By Frank Giampaolo
While it’s enlightening and even exciting for athletes to see themselves hitting in slow motion on a split screen serving next to Roger Federer, it typically doesn’t help. Why? Cognitive dissonance is too powerful for most students to overcome. So, what does the psychological term, cognitive dissonance mean? It refers to the discomfort the athlete experiences by simultaneously holding two contradictory mental habits (motor programs.) The flawed behavior they own and the new behavior that they don’t quite recognize. As a result, the constructive and informative video analysis leads to temporary learning due to the athlete’s internal conflict with change. Let’s unfold the mystery.
Research shows that replacing an old stroke with a new one takes approximately 3-6 weeks of deliberate, customized, focused practice. Sticking with the replacement plan requires the discipline and patience of both the athlete and the coach. Most athletes are interested in the improvement, but not committed to the process. Most athletes don’t possess the resolve to feel uncomfortable as the natural cycle unfolds. Understood that in the realm of improvement; it gets worse before it gets better. The following is a typical scenario demonstrating why improvement via video analysis often doesn’t stick.
The coach shoots the video and offers the athlete suggestions. Motivated and convinced the change is needed, the student focuses for a week or two on their new skill set. At the 2- week mark, like clockwork, they can‘t resist competing. So they call Bertha, whom they have never beat, to play a practice match armed with an unrealistic new “weapon.” “Sunday morning you & me. It’s finally go-time!” The athlete prematurely competes two weeks into their transformation. Their old stroke is dismantled, and their new version isn’t fully formed. Catastrophe strikes as the new stroke predictably breaks-down under competitive stress. The athlete then says “I know what Coach Frank said, but I can’t lose to Bertha again. I’m going back to my old one.”
Here’s the psychology: The older more comfortable version of the stroke will initially overtake and resist the new stroke in the first few weeks because the flawed old stroke still feels more comfortable. After all, the athlete has been loyal, nurturing and motor programming the lousy stroke for years. The inner conflict between the new and old often stops the metamorphosis dead in its tracks.
“If the pain the athlete suffers from losing is greater than the pain he suffers from changing a flawed stroke, the prognosis is good. If the pain of changing is greater than the pain of losing, the prognosis isn’t so good.”
Can video analysis help athletes? Of course, but improvement stems from the time and effort they put into the rerouting process. Some athletes will choose to speed up the transformation with several hours of on-court deliberate, customized, focused practice sessions along with hours of neuro priming per week. Athletes that embrace this route have an excellent prognosis. The normal, less committed athletes believe that merely seeing themselves on video will magically change their strokes. It won’t. Even if they choose to set aside one hour a week for a couple of weeks; it’s just not enough to override the old motor program.
The time dedicated to the project after the video shoot dictates the speed and effectiveness of the transformation.
