Volleyball Coaching Life-Counting

 

I'm counting out time,
Got the whole thing down by numbers.
All those numbers!
Give me guidance!
O Lord I need that now.

“Counting Out Time”—Genesis

Counting is an instinct for humans. Counting played an essential and useful purpose in our daily survival and evolution, so we humans have persisted in quantifying everything that we do.

In our zeal to applying the numbers we collect, it is also natural that we occasionally misapply the results from the counting; sometimes the misapplication is harmless, but sometimes the misapplication works towards our disadvantage.

Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell, the 10,000-hour rule is cited repeatedly as a heuristic for attaining expertise. (Gladwell 2011)  Unfortunately for Gladwell, the person who did the research, Anders Ericsson, very publicly refuted Gladwell’s interpretation of his research, which led to misapplication of the 10,000-hour number. (Ericsson 2020)

Yet people continue to misunderstand and misapply Ericsson’s conclusions, taking Gladwell’s attempt to popularize as original research.

Thinking about the continuing reliance on the 10,000-hour rule made me think about how we use counting in our coaching. For example: we give our players numerical goals as a quality control measure. For example, we can have them pass 20 balls, or we can specify 20 good passes, the good passes caveat is our way to introduce quality into the exercise. We assume that the players can make the connection between counting good passes and how to make good passes. Of course, that connection should never be assumed, but that is why coaches get paid big bucks, right?

As I started thinking in terms of system as I understood it, it occurred to me that most of our counting involve taking snapshots of a continuous flow of action; it is a snapshot taken at a specific time in a specific location. Sports — as with all of our reality that we experience— is a continuous chain of actions. We use Markov Chains, to be exact, to model sports as a chain of discrete events, even though it all looks like a continuous flow of events (Wung, Stats for Spikes-Markov Chains 2021). We count and make the assumption about the counting that we do because we need to simplify the reality so that we can understand what is happening in front of us. We do this by freezing the action at the time when a countable event happens. The drawbacks of that approach are that we cannot  possibly count every single touch all the time so that we can create meaningful sample space of statistics; counting discrete events creates an incomplete picture and does not capture  all the intangible qualities that characterizes the continuous reality. Yet, since counting discrete events is the only reasonable thing that we can do to capture reality, we continue to insist on counting. Most people understand this difference, but we have become so intent on the counting that we forget the reason for our counting. The tail is truly wagging the dog.

The motivating reason for Ericsson’s research, as well as the reason for Gladwell to write his book Outliers, (Gladwell 2011) is to distill the process by which people who do what they do well —much better than anyone else in the history of what they do—into a concise formula, another example of our brain’s need for formulas. Indeed, the problem with Gladwell’s writing is that he sometimes over distills and oversimplifies the academic studies in his zeal to explain the complex research results to the layman. Distilling and simplifying the complicate process of achieving excellence is what Gladwell does very well; indeed, better than most other popularizers. The point of his work is to show how someone can attain mastery— a word that is fraught with nuances— of a craft, a skill, a game, or a sport. It is indeed difficult to describe mastery, but it is easier to describe mastery than it is to describe how to attain mastery. The purpose to his writing is to point out the salient features of complex process that experts employ to achieve mastery. Part of the problem with distilling to the essential nature of the mastery process, however, is continuity. The path to mastery is a continuous process, an iterative journey full of failures, adjustments to those failures, and ultimately success. It is not a path that can be streamlined into a recipe or a formula. This is why the 10,000-hour rule is not only an erroneous and harmful misapplication, but it also does not directly address the bits connecting the numbers that we count to the process of how to master the subject that we wish to master; it only measures the byproduct of the mastering process, the number of hours of practice.  Some have amended the idea of the 10,000-hour rule by making the rule the 10,000-hours of Deliberate Practice. It is an improvement, but it still does not address the essence of How to do, it just addresses What to Do.

Returning to the more basic volleyball example. Do we really want our players to pass 20 perfect passes in a drill? Or do we want our players to take the opponent’s wicked serve and convert it into points for our side? I want the latter than the former. How does that happen?

It takes the convergence of the discrete parts of the playing experience to achieve this; a discretization that we coaches impose on the act of passing so that our players can internalize the disparate parts of the integrated action. We cannot, however, make the player learn how by throwing them to the wolves by immediately exposing them to the reality. We cannot coach by  hoping that the players can understand the action of passing by facing what they will be facing in game play. Some players can and they do this naturally, but for the rest of us, it takes years of experience, analysis, ability to self-analyze, and autodidactic learning to achieve. Unfortunately, most of the players will get frustrated and quit the game before that happens.

The act of teaching skills by parts and then teaching the players to make connections between the  disparate parts of a skill and then integrating the skill back into an integrated whole has become unfashionable. Even though teaching the whole prematurely has its own deleterious results.

One of the effects by focusing on the 20 perfect passes is that we are forgetting and neglecting the result we desire. This is not to say that we should stop counting, but we should emphasize that the counting has a monitoring function rather than a goal setting function. The conversation should be: 20 perfect passes in three minutes or passing 2.4 in the last drill; rather than using the counting results as goals: the goal is to get 20 passes in two minutes, or the goal is to pass 2.4 in this drill.

Rather than saying that 10-000 hours of deliberate practice is what will guarantee mastery, we need to say: continuous and focused deliberate practice is what is necessary to achieve mastery, do not let the amount of hours set your limit, take as many hours as you need.

Goodhart’s Law is once again at play here:

Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” (Wung, Stats for Spikes-Using Statistics as Goals 2021)

We need to stop using the intermediate measure from the process of learning as a target, we need to use it as a check on how we are doing.  The difference is nuanced but there is a clear difference.

Players will often make the same assumption, they will ask about what the goal is, it is only natural. This also a chance to include the growth mindset into the discussion.

Another problem with using the intermediate measures as the target is that reality is nuanced and depends on the context of the situation. In the case of the 10,000-hour rule, the context has to do with the attributes we are born with, physically, emotionally, mentally, and intellectually; as well as the circumstances surrounding our attempt at mastery. This is not to say that talent is a constraint that cannot be overcome. This is saying that not everyone requires the same time and effort to achieve mastery.

In terms of the simple passing example, the context has to do with the serves that is being passed, the skills of the server, the skill level and physicality of the team, the practice environment, and so on. Passing a 2.4 against the USA Gold Medal winning WNT is different that passing 2.4 against the players on your own team.

The point of this article is to remind ourselves that we must never lose sight of the prize, to focus our sights on the real result rather than on the byproducts of the process, whether it is to achieve mastery or to achieve better first touch while playing, rather than achieving 10,000-hours of practice or 20 good passes in a drill. This is a common problem, losing sight of our end goal. As Daniel Kahneman, the author of Thinking: Fast and Slow (Kahneman 2013) states: When forced with a difficult question, we often answer the easier one instead, usually without noticing.

Works Cited

Ericsson, Anders. "Anders Ericsson: Dismantling the 10,000 Hour Rule." The Good Life Project. 2020. https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/anders-ericsson/ (accessed January 17, 2022).

Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. Back Bay Books, 2011.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. NYC: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Wung, Peter. "Stats for Spikes-Markov Chains." Musings and Ruminations . March 21, 2021. https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2021/03/stats-for-spikes-markov-chains.html (accessed January 17, 2022).

—. "Stats for Spikes-Using Statistics as Goals." Musings and Ruminations . March 6, 2021. https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2021/03/stats-for-spikes-use-of-statistics-as.html (accessed January 17, 2022).

 

 

Book Review-Sparks of Genius By Robert and Michèle Root-Bernstein

This book Sparks of Genius was not a book that I had intended to read. I started reading this on the recommendation of Prof. Steven Strogatz, the renowned mathematician. He had mentioned this book as an instructive examination of the creative process, as a book on some of the tools to be used to spur our creative juices. I didn't believe him, so  I tweeted back to him that I didn't believe him. He kindly responded that he was skeptical at first as well but felt that it was a worthy read. I took a chance and bought a copy. As it turned out, he was correct, I truly enjoyed reading this book. I gained a considerable amount of knowledge regarding the creative process; more importantly the book opened up my mind to the possibilities of applying the 13 tools that the authors culled from their examination and study of some of the world’s most creative minds.  The 13 tools are natural things that we humans all do in flashes of inspiration. The difference is that they put the 13 tools next to one another and created connections between them and painted a mosaic which makes up the creative thought process.

The authors began the book with a chapter titled: Rethinking Thinking. The chapter observed our traditional way of thinking. How procedural our thinking has become as we have become acclimated to a specific way of using our senses and made the process of creating bypass our creativity, because we wanted to be efficient and expedient.  That first chapter drew me in, it fired my imagination and it made me consider the narrative that they described.  The first chapter also defined the difference that the authors thought between knowing and understanding, a key concept that I kept running into in my other readings. The authors also expounded on the importance of feeling as a major part of the creative process, something that is often neglected in the western traditions when it comes to thinking creatively. We have taken the mechanistic method of creativity to its extreme.

The second chapter is titled:  Schooling the Imagination. That chapter also goes hand in hand with the first chapter and it sets up the book nicely as to what the authors were trying to do with the 13 tools. In the second chapter, they make a case for changing the way we think about creating and inventing. This is where they lay out the 13 tools and gives us a bit of an advanced taste of what is to come in the later chapters. They go down the list of the 13 tools: observing, imaging, abstracting, recognizing patterns, forming patterns, analogizing, body thinking, empathizing, dimensional thinking, modeling, play, transforming, and synthesizing.

The last chapter is their summary and a call to arms to introduce these 13 tools into our educational paradigm formally so that we can educate the future generation on how to be creative and innovative through the application of these 13 tools.

The book starts with the most basic tool: Observing. And observation is illustrated by citing numerous examples of extraordinary people doing extraordinary things as they apply their keen sense of observations as a major part of their creative process. Observation is also explained and defined; they explain that observation  is not just looking for something but also knowing what to look for.  Which was a voilà moment for me.

The next chapter on Imaging, which  naturally flows from Observing. Imaging takes the results from observations to create images. Again, many examples of extraordinary people doing extraordinary things are described to demonstrate the  imaging process.

Abstracting follows and one gets the idea of the way the authors are using the sequencing of the chapters to create a sense of the natural sequential flow of the tools. They take the relatively concrete skill of  observing and move the thought process to something a little less tangible.  They then arrive at the actual act of abstracting itself.

Next on the tools list is Recognizing Patterns which was almost predictable because once you've abstracted the image our mind naturally begins to identify or recognize patterns for our own edification. Humans are very good at recognizing patterns; in fact, humans are too good at recognizing patterns. Sometimes we ascribe patterns for things just aren't there, but that is our creative advantage when we wish to create and innovate, we recognize patterns that are not logical.

Forming  patterns follows, because the natural instinct is to  create our own patterns after having recognized patterns from nature or from other people’s work.

As humans, we start drawing connections between the unfamiliar, we start Analogizing. This now takes us away from the most primal tools, those involve sensory perceptions and moving onto something that's mental: drawing analogy between the observed, imaged, abstracted, identified and formed patterns of; and connect with the familiar and recognized ideas from our experience through analogies.

Body thinking is next. The idea now is to imagine placing our bodies  into the analogy that we have drawn while centering that experience around our body.  

I have always taken empathizing as something emotional, but this chapter on empathizing made me think of empathizing in terms of slipping into someone else’s center, of changing my usual view from my center of existence and shifting it into observing all that is around me through the eyes of someone or something different.  

Dimensional thinking is next; this chapter is about  distorting, scaling, twisting, and rotating our  perceptions from the  body thinking and empathizing into a perception that is completely new and unknown.

Next two are modeling and playing. Modelling takes all the physical abstractions from body thinking, empathizing, and dimensional thinking  and creates a model. Which makes good sense. Playing is something very powerful that we humans do,  but we don't do enough of it because we are usually discouraged from playing in order to be serious, that is a bad mistake.  It takes the act of playing with the ideas before the concepts are made real.

The last two tools: transforming and synthesizing takes all that the previous 11 tools and use all of them together in a cohesive way. The transforming chapter talks about distorting and creating innovative concepts through the exercise of transforming the usual and daring to make it different, transformed.

Synthesizing is the critical final tool where we take the various disparate ideas that results from using the other tools and  put it all together into a consistent and cohesive whole.

The last chapter is again the authors’ opportunity to plea for the educational system to promote creative thinking, and they lay out their vision for a better process using the 13 tools in this chapter.

I truly enjoyed this book more than I thought I would, much more than I thought I would. I want to thank professor Strogatz for recommending it even though I gave him a little bit of guff for recognizing this book. It has modified and fortified my instincts on creativity and broadened my vision. I look at the world in a different, more nuanced way because I am aware of the 13 tools. Perhaps I knew some of the 13 tools as separate acts of brainstorming, now I can see them all as 13 ideas that must be coordinated and fleshed out in my thinking if I wanted to be optimally creative.

Obviously, I recommend this book very much.