5.
Big-Match Mentality
Dinner time in the Williams household. Mrs Williams is displaying all the organizational skills of an air-traffic controller at Heathrow as she marshals her three children through this most chaotic of mealtimes. Twelve-year-old Jimmy has just returned from football practice after school and eight-year-old Gillian is itching to get back to her cartoons, while Tom, the baby of the family at only thirteen months old, is doing his best to commandeer Mum’s attention as he wields his food-laden spoon with reckless abandon. At this stage in his learning, Mum is happy with anything that lands south of his nose.
Jimmy and Gillian are talking over one another, each relaying different stories about their day, as Mum pulls off the difficult trick of appearing to give each her undivided attention while she expertly manages Tom’s learning, gently guiding the spoon towards his mouth when required. A superb display of intense multitasking under pressure. Every time Tom gets it to his mouth unaided, she gives out an enthusiastic, ‘Well done!’ and he beams excitedly back at her.
If we wanted to couch it in management terms or coaching language, Tom is on a ‘cutlery handling micro skills-development programme’. This is where it all starts, on the high chair with the plastic bib as the catching trough. Mum is providing the positive reinforcement, leaving him in no doubt whatsoever when he’s got it right. As time goes by, he becomes more proficient, the food all over his face a thing of the past as he progresses to a fork and spoon. He’s able to stab solid bits of food and chart a course directly for his mouth with greater frequency. He’s hacking his way through that forest, making a path to walk down.
Not only does Tom have deliberate physical instruction from Mum, but he also has constant training input from those around him, particularly his brother and sister, whose food-management skills are now advanced – their food disappearing without a trace into their mouths with every forkful.
Tom is essentially receiving training in manual dexterity, much like a dentist or surgeon training for a delicate procedure. As a result of repeated, deliberate practice and improving control, meat is introduced to Tom and, eventually, a knife so that he can cut it up himself. The plastic catching trough is replaced by a standard cloth bib and later just a napkin. Eventually, he comes out of the high chair to take his seat at the table with the adults, his implements – knife, fork and spoon – mere instruments in the hands of his growing skills. The intervention from Mum subsides; the expectation that he will be proficient grows.
Now, thirteen years later, Tom is at a grand family luncheon, with uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents in tow, at a suitably fancy restaurant. All the adults are in their Sunday best, with the children, a couple of whom would now consider themselves adults too, immaculately turned out. The pressure to behave correctly, to demonstrate excellent table manners, to do the family proud, is on.
The first course goes without a hitch, polite conversation and all the food on target, despite the occasion making Tom more aware of his table manners than usual, forcing some of his subconscious, implicit actions up into his conscious thoughts. The mains arrive, with Tom having ordered the steak – after all, he is almost a man now. As the conversation flows at the table, with Jimmy regaling his grandparents with tales of his new job while, all too familiarly, Gillian vies for attention with her stories of university life, Tom eyes the thick slab of meat surrounded by a medley of vegetables on his plate. They even have a special knife for it, he thinks. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Armed with the tools for the task, he prods his fork into the steak and begins to cut – to no avail. So then he starts sawing, but when that isn’t effective, he begins to apply more pressure. Progress is still slow, so Tom, caught in the moment and with his perception of the occasion, the need for best behaviour narrowing to a point of almost extinction, he raises himself in his seat to apply more pressure and change the angle of his blade upon the stubborn steak.
As the tussle on his plate heats up, those around him continue talking, oblivious to the drama unfolding. And then, suddenly … disaster! The knife skids violently off his plate, and Tom falls forward into his food, sending meat across the table, scattering peas, carrots, broccoli – and toppling the bottle of red wine, flooding the table and drenching Mum’s pristine white dress. In the midst of gasps and the beginnings of a mirthful smile across the lips of his brother, Tom’s mum looks at him and hisses: ‘That is not the way to behave at the table!’
My question is this: when did Tom’s skill of using a knife and fork actually become a learned behaviour? Clearly, it started as a skill-learning programme, but under pressure at the table it became far less implicit and it’s fair to say that Mum would label it a misbehaviour. Perhaps the coach’s response would be: ‘Great work with your grip on the fork, but be careful with over-recruiting on the knife at that angle – you might cause an accident.’
Making a Splash
A light drizzle of rain provided some welcome relief on a warm day on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. I had a day off from coaching so thought I’d try swimming with the sharks at Sea World. Unfortunately, hundreds of others thought the same and, with the queue endless, I wandered off towards the dolphin show.
The dolphins were hugely impressive, swimming with great speed and then shooting out of the water to do two or three somersaults before splashing down. Two dolphins would swim together like a pair of organic water skis for the trainer to stand on. They would fetch a ball, balance it on their noses then push it back to the trainer waiting on the side. Later, two dolphins would come out with a trainer standing on each of their heads and the animals would catapult them out of the water a good fifteen feet in the air, before gravity returned them to the water. It was an incredible show, but it got me thinking: how did the dolphins learn these skills? And how did they get to be so good?
I asked the security guard who cleared out the crowd for the next show if I could stay and watch again. Reluctantly, she agreed. The second time was equally impressive, with the full repertoire of somersaults, water-skiing, retrieving balls and catapulting trainers out of the water, but I noticed that it was not exactly the same as the first. The dolphins leapt to incredible heights, but they were not consistent: sometimes they’d do two somersaults, sometimes three. The choice seemed random. I was intrigued, so when the show finished and I sheepishly asked if I could stay for the next, the guard shot me a slightly puzzled look and told me I could, but it would be the last performance of the day.
The third show was just as good again and the crowd lapped it up with heartfelt ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and rapturous applause, but again the inconsistency was there. By now I needed answers: if the dolphins sometimes react randomly, what is stopping them from just swimming off and doing their own thing?
When the familiar guard arrived to usher me away, I asked if I could meet the person in charge of training the dolphins. Her face said, ‘What on earth is with this guy?’ but her mouth said, ‘I’ll see what I can do – but I can’t promise anything.’ She walked off and after a few minutes returned with a guy she introduced to me as Chris Macintyre.
Chris was the head of dolphin training and meeting him had a dramatic impact on my coaching philosophy. He showed me round the facilities behind the scenes and introduced me to the other trainers, while he explained the challenges they faced in training the dolphins and, surprisingly – at least to someone like me more used to imagining the friendly mammals of wildlife documentaries – informed me that they often fight among themselves in the pens. A few of the dolphins had bite marks from such confrontations. Chris and I spent a good couple of hours chatting about our respective professions and soon saw similarities in what each of us did for a living. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: to come in and watch the trainers work with the dolphins in the morning.
The trainers each had their own specific dolphins to work with and training sessions were conducted in the same pool in which the paying public watched them, with the sessions coming to a close when the dolphins were signalled to swim through a gate and into their pens. The sessions were very well organized and it was a real education to witness at first-hand such patience and consistency.
Unlike training a toddler to use a fork by example, this was the ultimate in behaviour training. You can’t make a dolphin mimic your actions, nor can you manipulate their bodies so they feel the correct movement, as you would Tom’s hand with a spoonful of yoghurt. Indeed, the dolphin trainers used the word ‘behaviour’ to describe the response of the mammals when they gave a signal – it could be the wave of a hand or a short blast from a whistle – which might be to swim away and do a couple of somersaults or to collect a ball and bring it to the trainer. If its behaviour corresponds with the given signal, the trainer will leave the dolphin in no doubt by rewarding it, either through tone of voice, a pat on the head or with a small fish from a food pouch.
If the behaviour is wrong, however, the dolphin is ‘ignored’ by the trainer, who adopts a specific pose: standing upright, hands on hips (making sure there is no movement towards the food pouch), with one foot back and the other forward, its sole just over the edge of the pool. After a short while the dolphin, expecting a reward for its behaviour, will start to become agitated, squawking and nudging the trainer’s foot. This is a crucial point in the dolphin’s learning. The trainer doesn’t budge and then, after a sufficient period of time has elapsed, they make the signal again to see what behaviour the dolphin responds with, ignoring the dolphin again if it is wrong. This process is repeated with the same outcome until the dolphin gets it right, in which case everything changes: the trainer becomes animated and enthusiastically makes a fuss of the dolphin, and perhaps feeds it from the pouch.
The fundamentals of dolphin training involve absolute consistency, incredible patience, staging (one piece of learning at a time), ignoring failure, enjoyment – and a big show of celebration when it’s right. Most of all, it demands a great deal of discipline from the trainer. Any of this sound familiar? The similarities with teaching, coaching and management, and preparing ourselves to perform under pressure, are there, which is why, when Chris showed me the ‘bible’ of animal training, he pointed specifically to Karen Pryor’s laws of shaping. Karen Pryor is an expert in the field of animal behaviour whose work with dolphins in the 1960s pioneered new methods of positive-reinforcement training. I have listed the ten laws she formulated below, along with my own comments on how each is more widely applicable to our own two-legged species.
Pryor’s Ten Laws of Shaping
- Raise criteria in small increments. By using successive approximations you will set the animal up to succeed.
This is the basis of the ‘no limits’ mindset, which focuses on improvements at the margin of the components of our performance. The emphasis is improvement based on previous self. So often we fall into the trap of basing our improvement on other people’s level of performance – something that we cannot control.
- Train one criterion at a time. Keep your goals clear and remember the concept of black and white. When we train a dolphin to give us its tail so that we can take a voluntary blood sample there are multiple criteria. The dolphin must allow us to touch its tail, then hold its tail; it must remain calm, allow lengthy touching, accept pressure on the tail and eventually accept the insertion of a needle. These are just a few of the steps, each with its own criterion. We must be careful not to overwhelm an animal with too much all at once.
To be more effective we should base our coaching, teaching and management on the performance level of the individual and specifically work at their margin. This will require planning and a clear understanding of exactly where that person is at that precise moment of time.
- Vary reinforcement before moving to the next stage. Although we do not recommend that new trainers use a fully variable schedule of reinforcement until they gain experience, this is still an important rule. Reinforcement can be varied in many ways, including varying magnitude of reinforcement, type of reinforcement or requiring longer duration or repetition of the behaviour being trained.
When someone is successful make sure they are in no doubt that they know they have succeeded. But try to match your reward to the challenge. If it was something that you would have expected to be successful, based on the level of difficulty and the experience and skill required, you must still reinforce that success. In coaching and teaching we tend to make assumptions that people know when they have performed correctly. If this continues we are in danger of drawing attention only to mistakes. Inadvertently we are reinforcing the very parts of the performance we want to avoid.
- Relax old criteria when introducing new criteria. When an animal is being introduced to something new, it is not unusual for an animal to fail to meet all previously learned criteria. This is acceptable at first.
Be aware that learning something new could have, in the beginning, a detrimental impact on a previously mastered skill. If you were trying to develop a different impact point in a golf swing and you had good posture at address before learning the change, it may well be that the posture would initially be worse than before as the player’s attention would be totally fixed on the new impact position.
- Plan ahead. Have a training plan/path in mind and know the eventual goals.
Vital if we are to be at our most effective in managing learning. This requires a deep knowledge of the person we are training – we should take time to question and listen, rather than going straight in with our instruction.
- Don’t change trainers in midstream. For consistency it is not wise to have different people training the same behaviour.
Consider teaching within a Western education system. Initially, very young children usually have the same teacher for all subjects. As they get older and academically more ‘skilful’, more teachers are introduced for different subjects. Towards the higher level they will probably have a specialist for each subject.
- If a plan doesn’t work, change the plan. Training is a dynamic process; so don’t be afraid to change the plan if needed.
Those who tell people WHAT to do will be less effective than those who manage learning by finding out HOW people can do something and the learner may become confused and frustrated – and give up. Or, in a professional environment, become ‘expert’ at hiding the deficiency.
- Don’t stop a session gratuitously. Stay focused, don’t get distracted and don’t end a session without a reason.
The most effective coaches and teachers always have an awareness of the learner’s state and it’s their judgement (based on experience and emotional intelligence) as to when and how they should end the learning session. I have always used the benchmark of what I want their expectation to be for the next session – and worked from that.
- Regress when behaviour deteriorates. Animals can forget or get confused. Taking a few steps backwards can refresh their memory and get them back on the right track.
We should not make assumptions about prior learning. Often going back a few steps will reinforce the skill and understanding as well as providing both a great opportunity to draw attention to success and specifics within the process to reinforce the achievement.
- End on a positive note. Keep training fun. Don’t end a session if the animal is frustrated; end with success.
When you are ending a session finish with great success. When I am working with international rugby goal kickers we try to finish with a great shot to go to bed with – a kick you could dream about and visualize in the next game. You can do the same in meetings: finish on something positive so everyone at least has the opportunity to leave the room feeling good – and perhaps they’ll bring that energy to the start of the next meeting.
Fundamentally, Pryor’s laws of shaping require a coach or trainer to be consistent in their response to their subject’s – in this case a dolphin’s – behaviour; the only action the trainer can initiate is to either accept or reject the behaviour, which reinforces that which we want to repeat and discards that which we don’t. And, at a basic level, when we’re managing or teaching people, that is exactly what we’re doing. We should be making a big deal out of getting something right, not getting it wrong.
After my day at Sea World, Chris asked if I’d like to get involved for a few days and work with one of the dolphins. As I’ve already said, it’s vital to keep learning new things if we’re to teach, so how could I refuse?
As far as I can gather, Gemma the dolphin and I got on well. Chris guided me through the repertoire of signals – not unlike a mother guiding a spoon towards her child’s mouth – and Gemma responded impeccably. She fetched the ball and dribbled it back with her forehead; she would swim off at pace around the pool, executing two somersaults and then returning; and my personal favourite was when I stepped back and raised my hand up high then waved it down to the floor and she leapt out of the water and skidded on her belly to my feet.
What was interesting was how easy it was to imagine that I was developing a relationship with Gemma. When I was talking to her, I was looking for an empathetic response in her actions, even just a subtle tilt of her head. When we’re working with someone, we’re much more effective when we know they have understood our communication.
It reminded me of the time I was working with the England polo squad. After a lot of work practising and turning on a Swiss ball the players had to transfer that ‘feel’ to their actions in the saddle. As I was addressing the six mounted players in front of me, I began to realize that I’d come over a bit Dr Dolittle, as I had, in fact, been addressing twelve pairs of eyes and looking for comprehension in all of them, including the horses’.
Working with Gemma the dolphin reinforced some of the ideas I’ve already mentioned, most notably that of positive reinforcement. Leadership guru Ken Blanchard’s The One Minute Manager books suggest that to have the greatest impact on someone’s ability to reach their full potential, it’s necessary to catch them doing something right. As the dolphin trainers showed by rewarding their charges every time they did something right, and Mrs Williams demonstrated in her encouragement for Tom every time he landed his spoon home, positive reinforcement will encourage and produce the right behaviour. Whenever I see a player make a mistake in training and the coach bellows abuse across the pitch, I think of the behaviour model of reinforcing what you want to repeat and ignoring that which you don’t and wonder what the chances are that they will reach their potential.
Pressure Practice
Those training the dolphins would say that they are coaching or ‘shaping’ the animal’s behaviour, while baby Tom at the start of the chapter was undergoing a regime of both technical and behavioural coaching. But ‘behaviour’ has far greater implications than merely as a model for training and learning, and my interest has been piqued over the years by how coaching or teaching preparation and skills acquisition relate to match conditions. ‘Match’ obviously describes game day for sportspeople, the pressure-intense environment for which they prepare, but it’s just as applicable to us all: for Tom, it was the big family dinner. For you, it could be anything from a job interview to entering a local Great British Bake Off-inspired competition. I’ve witnessed a looming disconnect between the way people practise or prepare for an event and what they are required to do when they perform in the event itself.
If we compare someone’s actual behaviour in match conditions with how often they attempt to replicate that behaviour when practising, the disconnect is all too clear to see. The dolphins practise with the same trainer and in the same pool as on match day, when they perform in front of the public. They do the same things in training as when they perform. Compare that with a snooker player practising a specific shot again and again. Eventually, they’ll get it right every time. But the match comprises a series of single shots, all different, often with a substantial break between. They get only one chance to make each shot.
It’s the same for a pianist preparing for a recital. They can play the piece over and over again while they’re practising, but when it comes to the real thing, they won’t get a second chance at it.
Practice, it is said, makes perfect, and it’s true that repetition helps in acquiring a specific skill. But possessing a skill counts for little if it can’t be performed when it matters. The key to effective practice, then, is to make it purposeful. Of course, repetition has its place, but in order to be effective, practice must also reproduce match conditions as closely as possible.
Having wrestled with the challenge over a number of years, I eventually created a system of purposeful practice management, in which there are three elements. I call them repair, training and match.
Repair
Let’s jump ahead twenty years from Tom’s disastrous steak dinner and drop in on him at thirty-three. Neither the restaurant debacle nor his skill-development course in cutlery utilization appear to have left any lasting psychological scars, for he has become something of a budding amateur cook. He loves experimenting and trying new ideas and the kitchen regularly resembles a bomb site, with YouTube recipe clips playing on his tablet and utensils and food everywhere, sometimes accompanied by a strong smell of burning. He has just moved in with his girlfriend, Alice, and they host dinner parties at which Tom revels in showing off some of his gastronomic skills. Alice’s parents live and work in Dubai and Tom has never met them before, but they are coming to the country for a rare visit and, before he knows it, Alice has invited them for dinner at their new flat, with Tom, naturally, being the star chef tasked with producing a gourmet three-course meal.
Meeting the in-laws for the first time is a pressure event in itself. The importance of making a good impression combined with the added pressure of cooking a showpiece meal is something few of us would welcome. Tom is understandably anxious, but if we look at his preparation for the event, we can see the first of the three aspects of my practice-management system in action.
On those occasions when Tom has had some spare time and decided to have a go at cooking a recipe or seeing if he can improve an aspect of his technique, he is doing repair. He’s got a Jamie Oliver video clip playing, a cookbook with explicit instructions and, if he’s making, say, a pie, he’s working on his pastry-making skills. The outcome isn’t important at this stage: he isn’t making it for anyone but himself, there are no guests to concern himself with, and if he burns it or overworks the dough he’ll just adapt and have another go.
Fundamentally, repair is working on technique. In the last chapter, we talked about your ‘Feel’ folder on the desktop plus your one procedural key to occupy your conscious thoughts. We said that this folder should not be opened when performing under pressure, as doing so will lead to information overload when you need it least. However, in between performing the skills under pressure, it is always a good thing to open up the folder and review the contents, making sure all the documents are present and correct. No doubt you will sometimes be making edits here and there, strengthening the content of one or two and updating others in light of recent events, before saving and closing them all for the next time you use the folder.
It’s vital to keep your documents up to date, or you’ll be using inadequate information for the task you’re attempting. (To hark back to an earlier metaphor, the base of your iceberg will start to become weaker and more unstable.)
We talked in Chapter 3 about outcome avoidance. When someone becomes too fixated on an outcome, they tend to compromise their commitment to learning a technique thoroughly. If Tom was preoccupied with putting together the perfect three-course meal when he practised, would he be giving his all to the specific components?
It would surely be best for Tom to practise the courses separately and individually, with his recipe books to hand, as part of his repair, before doing it all together and concerning himself with the overall outcome. Of course, removing an outcome altogether simply isn’t possible for Tom, as he will still have a finished plate of food even when he practises one course at a time. However, he should at least give himself the freedom to fail in his repair while he improves his technique. Tom’s soufflé might sink and require him to begin again, but this is the time to do it, rather than on the big occasion.
Repair sometimes bears little comparison with the ways a technique will eventually be employed. We’ve mentioned rugby players kicking into a net, which would obviously never happen in a match, and I’ve had some strange looks from fellow coaches when I’ve had Jonny Wilkinson work on an aspect of his technique by deliberately kicking under the crossbar on the training field from close range.
It’s the same when we work on our repair in everyday life. You might prepare to make a speech by delivering it in front of a mirror at home, but you obviously won’t be doing this when it’s for real, just as, when Tom hosts a dinner party, he won’t have YouTube clips playing and recipe books everywhere. But these methods are essential for learning the skill.
Training
Once Tom has reached a certain degree of competence and is able to make his pie or bake his cake without YouTube or a recipe book, he can start producing them as part of his repertoire. He might cook dinner during the week for him and Alice after a busy day at work and, over a period of time, he’ll repeat the techniques he worked on in his repair as he regularly cooks the same dishes, outside of a pressured environment, no guests or decorum to worry about, just as part of a meal at home …
Training is basically repetition. If we imagine repair as the starting point, working on parts of the technique, and the match as the performance at the other end of the continuum, training is somewhere in the middle. We’ve moved on from working on a technique and we’re now repeating this learned skill. Here, we become more aware of the outcome – after a busy day at work, it’s undoubtedly important for Tom’s cooking to be of an edible standard – and explicit coaching takes on less relevance. Small adjustments here and there – quickly checking a recipe to be sure – or a brief word of advice are fine, but training should be the repetition of something we are doing correctly and getting the desired result.
When working with professional sportspeople, getting the training aspect right can be a delicate balancing act. By the very nature of repetition, even with the utmost commitment to practice, the concentration levels of most people waver when continually repeating the same exercise. It is extremely difficult to maintain a high level of concentration throughout each repetition.
When in training mode, a player will prepare fully for his first shot; this is almost a match behaviour moment – one chance to get it right – so it merits his or her full attention. But then the second shot is executed with the knowledge and experience gleaned from the first effort just moments earlier. Despite our best intentions, it’s natural for our brains to start making assumptions based on the previous experience and not prepare quite as fully as we would when we came to it cold. By the third shot, the temptation increases as the experience to draw upon has doubled. If their first shot veered a little left, they would make the adjustment to bring it right. If we return to our paper-ball throw at the start of the book, how much more confident would you be of hitting the bin if you had three shots rather than one?
Although the situation rarely occurs in match conditions, repetition is important. It is only through repeating an action that we can hope eventually to relegate it to our subconscious. So it’s a trade-off: I find that players can rarely maintain anything approaching full concentration – taking dead aim – for more than five or six shots. They’ll tend to hit several consecutive good ones and then, for no apparent reason, send one wildly off target. When I ask them why, they usually concede that they hadn’t been concentrating fully as they’d made assumptions based on their previous shots. They’d become complacent.
I encourage repetitive training in sets of five or six maximum, with a short break to reset before starting the next set. The process of resetting improves the depth of learning, providing time to take stock and reflect, and nudges the situation closer to match behaviour – one shot, one opportunity. It’s an approach someone practising a piece of music might use – a few run-throughs, a break, then start a new set as though for the first time. Rehearsing for a local am-dram production could be done in the same manner, or, indeed, training for a waste-paper bin throw.
Rather than just taking a breather, breaks could be used to practise another relevant activity: the golfer might hit a few putts so that when they come back to driving they’ve truly reset; the footballer could alternate penalties with long-range free-kicks; the pianist could work on command posture in front of a mirror when not playing.
This training also embodies the idea of accountability. I ask for Top Pocket scores and record the accuracy of each and every attempt. Where did the ball go? Did the outcome match the intention? Not recording outcomes turns deliberate practice into aimless practice. How else is someone to celebrate progress? The pause while I note the outcome also acts as a break between attempts, so that the next try feels closer to being the first.
A record of your training is essential if you want to progress towards your goals, whether it’s to lose weight, get fit or gain muscle. Keep all the details: the machine you use; the level of difficulty; the number of reps or distance travelled; the time taken and any other pertinent information. Only through recording this information will you be able accurately to measure your progress. Many people now take their smartphones into the gym so they can listen to music, and you could easily record the information on there, or even take a piece of paper and a pencil in with you.
This allows you to create facts. Say you were running five kilometres on the treadmill two weeks ago and now you’re running six, it is a fact that you are one kilometre better. If you were lifting five kilograms more on a weight machine than you were last week, it is a fact that you are that much stronger. Recording this produces objective data to prove you’re making progress so it is a fact that you’re getting better.
I understand how difficult it can be in our busy lives to find enough time just to make it to the gym two or three times a week, never mind having to record all this information, which probably feels a bit like ‘homework’, but it is the best way to make the most effective use of your precious time. Too many people go to the gym and do the same sets of cardio and weights workouts each time and wonder why they aren’t moving nearer to their goals. In fact, our bodies are extremely good at adjusting to the strains we regularly place them under, and after that initial burst of benefit from your exercise regime – you get that little bit fitter or stronger – your body quickly adjusts and the effects of the same exercise plateau, as it isn’t enough to take you to the next level.
In order to improve we need to adopt the no-limits mindset and continually push at the margins of our performance, which means that once you’ve done a week or two of the same routine, you need to start increasing either the reps or weight that you’re lifting, or the distance, speed or difficulty level you’re working with on the cardio equipment. Having accurate records of this information will allow you to see the improvements you make week on week and month on month, as your aimless gym routines instead become deliberate practice – worthwhile training that will maximize the use of your time in the gym and see you reach your goals much quicker. But I must emphasize that you note progress to celebrate, get excited and feel good about yourself. After all, with the amount of work, social and family pressures many of us are under, we should treat our time with the respect it deserves and that means if you spend time in the gym, you should be getting the most out of it – and enjoying it, too.
Match
By now Tom regularly rolls out the dishes he has learned through his repair and honed through his training, and, as the date of his three-course meal for the in-laws approaches, he has moved closer to match behaviour through cooking them at the dinner parties he hosts for friends. Here, he will experience conditions closer to those he can expect when the in-laws visit: the food needs to be of a good standard to appease the guests, he needs to keep the kitchen and dining area presentable and he needs to be adept at keeping the right balance between being a good chef and a good host – multitasking under pressure. Equally, this isn’t exactly the same kind of pressure he’ll experience on the big day, as he’s comfortable with his friends and they’re likely to be more forgiving of a blunder, but it is a significant step up from his training, which on occasion may well have ended up with him and Alice tucking into their food in front of the television after a hard day at work. Here, the other factors that will be paramount – the social aspect, the tidying up after himself as he goes, the pressure to produce that one great meal – are brought sharply into focus.
All this is excellent practice and precisely what is needed for the big day, and this final aspect of our practice is the most challenging to arrange. ‘Match’ is simply match behaviour, but how can we possibly replicate the difficulties someone will face on the day?
In Tom’s case he was almost able to replicate match behaviour through hosting dinner parties beforehand. He may not even have been aware that he was doing it, aside from being keen to test and refine his menu, but the other factors, the cooking and hosting at the same time, would all have been invaluable practice for him. Sportspeople each have their own unique challenges to face and attempt to prepare for on match day, but ‘one shot, one opportunity’ should be the guiding force of this type of practice. The golfer may have prepared diligently through repair and training, but have they legislated for other factors that could affect their behaviour: the changing weather, the different tee times? A rugby goal kicker knows he will have to kick the ball throughout the game, but in a chaotic and unpredictable match he will have no idea where on the pitch he will be taking these kicks from. In short, how do we prepare for the intensity of the match?
Perhaps the most simple point to address first is: what exactly is the match behaviour? I have developed a match behaviour matrix, the result of years of work in sport (Table 4). Whatever the activity, it can be plotted on here. Granted, physical contact isn’t something for Tom to worry about when he’s hosting his dinner with the in-laws – though he must be sure to get that handshake with the father right and is it one kiss on the cheek or two with the mother? However, things like anxiety, knowledge, controllable aspects can all be plotted on the matrix so that we can look at how best to replicate those match conditions in practice.
If we take two sports, let’s say football and golf, and compare them on the matrix, we can begin to see the different behaviours we need to produce for the relevant activity. Golf would certainly be more programmed and football more intuitive, with little time to think. Golf, with its lengthy breaks between shots, would be intermittent, while the constant rush of a football match would be more continuous. The golfer can control more – neither can control the weather, but the golfer has a more controllable performance as it’s all down to themselves, while the footballer has the uncontrollable opposition team to worry about. Golf, naturally, would lean towards the individual – with all due respect to the caddies and coaches – while football would be at the team end of the matrix.
Let’s compare two activities that require a great deal of practice: acting in a local theatre production and performing a piano recital. The actor would lean towards the reactive side, as they’d need to be able to respond to the human element that is the other cast members; both would lean towards the programmed end of the spectrum, the piano player more so, given that a perfect rendition shouldn’t involve doing any intuitive ad libs, while the knowledge required would be similar: they would each need to remember their lines and notes respectively, though the quick-thinking actor would have more margin for error in this respect. Both would be anxiety-inducing – stage fright would be a real risk, perhaps more so for the piano player who performs alone; physical contact might be involved for the actor, who would be closer to the team side of the matrix as part of a cast, while the piano soloist would be on the individual side.
Both have a well-tried method of recreating match behaviour: rehearsals. An actor would undoubtedly spend a lot of time on their own learning their lines (repair), and there would be various read-throughs to get used to their positions and prompts on the stage (training), but their match-behaviour practice would be the dress rehearsal. Likewise, the members of an orchestra might practise separately but rehearse together and play the full, conducted piece prior to the first performance. For the solo pianist this might be different, but a good match practice would be to run through the whole recital on the stage on which they’ll be performing, with a real ‘one shot, one opportunity’ mentality.
Look to your own lives and see how you can apply the match behaviour matrix to your own pressure situations. If you have a presentation to make in front of a large audience, where do the various aspects sit on the matrix? How can you best use this to provide match practice before the big event? If you’re going on a cycling holiday in a mountainous region of France in a couple of months with a group of cyclists a step or two up from your current ability and fitness level, how would you plot it on the matrix? You might have very little free time to spend riding, so what would you do to make your practice really count – to make it match practice?
Your Perfect Match
Trying to replicate match behaviour in practice can be complicated – because there are several different behaviours required during the activity. If we take a game like cricket, the bowler has his six balls, before he becomes a fielder for at least the next six. Fielding requires a different type of behaviour (and a range of them too: a fielder near the boundary will have a different mindset from one fielding close to the batsman; the latter is likely to have self-preservation higher in their list of priorities, as well as needing sharp reflexes, while the former may find keeping their concentration the greater challenge). As for the batting side, the striker would have a different set of priorities from the one at the other end. The wicketkeeper would require a different behaviour again, as they would face every ball bowled throughout the innings. The next to bat, waiting in the pavilion to come out, have to be always in a state of readiness.
Tom would face a similarly diverse challenge. He’d need his cooking skills, of course, but then a different set of priorities would be necessary while he was sitting down and eating – polite conversation, playing the dutiful and suitable partner for Alice, table manners and the like. All these different aspects would benefit from practising match behaviour, and it’s vital that the right attitude is brought to this match practice.
When I first got involved with the England and Wales Cricket Board I was invited to watch a training session. It was fascinating, witnessing the skills of the bowlers and batsmen while they practised in the indoor nets and, at the end of the session, all the coaches gathered together to review the day.
When I was asked my opinion I initially felt uneasy – after all, I was predominantly a rugby coach at the time – so I opened by lauding the skills of the players and the efficacy of the practice activities … until it was clear that Kevin Shine and his fellow coaches Gordon Lord, the director of elite coaching, and Peter Moores, the then England head coach, could see right through me. ‘Come on,’ they said. ‘It’s for our benefit. What do you really think?’
I told them the truth: I couldn’t tell when the session actually started. This was met by stony silence, so I continued, saying that if the point of the sessions was to replicate the match intensity, where players have to deliver on demand – one shot, one opportunity – I just couldn’t see it. The players had drifted into the session, with the bowlers starting by more or less just turning their arms over as they warmed up and the batsmen benefiting from a similar approach as they played these easy balls to get their eye in before the pace was increased.
The silence by this time was deafening. To be clear, I wasn’t faulting the commitment and skill of either the players or the coaches, all of whom I hold in very high regard, but this was hardly match practice. I continued: ‘A Test match starts with a bang – the first bowler charges in to dominate and destroy the opening batsman. But he only has one first ball, so when do the players have the opportunity to rehearse the Test match behaviour?’
It was so different from rugby training sessions where, in such a hostile, contact sport, the players do their physical and mental warm-up elsewhere, so that once they cross the white line of the training pitch it’s full-on match intensity – though admittedly the players more often work against pads or machines so as not to cause injury. I suggested the cricketers could do their warm-ups and preparation in a separate set of practice nets before they went into the ‘business time’ nets where no quarter was given: the bowler had to produce their best ball straight away, just like a Test match.
After we discussed it in some depth, the idea was adopted and to this day is still used by the performance squad. This separation of warm-up and business time in the nets helped produce a more realistic experience, putting both the batsmen and bowlers under pressure.
Game, Set and Match
Match practice is undoubtedly the most difficult facet of the three to bring to your preparation. In contact sports such as rugby, American football and Australian Rules football, there has to be a balance between reproducing the intensity of the match scenario and keeping the players free from injury. Through using the match behaviour matrix, it is possible to identify the aspects of the match scenario that you need to reproduce in your practice. What are the aspects you can identify to give you that ‘one shot, one opportunity’ feeling before you take to the big event itself?
For the actor discussed earlier, the demands of their match behaviour matrix were well served by the various stages of rehearsal, culminating in the full dress rehearsal which would provide them with the closest possible match behaviour. For Tom, it was, much like the multiple roles the cricketer takes on during a match, a set of different match behaviours required at different times – and sometimes all at once: cooking, hosting, keeping both himself and his home presentable. He leaned towards programmed and intuitive, continuous and intermittent, and so it was that the best way to replicate this behaviour was through a series of more informal dinner parties. This was his match practice.
If you have a difficult interview for a job coming up, then to take your preparation closer to match you could do some role play with a partner, friend or family member and get them to test you with some tricky questions. If you have a speech to deliver, whether it’s for work or as part of a social engagement, then performing it with just your cue cards to refer to in front of an audience – even if it’s just one person – is taking it closer to match. It’s easy to feel a little silly or self-conscious when doing this, but it’s quite incredible the difference doing something that little bit closer to ‘for real’ can make. You’ll be amazed at the things you hadn’t noticed before and the valuable feedback you’ll receive. No matter how uncomfortable you might feel doing it now, you’ll be feeling a whole lot sillier on the big day if it doesn’t go to plan.
Improving performance in anything we do is a combination of the three aspects of preparation – repair, training and match. In repair we work on parts of the process and in training we repeat these parts, hardwiring the improved technique and relegating parts of it to our subconscious where necessary. All three parts of the preparation are important – one is no good without the other, just as simply doing the repair and the training will not provide the entire spectrum of experience necessary to ready ourselves fully for the event. The real challenge of all our work in repair and training is to see if it will hold up under the pressure of match conditions – before we expose ourselves to the event itself.