How to become an Olympian

As the thrills of the 2012 London Olympic Games still linger in our minds and the excitement of the Paralympics beckons us on to hours more TV viewing, it is worthwhile reminding ourselves of a few facts about the most watched public event in the world.

For a start, the Modern Olympics have very little to do with Ancient Greece.  They were actually the idea of a French aristocrat who was inspired by the ethos of the English Public School sports of the Victoria era.  Baron Pierre de Coubertin looked to the ‘muscular Christianity’ of Rugby and other Public Schools, and concluded that, “organised sport can create moral and social strength”.  The youth of France – indeed the whole world – urgently needed some of this strong medicine, and so he travelled the world gathering support for his vision.  De Coubertin called this the ‘Olympic’ idea because he believed that it was the Ancient Greeks who have first developed the core philosophy.

The Baron’s vision was that the Games competition would be only one of a series of activities that take place during the Olympic year.  The ‘Cultural Olympiad’ was a marriage of sport and the arts, and included music, dance, visual arts and other wholesome activities.  This broader conception of the Olympics continues to exist, despite an almost total lack of interest from the national media … or anyone else.

__________________________________________________

Quick Quiz: Which of the following activities have appeared in the Modern Olympic Games?*

Cricket                                      Solo synchronised swimming

Pistol Dueling                           Long Jump for horses

Sculpture                                  Literature

Singing                                     Tug of War

* Answers are given at the end of this blog

__________________________________________________

Finally, and most importantly for our purposes, the elite sport aspect of the Olympics is just the outward expression of philosophy of life called Olympism.  This philosophy is built on three core values – excellence, friendship and respect – and aims to use the Olympic activities to inspire education and development in all people around the world.  De Coubertin wrote:

“Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of a good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.”

Ultimately, then, the razzamatazz of two weeks in the summer are just the tip of the iceberg.  The Olympics are a metaphor for something much bigger and more important, namely the potential of sport and the arts as vehicles for the realisation of human excellence.  And excellence can take different forms.  As we all know, it can refer to successful performance in high-level competitions.  What educationalists might call this the ‘summative’ view!  However, as we all know, it’s the ‘formative’ that makes the real difference in the long term.  This second form translates as personal excellence, and refers to on-going achievement against personal goals throughout one’s life.

It seems to me that, in launching the Olympics on the world, De Coubertin was offering a powerful metaphor for personal excellence.  The champions have their day, and in doing so, elite sport represents a laboratory for the rest of us.  We can see before our eyes the effects of someone pursuing excellence.  We can learn from their successes and challenges.

Fascinatingly, recent research seems to support this position: there is a great of similarity between the processes used by elite sports people in preparing for the Olympics and those used by the rest of us trying to improve in our own terms.  At least, this is the view of Professor David Collins, from the University of Central Lancashire.  Prof. Collins is a ‘Performance Psychologist’ and was National Coach for Athletics at the Beijing Olympics.  His research suggests that there are ‘champion behaviours’ that can be learnt by children (and by anyone else).  Starting with explicit teaching and reinforcement from others, eventually children learn to take responsibility for setting and monitoring their own personal development.

According Collins and his colleagues, champion behaviours include the following:

Goal setting - establishing specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-targeted goals.

Performance evaluation – regularly assessing your performance against your goals.

Imagery – going through an event or activity in your mind, using all of your senses, including sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and movement to recreate performance.

Planning – articulating the steps necessary for on-going improvement.

Commitment and role clarity  - learning to understand and accept your responsibilities with the group.

Focus and distraction control – remaining focused, despite pressure or failure.

Evaluating and coping with pressure – managing stress and learning to use it for positive purposes.

They have found that each of these behaviours can be learned, and they go further.  They argue that all children should be taught the skills, so that all of them have at the skills and behaviours of champions at their disposal.  Then, if they choose to aspire to excellence, they will have the psychological foundations necessary.

The most fundamental requirement of any attempt to develop excellence is the simplest: practice.  Forbes magazine summarized the view of many researchers like this:

“The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call ‘deliberate practice’.  It's activity that's explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.”

It is quite easy to find support for this view among those who have excelled in their work.  For example, here is the actor Will Smith:

“I’ve never really viewed myself as particularly talented.  I’ve viewed myself as slightly above average in talent.  And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening, work ethic.  You know, while the other guy’s sleeping?  I’m working.  While the other guy’s eatin’?  I’m working.  While the other guy’s making love, I mean, I’m making love, too.  But I’m working really hard at it,”

And here is the genius footballer Pele:

“Everything is practice.”

Famously, some studies examining expert performance have found that a minimum of 10 years, or 10,000 hours, of sustained practice appears to be a necessary.  But not just any practice will do.  According to Dr K. Anders Ericsson, the ‘expert on expertise theory’, the key is ‘deliberate practice’, which is done with the specific goal of improving performance, is effortful and attention-demanding, is not necessarily enjoyable, and does not lead to immediate social or financial rewards.  So, according to Ericsson’s expertise theory, every athlete at the top level has invested huge amounts of high quality practice into their sport.  The same can be said of professional musicians, chess grandmasters, and leading scientists.

There are many things about Ericsson’s theory that are admirable, not least his attempt to differentiate between practice and deliberate practice, and his corrective of the default position of sport scientists to explain every phenomenon in terms of biology.  However, there are problems too.  One is the status of the magical 10,000 hours rule.  As a metaphor, it works quite well.  But the briefest perusal of the careers of champions (including those at the 2012 Games) reveals that 10,000 hours is not the threshold value it is often claimed to be.  Some champions have managed to excel in their sport remarkably quickly (such as the Olympic Gold Medalist HeatherStanning or the Ironman goddess Chrissie Wellington), whilst others have taken much, much longer to succeed at the top (such as almost every Golfer).  Also, the portrayal of deliberate practice – hours and hours of exhaustive and boring repetition) simply does not match the accounts of most champions.

My own research with elite sports people and dancers has provided some detail to the understanding of deliberate practice.  The figure below shows three of the key characteristics. 

Supported Learning - It is sometimes said that practice does not make perfect; practice makes permanence.  A task that is repeated for an extended length of time becomes progressively more automatic and unconscious.  This is fine if the task being learned is quite simple and done correctly, but if not, practice can cement ineffective skills.  This is why feedback is so important for learning, as it nudges the performer back to proper form.  This is also why teachers and coaches are vital to high quality learning.  They guide, direct, and correct practice.

Mindful Learning - An second problem with any repeated task is that is can quickly become boring.  The psychologist Ellen Langer calls this mindlessness, and suggests that it is a barrier to motivating, effective learning.  Mindfulness, on the other hand, occurs when the individual is actively involved with task, constantly makes small changes and variations, and is open to new ideas.  Langer describes this mindset like this:

“Mindfulness is a flexible state of mind in which we are actively engaged in the present, noticing new things and sensitive to context.”

Our studies have lead us to conclude that mindful learning is a powerful component of personal excellence.

Contextual Learning - The third factor is probably the most important from the point of view of effective learning: learning that reflects the real context of performance.  In other words, contextual learning is learning that is designed so that learners can carry out activities and solve problems in a way that reflects the nature of such tasks in the real world.  Research supports the effectiveness of learning in meaningful contexts.  This means that the best way to learn to play cricket is to play a lot of cricket games; and learning to play the piano happens when learners play music.  This is especially worth emphasizing, as decontextualised practice is extremely popular in many activities, especially in education and sport, where drills often take up a great deal of time in sessions.  Research suggests that such activities are mostly valueless.

The implication of these ideas seem clear: practice is not enough.  Excellence requires high quality learning experiences that are characterized by meaningful, attentive practice supported by great teachers or coaches.  This is a necessary condition of excellence.

Taken together, these strands of research suggest that the achievements of top sports people reflect fundamentally similar processes to those used by the rest of us as we battle with our own pursuits of personal excellence.  There is nothing magical about Olympic performance; it simply shows what is possible if practices that are available to all of us are taken to extremes.

So, Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s early insight seems to have been right.  The glory and spectacle of the Olympic Games can act as a metaphor for personal excellence, giving evidence of the possibility of the realization of potential.  Skills like goal setting and role clarity are used everyday by likes of Jessica Ennis, Tom Daley and Michael Phelps.  Most exciting, however, is the fact that they can also be learned by children, and applied to their own sport and their own schooling.  They might also be used by you, Dear Reader, in supporting your own ambitions.

Finding out more?

Ellen Langer The Power of Mindful Learning

Daniel Pink Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us

David Shenk The Genius in All of Us

Quick quiz answer: Answer: ALL of them!

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How should we feel about the 'feelgood factor' at the London Olympics?

Just because you feel good

Doesn't make you right

Just because you feel good

Still want you here tonight.

Skunk Anansie, Hedonism

Prime Minister David Cameron thinks that the Olympics will create a legacy for the whole of the UK and not just London.  But, true to his earlier statements about importance of feelings and what-not, he warns that some of this legacy will be “hard to touch”.

The concept of 'hard to touch' is a strange one in an era of evidence-based policy, in which, in the words of one civil servant (presumably in thrall to the early philosophy of Wittgenstein), 'if I can't measure it, it don't exist'.  As you know, Wittgenstein abandoned his early ideas and adopted a broader view, and perhaps Mr Cameron has also been persuaded to take a more inclusive conception of reality.  Or maybe he is just worried that the only legacies of London 2012 will be immaterial.

Cameron's touchy-feeling tones when discussing the Olympics are not without precedent.  Consider this neat piece of verbal gymnastics from New Labour's Game Plan policy document, when it suggests that whilst the quantity of medals won at the Olympics is of great importance, one must not neglect the “quality” of a victory:

“‘Quality’ can be taken to be the extent to which victory produces the feelgood factor and national pride (as these are the main public benefits of high performance sport). If it is accepted that the more popular the sport, the greater the amount of feelgood which follows, then “quality” medals are those obtained in the most popular sports.”

So, according to Game Plan, the feelgood factor is a quality that can be created and changed in amount over time, and although it is admitted that it is “difficult to quantify”, there seems little room for doubting that it can have a powerful causal effect.

So what is the feelgood factor, then?  In case you thought it was something to do with happiness, or satisfaction, or well-being, or other philosophical fluff, the authors of Game Plan tell us it can all be explained with hard science:

“The biological explanation for the feelgood sensation is due to the release of endorphin in the brain. Endorphin has been called the ‘happy hormone’ and is released for different reasons, mainly physical, but also from laughter and joy, experienced by, for example, your team winning a match. Endorphin helps to reduce pain and has even been found to enhance treatment of many illnesses and diseases.”

Remember that this piece of pseudo-scientific woowoo comes from a government document; a document that is primarily concerned with justifying the future of sport in the UK, and the billions of pounds it says are needed to ensure it.

The feelgood factor has been repeatedly cited by governments and other agencies as one of the arguments for investment in elite sport in general, and the London Olympics.  In Game Plan, for example, it is listed as the first of three 'virtuous outcomes' of elite sporting success (the others are economic benefits and increased grass-roots participation).

If the Game Plan account is to be accepted, the feelgood factor really means 'improved mood'.  Perhaps you think that is a rather feeble justification for close-to £10,000,000,000,000 expenditure from London alone.

The weediness of the feelgood defence for investment in elite sport is partly due to the fact that we can easily think of more economical alternatives for generating good feelings and lifting our mood, from old episodes of Dad’s Army to Christmas with family and friends, to a smile from a secret crush.

There is a second, more fatal difficulty with the feelgood defence.  Improved mood following nice experiences is almost always short-lived.  Humans are adaptive creatures (like all creatures, in fact), and we readily adapt to changing environments.  So improved mood or satisfaction eventually results in a ‘hedonic treadmill’ by which the elevated state will not continue, even if the circumstances that promote it are maintained.

In other words, the good mood that we hope will come with the Olympic success will be short-lived, and will certainly last a lot less time than it will take to pay off the debt from the Games.

And let’s not forget that moods – like interest rates and skirt lengths – can go up as well as down.  John Steele, former CEO of UK Sport, spoke of the “the euphoria of a full Lord’s Cricket Ground … when a single Ashes test was won”.  But by the same logic, any of England’s subsequent defeats would seem destined to result in national despair.  What will happen to the feelgood factor if any of our Olympic hopefuls under-performs or is injured?

If success in elite sport (let alone second-hand, spectated success) has a potent positive effect on our mood, presumably failure has the opposite.  And if this is true, then this is a real cause for concern, as the nature of sports competition is that most players lose in the long-run.

These are not new arguments, nor particularly scholarly.  I am sure there are those among the governments and their policy makers who know that the public has been offered some pathetically weak rationale for their investment in the Games.  Personally, I’d prefer an honest explanation like, ‘Hey, it’s the Olympics.  We beat the French!’  I’d even take, ‘Look, I was a bit of a spotty geek at school; if we get the Olympics, I get to hang out with Jessica Ennis and Victoria Pendleton!'  I just wish they didn’t treat us like fools.  It doesn't feel good at all.

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Are the London Olympic Games Really Such a Good Idea?

Discussions of the legacy of the London 2012 Olympics have been an ever-presented theme of commentary since Sebastian Coe first made it a distinguishing feature of the UK's bid to host the Games.

Coe said:

We can no longer take it for granted that young people will choose sport.  Some may lack the facilities.  Or the coaches and role models to teach them. Others, in an age of 24-hour entertainment and instant fame, may simply lack the desire.  We are determined that a London Games will address that challenge. So London's vision is to reach young people all around the world.  To connect them with the inspirational power of the Games. (Singapore, 6 July 2005)

Ever since these stirring claims were first made, advocates have turned to the L-word every time a shot-in-the-arm of enthusiasm has been needed.

It is not difficult to imagine why such support is needed.  Increasing numbers of commentators are questioning why London, a city with no obvious problem attracting tourists or business would, is to align itself with "the Olympic movement, a juggernaut controlled by an unaccountable sporting elite".

The original London costing was a little over £3 billion, and this grow exponentially up to £9 billion, before a new government insisted on a more suitably austere budget by changing virtually nothing (and actually doubly the funding for the 'Slumdog' opening ceremony).

The figures usually cited for the 2012 Games are misleading, as they do not include the substantial investment needed to transform the UK's elite framework to its current position as one of the leading half dozen sporting nations in the world.  In the four years prior to the Athens Games (2000) the UK government invested £70.1 million.  With a haul of 30 medals (9 Gold medals), which means that each medal cost the tax-payer about £2.3 million each.  For the Beijing Games investment increased to £75 million, and the total medals won increased to 47 (£1.6 million per medal).

The pattern of spending is revealing: the more money invested, the more medals Britain wins.  This has been likened to a type of ‘sporting arms race’, as governments in pursuit of more medals invest further into elite sport because rival nations do, which in turn ratchets up further investment.  So it was that UK Sport, the government agency responsible for distributing elite sport funding, was allocated £304.4 million for the Olympic funding cycle 2008-2012.

This figure is unprecedented, and signals a remarkable commitment to the cause of elite sport.

Why?

Even outside of difficult times, we might expect the case for such expenditure to be clear and compelling.  We sports nuts are often mocked for losing our sense of proportion, but even we would hesitate from ranking a few medals about hospitals and schools.

Well, some of us would.  There are others whose uncritical love of all things Olympic reminds of Alan Partridge's justification of the outrageous cost of building a model of his own house in BBC Television Centre by betting:

"If the British public were asked whether they would prefer an Alan Partridge Christmas special to 14 kidney dialysis machines, the response would be unanimous."

The clearest statement of justification for investment in elite sport in the UK comes from a document called Game Plan, which was published in 2002.  In fact, its defence is the only one I have been able to find from central government.  Perhaps no further statement is necessary, as Game Plan's claims continue to be made and - with a few exceptions - repeated by the media. 

It is claimed that elite sport produces a number of benefits to the wider population:

1. a ‘feelgood factor’ (among the population) and a positive ‘national image’ abroad;

2. economic benefits (from spending after events and so on);

3. as a driver for grass-roots participation.

As for the claim that Olympic Games make financial sense, for the moment I will simply cite the New York Times:

• The 1992 Barcelona Games left Spain with a $6.1 billion debt;
• Athens estimated that the 2004 Games would cost $1.6 billion, but in the end it was $16 billion;
• It took Montreal nearly 30 years to pay off the $2.7 billion it owed after the 1976 Summer Games.

It doesn't follow that London will suffer a similar fate.  But it's worth bearing in mind, isn't it?

So, what about the other claims?  Will the Olympics develop positive feelings across the nation and around the world?  If it does, do these feelings balance the significant financial investment?

And will the Games drive up mass participation?

I will discuss these two vital questions in subsequent blog entries.  In the meantime, it would be fascinating to hear your thoughts.

Comments very welcome!

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Participant Development in Sport

LTAD?


Core skills and capabilities?


Early Specialisation?


Talent Development?


Critical Periods in Development?




There is increasing demand on coaches and teachers to keep informed of relevant research evidence, and to adapt their work accordingly.  Evidence-based practice is accepted as the default position for those claiming to be professionals in sport.


The trouble is ... Well, there are a few troubles.  For example:

• Some of the research literature is highly complex, and uses arcane jargon;
• Some of the literature seems to contradict itself; and
• There is awful lot of it out there.

Dave Collins, myself and a small group of subject experts from physiology, psychology and sociology carried out a comprehensive review of the literature on participant development in sport on behalf of sportscoachUK in 2010.

Click on the image to get a free copy.

The report turned out a lot more 'comprehensive' than we'd imagined at the start, and it is certainly the most thorough review carried on playing, developing and improving in sport.

It also includes HUGE list of references.

It offers a critical analysis of such hot topics as LTAD, early specialisation, and talent development.  It also gives an examination of the assumptions that underlie most sports development programmes.

The review was written as a reference document for sportscoachUK, and so the tone is at times quite technical.  So, we also wrote an Executive Summary, which is available by clicking the next image:

The Review team was:

Richard Bailey, PhD, RBES Ltd

Dave Collins, PhD, University of Central Lancashire

Paul Ford, PhD, University of East London (Now BOA)

Áine MacNamara, PhD, University of Limerick (now UCLAN)

Martin Toms, PhD, University of Birmingham 

Gemma Pearce, MSc, University of Birmingham 

We hope this resource proves useful, and makes some contribution to the quality of sporting experiences of all.

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David Cameron the 2012 Olympic Legacy

UK Prime Minister David Cameron defends the legacy of the London Olympics.




What do you think?




Do you think he sounds convincing?

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Funding an Olympic Legacy - thank God for Jeremy Hunt!

Billy Connolly used to joke that the Queen thinks the world smells of wet paint because everywhere she goes has been freshly re-painted!




I think of these words whenever government ministers and other official-types boast of their access to 'the voice of the people'.  How would they possibly know?  They are, after all, surrounded by people whose main function is to make sure they don't ever meet the dreadful general public, which is a demographic known to be notoriously off-message.




So, maybe be should take Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt's comments with a pinch of salt:

"I'm continually surprised by how few naysayers there are. I was expecting there to be a much higher volume. If you look at the run-up to Sydney and Vancouver, there were many, many more sceptics than there have been in the UK.

"Locog has done a superb job in helping get the public fully behind the Games. There will always be a few sceptics but the closer we get the more they are starting to realise that this is going to be an extraordinary moment and they will feel perhaps just a tinge of being a party pooper."

The simple fact is that, post-Blair, government ministers simply never get to spend time with critics and 'party poopers'.  So all of their ideas are, for all they know, marvellous, touched by genius and hugely popular.




The context of Hunt's comments was the announcement of another tranche of spending on the London Games, aiming to make the 2012 Olympics a large-scale advertisement for Britain.  This includes a £39m marketing campaign (in which a group of Brits barely known outside of Central London travel the globe with flags), and a doubling of the budget for the opening and closing ceremonies (am I alone in not really caring about these parts of a sporting event?).




Mr Hunt is also expected to announce new policies designed to address the concerns raised by ... well, pretty much everybody, about the inexplicable cuts to the budgets for school sport.

"We remain 150% true to the vision Seb [Coe] outlined in Singapore in 2005. We remain totally committed to that.  It's a difficult period in terms of public spending.  I think we've got a very good plan in place that will convince the sceptics we can deliver on a fantastic sporting legacy as well as a fantastic economic legacy."

Coe's vision of an Olympic Legacy proved to be untenable at a time when funding for PE and youth sport in England was probably more generous than in other any country in the world.  But somehow Mr Hunt claims to have discovered a way to salvage that legacy.  And presumably without lots of money.


Genius!  Or so he no doubt has been told.

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