MLK Jr. Day-2019

It is hard to believe that it has been thirty-three years since the first MLK Jr Remembrance Day. I was a gradual student at Georgia Tech at the time and since I was living in the city where Dr. King had lived and worked, we were right in the middle of the action.

While I was cognizant of the civil rights movement and it’s meaning, and I was aligned with its goals, I was not fully engaged in the holiday nor in the intent of the movement until that watershed year.

I was a member of the Graduate Student Senate at Georgia Tech at the time and a cross was burned in the front lawn of the first African-American sorority on campus the year prior. Georgia Tech owns all the land on campus, and they rent the houses out to the fraternities and sororities, and the competition for the privilege to have a house on campus was fierce. One had come vacant and the administration decided to rent it to an African-American sorority. There was a lot of discontent and rumbling amongst the Greek system, which is not surprising since Georgia Tech was deep in Dixie and the traditions surrounding the school are deeply rooted in the ante-bellum south. It was an annual tradition during rush week to have the dean of students lead a charge up Library Hill wearing a Confederate general’s outfit on a horse as the fraternity members from his fraternity charged up that hill with him.

Our president, Joseph Pettit, a genteel and introspective scholar, instituted measure to review the racial climate on campus as well as instituted educational sessions for every administrators and student leaders. This was how I was selected to be a small group of students who were being trained by Dr. Charles King, a civil rights activist and educator. Yes, the dean of students was ordered to attend as well, not with the students’ group but with all the administrators, including Dr. Pettit. It was a very tough session, going deep into our internal biases and beliefs. Our longest help beliefs were examined, and we were called out on our most cherished beliefs and they were exposed as myths. It was in the middle of this that the state of Georgia was slowly implementing plans to celebrate the very first MLK Jr. Day.

I remember attending the that first celebration, the center of the celebration was around Ebenezer Baptist Church and the corridor leading up the Martin Luther King Jr Center for Nonviolent Social Change, the MLK Jr. historical district, and Dr. King’s childhood home. There was an ecumenical service with assorted dignitaries and all kinds of festivities. This was a big deal for the community and for the city of Atlanta.

I went to the Sweet Auburn area for no real reason except to bask in the festivities and to witness the joys and celebration of the very first celebration. I walked amongst the stalls and businesses selling commemorative souvenirs, in the tradition of American entrepreneurship. There was joy but it was also somewhat subdued, as if people couldn’t believe that this was actually happening. I watched the parade as it made its way down Auburn Avenue towards the MLK Jr Center. For sheer contrast of the two Americas, you only had to look at the two bands that were there to march. The first was the Marine Corp. Band. THE Marine Corp Band, whose director was John Phillip Souza. Sharply dressed, the epitome of musical excellence and discipline. Marching in precision and giving off the aura of gravitas as intended, the musical selection was as expected, patriotic, solemn, almost severe. The other band was the Grambling state marching band, no less accomplished musically but more freeform, more creative, more informal, and much more joyous and celebratory. They did their steps and they marched as if they were entertaining at a football game. It was a raucous celebration and I had believed that this was a moment in time that we as a nation had reaching a turning point. The juxtaposition of the band’s was not lost on me, although I just took note of the difference in my mind and chalked it up to cultural differences. Little did I know that the differences would be make itself abundantly clear in the most hateful way.

One of the few municipalities to not recognize MLK Jr Day was Cummings Georgia, a small community in Forsyth County in north Georgia. Cummings today is very different from the Cummings of 1986. Cummings in 1986 was a small rural community, but it had the ignominious reputation, along with many other Georgia communities where blacks re not allowed to be in town after sundown. There are no black citizens in Cummings, let alone black property owners, as the white citizens of the community chased all the black people who used to live there out of town in 1912, the purported reason? Black men were accused of raping white women in Forsyth County, three black men were murdered by lynching at that time and the white citizenry gladly stole their properties and made it their own.

In 1987, there was a case of a group of black people being assaulted while enjoying a day out on the lake while black. Rev. Hosea Williams led a peace march through downtown Cummings and were also attacked. The following week, there was a call for another march through Cummings. Georgia Tech leaders after having been educated through the Dr. Charles King training rented buses for anyone who wanted to go and participate. My friend Janet talked me into going, as representatives of the Graduate Student Government. I was very scared, I had been warned about the white supremacists in the north Georgia mountains and was leery of engaging them directly. But this time, we had anything from 15,000 to 25,000 people of all kinds descending on Cummings. A line of Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the state highway patrol standing with locked arms along the march route, about a mile outside of town. They were between us and the white hood clad Klansman, who were spouting hate, spitting, threatening us with harm. Just as we were wavering, a drag queen of local renown in Atlanta stepped forward shouldering a boombox, dress in fishnet stocking and hot pants. She sauntered down the street as if it was a runway and led us down towards downtown. We were thus emboldened and marcjed along timidly behind.

There were many surreal moments in the short march, I remember the eerie silence along the way, no one said much. The silence pierced by the occasional spouted hate from behind the police cordon. I remember little kids wearing mini Klan hoods. I suspect they are the present-day hate mongers that we see in Charlottesville and other places. I remember looking to the faces behind the lines and seeing the defiant looks. I also remember the expressionless and blank stares of the GBI and state troopers, making it seem like it was just another day at the office. The rest of the march was a blur. I remember that both senators from Georgia, Sam Nunn and Wyche Fowler were giving speeches, but I was too preoccupied to pay much attention. We walked back to the buses and went home. I remember watching CNN’s coverage of us and getting a little pumped up over what I did. I want to say that I knew that it wasn’t over, that the battle over equality and amity between the black and white was far from being settled, but I wanted to believe this, that my little part in the very large picture was what made the difference, even though I knew very little was accomplished.

Cumming is now a booming town; the town is integrated and is enjoying an economic renaissance. This is the thirty-third celebration of MLK Jr day. Yet, the chasm between the races are as big, if not bigger than ever, fueled by the renewed hatred from the financially disenfranchised whites who believe that the racial differences are what is keeping them from economic prosperity and a cynical national political machinery that deliberately take advantage of that idea by using the race card to divides the economically disenfranchised into black and white, so create a haven for their craven purposes.

I think back to those two days in my past and I am torn between two poles, between elation and despair, between hopefulness and hopelessness, between the remnants of my youthful idealism and my well-earned cynicism. That is where I am on this MLK Jr Day, 2019.

Volleyball Coaching Life-Choking

Generally, people talk about choking when a team or a player blows a big lead.  Worse than watching the act of choking in real time is to be doing the choking and experiencing that sinking feeling as the game get away. Perhaps even more excruciating is to be the coach as they watch their teams going through that process, because the coach knows that there is absolutely nothing immediate that he or she can do to affect the outcome, as the fundamental work should have been done in the weeks, months, and years before. They can only curse themselves for not having trained their players to better survive the situation.

As I sat watching my Illini lose to Nebraska in the national semi-finals, I had that sinking feeling. Nebraska showed great heart and unity of purpose as they processed the loss of the first two games and played as they were trained. Their highs were celebrated and their lows were processed and forgotten. As the tide turned, the Illinois players showed signs of wavering, not through their demeanor but through the series of unforced errors.

Two days later, the Nebraska team took on a Stanford team that had gone through their semi-final match with relative ease. Indeed, it was a championship match for the ages, this match went five as well even though the sequence followed was completely different than the Illinois-Nebraska semi-final. The first two games were so even that either team could have won, they ended up splitting. The next two games were alternating blowout with Stanford winning the third and Nebraska winning the fourth. The last game was tight all the way down to the wire, with Stanford winning the championship, but barely. The causal sequence of games won and lost was indicative that both teams were mentally ready to battle and they did indeed, giving us one of the best finals in years.

As I was watching the semi-finals, my coaching thoughts turned to how I can train my players to behave as these players are behaving, the Nebraska players losing first two games and then turn around and playing comfortably and confidently as the pressure mounted? On the other hand, I was also thinking about what could be done to help the Illinois stanch the bleeding and turn the momentum around back to their favor. There was nothing inevitable about any of the three games that Illinois lost. Each game was relatively even until it moved into the critical segment of the game. The officiating was even, except maybe for the last touch in the deciding game giving Nebraska the two-point turnaround.

For the finals, I wondered about how the coaching staff of both teams trained their teams to maintain their composure and executed with such consistency while so much pressure is on them. They went through the emotional roller coaster ride with aplomb and resilience without succumbing to the fatalistic spiral that is so attractive when challenged.

The real question to me is: how to train the cognition system of these players to survive and succeed under the circumstances?

I have never been in Nebraska, Illinois, nor Stanford’s practices or had the privilege of witnessing the coaches train and I won’t pretend to project any of my conjectures upon these three programs. I used this match as motivation to think about how I would do it and to research how people who are much more experienced than me are training.

One resource that I found is The Playmaker’s Advantage: How to Raise Your Mental Game to the Next Level by Leonard Zaichkowsky and Daniel Peterson. Zaichkowsky is a psychologist who has been working at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and sports performance for a long time, while Peterson is writer working in the same area. The book is fascinating and educational. They also give us a look at the latest in cognitive neuroscience results, rather than just conjectures, which helps me think about these questions. I consider the book a must read

In chapter ten of the book, titled: How to Compete: The Clutch and Choke of the Performance Engine, they delve into the states that they call flow, clutch and choke. Zaichkowsky and Peterson quote Dr. Christian Swann -  a researcher who had interviewed high performance athletes about their cognition during periods of clutch and choke - defines: “Flow as a state of effortless excellence, in which everything ‘clicks’ into place.”  Swann further states: “We perform on autopilot, are totally confident in our abilities and fully absorbed in what we are doing without actually thinking about it.”  

Swann further defines Clutch as:

“a state where athletes are much more aware of the importance of the situation, what’s at stake, the potential consequences, and what’s required to achieve a successful outcome. In clutch, athletes describe being conscious of the pressure, and feel the pressure, yet are still able to perform at their peak.”

He also differentiates flow and clutch by stating that: “Clutch states share a core similarity with flow, but are more effortful, deliberate, consciously controlled and intense.”

Choke then is defined as the opposite of clutch. Swann found that the key factor which decides whether the athlete is clutch, or choke is a matter of personal perspective. It isn’t the score or the objective measure of the performance that affects performance, it is the subjective perception of the performance which most affects their performance. In other words, how people perceive of their own performance is what decides whether they are in a clutch or choke state.

This is all very instructive, and Zaichkowsky and Peterson goes in depth in explain the difference, but what mattered to me is: how do I train my players to perform in a clutch state and avoid the choke state. How do I get from understanding the explanation of the states to executing effective training to promote clutch performance? How do I put all of this knowledge into practice?

Zaichkowsky and Peterson delve into two interesting theories. The first theory is that the pressure is taking the athlete’s attention away from our task at hand, causing the athlete to be distracted, therefore disrupting their flow state. The alternative theory is that the pressure is causing the athlete to focus too closely on the task when they are under pressure, they begin to overthink their task, the paralysis by analysis idea. The alternative theory is based on the idea that any motor skill become so ingrained in the motor control system over time that the athlete does not need to pay attention because they can do it in their sleep, but the breakdown in performance comes when they have to focus and pay attention to what they do.

Not happy to have just theories, Zaichkowsky and Peterson found various large studies testing those two ideas together. The testing was done by other researcher on high level athletes and the result is that the latter theory, the over focus on the task theory, is the main cause for the most erosion in performance. They asked the athletes to perform familiar and ingrained tasks under two conditions: one is to introduce disruptions like noise and visual disruptions, and the second is to ask them to an addition unpracticed but simple task as they do their familiar task. The former tests the unfocused attention idea and the second tests the idea that focusing on a task causes the athlete’s mind to not do as they are trained but think about what they have to do. The practiced and well-trained athlete would perform at less than optimal levels if they had to think too much about HOW they do what they do and they would interrupt their flow state to focus too hard on WHAT they did, which inevitably cause them to make errors and spiral downward into a choke state. In other words, when the athletes start to turn their attention inward and try to FOCUS on the mechanics of their skill, they accomplish the exact opposite of their intent. Interestingly enough, I had read this same idea in Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis.

How does this translate into training? According to the Zaichkowsky and Peterson, one key aspect of training is to teach skills in an integrated whole rather than in a step-by-step manner, keeping the skill performance automatic and keeping the skill acquisition process as continuous as possible and limit the mental processing during skill acquisition. The reason is that if the athlete learned their skills in an integrated whole, they wouldn’t try to break it down into progressive steps when they are under pressure. I had to think about that for a bit. While I agreed with this in general, I keep thinking about the process of teaching skills to the youngsters and knowing the confusion caused by their minds trying to absorb the entire skill in one shot, especially dynamic skills like jumping and hitting or transitioning to the pins from the middle and blocking. On the other hand, I think about how long it takes for the athletes I have trained to break away from the if-then thought process and how difficult it was for them eventually overcome the mental process of the progression steps. I have tried to minimize the progressions when I teach skills, but I can’t get away from that paradigm when introducing beginners to volleyball. I am still thinking about that.

A productive way to think about the clutch performance is to define clutch performance as being able to perform as expected while under pressure, that is, treating performing under pressure the same way as performing under no pressure. Which sounds difficult knowing human nature, but if you train the player deliberately de-emphasize the mental pressure within the scheme of the sport, become acclimated to playing under pressure, and expect the players to be performing in the flow, regardless of the situation, then it seems possible. The ideal is the train the athletes to treat every action on the court as a natural and expected part, there are no surprises. It also follows the idea of preparing your team to be anti-fragile, that is, prepared to handle anything rather than preparing to be ready for specific things.

Of course, the problem is that we don’t know how our athletes will react while under pressure while in training, we don’t know what we don’t know about them. We can only hope for the kind of performance that we want when they are under pressure because we can’t possibly put realistic kinds of mental pressures which could alters their reaction in a practice. One thing that Zaichkowsky and Peterson suggests is to train them while altering the space and tempo of the training regimen, working deliberately in small spaces and with overspeed to make the players problem solve while under artificially created pressure situations; to be completely un-gamelike but erring on the side of overloading their cognitive capacity. They will fail and then they will learn while under space and speed duress, they will expand their cognitive capacity and learn; that is, create new capabilities in the system 1 or hot cognition response. This allows the athletes to learn to perform automatically without overanalyzing their situation and attempt to slow down their reactions or the game.

So, having thought about this, I have a blueprint of how I am altering my training plans this year, even though I am already a big fan of going overspeed, I will try to up the tempo even more and working in the space restrictions this year. This should be fun.

Much thanks to Len Zaichkowsky and Dan Peterson for checking my interpretation of their work and making sure I did not misrepresent their work.