Occassional thoughts about orienteering
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| okansas.blogspot.com Occassional thoughts about orienteering |
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Wednesday, April 09, 2003 Basketball, nerves and JukolaThe Jayhawks lost the basketball game to Syracuse Monday night (71-68).Watching the first half, I had the impression that Kansas looked "off" in the beginning. The players looked uncomfortable. They didn't look the way they normally do (I've seen a good 25-30 games this year). I couldn't tell you if they were too relaxed or too tense. If I had to guess, I'd say too tense. Sports psychology-types have graphs to try to describe the relationship between performance and some measure of nervousness. The graphs show performance initially increasing as nervousness increases. At some level of nervousness, performance peaks. Then as nervousness increases further, performance declines. You can be too relaxed, too nervous or just right. I'm not sure if there is any evidence that the graph is correct, but it seems to make sense in a general way. I've watched enough orienteers to have a few thoughts about the sports-psychology-graph and orienteering... The graphs are specific to the individual. Some people seem to do best when they seem to be nervous. Some people seem to have disasters when they're nervous. Erring on the side of too relaxed is probably better. I'd guess that big booms are more likely when you're too nervous. Small booms and not pushing hard enough are more likely when you're not nervous enough. Putting a group of people together raises all sorts of interesting complications. At a WOC, you've got maybe ten individuals together for a week or two in a stressful situation. My impression is that people have difficulty dealing with team mates who don't share their particular nervousness graph. Runners are WOCs are typically fairly young. They've got strong individual personalities. Often they have relatively little experience in the work place. Maybe they haven't developed the skills needed to deal with other people in stressful situations? I have a vivid memory of pre-race nerves. In 1991, I ran the 5th of 7 legs on a team at Jukola (world's biggest O' relay). Before the race, you'd probably have picked our team to finish in the top 150 or 200 of the roughly 1100 teams. As I was getting ready to warm up for my leg, a club mate told me we were in the top 50! My first reaction felt like being scared. The first thought that popped into my head was "oh no, I'm not that good, what am I going to do?" Fortunately, my second thought was, "well, if you'd asked me before the race I'd have said I want to be running on a good team that is doing well -- this situation is what I'd want." That entire thought process took maybe 15 seconds. I felt relaxed and was looking forward to the race. I had a good warm up and one of the better races of my life -- a very clean race that moved us up a few places. The last two runners had good runs and we finished in the top 50. More than ten years after that race, I can remember the feeling as if it was yesterday. posted by Michael | 8:06 PM 
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