Exactly what is it that sets elite athletes apart from their competition? Is it talent, an innate ability combined with superhuman reflexes? Take Muhammed Ali: his success is often attributed to almost god-like reflexes and speed. But were these seeming lightning quick reflexes truly as they seemed? Research into the anticipatory skills of elite athletes suggests that it may not be quite this simple.
Studies conducted by Brunel University and the University of Hong Kong showed that when watching tapes of opponents, brain activity in areas associated with observation and prediction was observed. Not only this, but it was observed faster in top athletes than that of average ones. This ability has been recorded in a number of athletes of a number of different disciplines; top tennis players are able to anticipate serve types without even seeing the actual serve taking place, and can estimate the serve position based on only seeing a few feet of the actual flight of the ball. The same is true with baseball players and pitch types and position.
Based on eye-tracking technology, we know that athletes predict what’s coming next by focusing on cues in the movement pattern of their opponents, and this skill becomes better with practice. Whilst the eye movements of novices are inefficient, wild and unfocused, those of experts are extremely precise. Across a number of different sports, highly trained athletes demonstrate similar “visual search strategies”. Their eyes focus on fewer targets, jump around less, and they stay focused for longer periods of time than do the eyes of novices.
So these athletes are able to quickly take in this information, but how do they process it? Surely conscious thought is too slow? It must be “reflexes” -- instinctive moves made without conscious thought behind them. However, it seems this is not the case.
To take an analogy from a book I am currently reading ('Bounce', by Matthew Syed – a very interesting book, I might add; it deals with the nature of supposed talent in athletes): “In 1984 Desmond Douglas, the greatest-ever UK table tennis player, was placed in front of a screen containing a series of touch-sensitive pads at the University of Brighton. He was told that the pad would light up in a random sequence and that his task was to touch the relevant pad with the index finger of his favoured hand as soon as he could, before waiting for the next pad to light up … After 5 minutes, the researcher returned. He announced that Douglas's reactions were the slowest in the entire team … slower even than the team manager.”
Douglas Desmond was universally considered to have the fastest reactions in table tennis. What then was it that accounted for his seemingly world class reaction speed if it wasn't, in fact, world class reflexes? This goes back to what I was discussing previously. Without the physical cues to use to anticipate future movements, he was left to rely only on his less-than-ordinary reflexes. Clearly then, reflexes don't even come into the equation. How exactly then do we process the visual cues to make split second decisions? The implication is that something has been encoded into memory. So now the question changes from “do athletes have superior reflexes” to “do athletes have superior memory”.
We can look to chess for our answers to this question. Grandmasters have been known to be able to play simultaneous games of chess whilst blindfolded. Surely then, this is a feat of memory far beyond what an average person is capable of. But is it truly? When faced with a chess board mid-game, experts are able to place every piece on the board, whilst the average person can place maybe 4 or 5. However, it the pieces are arranged randomly, with no bearing to an actual game, the expert fares no better than the average person.
This is an example of what is known as “chunking”. In order to deal with information more efficiently, we divide it into smaller chunks of information that are more manageable to process. This then brings us on to what is known as “sport-specific chunking”, and this is the method that is hypothesised to be used by elite athletes to process the visual cues they take in. Rather than looking at individual visual cues and looking at the relationship between them, a top athlete recognises familiar patterns that (s)he has seen before, and reacts accordingly.
The point I am trying to make is that even someone who thinks they have slow reflexes can develop quick reactions, as reaction time has nothing to do with reflexes; it's all about information processing, pattern recognition and anticipatory skills. Rather than reacting to your opponents movements, it's about predicting the moves he makes before he actually makes them. Maybe Ali was not simply a superman with insane reflexes, but a master of foresight and prediction.
Sources:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/178675.php
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...6902920000008X
http://web.me.com/pw70/ACE_lab/Publi...0al%20JSEP.pdf
http://dspace.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/1343
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_%28psychology%29
Just a bit of food for thought for you guys. I'm not saying fast reflexes are moot, but that they aren't the whole story. Though it may be that aren't part of the story at all! I'm still fairly new to the sport, but I thought you might want to hear an alternative viewpoint.
Studies conducted by Brunel University and the University of Hong Kong showed that when watching tapes of opponents, brain activity in areas associated with observation and prediction was observed. Not only this, but it was observed faster in top athletes than that of average ones. This ability has been recorded in a number of athletes of a number of different disciplines; top tennis players are able to anticipate serve types without even seeing the actual serve taking place, and can estimate the serve position based on only seeing a few feet of the actual flight of the ball. The same is true with baseball players and pitch types and position.
Based on eye-tracking technology, we know that athletes predict what’s coming next by focusing on cues in the movement pattern of their opponents, and this skill becomes better with practice. Whilst the eye movements of novices are inefficient, wild and unfocused, those of experts are extremely precise. Across a number of different sports, highly trained athletes demonstrate similar “visual search strategies”. Their eyes focus on fewer targets, jump around less, and they stay focused for longer periods of time than do the eyes of novices.
So these athletes are able to quickly take in this information, but how do they process it? Surely conscious thought is too slow? It must be “reflexes” -- instinctive moves made without conscious thought behind them. However, it seems this is not the case.
To take an analogy from a book I am currently reading ('Bounce', by Matthew Syed – a very interesting book, I might add; it deals with the nature of supposed talent in athletes): “In 1984 Desmond Douglas, the greatest-ever UK table tennis player, was placed in front of a screen containing a series of touch-sensitive pads at the University of Brighton. He was told that the pad would light up in a random sequence and that his task was to touch the relevant pad with the index finger of his favoured hand as soon as he could, before waiting for the next pad to light up … After 5 minutes, the researcher returned. He announced that Douglas's reactions were the slowest in the entire team … slower even than the team manager.”
Douglas Desmond was universally considered to have the fastest reactions in table tennis. What then was it that accounted for his seemingly world class reaction speed if it wasn't, in fact, world class reflexes? This goes back to what I was discussing previously. Without the physical cues to use to anticipate future movements, he was left to rely only on his less-than-ordinary reflexes. Clearly then, reflexes don't even come into the equation. How exactly then do we process the visual cues to make split second decisions? The implication is that something has been encoded into memory. So now the question changes from “do athletes have superior reflexes” to “do athletes have superior memory”.
We can look to chess for our answers to this question. Grandmasters have been known to be able to play simultaneous games of chess whilst blindfolded. Surely then, this is a feat of memory far beyond what an average person is capable of. But is it truly? When faced with a chess board mid-game, experts are able to place every piece on the board, whilst the average person can place maybe 4 or 5. However, it the pieces are arranged randomly, with no bearing to an actual game, the expert fares no better than the average person.
This is an example of what is known as “chunking”. In order to deal with information more efficiently, we divide it into smaller chunks of information that are more manageable to process. This then brings us on to what is known as “sport-specific chunking”, and this is the method that is hypothesised to be used by elite athletes to process the visual cues they take in. Rather than looking at individual visual cues and looking at the relationship between them, a top athlete recognises familiar patterns that (s)he has seen before, and reacts accordingly.
The point I am trying to make is that even someone who thinks they have slow reflexes can develop quick reactions, as reaction time has nothing to do with reflexes; it's all about information processing, pattern recognition and anticipatory skills. Rather than reacting to your opponents movements, it's about predicting the moves he makes before he actually makes them. Maybe Ali was not simply a superman with insane reflexes, but a master of foresight and prediction.
Sources:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/178675.php
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...6902920000008X
http://web.me.com/pw70/ACE_lab/Publi...0al%20JSEP.pdf
http://dspace.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/1343
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_%28psychology%29
Just a bit of food for thought for you guys. I'm not saying fast reflexes are moot, but that they aren't the whole story. Though it may be that aren't part of the story at all! I'm still fairly new to the sport, but I thought you might want to hear an alternative viewpoint.
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