The Good
Working in elite sports context is a real-time accelerator for learning.
In almost all domains.
1️⃣ Teamwork and Collaboration 👥 → working together for a common mission, everybody wins/loses
2️⃣ Discipline and Commitment 🤝 → rigorous training and dedication, behavioral skills easily transferable to other life domains; accountability
3️⃣ Leadership Skills & Decision-Making 👑 → deciding, motivating and learning to handle fluctuating or even constant pressure
4️⃣ Dealing with Failure & Emotional Intelligence 🧠 → setbacks are part of the game 👀; learn to rebuild and bounce back; learn to empathize and understand coping mechanisms
5️⃣ Time Management & Prioritization ⏱️ → being effective at balancing training, competition, family, friends, other responsibilities; hierarchize the options, master the basics
6️⃣ Cultural & Social Understanding 🌎 → dealing with different languages, religions, nationalities, creeds, biases
7️⃣ Strategic Thinking & Planning 💬 → analyse, build systems, test them, debrief, refine; art informed by science in several domains
8️⃣ Technical Knowledge 🔬 → you get to learn about physiology, biomechanics, injury, rehab, nutrition, exercise prescription, data analysis/performance metrics, technology integration, event management, sports law… If you want to do stuff right, there is (most likely) always a way to improve, there is something else you could implement. It is performance, not health.
I find the most fascinating, the art of using newly released scientific evidence to inform the day-to-day practice and apply it.
🚀 Differentiating what is bullshit, from what is optimal, from what is applicable and finding a compromise.
However… there are still too many vices and mistakes being perpetrated
The Bad
Biases & Thinking Mistakes driving bad decisions in elite sports:
What are they?
➡️ In the realm of Sports Medicine in elite sports, these are the ones I find most present and difficult to mitigate, specifically in football.
1️⃣ Ad Populum or Bandwagon Fallacy 🚉 → considering something true or good solely because it is popular or endorsed by many people (ex: “this supplement is being used by a lot of athlete colleagues, I will also take it”)
2️⃣ Halo Effect 🦋 → a positive overall impression of a person influences beliefs about other traits (ex: “this person dresses well and is assertive, he must be an expert in sports medicine”)
3️⃣ Dunning-Kruger Effect 🤓→ a cognitive bias where individuals with lower competence overestimate their abilities (ex: “I’ve injured myself and I read a lot about this, I know for sure what to do”)
4️⃣ Appeal to Tradition Fallacy 🎉 → assuming something is better or correct merely because it is older, traditional, or "has always been done that way." (ex: “we’ve trained like this for years, it is the best way”)
5️⃣ Superstition - Apophenia 🐇 → tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things; magical thinking (ex: “every time I use this greeting, we win, it helps us win”)
6️⃣ Authority Bias 😎 → a tendency to overvalue the opinions of authority figures, regardless of actual evidence (ex: “this world-class athlete does a lot of bosu training, I should also do it”)
The Ugly
💬 What are the uglier challenges to overcome elite sports?
Other than financial reasons, there are intrinsic and systemic challenges to overcome in elite sports.
🚀 Performance Oriented (Short Term) 🚀 → winning is (blindly and logically) the most important, way more important than the rest
↪️ High Rate of Turnover ↪️ → players and staff are always changing
⏱️ Time Urgency ⏱️ → sacrificing today for a much more valuable solution tomorrow is most of the times not an option; a mediocre solution now seems better than a more valuable solution tomorrow
🟢 Highs cover up the Dirt 🟢 → everything is well (and easier) if the team is winning; since there is a major and outweighing outcome - winning -, even if other (major) problems need to be addressed, they are perceived as unimportant; 🔴 Lows expose the Dirt 🔴
🧠 ”Something” might be better than “Nothing” 🧠 → even if we know a procedure is useless (relatively to its sham version), it might still be useful comparing to nothing, so it keeps being seen as an alternative instead of choosing a more effective but less sexy alternative
🔧 Thinking mistakes are useful 🔧 → biases and heuristics simplify (incorrectly) information processing & are “ready-to-use” (consciously or not) when deciding; 🟰 Outcome Bias, where decisions are judged solely by “how they ended up” regardless of “how they were taken”
🎓 Barriers to implement 🎓 → there are frequently barriers to implement what works and to convert education into positive change - people, time, tradition, infrastructures, individual predisposition, financial resources
✨ Shiny Object Syndrome ✨ → novel and fashionable alternatives quickly get traction and attention regardless of validity
Useful Links
- Dry needling for myofascial pain. Does the evidence make the grade? https://www.iasp-pain.org/publications/relief-news/article/dry-needling-myofascial-pain/
- Understanding performance under pressure: anxiety, attention, cognitive biases and the perception of failure - https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/39311/PayneK.pdf?sequence=1
- Heuristics as beliefs and as behaviors: The adaptiveness of the “hot hand - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010028503001312
- Psychology of Elite Teams - https://www.russellfutcher.com/new-blog/2022/4/13/the-psychology-of-elite-teams
- Bias in Medicine: Lessons Learned and Mitigation Strategies - https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacbts.2020.07.012