Train Smart, Play Smart comes to Swerve TTC

On Monday 21st July Brain-SPEC will deliver a workshop from the Train Smart, Play Smart series at Swerve TTC in Middlesbrough.
The workshop will focus on how to set effective goals and how to use your imagination to improve your performances.
Everybody is welcome and entry to the workshop is £10. Under 16s can have their parents sit in on the session free of charge. The workshop will start at 6:30pm so people are encouraged to arrive early and enjoy a tea or coffee in the cafe.

For directions to the venue check out their website HERE
For more information feel free to contact Brain-SPEC.

"Train Smart, Play Smart: Adding Quality to your Quantity" Workshops confirmed!

Bishop Auckland Table Tennis Club will be hosting two workshops looking how to improve your mental skills in order to make the most of every training session and bring your best performances into matches. The workshops will be on the 16th and 22nd of July at Bishop Barrington School, Bishop Auckland.
Entrance is £10 per person per session, discount is available if you are a Bishop Auckland TTC club member (Contact Matt Porter), or a Darlington Table Tennis Academy member (Contact Angela Simpson). Parents of players under the age of 16 are able to sit in on the session for free.

Spaces are limited so book early to avoid disappointment!
Book by contacting Brain-SPEC, Matt Porter (BATTC members) or Angela Simpson (DTTA members).

Host a seminar in England in July

Brain-SPEC will be on a rare trip to England in July, if your club is interested in hosting a seminar or two during that time, now is the time to get in touch.

Seminars will be tailored to suit the specific needs of the audience: things such as age, sport, playing level will be taken into account when creating the teaching plan. The seminar will focus on teaching the basics of some of the main mental skills: for example goal setting, imagery, relaxation, emotional control, self talk.

Prices are calculated per person and will vary depending on the size of the group. Opportunities are limited due to the short nature of the trip so get booking early to ensure your club can get the full benefit of a seminar.

Expert in a year: The challenge

A good friend of mine and table tennis coach Ben Larcombe has started a challenge...
to take a novice and turn them into an expert in the space of 1 year.
The way he has defined expert is "the top 1% of active players in the country" in English table tennis, where this project is based that means being ranked in the top 250 men in the country (with 25,000 registered members of the English Table Tennis Association).

Whether you agree with this definition of "expert" or not is not really the point. The point is: people at that level have been training many years, perhaps decades to reach that level, and are of a good standard. To get to that level in a year will be quite an achievement.

It will hopefully show the benefit and prosperity of efficient well-planned training or "Deliberate practice"- a concept talked a lot about in Matthew Syed's "Bounce", Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" and much scientific research over the past few decades. (I would highly recommend those books by the way- fantastic reads).

Brain-spec is proud to be accompanying Ben and his soon-to-be-expert Sam in their quest for success. As part of this process mental skills training will be given to supplement to coaching already being given and also consulting on how best to streamline the training being delivered.

This exciting project can be followed in more detail at: 

www.expertinayear.com

There will be also be some reflections from the player himself on how the mental skills training is affecting his performance and enjoyment.

Do you think Sam can do it? Comment below

Superstitions: do they help? Pre-match routines and their effect. Part 1

Those of you who follow tennis will know that Rafael Nadal has to have things a certain way. His water bottles have to be on certain spots, he has to sprint to the back of the court at the start of every match, he has to correct his hair and bandana before every serve and I'm sure there are many more things he does every time he plays that we do not notice or see.
There are many other famous examples including footballers needing to put one boot on before the other. Clubs trying to change strips at half-time as they determined a certain shirt was bad-luck.
Even as fans, who realistically have no way of altering the result (particularly, even if only watching on TV) have our own little things we do because last time we did that they won. I know of people who decided not to go to any of the games because every time they turned up, despite being one of tens of thousands there, they lost, but if he stayed home they often won.

Some psychologists suggest the way we look at the world is as detectives. We look for patterns and connections in everything because we have this internal desire to link things together into a logical, cause-and-effect world. Coincidences are confusing to humans as it means there is nothing they can change to get the desired outcome in that situation again. Therefore they develop superstitions from wearing lucky pants to not stepping on the lines of the field.

Do these work? The obvious answer would be no, unless those pants were exceptionally comfortable and allowed a greater range of movement that allowed better performance than others then no, wearing specifically those pants will directly affect performance. HOWEVER, if wearing those pants mean he goes into the game feeling more confident, there is a well-researched link between self-confidence and performance. So actually, YES, those lucky pants do help his performance!
 Would I tell these people that their superstitions are stupid? Would I tell Rafael Nadal the way he places his water bottles is silly? No, however, I would encourage anybody with these superstitions to analyse them, do you really believe this helps your performance? If so, then I would not in all cases tell you to stop, but in the long run I would encourage more of a focus on preparation that can have an effect on performance (which may include those superstitions) which I will talk about more in part 2.

If you have none of these superstitions, is this a problem? No! Would I encourage all athletes to search through their results and find a link between one specific thing and all the wins and decide that must be a lucky thing to do, and adopt it as a superstition. No, I wouldn't.
However, are there parts of your preparations you are ignoring that could have a positive effect? Is warming up before the match a superstition or does it actually have a biological or psychological effect that does improve performance objectively?

This will be continued in part 2 where more tips on how to improve your performance using routines will be given.

Working on routines is just one of the ways a sport performance enhancement specialist can help, check out "Services" to see how else one could improve your performance.

Facebook Page

Brain SPEC's facebook page is now up and running! So if you haven't been on it yet, have a look and give it a 'like', also share these services with any sportspeople you know. You will be doing them, and me, a favour!

Can high fives make a difference?

Sport is a very emotional game. In a team, or pair, or even individual game there are people that you

will look to share those emotions with. Even lots of individual sportsmen would want to share their successes with... some of the most touching moments in sporting history have been individual sportsmen running to their spouse or coach at the end of the championship. It has even become a somewhat expected custom in Wimbledon that the winner climbs up to their 'box' to share a hug and often a tear with those they are close to.

But is this sharing of emotion just a nice thing that can be poured out once after the end result, of could it be a factor in making that end result.

In team sports (and doubles) communication is an important factor for success- not only communication of different tactical elements but also exchanges of emotional information.

A pat on the back for a basketball player who missed a free throw may help console them, a handslap could reinforce a player who did something well, encouraging them to continue doing what they are doing, a team huddle may help build that cohesive unit that works so well together on the pitch.

One thing you may notice here for these examples is that they all contain an element of physical contact, or "touch".

Research done in the NBA, with some of the highest paid athletes in the world, by Kraus and his colleagues, showed the the amount of touch in the early season games could predict the levels of success the teams would show over the season. This factor was still important even when you had taken into account the early season performances and expert expectations for the team prior to the start.

This shows that teams that engage in more touching behaviour tend have more success...

Overall this is a relatively underresearched area so the precise reasons as to why it works are still unclear. Though research in mainstream psychology has long shown an ability to enhance a relationship through apropriate levels of touch.

What practical things can we take from this?

Well, the research does not show that touching more often causes more success, but it is linked. So, if you look at your team, how often do they slap hands or pat each other on the back or hug each other. If it's not often then it might be worth looking into the cohesion of the team. Are there any issues that may need addressing? Or are the players just not that close in general? Either way perhaps this is something the coach might want to improve.

It might be worth encouraging them to engage each other more often. I'm not suggesting there should be a mandatory hug between every member of the team between every point. But perhaps encourage a few more high fives after something good. Encourage the players to rally round a mistake with a few pats on the back of support to lift that players spirits back up. You may find that this actually has a positive effect on the general emotions of the team and the togetherness of their feelings and performance.