Momentum: Game-Changer or Unicorn?

An old baseball coach in Texas once told me "the two most important things in baseball are Mo and Po............Momentum and Potential."

Jill Ellis, the coach of the United States women’s soccer team, also believes strongly in momentum.  She kept and her players discussed it over and over again late Tuesday night after the team’s 13-0 win over Thailand in the opening competition of the 2019 World Cup.

With the win and the domination of their opponent, Ellis and her team ambitions are to win the World Cup, nothing less.  The team understands the importance of maintain a rhythm and flow that fosters confidence.  They wanted to set the right tone and mood.  

To that end, she was delighted to see her team score goals at will; she wanted as many players as possible to experience success.

“Those feelings are what can help you get through the tournament,” Ellis said.

Putting the Pedal to the Metal

“With the score line tonight, we have to look at the group stage as every goal counts,” star team member Alex Morgan said. “It was important for us to continue to go.”

“As a coach, I don’t find it my job to harness my players and rein them in, because this is what they’ve dreamed about, and this is a world championship,” Ellis said. “When you have a deluge of goals like that, it’s important.”

Goal differential in the group stage at any World Cup — the spread between a team’s goals scored and allowed — is the first tiebreaker for placing in groups ahead of the knockout stage.  Team USA's 13 goals were both a statement of intent and skill but also important in getting through the knockout round.

“For us, the goals matter,” said Carli Lloyd, who scored the last one and celebrated with a quick fist pump. “In this tournament, it’s important. So we just have to keep that throttle down.”

But mindset is as important as goals and statistics.  The winning culture and the atmosphere this team has been fostering values momentum, flow and self-esteem. Ellis sees this as a clear competitive advantage. She strives to spread these feelings throughout the team. 

As she prepared to send bench players into the game once the game was seemingly out of hand, Ellis told them specifically not to take their feet off the gas. She wanted more of her attacking players to “get hot,” she said.

At that point that point in the game, there were still several players appearing on the World Cup stage for the first time, and Ellis, wanted them to get comfortable on the World Cup stage as quickly as possible.

Young Rose Lavelle, scored twice in her first World Cup match.  “It’s really about making sure Rose is doing her thing,” Ellis said. “She is unique. She’s obviously a very skillful player, and you don’t ever want to limit that.”

Ellis afterward called the last goal “massive” for Lloyd, the MVP at the 2015 World Cup, as she continues to adjust to playing a supporting role off the bench.

Another young player, Mallory Pugh, who came in late in the second half, was in tears after scoring her first goal in her first World Cup game.

“You forget these moments are massive moments for players,” Ellis said.

Thanks to her aggressive approach to her substitutions, Ellis had three more players on her bench who felt the adrenalin rush of being involved in a World Cup goal.   Collectively, the entire team may feel that they can score again every time they step on the field.

“A lot of this is about building momentum,” Ellis said. “The reality is, we also believe we’ve got more to do, no doubt. We’re going to stay humble, and we’ll go back to work.”

So, Is Momentum a Thing?

Momentum is the feeling that accumulated success will lead to greater success. We want to be able to count on continued success, if at all possible.

Pressure, stress, competition, change, adversity all are a shock to the our systems. Our brains do not like being shocked. We like stability, we like the status quo. If our systems are shocked, we want to return to equilibrium as quickly as possible. 

When we reestablish the status quo again, we hope to stay there. We seek a return to stability and equilibruim. If we sense stability, we do all we can to stay there.  Our brains try to predict and control, for the purpose of returning to a stable place. We look for signal that our environment has returned to status quo, to some sort of stability.

Though the concept is debatable, some people, including sports psychologists argue that momentum is a thing, a literal game-changer, that has the potential to determine future outcomes, as well.  A way to create calmness and confidence.

Terms like momentum, “winning streak,” or “hot hand” (one that’s made many shots in a row) are thrown around casually to describe an experience sports fans and athletes know intuitively: When we feel like we’re winning, winning seems to come easier, whether that’s in the form of sinking multiple buckets in a row or winning a string of important games or even championships.

“What we often observe in athletes is that there are positive and negative changes in their mental states and behaviors when moving toward or away from the desired outcome,” says University of Groningen sports psychologist Ruud J.R. den Hartigh.  

Many scientists studying momentum have cast doubt on whether those changes in mental states are based on any actual statistical patterns of winning — a valid objection.  But den Hartigh and other sports psychologists argue that it’s the feeling that counts, so much that it really can lead to more wins.

Does Momentum Builds Within and Between Games?

Any sequence of positive results or outcomes we achieve, are easy to interpret as evidence of a positive trajectory toward success, suggesting “building momentum.”

Momentum can also be defined as the movement of a team or athlete toward or away from a desired outcome —that can be making a basket, making multiple baskets in a row, winning one game, or winning a crucial game in a playoff series. That means there is positive and negative momentum, both of which can affect the way teams play within a game and across games in a series.

In his research on rowing teams, den Hartigh found that positive momentum (taking the lead in a race) leads to more unified movement within a team, while teams are less coordinated and put in less effort when they have negative momentum (falling behind in a race). Similarly, his research on psychological momentum across rowing matches, published in 2016, showed that athletes with positive momentum were generally less sensitive to negative momentum in later races.

“So, momentum all has to do with that perception of moving toward or away from the desired outcome, and whether that outcome is still reachable,” says den Hartigh.  That perception, as others have shown, has major impacts on how athletes actually play. It is the mindset that counts.

How Momentum Builds

In his research, University of Maryland kinesiology professor and psychological momentum expert Seppo E. Iso-Ahola, Ph.D. has found that teams with momentum perform better because of the confidence that winning brings. Confidence, Iso-Ahola found, plays a critical role in how athletes operate.

“It would be a mistake to think, after winning a game, that we now have a momentum that will carry us through the next game and ultimately, to the championship."

”High-level athletic performance, he says, “occurs at the intersection of neurology and psychology, with specific motor movements (e.g., 3-point throws in basketball) being executed nonconsciously and automatically without any conscious interference (e.g., doubts).”

An athlete performing at their peak are skills at preventing intrusive thoughts from getting in the way, and that’s where momentum comes in.

Momentum, says Iso-Ahola, “facilitates nonconscious processing and automatic execution of athletic (motor) movements that have been rehearsed over thousands and thousands of hours.”  In other words, the confidence that comes with momentum makes it easier for athletes to do what they are trained to do without having to think about it. In his research on momentum, Iso-Ahola has shown that the most successful people are those who have more frequent occurrences of momentum and can make them last longer. In a basketball game, this is the team that has the most and longest scoring runs; in a series, it’s the team that wins many consecutive games often. He points out, crucially, that “between-momentums build on within-momentums” — a reminder to focus on momentum within a game.

A Mindset Leads to Winning

For a player, team, or fan, the feeling of momentum comes down to the belief that there’s been a certain pattern of success, whether in the form of a shooting streak or accumulated wins in a series. Take Steph Curry’s performance in Game 3 of the 2019 Finals against the Toronto Raptors, scoring 12 of the Warriors’ first 14 points, for example: To fans, it appears that a player like Steph Curry can get the “hot hand."

”But a statistician might disagree. Who’s to say that making six, or ten, or 25 shots in a row makes one “hot”? “People have been looking at the hot hand for more than three decades now and there is no clear agreement about whether it actually exists.”

“People have been looking at the hot hand for more than three decades now and there is no clear agreement about whether it actually exists,” psychological scientist Matthew Welsh, Ph.D., says. Welsh, a senior research fellow at the Adelaide Decision Lab, studies heuristics and biases in decision making, and the “hot hand” is a bias he’s spent a lot of time studying.

The hot hand is “the idea that, at certain point in time, players are ‘hot’,” he says. “That is, that their skill level is, temporarily, raised above its normal level.” Though its existence is widely believed by fans, players, and coaches, the numbers remain inconclusive.

The classic paper on momentum, published in 1985 by psychologists at Stanford and Cornell University, dismissed the idea of a “hot hand” in basketball as “a general misconception of chance.”  Their controlled shooting experiments on Cornell basketball players showed no correlation between the outcomes of successive shots.  People who believe the “hot hand” exists, they argued, don’t actually understand what chance means, and so they think they can find patterns in “even short random sequences.”  The way Welsh puts it, there was “no evidence of anything other than random patterns arising from long term shooting patterns."

”There’s some evidence that it may exist in other sports, but basketball, says Welsh, seems particularly ill-suited for it.  Factors like alternating start times, multiple substitutions, defensive changes, many time-outs, and the fact that “hot” players tend to be double-teamed, he says, might obscure the pattern, if it exists at all.  Nevertheless, the conviction in momentum remains, and that’s because “statistical” momentum isn’t equivalent to “psychological” momentum.  Whether a player is numerically “hot” doesn’t matter as long as they think that they’re hot — a feeling that Welsh credits to humans’ “oversensitive pattern sensing mechanisms.”

Teams Can Take Advantage of Momentum

Though the numbers may not support it, momentum is real, at least psychologically, and teams can use it to their advantage. But as den Hartigh warns, “it is important to keep in mind that the relation between momentum and performance is not always straightforward.”

“In the end, it is momentum that makes the difference in who wins and who loses."

”When teams have positive momentum, they tend to relax a little because “the advantage seems to become comfortable,” he says, and this gives the opponent an opportunity to claw back. Negative momentum, meanwhile, can also fire up a team. But reminding us that momentum is all about movement toward or away from a desired outcome, he points out that performance seems to drop once that outcome seems impossible to reach.

Iso-Ahola likewise warns of the dangers of coasting with advice worthy of Steve Kerr: “No backing off, but instead, pouring in as many points as possible, and giving no mercy to the opponent,” he says. “That is capitalizing on momentum. Each competitive situation is its own performance event for which momentum has to be separately created.”

Excerpts from:

https://www.inverse.com/article/56428-raptors-take-lead-in-nba-finals-maybe-it-s-momentum

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/sports/usa-thailand-world-cup.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190613?campaign_id=2&instance_id=10070&segment_id=14234&user_id=5b07f13b07a1d067ce0262161ce7c9c1&regi_id=279697130613

I Hate to Break It to You, but You've Got the Yips

Some call it "a pressure-induced involuntary muscle movement."   Others call it "a loss of control of your shot."  In most circles, it's called the yips.  

As you may be aware or you may have experienced, the yips are the loss of fine motor skills in athletes. The condition seems to occur suddenly and without an apparent trigger, cause or adequate explanation.  It usually appears in mature athletes with years of experience.  It has been poorly understood and we have, to this point, no known treatment or therapy. Though rare, athletes affected by the yips sometimes recover their ability, which may require an overall or partial change in technique. However, many at the highest level of their sport are forced to abandon their livelihood.  Some are still at or near the peak of their careers.

The yips manifest themselves as muscle twitches, jumps, shakes, jitters, flinches, staggers, and jerks. The condition occurs most often in sports which athletes are required to perform a single precise and well-timed action such as in baseball, golf, tennis, bowling, darts, and cricket. 

There are many suggestions that it is a muscular problem or neurological issue.  However, technical solutions that focus on major changes in technique or motion are largely ineffective.

On a less severe but more frequent note, many athletes go through slumps, some that last longer than others.   For example, in basketball, jump shooters and free-throw shooters often go through periods of time where their shooting percentages decrease significantly or their shooting becomes streaky, or both.  In either case, their ability to successfully make their shots has been altered.  Likewise, tennis players can lose their ability to serve in a flash.  Golfers lose their ability to putt, or drive the ball off a tee.    

Whether you are experience the yips, or you are in a slump, it is clear to me that even a minor shooting, serving, putting, or pitching problem, has its source and/or is quickly exacerbated and maintained by an athlete's internal dialogue; their self-talk.

In my last blogpost, I talked about strengthening your mental core.  Your self-talk or internal dialogue is an important part of your mental core.  

If you take a look at slumps in putting and teeing-off in golf, shooting in basketball, or serving in tennis, self-talk or internal dialogue is crucial in understanding the beginning, middle and end of a slump, or more problematically, the development of the yips. 

The most successful athletes are often the best mentally conditioned.  Their self-talk is either positive or non-existent.   As I and many others involved in sports and performance psychology know, self-talk affects performance.  During competition or practice sessions, the ability of an athlete to eliminate harsh or negative self-talk can improve performance dramatically.  

Unfortunately, many athletes do not or cannot quiet their inner dialogue, particularly their inner critic.  Excessive self-talk, whether positive or negative, is like having fans (or one particular fan) in the stadium, the arena, or in the gallery yelling at you at various intervals right before and during your shot or serve.  A fan who wants to disrupt you might yell:  "Miss it!"    A supportive fan might yell:  "You can do this!"   Encountered at the wrong time (i.e., at the moment you are executing your task) either can disrupt. 

Your inner dialogue during competition, might sound like this: 

"I don't think I can make this."  "If I miss this, my coach is gonna bench me."  "This is a lot of pressure."  "It's all on me."  "What if I miss?"  "I should have practiced this shot more."  "Come on, you've got this!"  "Would you just relax?!"  

Now, your self-talk is not necessarily intended or designed to disrupt.  Often, as with a supportive fan, it is usually intended to calm you or focus you on the task at hand.  It might be meant to provide encouragement or motivation.  Unfortunately, like an enthusiastic parent yelling instructions (or encouragement) to you from the stands, the net effect is that it disrupts your concentration and focus.  Over time, it erodes your self-confidence because the message is that you need last-second help, encouragement and instruction.  It's not a good message, really.  More importantly, it interferes with deep muscle learning and disrupts muscle memory.  Self-talk can undermine all the hard work that you have put in.  

With these types of messages, your brain is interrupting your shot, and your muscles are saying, "Wait, what?"   Because of this sudden emergency interruption, your muscles are saying "I must be about to do something wrong, otherwise, why would my brain be talking to me right now?" 

So, while you are busy talking to yourself, your muscles are reacting to your inner message by either trying to adjust, overcontrol, restrict, or over-correct your shot.  In most circumstances, you will ever so slightly slow down, stop or inhibit your motion  (shorting the shot) or over-correct (by shooting long).  Once you begin to overcorrect during the shot, your regular motion is affected.   Sure, you might still make the shot, but the probability has been changed, often dramatically.  

With enough disruptive self-talk occurring on a regular basis in practice and during competition, an athlete's ability to effectively develop and firmly establish smooth fine motor movements is compromised.  Self-talk affects the encoding of muscle memory through a series of micro-disruptions. With a sufficient stream of micro-disruptions, small disruptions of fine motor movements occur, resulting in an inefficient, and often erratic set of fine motor movements.   As your motor movements are affected, so is your comfort with your shot.  Any ongoing discomfort begins to erode your self-confidence.  Eventually, your self-talk produces self-doubt which causes you to not only question yourself but to question the fine motor movements themselves.

That's the way you forget how to shoot, putt, throw, kick, serve.  It's your inner critic thats attacking your muscle memory.  This constant internal criticism can erode what you have spend hours trying to perfect.  It's a type of waterboarding.  Death by a thousand cuts.

The more that I work with athletes and look closely at their self-talk, it appears that self-talk is prevalent enough to cause physiological disruption in fine motor movements.  At first, it affects individual shots, causing enough disruption in the athlete to miss any particular shot.  If the athlete's self-talk is disruptive enough and frequent enough, it causes shooting slumps; and, if an athlete's self-talk is chronic enough will create a more severe disorder, the yips.

My experience is that many, if not all, athletes have, at least, a very mild case of the yips.  With enough practice, most athletes can overcome harsh, negative, and disruptive self-talk.  However, when self-talk is at it's most disruptive, it can affect even the most rehearsed shot.  

In fact, I contend that any missed shot has, at some level, been disrupted by self-talk.  A missed shot becomes a slump through increasingly negative self-talk, followed by increased self-consciousness about subsequent misses.  The yips are simply the extreme consequences of extreme self-consciousness.  At its worst and most frequent, negative self-talk could "metastasize" into the yips. 

So, what can you do about your early stage yips?  

Be aware that your self-talk is disrupting your deep muscle learning and memory.    Don't let the yips get to you.  Want to make your shot consistently, or serve with confidence?  Want to avoid slumps?  Quiet your self-talk.  Shut your inner critic down.  Your muscle memory will thank you for it.     

For more information about strengthening your mental core, self-talk, mindfulness, mental imagery, sports psychology, etc. download Mindfuel, the mental conditioning app:  http://appmc.hn/1aekztQ. 

The Three C's of Team and Organizational Wisdom

"Compete with your competitors, but collaborate with your customers, and cooperate with your colleagues."

Competition.  You see it at home in children.  It's called sibling rivalry.  It is natural.  You see it at school with students.  The school system instills it in us and reinforces it.  At work, bosses insist on it.  Competition is the name of the game.  "Winning" as Charlie Sheen calls it.  I see it in the workplace.  It's everywhere.  It particularly comes out when resources are scarce.  I win, you lose.  It is the law of the jungle.  It gets played out in every company there is.

Unfortunately, my experience as a corporate consultant has been that in the workplace, this type of "winner take all, all the time" mentality is very destructive and is likely to keep your company from succeeding and being profitable.  I have seen it time and time again.

Why?  Because the competitive behavior that has been learned so well is difficult to tone down, even when it is necessary for success.  In order for companies to be successful they have to rein in their competitive streaks, at least internally with customers and colleagues. But, most bosses, businesses and organizations don't believe it...until it is too late.    

So, several years ago, I developed a game, "Pass and Shoot," that I play with teams during team training and retreats, etc.  This game is derived from the Prisoner's Dilemma game that was popular years ago.  At the beginning of the game, the instructions are to win.  The way to win is through trust, cooperation, communication, information sharing.  Teams can win if they are willing to cooperate and communicate, rather than being naturally adversarial and overly competitive.  However, once the players' competitive juices (and a little paranoia) start to flow, it is very difficult to control.  Players in the game with do whatever is necessary to avoid cooperation and will find it more important to block another team from looking good, rather than work for a win-win scenario (which is what the stated objective of the game is).  In most instances, participants would bet on their instinct to mistrust and protect.  They would rather see the entire ship go down than let down their guard and collaborate.  

"Pass and shoot" and other games of this type prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that competitive instincts are very difficult to control and can be the downfall of most teams if one is not aware of the pitfalls and consequences.

So, what is to be done?  First of all understand that the competitive nature of humans must be acknowledged as well as harnessed and directed at the competition outside the company not within the company or with customers.  Secondly, make sure that people learn how to collaborate with customers to determine what they need and how they need it delivered. After all, you are there for the customer and the customer is buying your product or service with their money. Thirdly, it is important to curb your competitive nature when working with colleagues. You need each other to succeed.  Lastly, though it is difficult to do, it is more important that you work toward a common goal than it is to be seen as an overly competitive, stab you in the back person who loses control, steps on others, assumes the worst of others and can't "play in the sandbox."

So, like I said, remember:  Be competitive with competitors, but be collaborative with customers and cooperative with colleagues.  Doing anything else will jeopardize your team and create barriers to success.

What do you think?