One more post before conferences.
A fantastic article on quick-decision making. The take-away that I see here (at least for the newer players out there) is the aspect self-trust. We need to learn to trust our mental heuristics, but also to trust our training.
The checkdown is developed and tailored to what you know about yourself and your teammates - what you can throw and what they can catch. You don’t build into your checklist the 50 yard hammer option if you don’t have it or if nobody will cut for it or even catch it. The biggest part of developing into a good player is, first and foremost, consistency and reliability. With those things, you can TRUST yourself to perform on the field, but first you need to put the time in at practice.
In order for any of this to work, you need to have a benchmark by which you know your checkdown works. It’s implied that this comes from training, but that leads to some more, very important implications, upon which a lot of sports psychology is based.
I’ve probably talked about this before, but training is the only reliable measure of your expected performance in competition. You don’t throw a thousand backhands in practice just so you can put up a hammer once you’re in game; it doesn’t make sense to rely on anything other than what you’ve spent time working on and perfecting.
Thinking in the other direction, competitive games are a showcase and measure of how well you have trained. When a team blows out their pool, it’s because they worked harder at practice than everyone else, and because of that they are accustomed to working hard when they know it counts. When you underperform, look back at your training over the regular season - that’s where you need to make adjustments.
When you get onto the field this weekend, remember your training, and let it take over. I hope you all go out and kick ass.
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