It’s a noticeable thing that generally, and In sport especially, watching a video of ourselves in action will often have a considerable effect on how we can best start to perform that action in a different way. Uncomfortable as it might seem at first, we often take the opportunity, when it’s thus presented, to become more objective and analytical about the “us” we are watching. It’s a very good way of honing skills, because within the video facility is the means of slowing down the film, in order to break down the various elements of a complex action into each link in the chain.
As a coaching aid within sport, video is a massively useful tool, both for players and coaches – and an astute and watchful observer can pick up an enormous amount of useful information about skills performance and also competition strategies. However, powerful as video might be, it is still just an audio-visual experience. In sensual terms it is 2 dimensional. Its abiding effectiveness lies in the fact that most of us within sport are visually oriented – i.e. we primarily work best at coding up visual experience and re-presenting it to ourselves in a similar fashion.
Realities
However, we are not robots – each and every one of us is unique. Not everyone is primarily visually oriented. In sensual terms we each make meaning of our experience in different ways, and across the sensual spectrum we each code up our experience in different ways as well. We are very good at recognising patterns, and this makes generalising a straightforward and common human propensity. We’ll regularly say that Fred is LIKE John, Ellie SOUNDS like Pam, and William BEHAVES similarly to Pete. In the detail though, there is no generalisation because Fred may look like John but he sounds and behaves in a completely different way – as do we all.
So, given the uniqueness of our various realities, is there a facility where we can add more sensual dimensions into observing our performance?
On the outside, the use of virtual reality has been a real advance. Starting with flight simulators right up to now, with adaptive motion software devices such as the Wii, we are able to replicate – and within that adapt – a whole range of actions, motions and emotions.
On the inside, visualization is widely used as a creative and re-creative mental facility for how we react to changes in our reality.
The Experiment
I’ve always had a fascination with running experiments with some of the players I coach – with throwing balls at targets with eyes shut being the most memorable!
Recently I've been exploring the possibility of a player being able to mentally step out of what they are doing to become a ‘virtual observer’ of their own action – whilst at the same time performing that action. Although it is still relying on a lot of the Visual elements, I had an idea that something else useful would come along – not for everyone, but perhaps for certain players.
Whilst working with batsmen in cricket, I’ve invited them to find out whether they could project into an imaginary fielder standing close enough to be able to observe them as they bat. We used a bowling machine so that the ball delivered was consistent with one particular stroke in response. The players – already accomplished batsmen - were asked to play at between 6 to 10 balls received.
The range of reactions and their various abilities to “do the projecting” was as varied as I had expected. At one end of the scale the player said he couldn’t do it at all, or so he felt. (Incidentally, this lad finds visualization difficult and displayed the same characteristics in the “Eyes Shut Throwing” experiment some 3 years earlier!) At the other end of the scale, the player reported the following:-
“Not sure I did the watching bit very well, but I did notice a feeling that I seemed to be very tentative in what I was doing.”
Now it could be said that he was tentative because part of his attention was detached from concentrating on the ball. The thing is - in my view he didn't look tentative! It was his own conclusion.
However, what happened for him when we went back to him just playing normally - allowing full attention to be brought upon the approaching ball – was noticeably different.
Before the experiment he had been playing well – after the experiment AND his own INNER FEEDBACK, he played with much more authority and in a much more positive way. I hadn’t asked him to be less tentative and play in a more positive, assertive way. Tentative was his own description of what he felt he looked like – which made his inner adjusting process so immediate, ongoing and 100% effective. “Hard wired” is probably another way of describing it.
Given these criteria, could he have got this feedback any other way?
• This was a real-time experiment and a real-time response.
• The sensual information fed back was non-visual.
• It was his own information.
• Could a virtual simulator provide him with his own ‘2nd position’ observation.
• Could video provide the Kinaesthetic data as feedback.
Conclusion
This clearly works best with players with very good visualization and projection abilities. When it works, it works at lightning speed, and with immediate effect. By using the player’s inner resources, any cross-sense translation is their own - such as his virtually-observed Visual to an inner-Kinaesthetic. With this nothing is clouded by any coach’s interpretation or linguistic capabilities - nothing is 'lost in translation'. It could almost be described as ‘Clean Transformation’.
The experiment is an ongoing ‘Work in Progress’.
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