During the Leaders conference and in fact at many sporting gatherings there are many ideas, theories, presentations, debates and anecdotes shared but who’s opinion matters the most? We consistently look for the edge by way of science, psychology, research, best practice visits, following the vogue of today’s winners, and trying to ascertain then steal what those at the very top are up to. However is it not of paramount importance that we clarify who the elite are, define them, trace their development, analyse their present, deconstruct their roads to excellence, the motives and drivers to stay on these roads and not only to then stay on them, but to remain at the head of all oncoming traffic for the foreseeable future? David Horrocks, an elite performance consultant and Leaders delegate from the 2011 sessions, is an active researcher in this very field. This insightful article gives us a snapshot of the development of the elite athlete, the people and support network around the maintenance stage athlete, the preparation habits and ultimately the mindset and attitude of the elite performer going into competition. The article also provides interesting thought for analysts, coaches and athletes alike in the quest to push to the very top and a snapshot of the methods that may facilitate such progress.
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)
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
