The Art of Manliness - #456： Myths About Kids and Sports

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast youth sports in

00:00:19.400 america is a 15 billion dollar industry and a lot of that money is going towards special coaching

00:00:24.140 and training as well as participation in elite travel teams parents spend enormous amount of

00:00:28.320 time and money on their kids involvement in sports hoping the investment will pay off in accolades

00:00:32.220 college scholarships and even the chance to play professionally my guests today argue that all that

00:00:36.740 special coaching you're spending money on probably isn't doing much to turn your kid into a superstar

00:00:40.980 their names are lynn zikowski and daniel peterson lynn is one of the pioneers in the field of sports

00:00:44.640 psychology and was a professor of it at boston university for 37 years over the decades he's

00:00:48.940 consulted for professional and collegiate sports programs as well as olympic teams daniel peterson

00:00:53.360 is a science writer who has spent his career looking at the intersection of neuroscience and

00:00:56.980 athletic performance and is the co-founder and director of 80 mental coaching today on the show

00:01:01.340 lynn and daniel discuss whether you can spot athletic talent in a child and why a kid who

00:01:05.100 looks talented at age 10 can end up being a dud athlete at 20 they explain why you shouldn't

00:01:09.360 regiment your child's athletic training or specialize your kids too early in sports along the way they

00:01:13.420 provide best practices for parents and coaches who work with children in sports and we then discuss

00:01:17.480 how sports can boost children's cognitive abilities and why an athlete's mental game can be just as

00:01:21.960 important as their speed and strength we enter conversation talking about what kind of practice is nearly

00:01:26.000 useless and what kind is the most helpful after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is

00:01:31.040 slash playmaker

00:01:32.180 lynn zikowski daniel peterson welcome to the show thank you brett great to be here yeah thank you for

00:01:46.920 inviting us to be part of your great worldwide podcast well glad thanks for coming on so you guys you

00:01:52.660 too have a new book out called the playmaker's advantage how to raise your mental game to the next

00:01:57.300 level and it's about basically the latest research in sports psychology neuroscience and how that how those

00:02:04.700 things can separate elite athletes from the rest but before we get into that let's start off with some

00:02:10.200 definitions how did how do you all define a playmaker and is this our playmakers seen you know on the

00:02:16.020 the little league level and all the way up through the pros well i'll start with this we when we wanted

00:02:23.480 when we put this book out we wanted to start a conversation with parents and coaches about the

00:02:30.300 cognitive aspects of the game and we knew we couldn't really like name it the cognitive advantage

00:02:36.380 or the neuropsychological uh benefits of of sports we knew we had to connect it to something a term

00:02:43.720 that people had heard of and the term that popped in our heads was playmaker because there seems to

00:02:50.160 be somewhat of a universal understanding across sports especially team sports that a playmaker is

00:02:56.260 someone who obviously makes plays someone who sees the field the court the ice a little bit better

00:03:02.900 makes quicker decisions better decisions and yes that we do see it at all different age levels

00:03:10.140 that it's that one player who just seems to get it a lot quicker not necessarily from a physical

00:03:17.720 maturity or uh or even a skill component but just someone who kind of orchestrates things out there

00:03:24.600 it's maybe the center midfielder on a soccer team maybe it's the quarterback or someone else on a football

00:03:29.640 team the point guard etc but not necessarily by position i think all players can have some of these

00:03:36.580 playmaking skills and we actually for all the interviews we did with coaches and academics for

00:03:43.100 the book we started each interview with the question to them of what is your definition of a playmaker

00:03:49.840 and we got some very interesting responses and a few of those i'll just share a couple of them

00:03:56.420 for example sydney crosby who was we were very lucky to talk to and we'll tell the story about mike

00:04:02.220 sullivan in a little bit but his response was a playmaker is somebody who is able to create things

00:04:07.700 whether that's for themselves or for somebody else around them it may just be a subtle play that ends

00:04:12.420 up turning into a better play later later on we talked to brad stevens head coach of the uh

00:04:18.480 bros and celtics you know he said in basketball i always think of it in terms of making their

00:04:22.780 teammates better just by their presence on the court the ability to create advantage for everyone else out

00:04:27.400 there and then we also saw a quote from the current manager of manchester city soccer team in the

00:04:34.120 english premier league pep cordiola who's coached barcelona and byron munich one of the best coaches

00:04:40.180 in the world he actually made a comment about one of his young stars 25 year old belgian kevin de

00:04:46.560 bruyne and he was commenting on the skills of kevin and his quote was he makes the right decision

00:04:53.420 in the right moment every single time and we thought that was a great way to define the playmaker

00:04:59.840 but then what the book is about is kind of diving into the science and all the other aspects of trying

00:05:07.020 to figure out what that is that those playmakers have so what i think is interesting is i think

00:05:11.540 oftentimes when people think about sport talent they think of like skill physiology right we had

00:05:17.080 epstein on the podcast talk about the sports team but you guys your focus is on the cognitive aspect

00:05:21.480 right it's all about seeing plays develop and i think this is interesting like you started studying

00:05:27.060 this stuff what back in the late 60s 70s i mean yeah i mean were that were there many people what was

00:05:33.000 the field like at that time of sports psychology were they even looking at that no it was barren 1.00

00:05:37.820 there was nothing happening and uh but i always had that fascination wondering who these who these

00:05:45.280 playmakers were these great players and and why did i not become one and and so i'm thinking it had to

00:05:53.380 be the coaching and i always was intrigued with that and finally i had a an olympic champion at boston

00:05:59.920 university david hamry uh won the 400 meter hurdles in mexico city and then followed up in 72 with a silver

00:06:07.660 did his doctoral dissertation on these great athletes and what made them champions and of course

00:06:14.200 we were really talking about champions but we decided to call them playmakers rather than champions

00:06:19.520 but but that was kind of the beginning so that that's mid-1980s where it's kind of i'd have to say one of

00:06:27.040 the first publications on examining who these people were that became the playmakers or the champions

00:06:35.040 so uh i'd have to i'm proud of the fact that i kind of started a lot of this inquiry but it's really

00:06:41.580 mushroom and you mentioned that david epstein's great book on the sports gene where he kind of

00:06:46.820 debunked the whole idea that so much of uh performance is around what you inherited from

00:06:52.440 your parents so it's yeah it was a barren field and it's slowly picking up but uh and we're hoping

00:06:59.660 with you know your your help for sure in your podcast that we can spread the word that we've got

00:07:05.260 to be thinking more about this area that's been historically ignored i'm sure there's a lot of dads

00:07:10.840 listening to this show their kids are involved in sports uh now you know we talked before we got

00:07:15.440 on the show my kid's doing flag football this year he's done t-ball and things like that and you know

00:07:20.780 our approach is you know it's very casual but there's a lot of parents who they they invest a

00:07:26.420 lot in their kids right and because they want them to be successful they're hoping they'll go to

00:07:30.720 college scholarships maybe they'll go pro and we've probably all seen those specials on the news

00:07:36.220 about parents sending off their kids to these really intense training camps when they're 10 or

00:07:41.280 11 and because i think people there's an idea out there that if you want to be great you have to

00:07:46.160 start young because there's a story of tiger woods right he was golfing when he was three or wayne gretzky

00:07:51.160 um but what's the research say does can can you spot playmakers that early and can you can you

00:07:58.980 really train it like like we think we can if you send your kid to an extensive soccer camp is that

00:08:04.580 can help them become a playmaker well the answer let me start with that is definitive no that is

00:08:12.480 it's that uh like yogi berra the great philosopher i chuckle at him he always said like prediction is

00:08:19.620 difficult particularly for the future and uh it's the with the all the pro leagues and the colleges

00:08:26.680 have all failed miserably and trying to predict talent from me at a young age and it's it really

00:08:32.680 bothers me when i hear colleges offering scholarships to to young athletes who might be 13 14 years of

00:08:39.600 age and they're five or six years from entering college and it's just so unpredicted but uh they

00:08:46.640 keep trying to make those kinds of predictions that based upon that early talent that they're going to

00:08:52.000 get there and and then that kind of ties in also to the the whole era of specialization that you've got

00:08:58.340 to start early and the entrepreneurs of course that's how they make their money uh having parents

00:09:03.580 invest big money in kids coming to camp or hiring a team of specialists and i'm when i talk about that

00:09:10.740 i'm reminded of the great story that probably many of our listeners will not have heard of but there was

00:09:16.220 the athlete football player at usc the todd morenovich i think he was drafted about 1991 number in the

00:09:22.740 first round but by oakland just absolutely fizzled and his father had this he was a he was a football

00:09:29.000 coach who had the idea that i'll get uh you want to train him to be a quarterback that i'll get all

00:09:34.880 these specialists from the mechanical people the technical people the nutrition people strength and

00:09:40.620 conditioning and all these experts and just had him so regimented and he he had a very modest

00:09:48.140 career in at usc and then failed miserably in the pros and then got into drugs and alcohol but he

00:09:55.380 was so regimented and and even though the father had great intentions it really backfired on him that

00:10:02.200 may be the most you know horrific story i but i've heard of in in in sport where you know parental

00:10:08.800 beliefs uh really kind of backfired on and dan can you highlight i mean i mean so if specialization

00:10:15.040 doesn't work i mean when you guys looked through the research what most of these playmakers we think

00:10:21.160 of today like tom brady basketball players like did they specialize in their sport at an early age or

00:10:27.140 were they doing all sorts of different stuff no they the common theme that we heard throughout all of

00:10:32.800 those and in fact we we have quotes in the book from from brad stevens mike sullivan the coach of the

00:10:38.060 penguins etc saying the ones that they look for and the the players who are at that elite levels

00:10:43.840 most of them now we're going back you know 10 years or so now uh they played multiple sports growing

00:10:50.200 up and what's interesting is we did look at a lot of the research and there was one study in particular

00:10:56.020 that really stuck out dr arnie gulick who was the head of the department of sports science at

00:11:01.720 kaiser sloten university in germany he did a very long gated study of the soccer young soccer athletes who

00:11:11.580 went into the elite german soccer academies and you can imagine that's pretty elite because you know

00:11:17.680 soccer is everything in germany so some of these kids coming in at age 8 age 10 to these basically

00:11:23.880 you move away from home and go to these elite academies and he uh gave a presentation at the 2016

00:11:31.440 youth athlete development conference in singapore and he just dropped a bomb on everybody and his

00:11:37.460 his uh opening remark was future top athletes cannot be predicted reliably by way of young age talent

00:11:45.880 identification particularly early talent development programming is neither necessary nor beneficial

00:11:51.960 but correlates negatively with long-term senior success and what he did was he he looked and tracked all

00:12:00.360 of these players over time and he saw that in fact another quote here their success at the age of 10

00:12:07.460 had zero correlation with their success as a senior so in other words he followed them

00:12:11.680 through the years to see if they ended up on elite teams if they ended up with the german national team

00:12:17.520 etc and he said no that those who were better at a young age were not those who were better at an older age

00:12:24.720 and of those who were recruited at an age of u11 or u13 by the time they were 19 only nine percent of those

00:12:33.280 kids were still in the program they had all dropped out by then on the other hand those who made it to

00:12:38.880 the national a team of germany those we see in the world cup were being built upon gradually across age

00:12:45.100 stages and so what they found was these kids who made it who were some of the top german stars today

00:12:53.000 played multiple sports probably up till about the age of of high school you know age 14 15 then they

00:13:00.620 turned their attention and specialized in a sport uh through the high school ages but from age six

00:13:06.820 from age eight the age of your son up till high school it was trying to get them in as many sports

00:13:12.600 as possible and there's also a a physical component and a burnout component as well lots of studies from

00:13:19.640 orthopedic surgeons etc and we've seen this a lot in baseball with kids you know having surgeries on

00:13:26.100 their elbows in their early teens that the recommendation from the medical doctors as well

00:13:32.340 as the the cognitive scientists is to play one sport per season play a different sport every season

00:13:38.220 and then take some time off as hard as that is for parents to do with their kids you know and

00:13:43.940 some of the research also shows that as long as they play complementary sports that have a similar flow to

00:13:52.100 them so in team sports if your son or daughter were to play soccer in the fall basketball or hockey in

00:13:58.700 the winter and maybe lacrosse in the spring and then maybe take june or july off but those three those

00:14:05.860 sports are all invasion based as we call them they all have similar concepts of offense defense passing

00:14:13.380 shooting dribbling moving the the ball or puck down the field and so those cognitive skills cross over

00:14:20.420 between the sports and reinforce each other but yet they're using different physical muscles

00:14:26.980 um they're playing a different sport with different teammates so they don't have the mental burnout of

00:14:33.180 playing 12 months a year of soccer 12 months a year of basketball and so that's um i think that's

00:14:39.340 you're going to hear more and more of that it's it's tough for parents to come up against that because

00:14:44.200 kind of the for-profit coaching machine tells them to oh your your son or daughter has to be playing

00:14:50.560 this sport 10 12 months a year if you want to get them anywhere and that's just that's just simply

00:14:55.940 not true and there's a lot of social pressure too right because like because your kid sees all the

00:15:00.840 other kids doing it and like well i got to do that too yeah i guess i could if i could add something

00:15:05.760 here uh the the message uh take home message for parents would be when when your children are young

00:15:13.740 and interested in getting into sport and they're they're seeing it on television hearing it their

00:15:18.900 friends are playing have them sample of it we call it sampling jean coutet and others uh in canada

00:15:25.160 study this extensively and they call develop these different periods of what kids should be doing

00:15:30.340 in in terms of talent development but those years when they get interested in sport it may be four

00:15:36.400 or five years of age six have them sample a variety of sports and and let the the youngster decide what

00:15:43.780 they seem to be best at and what they what they have a passion for and as parents we tend to socialize

00:15:50.240 our kids into sports that we played and we have a passion for in life and think that our kids are going

00:15:55.940 to be uh going to like it and and be good at it but that just isn't correct so get try have them

00:16:03.360 experience a whole variety of different sports i know it's expensive but that way they they'll get

00:16:08.480 a better sense of what that youngster has a passion for and could really be good at so give them a try

00:16:14.980 right sample i mean another thing you talk about too is you mentioned earlier is that like sports today

00:16:20.620 youth sports particularly is very regimented from an early age where you know when i was a kid i had

00:16:25.640 neighbor kids that we play pickup baseball we'd play pickle or we'd play football and like we would

00:16:30.760 so i mean what's going on cognitively in a child's brain when they do when they're playing a sport but

00:16:36.660 it's not it's not adult supervised is there something like something something different

00:16:40.580 that happens compared to say a regimented practice well for one thing uh red is that they're making

00:16:46.520 decisions for themselves there's no parent or coach telling them what to do that's the great

00:16:51.680 tragedy that we have now is that we've lost all that and youngsters are being told what to do at a

00:16:57.680 very young age and they they're find themselves incapable of making decisions for themselves on

00:17:04.760 the field so that was the great thing of of sandlot baseball or pond hockey or pickup games and soccer

00:17:11.420 kids you know made their own decisions made made up some of their own rules just so that they could

00:17:16.720 advance the play so uh yeah there's there's a lot of good things that we've lost by with organized

00:17:22.760 sport um i think yeah i think it's a jammer like you you see these parents in america you know spending

00:17:28.560 lots of money sending their kids to like these really extensive baseball camps and yet a lot of the

00:17:33.660 great players come from these caribbean countries yes where they they used a paper bag for a glove

00:17:39.280 great point great point yes so okay well okay you don't want to specialize early uh what's the

00:17:46.560 best way you know for those who are parents of athletes or coaches who are coaching young people like

00:17:51.560 what's the best way to coach kids because i remember when i uh i i was the volunteer dad to be

00:17:57.280 the coach for t-ball last year and i remember getting there and so i had baseball is a really

00:18:02.740 complicated sport it's very abstract right but then there's like the skill is really hard like throwing a

00:18:08.020 ball really hard hitting a ball off a tee it's like a small object hard but then there's these

00:18:13.520 rules i remember one day when we finally i said i'm gonna i'm gonna teach them the difference between

00:18:17.360 a forced out and like a tag out and good luck yeah it didn't happen and so at that point i was like

00:18:25.100 you know i just realized you know what i'm just gonna let them have fun um so yeah so like what what

00:18:30.500 is the best approach for coaching like you know ages you know five to ten any insights there from the

00:18:36.000 research i'd say i'd start with we talked with another one of len's longtime colleagues um

00:18:44.240 and at the university of new jersey and uh uh professor feigenbaum and he has spent his whole career

00:18:55.560 advocating for what what he calls the technical term physical literacy but what he argues is that so many

00:19:02.820 kids today jump right into sports and that that are coached by parents well meaning i was one of them

00:19:10.340 uh but they go way off the deep end as far as teaching them all the minor tactics and tricks and

00:19:17.360 rules and things that they just aren't ready to handle and what uh professor feigenbaum says is

00:19:22.640 first they have to learn to run and jump and you know spin around and learn all of those

00:19:30.280 physical athletic skills and he said that's what used to come like you said from just playing

00:19:36.460 outside with your friends playing tag climbing trees etc and what he sees when he works with a lot of pe

00:19:43.200 educators in schools is a lot of these kids don't even know how to do those some of those things they're

00:19:49.100 not good at some of those basic physical skills and they also don't have the physical development or

00:19:54.840 the strength uh because a lot of that time has been restricted in school and they don't do as much

00:19:59.720 of it after school etc and so we put in the book some some ideas of just that's a place to start

00:20:06.720 is just out there not teaching them a complicated sport but just setting up some basic rules and like you

00:20:13.420 said play play catch uh uh play hot box you know between two bases things like that and then going on from

00:20:22.080 there i think the um a lot of the literature would say you're really trying to build up a lot of

00:20:28.800 pattern recognition being able to see their sport in a lot of different situations and so the old

00:20:35.660 adage of practice like you play instead of breaking down a practice session into drills of going around

00:20:41.820 cones and stuff you know set up some small-sided games uh you know football's an easy one play four

00:20:49.020 on three tag football or flag football like you're doing and just let them experience it and make

00:20:54.480 decisions about where to cut and when to run and how to avoid people and things like that before you

00:20:59.680 try to teach them offsides and everything like that but len what do you think yeah if i could add to that

00:21:04.980 that that's that's that's an important concept you've brought up here but one of the things you can't

00:21:10.240 be afraid of is just to to coaches to modify the rules a little bit and you see it so much in in youth

00:21:18.560 sport where i've had arguments with parents and administrators over things like teaching youngsters

00:21:26.900 baseball at eight nine years of age and they're they're afraid of that hard baseball so when somebody

00:21:33.900 developed this little the ball the same size or perhaps a little bit smaller but but didn't have

00:21:39.880 that hardness that a baseball has that made kids afraid when they get hit by the ball and they said

00:21:44.960 no you can't that that's not baseball they've got to be banged with that real hard baseball

00:21:49.520 to learn the sport so they they really objected to the to the uh to the modification of the ball itself

00:21:56.040 or having a smaller basketball for example a smaller soccer ball when they're first starting out

00:22:02.920 or the the height of the hoop in basketball they were just no you you've got to keep it that what

00:22:09.640 at what level the the adults are playing it at and that's absolutely insane so having a smaller ball

00:22:16.360 lower hoop and now we can teach them the mechanics of making a good free throw or a jump shot if we

00:22:23.040 make those modifications and as dan was saying having them work in tight areas where they get to touch

00:22:28.580 the ball more frequently in a soccer pitch or on an ice hockey rink we did a lot of cross cross ice stuff

00:22:35.100 it not only gives them more touches but it forces them to think quicker they got to make quicker decisions

00:22:41.220 because a defender is on them all the time and i think is another thing that's important to kind of

00:22:46.660 get at this cognitive dimension brett is that that as coaches we're often telling kids what to do

00:22:53.260 and as parents were telling them what to do we we really lost the art of asking good questions

00:22:59.580 so when you ask questions kids have to think and so when you're asking them why would you do this

00:23:06.340 what's a good way to to do this it gets the wheels turning in the in the young brain of a little

00:23:14.800 athlete and so that's one way of kind of enhancing the the cognitive development of kids in sport

00:23:20.820 brett i'm just going to bring up one quote that we have in the book we um from a dr istvan bali who

00:23:26.960 is a world expert in developing these player development plans that you see from a lot of

00:23:32.420 the national sport organizations he's done usa hockey is u.s lacrosse is he's worked with olympic

00:23:37.380 committees etc to kind of understand this idea of physical literacy and building sports skill over time

00:23:43.020 not all at once and the quote that he always likes to use in his presentations is uh and this is dr bali

00:23:49.480 i learned this from jesuit priests in ireland if you want to teach latin to johnny you have to know

00:23:55.140 latin and obviously you have to know johnny so instead of latin if you want to teach any sport

00:24:00.500 to johnny you have to know that sport which we do obviously very well and you have to know johnny

00:24:06.140 we know the sport very well but we do not know johnny or jane from age six to sixteen and he goes on

00:24:13.300 to talk about you can't just impose an adult training program on little kids you need to adjust it

00:24:19.340 down to their cognitive level uh one really great brass tack piece of advice that i got from that

00:24:26.360 was the the research about working memory in kids and when you're instructing them because you know as

00:24:31.920 a parent you know i'm watching my kid play and i'm like shouting instructions at him right and you

00:24:37.240 think it's helpful but like when you guys talked about like no a kid's working memory is not very

00:24:42.740 developed the prefrontal cortex is not very developed so when you're just barking these instructions like

00:24:46.520 they're trying to maintain all that information that you're sending them while also trying to

00:24:50.920 process what's going on in the the sport that the game itself and it just shut like it just shuts down

00:24:55.960 and they don't do well so like basically the tip was like just shut up and let your kid play

00:25:01.520 and it's interesting because uh it just to go a little bit deep in some of the uh the cognitive part

00:25:09.080 of that one of the few of the scientists that we quote in the book really do not get do their work

00:25:15.320 in sports but a very well-known one is daniel kahneman and amos toversky kahneman won the nobel prize

00:25:21.260 and kahneman came out with the book thinking fast and slow several years ago and he introduced the

00:25:28.380 whole topic of how we may how humans make decisions with system one and system two system one is your

00:25:34.600 you're thinking fast you know two plus two is four you don't have to really think about it

00:25:39.080 football's flying at your head like len said you're gonna duck or you will the second time and so those

00:25:44.540 are the system one things those are the automatic things and in a sports world that's when you have

00:25:50.360 mastered a skill that's when you can dribble a basketball without looking at the basketball

00:25:54.160 or you can stick handle a puck without watching the puck and the system two is the more deliberate

00:26:00.660 analytical side where you actually have to stop and think to figure something out and it's as

00:26:07.240 obviously when you're learning to do a new skill you're stopping to look at your hand as you're

00:26:11.680 dribbling the basketball until you till you can figure it out for sure it's the same way like you said on a

00:26:17.480 on a field or on a court in among all that chaos what we want is we want system one happening we want

00:26:24.280 automaticity we want kids who see something see an opportunity see an opening see a pass and they just

00:26:30.440 do it instinctively intuitively and that comes from years and years of pattern recognition of seeing

00:26:37.360 opportunities oh tried that once and it didn't work and slowly subconsciously that database of ideas

00:26:44.580 and patterns build up until the point where it just looks automatic and they always talk about the game

00:26:51.120 slowing down at a higher level that's the process it's going from system two to system one where they

00:26:56.640 can just react the way they should but like you said when a when a parent a well-meaning parent i've been there

00:27:02.920 i know you know yells no pass over there to fred you know your son or daughter already had an idea in their

00:27:10.020 head of what they were going to do and now you've just introduced a whole nother decision there and they slow

00:27:14.860 down and they lose the ball and or they make a bad pass or when a coach yells the play by play from the

00:27:21.040 sideline of exactly every pass they should make it just it disrupts that automaticity and learning

00:27:26.820 process so like you said the best thing to do is cheer positively and and don't give them specific

00:27:32.240 instructions we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show

00:27:38.180 so let's let's recap here for coaching young kids or parenting young kids who are athletes don't want to

00:27:44.000 specialize early let them play lots of different sports don't make the practices too regimented like but make

00:27:49.820 them more like gameplay so maybe do little mini games within practice so they can recognize those

00:27:55.080 patterns and get that get those or practice those skills that underlie the game would that be a good

00:28:00.560 summary sure yeah and ask questions a lot don't always be telling even though it's a more efficient way of

00:28:06.560 running a practice but talk to the kids and ask them questions challenge them mentally we see that's a

00:28:12.080 great question i always wonder like how do i if i'm watching my kid do something and i see something

00:28:16.680 that okay maybe he should he should have done something differently like do you bring that up

00:28:21.080 right after like in the car ride home like do you ask a question like what what were you thinking in 1.00

00:28:25.920 this i mean because like you don't want to ask it in a way like what were you thinking you you idiot 0.99

00:28:29.680 like so like i mean so like what what kind of advice there like how do you have that conversation 0.99

00:28:35.000 with your kids so they can uh develop more cognitively for their sport well it's heightening

00:28:41.100 that awareness i think picking your spots and when to do it it may not be in the car car ride home

00:28:46.020 wait for a while depending upon whether it's a success or failure uh attempt but it's it's asking

00:28:52.260 those questions of your children as a parent or as a coach uh i think is really healthy you know

00:28:58.180 without kind of coming across as uh you know it's really an inquisition but rather how how are they

00:29:05.040 seeing the field and the pitch or the court they might be seeing it very differently than when

00:29:11.000 they're on there than you as a parent or a coach on the sideline because they're getting a different

00:29:15.260 angle so it's it's always good to hear them and but kind of do it with a little bit of humor too and

00:29:21.120 encouraging them to to talk it through and ask why they make these decisions and you know brett i always

00:29:26.420 when my my guys were little we had a hockey coach who's a great guy and he told his parents on the

00:29:32.660 first day of the season he said abide by the the parking lot rule and we're like what's the parking

00:29:38.520 lot rule and he said after a game you start up your car your kids in the car you're heading out of the

00:29:45.200 parking lot when by the time you get out of the parking lot stop talking about the game you know

00:29:50.180 that's it you know it just good game bad game maybe one question but once you leave the parking

00:29:55.880 lot it's done and and don't dwell on it and i thought that was always useful at least it was i guess that

00:30:01.700 doesn't mean you can sit in the parking lot and yell at them but basically you know you get you

00:30:06.620 get about 30 seconds or a minute to talk about the game and then it's over let it go right so yeah i

00:30:11.400 mean i think a lot of parents where if they don't do the regimen stuff they're not going to pick up

00:30:14.580 the game but like the kids are picking this stuff up you just have to give them opportunities i guess

00:30:18.780 that's i think that's reassuring so at what point can kids start specializing is it different i

00:30:24.800 imagine i mean maybe it's different for every kid well it's different for every kid and maybe by

00:30:28.680 sport you'll see the specialization in something like gymnastics where they start awfully young

00:30:33.600 swimming to some extent has that as well where they start young and i think there's a belief system

00:30:39.660 that they that that is fairly important that they start young but most of the other sports

00:30:45.060 no sample different ones and i remember sydney crosby telling me in my long interview with him that

00:30:50.340 he said he played every conceivable sport he could as a kid and he didn't specialize in

00:30:54.700 and hockey until he was around 14 or 15 but he said there were so many transferable skills

00:30:59.740 that he learned and he said even cognitively like that the different patterns of play you learn

00:31:06.100 something from every sport that you can transfer and he says you just won't get that by playing one

00:31:11.180 sport and exposed to different coaches as well who give you different ideas on how to process

00:31:16.640 information yeah so that's kind of my take on that yeah i think from the some of the researchers

00:31:22.720 said based on what you know where some of the elite athletes have come from a lot of them didn't

00:31:28.300 start until about that high school age about 14 or 15 years old did they really kind of get rid of

00:31:33.580 the other sports in their life and and pick one and it certainly like you said every every child's

00:31:38.760 difference some may never get rid of them you know the the the three-letter athlete in high school

00:31:44.060 has become more and more rare but they're still out there and there's no reason you have to quit

00:31:49.160 the other sports i know there's all this you know i've lived through it the whole quest for the

00:31:55.060 college scholarship and all of that a couple of my guys did that and but it's it it's a conversation

00:32:02.020 with them at that age of hey if you really want to go for it from high school and beyond here's

00:32:07.640 probably some things we need to do but you don't have to you can keep playing all of your sports if

00:32:12.160 you want and then they make the decision i think the data are pretty clear too that specialization

00:32:17.080 is much earlier today than it was when david henry did his study in the mid-1980s i think

00:32:22.960 it was the the of the 50 some athletes he interviewed they they were specializing at about age 15 you

00:32:29.720 know my i don't know what they are the exact number would be today but i suspect it's much younger than

00:32:37.120 15 years of age to specialize in the sports that they're playing yeah i mean you you see very few

00:32:42.480 even in college like multi-sport players i think oh you has one right now the quarterback

00:32:47.640 for oh yeah he's good good baseball baseball player football yeah but no they're not a lot of

00:32:53.080 deon sanders anymore jackson's jim thorpes right but but part of that i think brett is is you know

00:33:00.180 as parents you know we think we're we've got to do the right thing and and there there are good

00:33:06.140 entrepreneurs out there that are sales people and they say there's only one way to get to the top

00:33:10.980 you gotta stick with me and they've got to play 12 months a year and we'll start early and they

00:33:16.440 buy into that they think more more is better and yet you know but these people aren't reading journal

00:33:22.880 articles or the sports science information so how would they know they're hoping that they're making

00:33:28.280 the right decision and intuitively it might make sense to them but it's research just does not support

00:33:34.820 that so we've been talking about so far how the brain works the child's brain works when they're

00:33:40.420 learning a sport and the best way to approach that when they're young and we want to specialize

00:33:43.620 later on when maybe when they're in high school but you also hit on research saying how how sports

00:33:49.740 can affect cognition and that cognition carry over to other parts of our life because oftentimes we

00:33:55.140 think of sport it's very like domain specific but there's research showing that you know when you

00:33:59.220 play sports you work parts of your brain that can help you in decision making and say you know just

00:34:05.240 school work etc yeah it was one of the interesting studies that we looked at was from the university

00:34:11.680 of illinois dr beckman and who's dr hillman at university of illinois hillman yeah yeah they did

00:34:18.600 uh some very interesting studies uh probably about five or six years ago where they had they have a

00:34:25.620 facility there that they call the cave it's basically almost 180 degree surround screen where they can

00:34:33.000 flash movies and images of environments up there and then test certain things as you react to them

00:34:38.460 and one of the things they had in there was a scene of a busy street and your job was to cross the

00:34:46.240 virtual street without getting hit by the cars and so they brought in university of illinois student

00:34:52.220 athletes and they brought in some recreational athletes and then they brought in some athletes who

00:34:57.900 didn't play a lot of sports and they tested them as far as their ability to know when to cross the

00:35:04.820 street virtually in other words timing things you know there's cars coming both ways and all of that

00:35:11.060 and then they did so well the first thing they found is that yes indeed elite athletes got across the street

00:35:17.540 better than than the recreational athletes or the non-athletes but then they also threw in some things like

00:35:24.260 distractions as most students are distracted they'll have a phone ringing they'll have a have

00:35:30.100 them look at a phone while they try to cross the street etc and there again that for what they found

00:35:35.480 is that the elite athletes had better awareness peripheral vision etc and they were able to get across

00:35:41.620 safer but it still didn't answer the question and they they admit that this they haven't asked the

00:35:46.520 question whether it's nature or nurture you know are they are these elite athletes better at this

00:35:52.600 because they played sports and that trained their cognitive abilities or are they elite athletes

00:35:59.860 because they were born with better cognitive abilities a lot like the the david epstein discussion

00:36:04.520 that he's brought up of of is it is it genetic or is it uh is it training and that goes into the

00:36:10.560 whole 10 000 hour discussion etc which we'll get to but and they have also found that they've tested

00:36:16.740 athletes who can show better vision results and other things but usually they only show better

00:36:23.860 vision perception etc when they're in a sports context so if you show a bunch of elite soccer

00:36:31.020 players a soccer situation and and stop something and have them think about working memory or whatever

00:36:36.580 they find that in a soccer setting they do much better than people who are not soccer players

00:36:41.860 but in a non-sports specific context they don't they're they're not that much better they don't

00:36:47.780 have that many more cognitive gifts than uh than the general population so still a lot of interesting

00:36:54.000 research to do out there but um a few hints here and there yeah let me let me add a little bit to

00:36:59.220 what dan said brett there are a couple of studies that i'm quite familiar with uh my my colleague at

00:37:04.320 university montreal jocelyn foubert developed a device called the neurotracker which is really

00:37:11.680 multiple object tracking so it takes incredible cognitive skills particularly attention skills

00:37:18.740 and an executive function processing skills to do well on the task and this is published in

00:37:25.500 in prestigious journals nature and in science and basically has demonstrated that that elite athletes

00:37:32.600 outperform other people on that but again we don't know that's something that they were they were

00:37:38.680 gifted with i tend to think it is something that that helped sport helped them develop yeah they

00:37:44.160 may have had high baselines to start with but sports certainly contribute to that and then we cite in

00:37:50.720 in the book also a famous dana study looking at executive functions of high-end soccer players and

00:37:57.820 lo and behold they used a couple of spanish players that i worked with in 2006 and and eight

00:38:03.360 iniesta was one of them i think ramos was the other and they were yeah yeah yeah xavi was xavi that's

00:38:10.320 right who would they were just off the charts on executive functioning standard psychological test

00:38:17.100 they used for lucky and executive functioning abilities and they were just nobody close to them

00:38:23.060 here again did they did they come into the world with those those great abilities or did the kind of

00:38:31.020 football they played help develop it and i'm leaning towards the latter for sure okay yeah because i

00:38:36.440 know there's a lot of uh discussion too now about the role of physical education or sports in school

00:38:42.700 when there's all this pressure now for you know kids to do well on tests so a lot of schools are

00:38:47.320 dropping pe they're dropping sports and you think well what are what are they missing out i mean is that

00:38:52.180 is that going to affect how well they actually do on these tests because they're not exercising their

00:38:56.160 their brain in that way exactly right you hit that right on and my my good former student and

00:39:02.840 colleague avery fagenbaum in new jersey he's kind of the world's advocate on that he said and and i

00:39:09.020 think there are a lot of pretty bright people who would support that we've got to have that that

00:39:13.640 exercise dimension to to enhance brain function it's just that uh you know the policy makers uh believe

00:39:21.640 there's you just got to have more reading writing and arithmetic and uh the world's problems will be

00:39:26.320 solved not true so i mean so far we've been talking about um this is very like very recreational i think

00:39:32.640 sports are i mean for me sports are important for kids because you make a lot of memories uh you make

00:39:37.960 friends you get to exercise you get to work your brain a different way so i think for most parents

00:39:42.860 who are listening like this is going to be useful advice because they'll their kid will play sports

00:39:46.720 through high school and they'll have a good time but like what about like is i mean we talked about

00:39:51.420 earlier can you recognize if a kid like they say they're a senior in high school like okay he has a

00:39:57.460 chance to do well in college is that even i mean is that possible like can you see like you can see

00:40:02.060 the playmaker ability there or like even if he gets to college can you go well now maybe he has a chance

00:40:06.340 to go pro is that possible can you are there things we can look for that will determine performance

00:40:12.380 like later on in their athletic development i'm not talking when they're 10 i'm talking when they're

00:40:16.020 18 17 years old well let me just kind of comment on that brett is that up until now in every major

00:40:24.540 sport that i've worked in the the drafts uh are very poor at predicting those who are going to make it

00:40:31.960 and they keep repeating the same mistakes because they basically look at the attributes that they

00:40:37.900 could easily measure so it's easy to measure athlete speed athlete strength you know their emotion

00:40:43.740 their biomechanics and they they try to create an equation that's going to predict whether they're

00:40:49.080 going to be successful as a collegiate player or a pro player men and women and and the prediction rate

00:40:56.300 has been terrible and and and so why and my opinion is that the area that they're missing may be the most

00:41:04.820 important one in the equation it's not part of the equation and that's the the these perceptual

00:41:10.060 cognitive abilities of that individual and because we haven't been able to measure it up until now

00:41:15.720 it's not part of the equation and and kind of makes the the the prediction terrible as it's been

00:41:22.120 so i'm i'm predicting i'm making this prediction that in the future it's going to get a lot better

00:41:27.440 because now we're at that point scientifically where we can measure these perceptual cognitive

00:41:34.340 abilities and we cite that in the book uh and i keep talking about it where there's really good

00:41:41.000 things happening in the world of sport and sport science where we're able to measure these perceptual

00:41:46.220 abilities cognitive abilities and i think it's going to enhance the predictive uh ability of uh

00:41:52.780 talent scouts so what is what are they doing to test for that cognitive aspect of the sport

00:41:59.700 or they're starting to well uh let me briefly mention a couple of them the the first thing

00:42:05.800 we talk about in in part two of the book is being able to uh to read read the play so it's it's a kind

00:42:13.360 of perceptual skills and most of it's with with vision of course but certainly we rely on some of our

00:42:19.440 other senses too but vision is the primary one what are we seeing out there and uh there is a

00:42:25.500 a company called uh right eye r-i-g-h-t-e-y right eye that in 10 minutes gets you all the valuable

00:42:35.540 visual metrics that are important for basically every sport it's more than just doing acuity

00:42:41.040 tests with an optometrist it captures these wonderful metrics that's getting a lot of traction

00:42:45.960 in the world of sport in the last couple of years very familiar with that company and how they're doing

00:42:51.520 it and i think that's adding adding to our predictability by measuring these perceptual

00:42:57.300 skills then the decision making part you may know from the knowing the football world a bit

00:43:03.860 they've used the this wonderlick test which was kind of a 1930s uh primitive iq test and they i think

00:43:12.340 the dallas cowboys introduced it to see if they could identify smart quarterbacks way back when and and they

00:43:19.180 continue to use the wonderlick and every year they talk about how somebody scored on the wonderlick

00:43:23.360 even though it's supposed to be confidential but it's a terrible predictor or measure measurement tool

00:43:28.480 for cognitive abilities and so my good friend scott goldman uh started a project when he was at

00:43:35.380 university of arizona and then when he moved to michigan kind of fine-tuned it and he's developed

00:43:40.620 something called the aiq or the athlete intelligent quotient and it basically looks at important executive

00:43:47.020 functions the kinds of intelligence markers that you need basically executive function skills to be a

00:43:53.880 good athlete and that's getting a lot of traction in the high performance world and i think it's it's

00:43:59.820 only going to alert most of the sporting community that we've got a way now of measuring those executive

00:44:06.820 functions that work at the free prefrontal cortex and so forth so now that we can we can insert into

00:44:14.220 the equation the perceptual dimension and the decision making dimension i think it's going to do

00:44:19.240 great things for the predictability of of athletes at the college level and at the professional level

00:44:25.200 you know brett another just to add on to what len said in high school football we have a section i think

00:44:32.120 it's chapter two called you know what gets measured gets noticed and one of the things they have every

00:44:38.600 year for the elite high school football players is nike sponsors it called the opening and it's regional

00:44:44.620 competitions across the country i believe there's six of them and then if you do well at the regional

00:44:49.400 competition you get invited to the national competition and these are high school football players looking to

00:44:55.380 move on to college or get recruited for college and one of the things that we noticed and we looked at a lot of the

00:45:02.820 numbers etc and the conversation about it was you know the national recruiting services will rate a player

00:45:10.220 three-star four-star five-star and then they go to these combines basically they do run some football

00:45:16.940 specific plays etc and look at them that way but one of the things they do is they put them through these

00:45:21.500 physical tests uh the nike spark test for speed power reaction time agility and quickness and these are all

00:45:28.520 measures of their of their athleticism and what's interesting is what we found is that at the

00:45:35.700 regional at the national level the players who were five-star recruits as ranked by national scouts

00:45:43.740 did not were not always the ones who scored at the highest levels within their position group in the

00:45:50.360 physical test the athletic test and vice versa the guys who scored really well on the spark test

00:45:56.580 or maybe three-star recruits and so from that we kind of you know all right well then what's the

00:46:03.360 what's the x factor then why are why are these guys ranked five stars when they're not even the best

00:46:08.720 athletes within their position group certainly they're elite athletes among the rest of us

00:46:13.200 but within their position group and within their peers physically they're not as gifted as the others

00:46:19.780 yet they're ranked higher and that's where we started thinking well it that's where we need to start

00:46:25.240 measuring or find a way to measure the cognitive end and in fact we were so interested in that and

00:46:31.660 exactly your question how do we measure this decision making component i think that's become uh len and i

00:46:38.320 have decided that's the topic of our next book in 2019 is to look specifically at decision making in

00:46:46.040 sports and dive deep into that and all of the interesting science and interesting anecdotes

00:46:53.580 about good decisions bad decisions winning games losing games uh how do you coach decisions how do

00:47:00.360 you measure decisions and all of those things so there's a lot of work still left to be done there

00:47:04.560 no for sure um and one of you mentioned the 10 000 hour rule in in practice because we've had

00:47:10.120 andrews erickson on the podcast to discuss this and i i thought one of the really kind of

00:47:15.600 counterintuitive findings you you have in the book is that at an elite level it seems like more

00:47:21.120 practices and help like you you got you give the example of uh kyle ivory no the basketball player

00:47:26.600 just decided he wasn't going to practice anymore oh ellen iverson ellen iverson right his famous rant

00:47:32.000 right his famous rant against practice i mean so i thought that was kind of interesting it's like

00:47:35.480 it doesn't seem to help that much at a certain point what's going on there well i think in

00:47:40.860 iverson's case it was you know his practice days were when he was in college so when he's like a in

00:47:48.440 the nba for 12 years skipping a practice isn't going to significantly affect alan iverson i think

00:47:55.180 that's what he would when he raised all that that iris and why is the practice important well you

00:48:00.200 know he's his his skill set was all automated by that time you know getting an extra 15 minutes in

00:48:07.360 wasn't going to make much difference for ellen iverson but for the developing athlete it's hugely 1.00

00:48:11.120 important and and and it's got to be like and i'm sure you learned that from uh andrews erickson

00:48:16.320 that it's got to be deliberate practice we had a great interview with him and i've known andrews

00:48:21.680 for many years that he just doesn't see much of this what he called deliberate practice or what i

00:48:27.640 refer to more purposeful practice where you're actually trying to accomplish something not just

00:48:32.760 going through routine stuff at any level whether it's at the youth level or collegiate level or at

00:48:39.860 the pros you have to be trying to get better with each and every practice on certain subskills

00:48:45.700 and i think he probably clarified and summarized better than i could you know the the whole conversation

00:48:52.340 about 10 000 hour theory and and even you know malcolm gladwell in his outliers book he didn't

00:48:59.220 really even mess it up that bad i mean he was just he took this before that it was a somewhat of an

00:49:06.120 obscure piece of research by dr erickson among people outside of his field and and it was on musicians

00:49:12.320 it wasn't even on athletes and but and malcolm will say this as well and we we have some of his quotes

00:49:18.720 in the book that you know he didn't play up he called it the 10 000 hour rule but other than that

00:49:25.380 it just kind of one of those things that kind of took off on its own that poor people heard 10 000

00:49:30.880 hours is what you need to be world class and that's the thing that stuck whereas gladwell and erickson will

00:49:37.620 say that's not the thing that we wanted to stick what we wanted to stick was the idea of deliberate

00:49:44.140 practice as len said where you're focusing on something specific preferably a weakness you have

00:49:49.960 a coach there to guide you it's uncomfortable you don't like doing it but over time you will get

00:49:55.740 better at these things and that goes back to our discussion about automaticity you're moving from

00:50:00.820 system two to system one with all of that practice if you just go out in the driveway and shoot baskets

00:50:07.220 for an hour casually okay you can chalk that up as an hour of practice but you really didn't improve

00:50:13.820 anything one of the quotes that anders gave us during our interview is he's saying i'm basically

00:50:19.660 arguing that when you look at a lot of the practice that i've seen visiting all sorts of different teams

00:50:25.260 very little of that is actually even getting close to this idea of individualized deliberate practice

00:50:31.080 where somebody's doing something that is uniquely appropriate for them to improve some aspects of their

00:50:36.340 performance in some individualized context so that's kind of his mission and maybe he said

00:50:42.940 something similar when he talked to you but that's his mission is to push the deliberate practice part

00:50:47.800 not the quantity right so i imagine like you wouldn't want to do this deliberate practice on young

00:50:52.880 kids with the skill like just have them you know throw balls over and over and over again and like

00:50:58.360 make it right you just want them to play but i imagine as you get you decide to specialize you're going

00:51:03.520 to start spending more time refining skills that's when a coach come in and i imagine at an elite

00:51:08.340 level like the practice that you're doing is not so much the the physical skill of it but it's like

00:51:14.200 the the mental part like the film like if you're a football player it's like you're spending a lot of

00:51:17.780 time watching film analyzing things how you could have done things better you know increasing that

00:51:22.780 pattern recognition in your brain right exactly exactly well guys this has been a great conversation

00:51:29.360 where can people go to learn more about the book well it's available just about anywhere it should

00:51:33.620 be in your local bookstores it's obviously on amazon and all the online booksellers it's called the

00:51:38.820 playmakers advantage it is uh in our website is 80 mental.com 80 mental.com and people can also

00:51:48.840 follow me on twitter at daniel peterson all one word and like i said it's uh we've had it out there

00:51:56.120 since june uh getting a lot of good feedback it's available in hardcover audio version or ebook and

00:52:02.680 then there's a paperback coming out in january well lynn zikowski daniel peterson thanks so much for

00:52:07.900 coming on it's been a great conversation thanks for having us on brett my guests today were lynn

00:52:12.960 zikowski and daniel peterson they are the authors of the book the playmakers advantage it's available on

00:52:17.480 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about their work at 80 mental.com

00:52:22.380 also check out our show notes at aom.is playmaker we can find links to resources we can delve deeper

00:52:28.120 into this topic

00:52:28.940 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:52:45.180 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com and if you enjoy the show

00:52:49.320 you've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes or stitcher that

00:52:52.680 helps out a lot and if you've done that already thank you please consider sharing the show with

00:52:56.220 a friend or family member who you think would get something out of it as always thank you for

00:52:59.680 your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

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The Art of Manliness - November 07, 2018

#456： Myths About Kids and Sports

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