live in the real world where there is an expectation that the psychologist will be a balanced person who takes things in their stride, and therefore demonstrates they practice what they preach! That’s a tough call for any human being to do because life is generally stressful and any psych is no different to the person on the street, but I do believe that there is an obligation to develop yourself and actually apply the techniques.

MN: Steve, what is your take on the idea that sport psychologists are a luxury, because really, the coaches are the psychs? You know the argument, which is very prevalent in professional football for social, cultural and historical reasons and sometimes you get it in other sports as well where the coach is quite sure that because of their experience and knowledge of the sport, they are in effect highly skilled psychologists and sports psychologists. Otherwise they lose their jobs!

SP: Let me answer this one from my medical background and training as a doctor. I remember when I was in a surgical post and doing a surgeon’s job, nobody discussed or argued with me as patients. I would explain whether they were going to be operated on or not, but on the whole, people just took it because they didn’t have an opinion really since they assumed you knew what you were doing. However, when I started my psychiatry training things were very different. Immediately I was seen as basically somebody who was talking common sense and everybody had the skill and everybody had an opinion. Not just the patients, but the staff and the family members too. Everyone was a psych! And that surprised me, it shouldn’t have done but it did, and I found that this continued. And even now when I teach students having got twenty-odd years plus into this field, and you go in with all this expertise and knowledge, some of which is common sense and a lot of which isn’t common sense, and you get students challenging within thirty minutes of the lecture. There are lots of things wrong with this view, but one of the most unfortunate is that just because some individuals have strong people skills it doesn’t mean that they necessarily have the psychological skills and knowledge. And in sport where the coaches can be in a very commanding position, the sports performers fall in line whether they’re doing well or not, and therefore they will achieve results but they’re probably not optimum. But with this approach there are a lot of casualties en route which never get mentioned.

MN: In these difficult financial times, Steve, when everybody’s looking at evidence based practice and reassurance that what you’re doing has direct impact and is measureable, how on earth can psychologists be justified?

SP: It’s a really difficult one this. When I first came into the field and I worked with David Brailsford in cycling, and David is very psychologically minded and has amazing psychological skills, so he’s fully aware, when I walked in I said this to him, Look Dave, it’s very hard to measure psychological aspects in any shape, even in psychiatry. Trying to get measurements of how well people do. So I said to him how do you know that I’m doing any good because obviously I want to know I’m doing good, and if I don’t convert what I do on a track then clearly it isn’t worth doing. But Dave was quite astute in this in saying that he accepted some things can’t be measured but you can recognise the outcome. That outcome may not be directly attributable to the psych work but it correlates with it. In other words when you start seeing trends and correlations, it’s clear that it’s working.

MN: A final question, Steve. What do you feel about the types of skills and knowledge base that needs to be developed to help maybe younger or less experienced sport psychologists become more effective in the future in top level sport?

SP: During my medical training I worked alongside clinical psychologists. This provided a wonderful insight into the work of clinical psychology to allow us to support their function more constructively and to help with knowledge about when to refer. I found this so interesting and useful that I did 6 months in CBT as a doctor working alongside clinical psychologists, and it was brilliant, I learnt a lot. I also think counselling skills, even a basic awareness of what counselling is and isn’t, how it operates, is incredibly helpful in this type of work.

Dr Mark Nesti CPsychol., is Reader: Psychology in sport at Liverpool John Moores University. His most recent book, Psychology in Football, is based on work inside Premiership clubs over 9 seasons.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
DAVID HORROCKS: EXPERT PERFORMANCE – THE DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF SUCH STATUS, THE TRUE EXPERTS VIEW
PROZONE ANALYSIS: FIFA TURF STUDY
KEVIN GOODFELLOW: SPORTS DATA MANAGEMENT – A KEY TO ANALYTIC ADVANTAGES

In this interview we have a chance to hear from one of the most well received presenters at this year’s Leaders conference about his thoughts on psychology and sport performance. Dr Steve Peters is a medical doctor and psychiatrist by training, who has been a University teacher at Sheffield Medical School for many years. Although Dr Peters has carried out lots of consultancy work in a range of sports during his career, it is his involvement in British cycling that has really propelled him into the public eye. As we heard at Leaders, Steve works very closely with British cycling performance director Dave Brailsford and with the coaching teams and individual athletes in what is currently one of our most successful sports. But what does he actually do with them and why? Some of the answers to this can be gleaned from his views on a range of key topics in sport psychology.

I started by asking him about anxiety in sport – often one of the big issues facing sport performers.

MN: Would you say that it’s mostly or always oriented towards the upcoming performance and how well you’ve done in previous performances, or is it sometimes related to broader issues?

SP: I think it’s varied and you need to maintain focus on the individual. I think you’ve got to look very carefully at each individual. So for example if somebody was saying, “I’m terrified about competing” it might be because their dad’s in the audience and they don’t want to let them down. That is a scenario that I have often met. However, if dad’s actually saying, “well actually, I’m not bothered as long as you’re happy” then that anxiety disappears, and now it would be valuable to start going down the route where you say let’s get you calm and let’s get you focused on what you’re doing. In my experience though, anxiety can be caused from a very wide range of factors – performance based, personal and social – so I tend to do an analysis of all the angles of where it might be coming from to find out what the problem is.

MN: In general terms do you go beyond individual work, do you get into the system as it were, try and affect the culture, or do you leave that to performance directors and others? Do you think that your role is really the one-to-one work, irrespective of whether the culture is conducive to what you’re doing or not?

SP: I think I need to work on both these levels. If I get asked to come into a sport where somebody’s asked me to remove anxiety from an athlete where I don’t know the system, I don’t know any of the cultures, I don’t know the staff, then I’m being asked to do a job where you’ve got to be careful and be very respectful of the fact that it’s not my domain. So, I try and engage with the people around the person so that I can actually find out what the setting and culture is. And if the culture itself doesn’t lend itself to getting this player in the right place, then yes, I would address it. It is easier to do this, gets less resistance, if you approach this by suggesting why and how the culture can be modified. I can’t implement it though. Really my role here is that of an expert offering an opinion- I rarely go in and tell people what to do, that’s not my remit. Even within cycling, somewhere I understand quite well now, I don’t come in and tell people what to do; they might call on my expertise and then we might jointly come to a decision. All I do is contribute expertise on how the team can function better or what environment is best for athletes or coaches.

MN: That’s interesting to hear you say this, Steve, because during my time at Bolton Wanderers we tried to divide these roles where I did some of the one-to-one stuff with the first team guys and Mike Forde did more of an organisational psychologist type role to manage the environment and affect the culture. And with him being able to do that sometimes allowed certain types of issues to disappear and made it easier to do the individually focused sport psych work. Do you agree that there often seems to be a lot of misunderstanding out there about what value psychologists can have in elite sport, and their precise role?

SP: I think the biggest misunderstanding is that sometimes we are expected to produce miracles! Look, I’m a mental skills coach, and so if you throw somebody at me and say this is their problem I’ve got to say okay, hang on, first of all I’ve got to know what their natural ability is to deal with life in general and this problem specifically. Then I’ve got to know what headroom they’ve got, how much they can improve, will they get this as a skill rather than as some clever tricks to learn. I think people will see it as a trick that once you’ve learnt it they have it for ever. But that’s a ridiculous thing to think! It’s a skill base which needs to be acquired and maintained. I think that the biggest misunderstanding a psych encounters is this erroneous belief that we have some mystical ability to do tricks with people and get them to a place where they’ll always remain, and therefore if they don’t, it’s something we’ve done that’s wrong! But this is nonsense since it rests on the ability of the athlete too.

MN: Steve, I fully agree with you here, not least because circumstances change and the demands placed upon elite sport performers vary day in day out, week by week, season by season. To change tack a little, given your background as a psychiatrist who’s trained essentially to work with clients who’ve got serious mental health issues and illness, how do you feel able to work in performance sport? You’re not a sport psychologist by traditional training and development so does this cause you any difficulties?

SP: From my perspective I have a generic skills base to look at the brain and the mind, that’s my expertise. I’ve gone down the route of a doctor treating mental illness; you’ve got a mind that is not functioning correctly and it’s hugely based in my world around chemical imbalance or structures not functioning, so that’s where I’m coming from roughly. However, when we do get a mind to start functioning well sometimes there’s dysfunction so it doesn’t operate in the right way, and the person doesn’t use their mind for advantage – that is what I call dysfunction rather than malfunction. So, there are lots of elements of psychological and clinical areas that I would touch on. However, I have to keep saying to people, you know I’m not trained in sport at all. I’m trained in the human mind and it doesn’t matter where you put me, all I can do is put the mind into an optimal place and then work alongside experts in that field such as the coaches, to say what is it you have to achieve and then I’ll have to explain why the mind isn’t going there. But I don’t get involved in coaching as such.

Continued in Part 2…

Dr Mark Nesti CPsychol., is Reader: Psychology in sport at Liverpool John Moores University. His most recent book, Psychology in Football, is based on work inside Premiership clubs over 9 seasons.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
DAVID HORROCKS: EXPERT PERFORMANCE – THE DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF SUCH STATUS, THE TRUE EXPERTS VIEW
PROZONE ANALYSIS: FIFA TURF STUDY
KEVIN GOODFELLOW: SPORTS DATA MANAGEMENT – A KEY TO ANALYTIC ADVANTAGES

Data Management is the fundamental piece of the sports analytics process on which everything else is built. It is the science of acquiring, moving, storing, organising, cleaning, and connecting fragmented data into a form that enables deeper analysis, and due to the evolution of sport analytics over the years it has been increasingly difficult work. Today the top teams are facing three major challenges that strain existing Data Management processes and require more advanced skills: width, depth, and speed. Let me explain…

Width – Width is the concept of data variety. Gone are the days of strictly examining the on-the-field metrics to understand and optimise behaviour and performance. Analytics have expanded to include much more beyond game data, such as: physiology, biology, psychology, neurology, strategy, coaching, scouting, training, trades, salary data, etc etc. This widened scope helps paint a more robust and complete picture, but comes with the corresponding challenges of collecting and connecting these different sources of data.

Depth – Depth refers to the increasing size and detail of datasets. More recently, this fine-grained data is generated from automated systems, rather than being manually collected. While this automation is a major advance, the result is often a huge amount of data that can’t be managed with simple spreadsheets. Examples of this would include: pitch tracking where the position of the ball in space is captured in incredible detail such that the physics of the pitch can be observed; motion tracking where player location and orientation is measured by GPS or Video so that a player’s place on the field is accurately recorded multiple times each second; and sensor data where heart rate, breathing rate, and impacts, etc are recorded to use in fitness, readiness, and safety measures. All of these measures lead to extremely large amounts of data that must be managed, stored, and cleaned before they can be used for analysis purposes.

Speed – With coaches and staff squeezed for time, an increase in analysis speed can be a distinct advantage, giving a team the ability to do more preparation in less time. Solutions that increase analysis speed are particularly desirable and clearly advantageous.

The challenges of width, depth, and speed are changing the world of sports analytics like never before, causing teams that want to stay ahead, to place greater emphasis on their Data Management skills and technology. These skills have not traditionally been an area of expertise in the front offices or coaching staffs but that is starting to change.

The sections below contain some brief comments from experts in American sports, outlining the increasing role of Data Management in their organisations, challenges that they face, and the benefits than can result.

Sig Mejdal
Director of Decision Sciences
World Champion St. Louis Cardinals / Houston Astros (MLB)

Data Management in Major League Baseball (MLB)
Much of the recent attention in MLB has been directed at the analysts, focusing on their mathematical skills and metric discoveries. While those skills are very important, without the back-end work to store and manage the data, many analysts have difficulty taking advantage of the ever-increasing data volumes.

Much of the standard “must see” data for MLB decision makers comes from a variety of player oriented sources such as: recent and historical in-house scouting reports, draft information, contract information, past game statistics, health records, and notes on competitor interest – just to name a few. While this is already a substantial amount of data to manage and analyse, more and more front offices are looking to analyse large volumes of detailed performance data from sources like pitch f/x (pitch tracking) and hit f/x (player tracking) for modelling purposes.

With the increasing amounts of data and the variety of sources available, data management skills are becoming one of the most important skills needed in the front office. However, these skills are often the least appreciated and least understood. This is understandable, since data management skills have not traditionally been a part of the standard front office skill set. It is my opinion, that in the very near future, these indispensable skills will be a requirement in all front offices. Without them, it will be hard to compete.

Ben Alamar
Director of Analytics
Oklahoma City Thunder (NBA)
NFL Analytics Consultant

Data Management in the National Football League (NFL)
The volume of data available to a NFL head coach has grown dramatically over the years, in part due to the growth of coaching staffs. Typical NFL teams now have a coaching and training staff of twenty to thirty. Head coaches are so pressed for time during the week in between games, that they do not have an opportunity to gather, process and evaluate all of the data collected. Instead, they rely on their staffs to provide them the most relevant data so that they can set the strategy for the week.

In the week of preparation for an upcoming opponent, each member of the staff is collecting and amassing data through film study, working directly with athletes, or talking to coaches who have played the upcoming opponent. Each staffer collects the data specific to their area of expertise (i.e. QB coaches collect data relevant to QBs, without concern for how it relates to defensive schemes), and may not see potential valuable connections between their data and that of other coaches. This not only can make the coaches imperfect and inefficient filters of information for the head coach, but an opportunity to gain important insight from the combination of all of their data is lost.

Efficient data management however, can summarise and connect information for the head coach and staff, allowing them to have a more comprehensive view of the available information about an opponent, as well as the ability to drill deeper into specific focus areas. This efficiency and speed allows the head coach to get answers extremely quickly, allowing him to ask and answer a larger set of questions in a shorter period of time, with less last minute scrambling from his staff. It is clear that a solid data management strategy results in a team that is better prepared to compete on game day.

Dr. Peter Vint
Director of High Performance
United States Olympic Committee

Data Management in Olympic Sport
The 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London will comprise 26 sports, in 39 different disciplines, and 302 contested events. Approximately 10,500 athletes from 204 nations will compete for 2,100 medals. With numbers like these, the role of data management in Olympic sport is significant and multifaceted.

In a big picture sense, the ability to rapidly harvest, manage, and analyse competition results data is critical to our understanding of international competitiveness across sports and within events. We rely on these data to identify who and where world-class performers and performances are today, who and where they will be “tomorrow”, and what it will take for us to either hold on to existing competitive advantages or to become more competitive than we are currently.

On a much finer scale, terabytes of data can be accumulated on factors that affect an individual athlete’s performance (e.g., medical histories, testing results, responses to training modalities, performance trajectories and historical outcomes, caloric and nutrient balance). I believe it is at this level that the greatest challenges and most substantial opportunities lie. The challenges are many and include managing a group of different users with different systems with different data across different sports and across different parts of the country. The upside to getting it right, however, is just as dramatic. In general it will be the ability to effectively manage, analyse, interpret, and make actionable data from a myriad of sources and systems that has the potential to be “Game Changing”.

I agree with Peter, it is most definitely “Game Changing”. I hope that this brief exploration of Data Management has provided a good perspective of what it is, the role it plays in sports analytics, the current challenges, as well as the benefits that other sports professionals have observed.

Kevin is the founder of Sports Data Hub, a company focusing on pro sports data solutions. He has over 16 years of analytics experience in a wide range of industries, for companies large and small. For the last 10 years he has provided Data Warehousing consulting specializing in Data Architecture and Data Integration. He is a graduate of Cal Poly and the University of Colorado, earning B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering. Early in his career, Kevin was a systems engineer for Boeing in Seattle, working with data while designing, analyzing, and flight-testing commercial aircraft landing gear systems.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
STEVE PETERS: THE BRAIN BEHIND THE MEDALS
DAVID HORROCKS: EXPERT PERFORMANCE – THE DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF SUCH STATUS, THE TRUE EXPERTS VIEW
PROZONE ANALYSIS: FIFA TURF STUDY

In order to dispel any concerns and to guarantee that artificial surfaces are of the highest possible standard, FIFA has both supported and conducted a number of medical, biomechanical and psychological studies with the aim of ensuring player safety and providing a comprehensive assessment of performances on both grass and synthetic turf.

With our expertise in technical consultancy and strong commitment to applied research within football, Prozone has worked alongside FIFA in order to assist with on-going scientific investigations and to deliver bespoke analysis projects in several areas of interest. This partnership has included detailed enquiries into the possible effects of artificial surfaces on player performance, a field which the business has been at the forefront of for some time.

In 2011 Prozone installed our leading player tracking system, PROZONE3, at two stadia in Moscow, the Luzhniki Stadium (artificial turf) and the Khimki Arena (natural grass), comparing and contrasting the performances of players at the two grounds over the course of the Russian Premier League season. In order to eliminate the perceived factor of home bias, only data from the players of visiting teams who completed ninety minutes was collected as fifteen games at each arena were analysed in order to provide a thorough statistical overview.

The findings of the study revealed that no major differences could be observed between the physical data collected on natural grass and that captured from games played on synthetic turf. While the average total distance covered during a match on grass was found to be 112.1km, teams at the Luzhniki Stadium typically ran 113.9km and so demonstrated that there is little by way of discrepancy between the athletic performances of players on the two surfaces. Although sides cover more ground through high intensity running on grass (12.13km compared to 11.81km), the average distance of sprints at both arenas remained remarkably similar; figures which suggest that the players had confidence in the pitches and were able to accelerate and decelerate normally on both grass and artificial turf.

Variance in Total Distance and High Intensity Distance between games played on football turf and natural grass

In terms of the technical quality of games, the data taken from the Russian Premier League again shows few disparities between performances on the different surfaces. Critics of artificial turf often hold that players are not comfortable in possession on artificial pitches, yet the average number of touches per player remained steady (2.06 on grass, 2.01 on synthetics) to denote that teams are confident to play very similar styles on the two types of turf.

With regard to passing at the two grounds, the study found that teams attempted more passes on grass (316 per game as opposed to 273 on the synthetic surface), a finding inconsistent with previous research and a statistic which goes against those who claim that football turf encourages players to keep the ball down and play a possession-based game. Perhaps more telling is that the quality of passing on grass was of a higher standard, teams completing 80.7% of passes while falling to 77.5% at the Luzhniki Stadium. While, at least superficially, this may appear detrimental to the reputation of football turf, when the figures are broken down we can see that a greater percentage of passes are played forwards on artificial surfaces than they are on grass, something that arguably makes for a more offensive game and a more entertaining spectacle.

Looking at the issues around player safety, the fact that the average number of tackles per player per game only rises by 0.70 – a very minor change – when playing on artificial surfaces illustrates that players are not at a greatly increased risk of injury from the perceived changes in teams’ defensive approaches that many cite as a negative aspect of artificial surfaces.

Although the two grounds used were located in the same city in order to reduce any potential climatic differences, the changes in the weather which may have taken place from game to game could not be controlled and may have had an influence on the results of the research. Furthermore, other variables such as the tactical approach of the various teams and the interpretations of different officials could well have made a difference to the outcome of the investigation.

Overall, however, Prozone’s turf study represents one of the leading pieces of research into the effects of artificial surfaces on the physical and technical performance of professional athletes. Working in association with FIFA in order to benefit players and more fully ensure their safety, such investigations provide a valuable and insight into an area that has been the subject of much debate and speculation in recent years.

Prozone offer the most accurate performance analysis service in world of football. They do this by working alongside some of the leading clubs, organisations and coaches to create performance analysis systems that meet the very highest requirements of the modern game. Their world leading systems track the player movements every 10th of a second and give detailed technical and physical data on over 2,500 actions in every game. This unrivalled level of objectivity and precision is why they are the world’s only independently validated performance analysis system. It is also the reason why 75% of clubs in the Premier League and Championship work with Prozone and in total over 100 clubs, leagues and federations world-wide now benefit from their leading performance analysis service.

The views of our regular columnists are independent, and as such do not represent those of Leaders in Performance.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
STEVE PETERS: THE BRAIN BEHIND THE MEDALS
DAVID HORROCKS: EXPERT PERFORMANCE – THE DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF SUCH STATUS, THE TRUE EXPERTS VIEW
KEVIN GOODFELLOW: SPORTS DATA MANAGEMENT – A KEY TO ANALYTIC ADVANTAGES

The event promises to be even bigger and better than 2011 which saw a record 1500 Director level delegates from over 45 countries and 40 sports attend the 5 leading edge conferences for Football, Performance, Sponsorship, Digital Sport and the business of Horseracing.

James Worrall, CEO, Leaders says “We are delighted to confirm the dates for our 2012 Leaders Sports Summit and are incredibly excited at what promises to be our most exciting event to date. The team are constantly striving to improve the event and, after a comprehensive consultation process with over 300 delegates and commercial partners, we have identified a number of exciting changes to keep Leaders fresh, relevant and of value to our clients.”

Leaders in Football, Leaders in Sponsorship, Leaders in Performance, Leaders in Digital Sport & Leaders in Racing will run concurrently over the 2 days alongside a series of specific workshops and networking opportunities, making Leaders the must attend international sporting event in the calendar.

If you would like to learn more about Leaders or to enquire about opportunities to get involved in 2012, please contact one of the team on +44 (0) 207 042 8666 or email enquiry@leadersinevents.com.

So what evidence is there that sport has been furthering this aim in 2011? One of our problems is that we quite naturally tend to assess things on what we can easily see. And what do we see (and hear)? Well, if we measured the value of sport in terms of what we read in the papers, pick up off the internet or watch on TV, we would probably be tempted to conclude that as George Orwell said many years ago, sport is war without weapons! The battle grounds are swamped in money and greed, the infantry lost in no man’s land, leaderless or led by donkeys. But is this really the whole story? Well, at the highest levels some of us would argue that the problem is not sport but the society that surrounds it. Sport should not be the scapegoat for the ills of something much bigger than it.

Another way to view psychological wholeness is to talk about self-knowledge. We need to look closely at our own motives, values and beliefs. We need to know our selves before we can expect others to place their trust in us. Trust! Maybe one of the most frequently used words in sport, especially at the highest levels. Trust in the manger, trust in your team mates….trust in yourself. How has trust fared in 2011? Trust in our banking system, our institutions and our politicians? Why should the virus stop at the door of sport? Well, it hasn’t of course. And what is trust based on? Mutual respect. That’s respect for me as a human person, not because I have something you want or need! To be fair there are some sports where we still see noble behaviour where the psychological and spiritual personal quality of trust is often evident. Is it a coincidence that this is often in those activities where players play for the love of the sport rather than the love of the extrinsic motivations of money, fame and power? Very fortunately, 99.9% of those who take part in sport are in the first category. This is where we can witness the eternal and universal human values in action-trying to do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. And those who don’t play sport like this-well they are the weaklings who are copying their perceived betters-the clever and the cynical ones who have the material successes but suffer a loss of meaning. The ones who no longer love sport but use it!

So, sport as a source of meaning? For many it is the way to encounter and live out those so politically incorrect terms of courage, sacrifice, spirit and yes, love!

Will high level professional sport be able to recover some of these words? Is it too late for a renewal? Is it too much to ask for these things when the culture beyond sport is less interested in meaning and more focused on materialism? Well, we can’t ignore meaning, because without it, ultimately we have no real reason for hope. And hope is a big word for our culture both within and outside of sport.

So to return to my earlier question, has sport contributed to the notion of psychological health and wholeness? Well, maybe there are some signs that it is beginning to take this area more seriously, although it took an unexpected tragedy to cause this to happen. As a chartered sport psychologist who has worked for almost 25 years now with many different levels and types of sport performers, I would like to close by commenting on the very sad death of Gary Speed. I worked at Bolton Wanderers when Gary was at the club and although I didn’t know him well, I knew him well enough to see that he was a true professional person, someone you could place your trust in. His death has shocked so many because it is so inexplicable. Much has been said so far surrounding this terrible event, and much more will be said in the future. However, one thing that has emerged clearly is that in professional football (and other professional sports) there are many people suffering from psychologically related conditions. The causes and triggers for these are many but some of us believe that the culture surrounding football in particular is a breeding ground for these problems. In simple terms, anywhere where there is a desire for quick answers all of the time, an inhuman rate of change, little trust and utilitarian values, will place people under great mental strain. When this is combined with an environment where to show integrity and honesty (despite being on everyone’s lips) is seen as a sign of weakness, is it any wonder that there is so much acting of Hollywood proportions- a pseudo culture of brittle masculinity! How else can you expect to survive surrounded by so much inauthenticity? Now I remember what those old pros always said to me-there are no friends in football. Where are those solid time honoured working class values of courage, honesty and integrity? For the most part they are now lost in a game that increasingly resembles the worst qualities of the lower middle class as the sociologists used to call them-self-interested, suspicious, envious and afraid.

So, I started with sociology and I will finish with it (sort of). The biggest help that the sport of football could provide in our country at least is to do all it can to slowly but determinedly begin to change the culture of the sport at the professional level. To make it a more truly professional place where players and staff are not afraid to ask for help, and return to emulating the values of ordinary people rather than the leaders of our crisis laden culture. It is only with this type of change that psychological work, especially aimed at addressing some of our deepest needs, can be more acceptable and effective in professional football. As the famous poet WH Auden said of the last century, ‘we are living in an age of anxiety’! And without a deeper source of meaning in our lives this anxiety threatens to engulf us, paralyse our sense of hope and undermine our belief in the future.

Dr Mark Nesti CPsychol., is Reader: Psychology in sport at Liverpool John Moores University. His most recent book, Psychology in Football, is based on work inside Premiership clubs over 9 seasons.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
LEADERS IN PERFORMANCE DAY TWO: MIND, BODY AND CARE…
PROZONE: EFFICIENT RECRUITMENT – A JANUARY TRANSFER WINDOW ANALYSIS
DAVE RICHARDSON: ALL BARR ONE!

Richardson:
The musings of Dr Nesti and me from day one took us from ‘practice to perfection’. At the end of the day, the usual conference form is to retire for some refreshment and cordial conversation. The aspirations are clear from the outset; have a few beers, catch up with a few old friends and acquaintances, get something to eat, have one more beer then head off to bed. My colleagues and I followed this plan to the letter, up until the ‘just one more beer’ point. To be fair, we would have well overstayed our welcome at the Prozone party but the bar closed so we had to go! We probably had ‘one more’ too many but we were still in bed (asleep) at a reasonable and respectable hour! Scouring the landscape at the opening session, I note that one or two fellow delegates didn’t appear to fair so well in their pursuit of a well rested utopian state. The pudgy black coffee, a Leader’s speciality, appeared to have been well received by many a delegate. So, my first thoughts, of the morning, what have we learnt? Well for me, it is pretty clear that the social banter evolving from a few beers enables us to develop a more personable relationship with existing and potential clients. It also allows us to talk openly and honestly with our colleagues and fellow delegates. Such interaction is critical to our future business relationship. I for one am happy to encourage everyone to work on this. If we like you then we are more likely to work with you!

And back to the other reason as to why we have converged at Stamford Bridge, the speakers. First up for the Leaders in Performance delegates is the ‘Science of Sport: How to make the most out of talent’. For this we have the pleasure of Andy Barr performance specialist at the New York Knicks, Hakim Chalabi, assistant Chief Medical Officer, Aspetar and Gerry Ramogida who is the consultant chiropractor for the Seattle Seahawks and the performance therapist with UK Athletics. The session is chaired by Peter Bruckner, Head of Sports Science and Medicine at Liverpool Football Club. The session promises to explore the analysis of human performance including mind, biomechanics, time motion ratios, speed, agility, recovery and rehabilitation. This promise was a fairly extensive brief but given the nature of the panel it was not insurmountable. However, the session was dominated by the concept of injury prevention. Don’t get me wrong, whilst I appreciate that the balance of injury prevention and performance enhancement is critical to the pursuit of athletic excellence, I was left wanting a little more. The session, for me, didn’t do exactly what it said on the tin! However, I did come away with a fuller understanding that the science of sport (or sport science or at least a component of it – injury prevention and re-hab) is a critical aspect of high performance sport. It is also an area, whilst it appears fairly self-explanatory (i.e., reduced injuries equates to better performance), that is still required to justify its existence in the realms of many a high performance sport environments. There appears to be a constant need for these guys to ‘justify’ their existence with statistical evidence that reports injury reduction (non-traumatic and/or traumatic – depending on your view that any injury has the potential to be traumatic!) year on year. I can sympathise with this position but have concerns over the complexity of reducing injuries year on year. The discussion focuses on injury and the prevention of injury before addressing the notion of wellness data. From the debate, I’m still left wondering what this actually means. I am informed that there is a drive to collect (personal) data on athletes and players alike on a day-to-day basis; for example, how are you feeling today? How did you sleep? Do you feel sore? The concept appears to be striving for a long term picture of athlete mood and physical states. Now, none of the panellists claimed to be a psychologist nor lifestyle counsellor nor any other similarly aligned practitioner but to me such information would be the preserve of such practitioners or at least undertaken in collaboration with them. Again, there may be more to this, but unfortunately, this was not explored during the session. I was left wondering, as a player or an athlete, how I would respond to such questions if there was a big ‘meet’, Champions League game or NBA Play-off game coming up as opposed to (say) a trip to Yeovil (no offence intended) in the Carling cup or a non-ranking athletics event or friendly. I am left to wonder whether that the importance of having ‘scientific data’ on someone has become more important than understanding who they are and why they feel like they do? I’ll leave this one for you Mark. I’m sure you may have something to say on this topic! You could say I’ve set you up (maybe stitched you up) nicely, what do you think?

Nesti:
Yes Dave, another hospital pass from you but I would expect nothing less (typical midfielder-get rid when you’re in a hole)! No, I’m not going to focus on the thorny issue of the value of scientific data to support the value of non-scientific craft knowledge. I am though, going to pick up on the skill that each panellist displayed in not over stating their case whilst being aware that they had to have solid reasons for the arguments they put forward. That each, in different ways, tended to say the same thing is a testimony to the ability of the conference organisers to invite these individuals to speak at the same session. It sounded at times as though they had met up earlier to rehearse their lines so that a collective view and a common underlying practice philosophy would emerge! And I mean this as a compliment to all concerned. It’s always a good sign when highly experienced specialists from diverse specialisms agree on things. Statisticians refer to this in terms of correlations, and those of us of a less numerate disposition call it common sense! However, as my favourite English author G.K. Chesterton put it, common sense is rarely seen and not too common.

Like my colleague Dr Richardson, I too was a little disappointed that we didn’t develop the interdisciplinary theme a little more fully. This was a shame because Andy and Gerry in particular stressed how important this was in their work. I wonder how much of this is because as therapists they are aware that you can’t easily compartmentalise when you have someone in front of you seeking help. It’s really quite hard for human beings to forget that they are speaking to a person like them, although there are some sport scientists, coaches and others who seem to have spent many years getting qualifications to help them ignore this fact. Such people fortunately are most usually found in universities although there are quite a few who are at large in the real world as well!

So, it seems that it always starts with a discussion about techniques, data and systems, and ends in… well, bodies, brains and minds. And we should be pleased about this, since in the final analysis, it was what we heard from the talented and expert individuals assembled here. It was noteworthy that all speakers constantly talked about still feeling that there remained much to do to move things forward. This is always a sign of top performers – an awareness that they know so much that they know there is so much more they don’t. We usually call it humility or modesty and think of it in moral terms. But actually, it is not infrequently also the key character trait of the very best.

Maybe it would have been nice to have heard more from each panellist and for the questions to probe more deeply into their ideas for the future. The discussion about psychology, lifestyle, mood, and performance management, especially in relation to injury prevention, could easily have been the whole focus of the session. There seemed to be a real awareness that this ‘final frontier’ must be considered more fully, although there was much less idea on how this could be achieved. It would have been great to have had a psychologist asking some hard questions at this point (I know Dave, some people think this is all psychologists do… but they are getting us mixed up with our close cousins in philosophy!). In all fairness to the conference team, the topics covered here might be better addressed in a book. And what a book that could be given the eminence of the contributors.

Richardson:
Thanks Mark. I’m not sure whether you answered the question or not!

Nesti:
That’s what’s wrong Dave… everyone expects an easy answer from us and when we do, they say they knew that already!

Richardson:
Maybe you should consider a political career in the future! Following the network break and a couple more pudgy coffees we were treated to the wisdom of Dr Steve Peters. Steve is a psychiatrist and Doctor with the British cycling team. Steve has been previously lauded by Dave Brailsford as an integral component of British cycling’s success over recent years. Moreover, Peters has helped Brailsford understand how personality and emotional state impact performance. Peters’ talk concerns this similar theme. Indeed, the concept is to ‘take the emotion out of decision making’ or, in essence, to prevent (as much as possible) the emotion interfering with the decision. On day one we witnessed the studious intensity that surrounded Mark Cavendish’s approach to winning alongside his despair with (some) ‘scientists’ that appeared to lack a real appreciation of his world. Peters is a psychiatrist with training in maths and medicine. Does he understand Cav’s world? Peters, explains the value of logic to us and explains how he helps the athlete and the coach (and us) to understand how we think and how we behave. Peters is famed for his chimp analogy and uses this as the framework for his presentation. Logically, he offers the audience a pared down version of mind events. The theory is of emotional control and coping. His approach is bespoke and introspective in that he encourages the athlete to understand how their mind works. He breaks the mind into 6 segments for us (the audience) and explains the distinct roles of the various components. The frontal lobe which influences logic, sentiment, thinking and personality. Then there is the computer and, of course, the chimp. The chimp is characterised as an extremely strong, yet demonic, primitive, irrational, almost animalistic part of the brain. In essence, he explains that you and your chimp do not always see eye to eye and that you need to first understand what (or which you) your chimp is and how your chimp thinks and behaves in order to subsequently control the chimp and/or put him, or her, away at critical moments. The talk is jolly, clear and enlightening and you get a sense that the audience is left thinking about their own chimps. How they deal with them is another matter… Hopefully, the coaches, and others responsible for performance, will recognise that this approach is not just a mechanism to enable better athlete performance but the analogy should transcend the athletes and their support staff. If we can all understand our chimp then we will also understand how it (and subsequently we) may affect others. In some cases our behaviours may instigate another’s chimp at precisely the time when they are trying to put him away… think on!

Nesti:
This was a very clever presentation from Dr Steve Peters during which he managed to describe some of his psychological work with British cycling in a very entertaining and accessible way. This was no mean feat since for many of us the last time we laughed at a shrink was probably during one of those pomposity busting episodes of Frasier. Of course that’s the problem with psychiatrists; they use fancy scientific sounding terms to shrink our consciousness so we can confront our unconscious desires to deal with them constructively! Or that’s what the official strap line says… well, sort of. But when the id, ego, super ego, repression and sublimation are described by reference to chimps and claims to be (like my wife!) a straight talking Yorkshire person, you know that what follows will be real and stimulating for all. Although in my own approach I adopt a very different psychological model and underpinning philosophy, I was able to recognise much common ground both theoretically and more importantly from practice in real sport. Dealing with top athletes requires professional confidence based on knowledge and skills. It also demands that the practitioner brings their personality and personal qualities to the table as well. Steve made this point very apparent in the examples he used and stories he told. It was this aspect of the talk that made it most powerful and engaging.

I did hope (and still do) that there were psychologists in the audience and others with a critical mind who found the session provocative and challenging rather than reassuring and easy to accept. I say this because all good psychologists and psychiatrists know that our understanding of mind (as opposed to brain) is far from complete. When this is discussed in relation to high performance domains like elite sport things often get even more complex. I am sure that Dr Peters would be happy to know that many listeners went home from the conference motivated to find out more, much more, about the psychology in sport. I am sure that they will have benefitted from hearing that although models are a good place to start, to be useful, they need to be put into context and applied by someone who understands the art of practice. Listening to the stories about empathy, belief, integrity and care from the world of elite cycling, I remembered again why psychology’s most famous son, Sigmund Freud, the founder of psycho analysis, always maintained despite being a medical doctor and surgeon himself that this training was not necessary to be a successful psychotherapist.

Maybe Steve will be invited back again soon to talk about an area that many in academic sport psychology seem unaware of. As Dave mentioned earlier, I refer to the work with staff, the managers, coaches, sports scientists and others who make up the performance team. This key topic was alluded to in the presentation but is surely one to focus on in the future. Can we expect our athletes to deliver exceptional performance when the support staff are in need of support themselves? Listening to Steve and the relationships he has at British cycling I am sure he will have a view!

Richardson:
So, I think we agree. Peters seems to work with the athlete in their world. We also need people such as Peters to work with the support staff. Their world is complex and pressurised too!

The networking lunch is full of chatter about everyone’s various chimps; stories of chimps going off on one alongside some (non-professional) advice from those who believed that their chimp had been were shared between many a delegate. In essence, we might not fully understand what to do next but you know when a presenter has stimulated and intrigued an audience when the debate and personalisation of the topic carries over into lunch. It might not be every psychologist’s approach, but it offers an interesting and tangible perspective to emotional control and coping strategies.

More British cycling after lunch as Brailsford himself takes the stage to chair a session on ‘Innovation and Performance’. Brailsford is ideal for this session. He appears to leave no stone unturned in his pursuit of success for his team. Prior to his rise to become the Performance Director of British Cycling he spent some time working in the design and engineering aspects of the sport and was keen to embrace the science and technology of performance early in his tenure. However, it is not Brailsford who is the main attraction as he is joined by Stephen Park his fellow Olympic Performance Manager with the Royal Yatching Association and Geoff McGrath, Managing Director of McLaren Applied Technologies. The session starts off with similar yet contrasting ‘promo’ videos depicting the fortunes of the respective worlds that Stephen and Geoff operate in. Both ‘promos’ are slick and intriguing with relevant musical accompaniment overlayed onto the action. Each carries its own message about the philosophy of the sporting worlds. However, it is noticeable that Stephen Park and the RYA function within an entirely different financial model to that of Geoff and McLaren. We learn that McLaren host and embrace a technological world similar to that of NASA scientists. This world is one of constant innovation that includes the intricate testing of the smallest of technological alteration to the body of the Formula One car or to its internal workings. Minute alterations are introduced, tested and re-tested in conditions that (mirror) the reality of race day. McLaren’s world is one of real-time data collection, data modelling and analytics. McLaren operate in an environment where ‘if you don’t know what will happen if you make a change, then how can you be sure it’s worth changing’. The mantra is quite simple, ‘innovate, test, re-test’. In essence, we see a model of informed decision-making and evidence-based practice as opposed to working on myths and hunches. However, having the wherewithal, technology and financial clout to operationalise such a philosophy is something else. Park’s world is one where the (aspiring) philosophy may be similar but the ability to operationalise such an approach is more challenging. Needless to say, Park has tried to instil the scientific, nee clinical, approach to engineering and mechanics that surrounds the McLaren garages; men in clean white coats as opposed to oily overalls who are precious about cleanliness, creating an environment where dust is a bacteria that may impact performance. The boathouses of the RYA have never been cleaner! It could also be claimed that motor sports are more about the car than say sailing is about the boat. However, both Park and McGrath claim that there is a need to embrace the symbiotic relationship that exists between the athlete and the machine. Similarly, the argument that it is all about the car was (slightly) dispelled with McLaren’s approach to athlete development. MacLaren adopt a holistic programme of skill development, health and wellbeing, fitness and mental energy for their drivers. The testing and simulation includes the testing, monitoring and development of the driver and the support staff. The innovation here is holistic and symbiotic. However, the main innovation is a philosophy that affords people time and resources to be able to innovate.

Nesti:
Very clever, very clever indeed! So who was the bright spark that decided to put two incredibly different sports together at this point in the conference? One takes place on water, uses wind and is arguably the oldest form of transport known to mankind. The other is loud, brash, flash and full of cash! Or so it all appears to those who judge the world on appearances alone…. In fact, as this session demonstrated, the activities of the RYA sailing and McClaren motorsport teams share much in common. Attention to detail in both camps sounds like something close to organisational obsessive compulsive disorder! But then, getting near to, but not beyond the limit of extreme behaviour is common to all top performing organisations.

Stephen Park and Geoff McGrath also spoke about the value of innovation, the need to keep ahead of the opposition. They explained that creativity, not novelty for novelty’s sake, was the key to their success. How did they do this? By giving responsibility and constantly measuring for evidence of impact. That’s impact that that makes things better, not impact that makes things different! It sometimes sounded as though working for these two individuals would be simultaneously remarkably empowering and incredibly scary! Or as existential psychologists would have it… lots of freedom and plenty of anxiety. This is the best psychological state for optimum performance as long as the environment is a supportive one underpinned by sound values. Away from the detail about the details of how these issues are addressed, it was clear from both speakers that they fully recognised the importance of providing the best culture in their teams. This was a thoroughly refreshing hour or so for those of us who argue constantly against the either/or scenarios presented at second and third rate organisations. Both of these teams and their leadership have avoided these false dichotomies but have not opted for a safe middle ground. What we heard was that they passionately support their staff who commit fully to the team and they (quite logically and morally) feel able to deal ruthlessly with those who hold something of themselves back.

Gosh, engineers and performance directors with heart. Whatever next? Coaches with accountancy qualifications and degrees in astrophysics!

Richardson:
Talking of accountants or number crunchers, the last session takes us back over the pond to two of the United States’ leading sports business minds. Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland A’s is joined by RC Buford, General Manager of the San Antonio Spurs. We are reminded that Billy has recently been immortalised by Brad Pitt on the silver screen as he plays out Beane’s experiences as the man who fought the collosals of the baseball world on a shoestring budget. The founding father of statistical analysis in sport is more that a number cruncher. Beane is famed for picking up unwanted and sometimes unloved players based on their ability to get to first base or their walk to strike ratio or various other obscure but measurable essential functions of baseball performance. In essence, Beane is similar to Peters in that he was taking the emotion out of the decision-making process. Stripping everything back to logic and dismissing the romanticism that surrounded certain ‘glamour’ players and the scepticism, doubt or baggage that plagued so called ‘has been’ players. Beane’s strategic wisdom was based on a sound business model that was alien to high performance sport. He just realised that he could win (more) with due diligence, care and attention to detail. RC Buford is similar in that he wants to win in sport and in business. He portrays a confidence that has given rise to the Spurs recent successes and what appears to be an underlying requisite trait to leave nothing to chance. RC does however, recognise that Basketball is not baseball and that basketball is a far more complex and dynamic sport and does not lend itself (explicitly) to statistical analysis. Sure, there are statistics in basketball, but it is also an emotionally charged, transient game that is a hostage to a multitude of complex and personal interactions over a period of highly intense involvement. Both Beane and RC are moving towards their next career chapters. It would appear that both are now championing the notion of athlete/player care as the next frontier in high performance sport. Importantly, no matter how you recruit your players you need to manage their health when they are with you. From a business sense, this suggests value for money, look after your assets. Today’s high performance athlete needs looking after. We find ourselves back in Andy Barr, Hakim Chalabi and Gerry Ramogida territory. The requirement to ensure that performance is prolonged and ‘the numbers stack up’ is to spend some time looking after the athletes that you have.

Nesti:
And so to the finale! What was I saying about a future with coaches who are as comfortable with figures as they are with feelings? Well, in this session we were treated to the stories of Billy Beane and RC Burford who had quite a few things to say that differed from one another and some very important elements that were very similar. The most important of these was that each emphasised that long established practices from the world of business could be used to bring great advantages in player recruitment in sport. Although they acknowledged that some sports lent themselves to these practices more easily than others, the general principle was that careful use of hard data could give real advantages that other competitors often overlooked. Especially in top level professional sport there exists a market value for players’ that is influenced and shaped by a type of mass psychology. Media perceptions, activities of agents and views of the fans are just some of the factors that can dramatically increase or decrease a player’s value. Sometimes these valuations are out of line with reality! More precisely they may be the result of short term achievements, collective success by being in a strong team, or even luck. And the famed scout’s eye can sometimes see things beyond the human eye that maybe only agents can see!

Of course these things happen in even the best top 100 businesses, but the aim is to reduce their frequency. And when you are not one of the big players the need to do this, to better manage risk, is even greater. In this we were fortunate to hear from practitioners in sport who had skilfully integrated the models of business to help them to join the top table where waste seems to be more accepted and even expected! Although we were hearing about the activities of two highly successful managers in sport, it would have been nice for some of our politicians to have been in the room. Maybe if BB and RCB put themselves up for election we will see less waste and more focused use of our precious resources. It can’t be a bad thing that Brad Pitt wants to play you in a film, although I was always more of a Clint Eastwood man myself.

Richardson:
I’m sure Clint would be privileged to play you fella! So what have we learnt today. Yet again we’ve been privileged to listen to the reality of working in high performance environments. The pressure to justify your existence and worth is forever heightened and it would appear that people want evidence to reinforce this. Perhaps we should take a step back for a few seconds, before we all rush out to create a spreadsheet that depicts ‘our value’ to the organisation. As Dr Steve Peters eloquently articulated, the athlete’s world is a complex and pressurised place that is visible to us all. We have learnt that the need to succeed is not just the preserve of the athlete. The owners, Directors, managers, chief executives and support staff are all affected by such hostile and volatile demands. We’ve learnt that we all have to live in this world together. The next frontier would appear to embrace athlete and people (or asset) care. The more we understand each other and the more the others understand this world then the more likely you are to live and work in harmony. Success will likely follow. See you next year. It’s been a pleasure…

Dave Richardson PhD is a specialist in youth development, organisational culture and community and the assistant director of the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University.

Mark Nesti is PhD is Reader in Sport Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University. He is the first chartered sport psychologist in the UK to utilise existential phenomenological psychology in work with elite sport performers.

The views of our regular columnists are independent, and as such do not represent those of Leaders in Performance.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
MARK NESTI:SPORT IS THE MIRROR OF SOCIETY…
PROZONE ANALYSIS: EFFICIENT RECRUITMENT – A JANUARY TRANSFER WINDOW ANALYSIS
DAVE RICHARDSON: ALL BARR ONE!

With the January transfer window fast approaching, Prozone analysis is being utilised to supplement the intuition of scouts and managers as clubs look to increase their due diligence and accountability with regard to player assets and player trading; applying to football the approach to recruitment enshrined in the Moneyball philosophy with a similar level of effectiveness.

Analyzing the impact that January transfer activity has had on league position within the Premier League over the last five years, there are several trends which come to light. While there is a general trend towards January recruitment having a negative influence on team performance, when we look at the statistics for clubs in the bottom four at the start of the window we see strong improvements in results, the average win percentage rising from 19% to 27% post-window. Interestingly, the teams which appear to gain the most from recruitment in the New Year are those who bring in between three and four players, a figure which suggests that, given the delicately balanced nature of many squads, there may be an optimum level of recruitment for the mid-season transfer window.

Looking at the data more closely, what becomes apparent is the correlation between effectiveness in recruitment and Premier League survival. Fulham, one of the teams in the bottom four at the end of January last season, used newly recruited players for a higher percentage (51%) of their remaining games than their bottom 4 counterparts and survived, whereas Birmingham City and West Ham United – both ultimately relegated – each gave a lesser percentage of match time to the January recruits.

Having gathered a wealth of data for the bottom four teams over the past five years, Prozone can begin to assess the potential impact of new recruits on team performance at a much greater level of detail. For example, when we look at the most significant attacking variables for those teams striving to maintain their position in the upper echelons of the game, we can see that the figures for shooting accuracy, the number of goals, total shots and shots inside the box all increase post-January. Similarly, defensive statistics such as the average numbers of tackles and possessions gained also rise, data which suggests a marked improvement in performance following the opportunity for recruitment which is presented by the transfer window.

While the varying levels of financial freedom between Premier League clubs determine just how expansive their respective recruitment policies can be, the data indicates that the business done in January has the most profound effect on those clubs struggling at the foot of the table. What this suggests is that reactionary short-term planning can have an instantly positive effect on performance, although that should not be seen as a guarantor of improved results over a sustained period of time.

What is able to be concluded is that, by optimising transfer strategies with tools such as Prozone RECRUITER, teams can identify an optimum level of business for themselves and then qualify the effect those new players have on the team’s performance over the remainder of the season. Empirical approaches to recruitment may not be as firmly ingrained in football as they are in the world of Moneyball, but statistical analysis is fast becoming a vital tool for clubs looking to enhance the due diligence process around player trading as they re-shape themselves for the future.

Prozone offer the most accurate performance analysis service in world of football. They do this by working alongside some of the leading clubs, organisations and coaches to create performance analysis systems that meet the very highest requirements of the modern game. Their world leading systems track the player movements every 10th of a second and give detailed technical and physical data on over 2,500 actions in every game. This unrivalled level of objectivity and precision is why they are the world’s only independently validated performance analysis system. It is also the reason why 75% of clubs in the Premier League and Championship work with Prozone and in total over 100 clubs, leagues and federations world-wide now benefit from their leading performance analysis service.

The views of our regular columnists are independent, and as such do not represent those of Leaders in Performance.

THIS MONTH’S ARTICLES:
LEADERS IN PERFORMANCE DAY TWO: MIND, BODY AND CARE…
DAVE RICHARDSON: ALL BARR ONE!
MARK NESTI: SPORT IS THE MIRROR OF SOCIETY…