THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

“The main reason you can’t move the same way each and every time, such as swinging a golf club, is that your brain can’t plan the swing the same way each time,”

Really?  Who would have thought that?

Seriously, what is the alternative?  That the barin can easily learn to reproduce precise movement instructions for the body, but then the wind screws everything up?

I mean it is nice that these researchers can measure variations before they happen, but really, are the results surprising or even informative?

Hey, I couild have written the usual…

“In other news, researchers have been able to measure the fact that grass is green and water is wet.”

I can’t agree that this study is useless or uninformative. On the contrary, it suggests that the dominant sports paradigm about slumps is wrong. According to that paradigm, and I’ll use a batter as an example, a player has a certain batting stroke. When he struggles over a period of time, it is often said that he has developed bad habits. The answer is extra batting practice with the batting coach to help eliminate those habits. This study would suggest this is probably a waste of time. The best approach would be to relax and do what you’ve always been doing.

To quote the press release above. “For athletes, the inability to replicate the perfect movement might seem to be a frustrating problem to be solved.” This study contradicts that point of view. Once you reach a certain level of competency, further practice isn’t going to make you better. In other words, practice doesn’t make perfect. To have concrete, empirical evidence of that is valuable.

BTW, though I referred the article to Tom, I have no connection with these people. I just happened to run across it while searching for something else.

Once you reach a certain level of competency, further practice isn’t going to make you better.

I don’t get that at all from the article.  In fact, that can’t possibly be true, since there cannot be a bright line at which you have “reached a certain level of competency.”

I think it is common knowledge that the more you practice, the better you get, with diminishing returns.

Again, what this study reveals is a mystery to me.

Actually the point of the research is that inconsistencies in neural patterns or brain waves are responsible for at least half of the variations in movement as opposed to the idea that all of the variations are due to “imprecision” of the muscles that are being “directed” by the neural inputs.

The idea that the brain would solve relatively simple and repetitive problems differently each time is rather thought provoking IMO. To me (and to a number of other smart people considering it was published in a prestigous journal like Neuron) that conclusion is neither obvious nor intuitive.

So what’s novel isn’t that “ the more you practice, the better you get, with diminishing returns” it’s why that’s the case that’s interesting, at least to neuroscientists.

Although I actually don’t think this has any applicability to baseball hitters as the pitches that they are presented with vary widely in spin, velocity etc.