Sport and Exercise for the Long Term.

In the game of football it is easy and common to play head down looking at what your feet and the ball are doing. The obvious disadvantage of this is not knowing where you are going to pass as your not looking up and seeing the rest of the game. Football is a team game and passing is the key team skill for success. This short term head down approach is common not just in children. In the midst of action and before, looking up and becoming aware of the next best move will lead to better performance over the long term. For people who never look up they just never know the possibilities.

Short term thinking and tactics are important and essential, but over dependence on them leads to lower performance over all and loss. Playing against head down players is easy if you have your head up and think. They become predictable even when they do not know they are as they are busy and unaware. It is a natural prejudice to not work for the long term, and the addiction of adrenaline and crisis distracts from awareness of opportunity. Short term is survival and provides short cuts away from stress. It does not though avoid future stress. Sport and exercise is no different than the rest of life where cognitive biases affect thinking and action. The emotions drive short term decisions and actions. They are traps of human minds (and all animal) but we have the ability (well some of us) to think ahead and plan. In Britain we are proud of the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ where the nations service men where supported by civilians in the hour of need. What this pride (emotion) misses is the idea of avoiding the Dunkirk type situation in the first place and achieving goals without digging deep unnecessarily. Long term thinking may aim for an easy effective life which is a bit theoretical, but it can make things easier leaving energy and time for more advanced goals.

There are many cognitive biases that people (including professionals) regularly fall pray too. Avoidance has to be actively pursued. Short term thinking and immediate desire do not come up with the goods especially if there is an opponent who has thought things through, or mother nature who can not be cheated.

As we do not analyse before, during or after most of the time we use other methods that we may think and say are analysis but are not. Attempting to become aware of what is really happening and what can actually happen is easily missed.

First is time. We want things now. Just as we buy things when we are tricked (even though we know it is probably a trap) into free offers or the middle priced offer (Yes! the expensive one is listed so we will buy the middle offer) and availability traps (no we do not have that one but we have this other one right now). One misjudgement easily made is Hyperbolic discounting where we take less now rather than waiting for more later. The process is good in a survival situation but limiting for development in the long term as we get less. This Temporal proximity is now not later. This delayed gratification ability is more common when children are not in stressful (survival) situations a lot, children need times of no stress to develop the skills of delaying for a better deal later.

In sport it is the drive for goal or the target even though the opponent is fully defending it. The longer term method is to keep good positions until there is a better opportunity. Professional sports change the rules to reduce this as it is not as entertaining. But it is more effective. Waiting or creating opportunities can be approached in many ways and simple methods often beat amateurs however hard they scramble head down.

Another disadvantage to the head down scrambling, battling approach is how physically and mentally draining and damaging it is. Constantly over stretching and operating in extreme positions means more energy sapping emotion and physical injuries from putting the body in positions it works badly. Finding the limits of muscle, ligaments and bones. Injuries reduce performance at the time but also reduce the training and preparation that can be done as well as permanent incapacity. Also resultant energy levels are down for the next game putting you at a disadvantage.

The short term exercise patterns have the same injury and energy risks and limiting effects, reducing actual performance and attainment. To stay healthy or attain high level standards takes years of preparation. Just playing has the injury and energy risk. Too hard a session effects the next session. The biological limit is how fast the body can adapt to what it is subjected too. If you over-train then it will not keep up and will break down. To get from a child to professional standards takes years. Rushing some parts will slow the progress down and could easily lead to an injury that ends the dream. A problem is some athletes do survive poorly managed programmes which covers up the actual potential they had and how much more could have achieved. The muscles take about 90 days to completely change cells. Doing an exercise for 10 days and then changing to a different exercise will not produce much long term effect. Much gains are lost with de-training where the body does not maintain abilities when other needs are felt. Long term chest strength developed with press ups would progress from simply getting to do a press up correctly and then training a progression (slightly harder exercise) for 6 - 8 weeks before changing to the next progression if the target performance has been achieved. Quicker progress will lead to a plateau in improvement and probably a stop in trying with disappointment. A coach would need with experience (theirs and others) to time the change to the next progression. Connective tissues take longer to replace (about 210 days) so needs longer to adapt to the strain (particularly resistance training) and can not be left behind when developing faster changing muscles. Bones do change as well at around 2 years. Developing stronger bones to withstand the stress of elite performance (and training) takes many years as of course does healing from injury. Take the time in preparation rather than not achieving or the common achievement of major injury. Mother nature can not be cheated. Steroids can accelerate the muscles but leave the connective tissue behind.

Tai chi has been called ‘patience boxing’ as the best is the one with the most patience. Some things just take how long they take. The long term plan needs this to be included, not buying the secret short cut as the secret is there is no short cut to higher levels.