Categorical Errors in Sport and Fitness.

I am going to discus some common thinking errors made everywhere but I am going to put them in a sports context. Knowing the common errors we all make by both not thinking and poor thinking that can cause massive difficulties, with these you may go in to the first stage of grief which is denial, but you are just human and many errors are part of the human condition rather than personal, the effects for you though are personal.

Making categorical errors is common in all areas of life but I will stick to my professional area for examples. It is mainly about the words different and same which sounds so simple. Sometimes there are areas where there are subtle differences but the mistake can be made even when there are large differences that is of course ‘not same’. Treating different things as the same often leads to problems and is incorrect. Categories can often be agreed or arbitrary for convenience rather than real world. Once the agreement is made or there is a real difference. It is common to blur and then eliminate the boundaries between different things.

As the Confusion quote:

A superior man, in regard to what he does not know, shows a cautious reserve. If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties and music do not flourish. When proprieties and music do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect.

— Confucius, Analects, Book XIII, Chapter 3, verses 4-7, translated by James Legge

A clarity in language was identified thousands of years ago as a need for wisdom not just by Confucius but by Plato in Athens and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra who make similar observations.

In sport and fitness there is plenty of emotional input. The desire to do something or win is high. Wanting so bad you are fully prepared to believe any encouraging suggestion. This motivation to meet desires and results rather than actual achievement and actual performance is a constant trap that reduces real progress. The use of critical thinking is often missing due to the evolutionary factors to peoples perception. Early in life we attribute many things to luck/skill or ability/inability depending on the result. Perception is hard to influence after experience of perceived circumstance has given direction to our thought.

Science in sport is even ignored by high performers. To gain high performance or good levels of health, you have to do effective preparation and practice to get real results. Early real explanation and correction is needed. Differentiating what works and scientifically why and how. I will explain some terms and situations common to sport and fitness where I see systematic errors.

The first obvious error is incorrect technique. This though needs to be defined, feel free to argue the definitions but if your definitions are wrong it may hurt. Correct technique in sports is physics. The Biomechanics of the body rely on forces and the direction of these forces as they are applied in collaboration. Simple examples are swimming where the water offers greater resistance then air. If you hit water really hard with a flat hand it is a slap but if you make your hand very streamlined it will cut through with minimal resistance. Not hard and yet many people have technique that has resistance to the direction they want to travel and a subsequent small force to propel in the opposite direction. They often do the opposite they streamline the push or pull and resist the forward momentum. This happens physically and is a metaphor for all progress. Reduce resistance towards goal and maximise force to move towards it. The term squat for instance can be used for bad technical movement that likely produces injury. A good squat will follow good physics (mechanics) and be safe and have higher performance.

There are different parts of preparation and performance. The first mistake is jumping in with no preparation hoping natural talent will beat prepared opposition. Deliberate preparation to reduce resistance and increase movement towards your goal is needed. One word used in exercise is specificity where for example press ups improve press ups with some help to other actions, but have little benefit to actions that do not have an upper body press. Many people do the wrong exercises or programmes to get the desired results. The fashion for body building with weights has been misapplied and reduced potential and actual performance for many. Big muscles for body building do not help many sportspeople as the muscles get in the way and slow them down. That does not mean do not train with weights it means do it correctly for your needs towards your goal. Long distance athletes do not look like Body-builders and vice versa they may both train with weights. There are more subtle differences between Body-builders and strength athletes (Olympic weightlifting, power lifting) and Rugby. Here slight differences to the weight, sets and reps are needed for the different aims. Specific preparation for each event is needed and understanding the requirements of different sports and even health are often badly guessed. These categories are related to specific outcomes aligning them is vital.

Stage one is learning physical and mental skills. Evidence of the scientific variety pretty much backs up the general empirical and traditional ideas. ‘Healthy body, healthy mind’ holds water as do many other aphorisms. Learning is done best in a conducive environment with motivation towards learning. Simple carrot and stick motivation helps and the reduction of distractions (resistance), many social and cultural disablers appear with loud statement of perceptions of egos. There is an important category mistake the difference between performer and preparer. Being an excellent performer in your competitive group is no magic bullet for success in other conditions like coaching. Whether competitive or in helping others. The selfish dedication to beat those in front are pretty much opposite to those properties of effective helping (more selfless!). Separating learning of skills and tactics and conditioning and performance leads to clearer results. Learning is not performing and conditioning is not learning etcetera and setting each up deliberately and clearly rather than a mix of all where they interfere with each other.

I regularly see people wanting to learn and improve performance in competitive situations by competing only. Well the winner is the best prepared. Quite often the person with the biggest immediate advantages initially, but you need to prepare for higher levels of competition. Learning and development is not a competitive process even if the motivations are. As children, the best prepared is the larger, older child. Once a skill or tactic has been learned in a calm relaxed supportive manner then it can be slowly practised with increasing resistance. If you cannot perform a skill without pressure how do you hope to perform under intense pressure. A prepared opponent will not let you!

So stage one is learning, stage two is practice. Different stages but they do overlap so more able people sometimes skip stages or merge into each other. You need a good supporter (teacher/coach) to know who needs stage 1 and who can move quick to stage 2. The hard job for the teacher is not distinguishing actual ability and performances but dealing with the learners perception of ability and often parents perception as well. Some sports or activities who likely use this sort of progression are more closed sports where competition is often singular, where as more open sports like team sports or sports with a higher number of different skills can get stuck in an all in (lack of) method of training. The mistake is in open sports is insufficient learning and practice of foundation skills before immersion in competitive situations. The bigger child will probably want this most as they have the initial advantage and will probably win!

Another stage is training. Here skills already to appropriate levels of performance are practised in conditions closer to competition and under some pressure are worked on. Correct technique needs to be encouraged to reduce skill deterioration in over competitive situations.

The final stage is competition. It can contain learning, practice and training benefits, but is more about performance and then results. Lop sided competition of very able and low ability is not competition as the skills of the low side are insufficient leading only to scrappy survival battling detrimental to skill development for higher levels of performance. Early bad habits often limit eventual development and performance.

This set of stages is a set of categories and errors in distinguishing them and applying them result in lower performance. Sport has the advantage of clear results. Some people compete in things confidently in spite of never or only once succeeding rather than using the things that work most often. This categorising set is not set in stone but useful. This pattern of unclear categories and misunderstanding ‘same and difference’ is common in all areas of life. The errors in sport and fitness of bad technique, poor learning, unpractised and untrained and of course poor performance are common and resistant to change. Still with so many doing this it makes the few who don’t look good. So I’m off to learn some stuff then practice and train.

There are many areas and occasions where one thing is thought and acted on as if it’s one thing when it is another. A universal error is to treat an approximation as a fact. Let alone an approximation of an approximation, like in maths where a rounding up or down can be made in the right circumstance but then this rounding is used in another calculation with more rounding. The accuracy is a little off from the first rounding and is then magnified with the second rounding, vastly effecting accuracy. In sport there can be false belief created from not understanding the lack of accuracy and clarity of definition and purpose.

Other Metaphors and Analogies.

Metaphors and other literary devices (I’ll lazily call them all metaphors from now on) are just tools of the mind. Like any tool they need to be used with care at the appropriate time and place. Some are specific and others more general. The more general examples allude to principles and concepts of nature and can be useful in many circumstances. The best seem to be more than just tools but almost statements of fact and have of course been believed to be so. I have found the metaphors from the East very useful in many situations. They are quite useful as guides to how to think and approach problems but also how to live ones life. They tend to work together in combination where they describe the world from different perspectives but describe the same world. The Dao De Jing states that the Dao (way or universe perhaps) is un-knowable pointing out the limitations of Humans and their brain power and words. The power of metaphor is the ability to paint mental pictures which speak a thousand words! Many sayings and axioms give similar bang for the buck. I like the simplicity and yet depth of possibilities that sometimes grow. The Buddhist Koans are an example of short sayings or sentences that are stated and then come with the instruction now think about that for the rest of your life(s)!

A classic example particularly from Daoism (Taoism) is the water analogy. It takes the properties of water on earth, a daily experience for people and suggests ideas for understanding and action. It links to the natural way of nature (Dao) and how it works and how to work with it (Wu Wei). Of course you can go against nature and fight it, but victory can only be temporary. Like the idea of entropy from science where everything breaks down towards disorder. Before science started with thermodynamics. The unstoppable effects of water dominated life. It can be stopped for instance by a dam but you have to maintain the dam or the water will break it and one day you will stop maintaining enough and it will collapse! Temporary may be much longer than a human life but not much in the universal time. The practical advice from Daoism is to work with nature not resisting it’s forces. So perhaps if it is hard work it’s because you are going against nature and doing the wrong thing! Any achievement is still temporary (not necessarily wrong though).

It also suggests that to keep things a certain way, work will need to be done and the more complicated the more work to achieve and maintain. Perhaps the best ideas will be easier to achieve and maintain more in line with nature. Yin/Yang concepts are another staple of oriental thought and perspective that penetrate (just like water) everywhere, into every aspect of thought and action. Simple ideas of light and dark (it’s origin) help see that there is always both with shade in the day and moon shine and stars in the night. They are parts of a whole that cycles. This idea of changing balances aspects of the whole, rather than one thing and not another, but both that constantly changing. So Yin/Yang not Yin and/or Yang. So for thinking looking for the best balancing of aspects rather than extremes keeps closer to nature and easier to maintain as well as more effective. Avoiding the extra work to get diminishing returns.

Sometimes a balancing aspect or force is needed. We often keep doing one aspect as we are biased towards it getting caught in the trap of more is better. But the examples of combining Yin and Yang help with examples to actually get better results. The best swords have hard and soft elements to prevent stiff brittle steel or floppy soft iron. It’s the right amount not too much or too little that we look for. Sometimes we can alter what we do and sometimes we need others to balance us. I have used the example of a wall where Bricks (say yang) need Mortar (say yin) to come together to be most effective. Using these examples to look for other balancing aspects in all things becomes an aid to thinking and acting. Some people see a garden as the plants they plant and encourage to grow, but miss the taking away of plants they do not want to grow. Some people take away the unwanted the best and others add the best. The combination of both is greater than one on its own and has higher potential than one person who has balance themselves. These ideas can grow in complexity but the balance of aspects is always taken into account and gradually improved (Kaizan). Perfection is never attained but constant care and attention is needed to improve and maintain in the light of entropy.

These ideas of balance of opposites and going with nature added to the ideas of constant change and differing perspectives open up infinite possibilities of thought and action. They are not completely different to other ideas from the rest of the world. Similar ideas are found in historic ideas and the civilisations of other areas. The Greeks wrote down a lot giving later generations access to ideas that can be investigated and extended. Others have left other marks in oral traditions or culture. Of course it only natural that humans have investigated, thought and worked with the same world and universe so have found similar ideas and methods. They will be natural, balanced, changing and varied.

Like any tool you have to know how to use it. Finding the right time and place. Not using one tool all the time. These mind tools can be more powerful than a physical tool but thinking and practicing their usage leads to higher performance. When using metaphors with others it is important to develop the natural methods to usage of these tools and remember the communication needs of both giving and receiving timing the right message to the right person in the right way, not blindly blaming the receiver when disaster occurs after incorrect action.

Care needs to be taken when using metaphor as some people will later misunderstand it is a metaphor but you can paint a picture that can be understood and compared to another situation. You can take the known as a guide to the unknown and you can set up long term investigation. They can help with ideas too large or complex for words. The recipient has to be able to use them so simpler metaphors for some people and also ideas, allowing sometimes the freedom to expand to more detail and interpretations.

Going Real High and Diving Real Deep.

Metaphor and analogy are vital methods to create mental growth. They sometimes use examples of pre-existing knowledge and experience and overlap it onto another area. Sometimes they give a picture to explore. There are many other approaches to these literary devices and their use. They are flexible tools that have limitations and disadvantages, like any tool they need to be used well, not just stuck to regardless or incorrectly. A modern method commonly used is to write every part or detail especially to prove to someone managing or judging you. So the flaw here is ‘a picture paints a thousand words’. This highlights the limitation of words as well as showing the advantages of pictures. Advanced topics or elements would require more words than anyone has sufficient concentration to use on a practical basis. Good metaphors used well can be exponentially more effective in developing understanding and illustrating perspective.

Metaphors of mountains and oceans have been used for longer than writing. Here I want to start off with these two and look a little into them.

So picture a mountain out of the plain that towers over all around. It has a base of trees and vegetation then an increasingly barer area getting higher to only rocks and cliffs. It is snow capped. For human achievement whether an individual skill or activity or more complex area, this is the mountain metaphor. At the lower levels in the trees there are the most people, with lower level skills. If you are there you may catch glimpses through the trees higher up the mountain and see the backsides of people who have gained more skill and experience, although you might not recognise this. Some may be waving encouragement or holding ropes to help you up. Not everyone can see this above just dismissing them as noise or not looking in the right direction. If you grab the right rope it can help you out of the trees and you can look below and see the majority who are amongst the trees. If you grab the wrong rope it can break or somehow lead through trees but not up the mountain and out of the trees.

If you have got into the more open area you may choose to be happy at your achievement and picnic or try to pass ropes to those in the trees below. Some may walk sideways around the mountain and others will jump for joy and slip back into the trees. Now to climb further requires slightly different skills. In the distance you may see people in the snow you may also copy some of their methods, but ice climbing is different again requiring different skills and equipment and much more experience. To get up this high needs the help of others, hard work and luck.

Now I could go on but already you can see that the mountain is a comparison to development in a path to higher levels. So for instance a sport. Most people have an idea and can do some things, but to be competitive at the beginner level that can take you to the middle level of genuine progression and on to high level can be compared to climbing a mountain there are rope bearers perhaps teachers that can help you up, some may even have a fixed rope system that can get you all the way to the snow. If you have only been in the trees you can only guess what the higher levels are like and others can mislead you with broken ropes (for money?). You may just look down and not notice above, or start teaching what you think you know straight away.

Once you have climbed out of the trees you have abilities to climb. Can you translate that to climbing further or even other mountains? Be careful of rock slides and broken ropes that send you crashing back down. Be careful of thinking the ones at the top climbed up well and are not just about to come crashing down. Many ideas can be described through the mountain idea as metaphor or analogy.

As well as the heights there are the depths. Again there are levels and most people are just in the shallows or in rock pools by the side. You need tools that help you go deeper and keep you safe and you have to get away from distractions. Some people are dragged down by the currents or by other beings.

Here the first level involves getting into the water becoming aware of the surface level, learning to swim. Some people do not even get their face wet, others dive in fearlessly close to the edge (tome-stoning) with substances in their system. The ancient methods of the people of Polynesia apprentice by lying in the ocean looking at the stars and drifting feeling the currents and using the stars to help know how to travel along the oceans and where they are at any one time. Other people dive deep for pearls or deeper to see strange creatures and unknown dangers.

Another depths approach is deeper into an onion through layers to get to deeper layers underneath.

So the trick is not to think I need mental health support (true or not). It is to reflect on the idea and try to see what it could mean, what lessons can be learnt how else can you use these ideas. Of course also when are they not useful and misleading. Learn from maths so you compare like with like not incomparable ideas. There can be never ending depths and also lessons on climbing or journeying from one area that is easy to understand and the lessons applied to other areas. Perhaps we all climb but it is a different mountain for all of us and the depths of our oceans have different monsters in. Some of us can climb a lot on our own, others need ropes to see above the trees. Just imagine, play and see what happens.

The Difference Between Top and Bottom.

This could be theory and practice, but also most to least in ability or performance. The distribution of variance is a factor in many things. On the roads the learner driver is on the same road as the world champion, in the same queue going nowhere!

When you look at the law it mostly says what you would think it should say. When I have covered law for moving and handling, first aid and other areas there is always a logic to the law. You have responsibilities and so do others; to look after yourself and others. If you do that you are unlikely to have problems. The gap between the written down law and the average persons understanding and opinion is massive. What beliefs and opinions people operate under can amaze. There is a massive gap in understanding, which some exploit. An element for the legal industry is to reduce the gap of belief closer to actual (qui bono). In Health & Safety from 1974 there was a simplifying approach for ease of understanding and guess what; deaths and major accidents fell massively in the workplace. Other crimes have fallen but not due to simplification.

General understanding in most areas has a similar gap from the expert to the lay person.

There is a similar gap in health from the elite, those that do the recommended to the vast majority who keep the health service busy and to the highest performers. First is exercise, only 1 in 10 exercise enough (3*20mins a week or equivalent) and half the population not at all. 3 out of 4 eat unhealthy and most do not sleep enough. Less people are under the addictive effects of nicotine now, but the effects of alcohol are still large. This can of course be under the influence, withdrawal or the longer term effects. There are also medicines and illegal/legal self medication. All of these effect body and brain and degrade performance including awareness of this degradation. So I go to work and deal with overweight pre diabetics in sleep debt, drug filled people trying to make decisions. These decisions are rarely to a high level!

There is a general ignorance to what is possible, that is effective or anything long term. The average person is unhealthy, mentally unbalanced and ignorant of these points.

My problem is I know and feel the benefits of exercise and activity, of a healthy diet and consistent good nights sleep. Limited drug intake of some caffeine and some alcohol admittedly. I use this healthy body and clear head to do some thinking and planing ahead and with the general aim of good practice. Am I massively above average. Well yes after all the average is very low. The down side is others do not have these benefits and I (and you) have to deal with them. How do you get the average person to understand anything complicated or counter intuitive or long term. They need their next fix of some drug(s), some sleep and their body is crying out for stimulation, nutrients and rest all at once. So they have no understanding of higher levels of anything whether sport, legal, or even an awareness of the gap between them and the superhuman levels. Now this is not the only problem. The real problem is to get them to understanding healthy and a basic organised life by perhaps trying it and like the ex-smoker that discovers taste, and the alcohol abuser who discovers single binocular vision they might encounter understanding of what is actually going on. It is not the case for most to correct vision with corrective lenses, it is to stop clouding the vision in the first place.

You would think that most people would not give themselves mental and physical disabilities when they see the problems for those who are born or have an accident and have disabilities.

Its important to know who you are speaking to and the factors that effect any communication or action. Decision making and listening and thinking are effected by the blood that can be sugar levels (hyper/hypo) not just for diabetics. Alcohol, nicotine, medicine levels or timing including withdrawal, even of caffeine gives you the shakes. A full bladder creates urgency in thought as well as action. These are all immediate factors that also tend to happen a lot so become chronic factors that increase emotional decisions with cognitive bias filled reasoning. These chronic factors reduce the use of logic, maths and science knowledge and consideration. Favouring biased, superstitious and flawed thinking.

Reason with logical, mathematical and science truths requires practice, it is never finished or perfected. Critical thinking needs to be taught and encouraged and given time to work. It’s not natural as the evolved human brain has changed over millennia to cope with different challenges (Running away from predators, getting food and constant crisis). To make better more effective decisions and actions a different approach has to be used or machines take over sooner!

Such is the many variances in ability and experience that the gap between the most and the least can be too large to see. With IQ the difference between a top 5% and a bottom 5% is massive and in fact a person with a top 5% IQ may find something easy that an average person dose not even know exists. An example from sport is in grappling and Brazilian Jiu jitsu where a black belt can do pretty much whatever they like with a white belt with their 5 or more years of study and practice. It is only when you achieve a black belt (I have not got one in Jiu Jitsu) that you realise that it’s just a mastery of the basics still a major achievement. The but is the example of Marcello Garcia where several black belt competitors have been quoted as saying they felt like a white belt when training with Marcello Garcia. The gap from white belt to black and then again from black belt to the best (probably of all time) is hard to even visualise without black belt skills and experience. The same relationships exist with academic subject specialists to the general public. Some areas are obvious like height the under 5 feet to the over 6 and a half feet tall is easy to see other aspects are harder to see let alone comprehend.

Of course in a democracy every one has one vote each so the world champion has the same as a member of the public unaware of anything. This is an issue for getting quality decisions and actions. If I am on a mat with Marcello Garcia I do what he says is best, I go with his ability and experience, I don’t insist on having equality because I don’t have it. By all accounts he will be nice and then he will take your back and make you tap then let go when you do. Then he will help and advise and then still he will take your back and submit you. But when you role with another beginner you can get some success, gradually improving your understanding and skills.

Cooperation and Competition.

Clarity usually enables better performance. It is possible to over simplify things but it is also common to over complicate things.

An important distinction is to work out if a situation is competitive or cooperative. These situations are often conflated. Many people who do not work together go on team-building exercises. And many people who worked together are set up in competition with each other within their working environment. Hoping that the survival of the fittest gets the desired results rather than managing a team to work together towards a shared, identified goal is a common approach/mistake.

Many people are in competition with their work colleagues directly and indirectly. The incentives to work together are often week which directs (incentivise) the behaviour of the workers. In a school it is best for all if the children improve their skills and increase their knowledge and perform to higher levels. In many state secondary schools the classroom and corridors are labelled war zones, even though it is in everyone’s interest to cooperate not compete (conflict). Many work places are similar either directly competing in sales or indirectly through social and political environments.

The first task for an individual is to recognise the environment and situation they are in. Where are they in competition and where they are cooperative. Working out who is on your team and who is against is important. ‘Should’ is an easy distraction. The teacher goes into a school to help the children but the child often goes into a school to get what someone else perceives is good for them. All sorts of ‘should’ are in the teachers mind of how the children should be motivated, behave and understand. Reality hits quite quick in some schools. Other middle management roles have the same issues of cooperation and competition. Competing needs and interests effect the whole environment.

A second task is to go from conflict or competition to cooperation. This need may be immediate in the situation where conflict is ramped up. The best long term method is to prevent the conflict from developing. This quite often is a legal concept (often ignored) that should be enacted, as well as a principle of higher performance. There are many models to create groups or teams. Lack of clarity is not a good method, getting colleagues to compete against each other is not conducive to them working together. Teams need to bond together getting to know each other with respect. They need to work together in all stages to act at the best time and ways. They need to take responsibility for their own and teams actions and performance.

If the conflict is active you need to get back to cooperation. Security professionals have to try the correct level of their behaviour to match the level of conflict. The most commonly needed skill and tactic is talk. Calming down emotions, connecting to the participants to identify the issue and the way forward. Sometimes time and space is all that’s needed. Other times discussion may identify actions and perceptions that need to be addressed. Eliminating all conflict is impossible and sometimes the conflict is violent. The correct response has to be made to get the best results. The hindsight passive aggressive attacks often cloud the mind of the conflict resolver. The old adage of ‘don’t take a knife to a gun fight’ points to knowing the situation (battlefield) and what will work or will not to improve the situation. Sometimes violence in the immediate time is needed to protect people and property as the consequences of not can be immense. The law recognises that physical action may be needed, but professional handling of the situation needs preparation and training. A non-contact approach may be illegal (duty of care) and yet is not challenged for social and political reasons. The most powerful socially and politically are not necessarily the most knowledgeable. In regards to conflict they are most often ignorant of legal and effectiveness issues, but well aware of potential risks to themselves, while under-emphasising the risk to others or of inaction (the cost of not).

Many times the mistake of encouraging competition is made due to ignorance of the cost and consequences of inaction and the lack of desire to help others who are in conflict or who have to deal with the conflict. These skills and knowledge are not those that are incentivised for work promotion. There is a demand and pressure for accountability for the people who deal with conflict but not for those who do not prevent before and judge after. Even within an environment the phrase ‘keep your friends close and your enemies even closer’ comes to mind many workers are wary of those with power including those ‘on their side’.

How to compete is another topic, that I do not want to share with those who compete with me!