Today's subject is the reasons we sometimes 'choke' Why when sometimes it seems easier to win do we fall apart doing the basics? I will tell you the time it happened to me and of course famous stories of people who have choked unexpectedly.
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| Greg Norman chokes in 1996 |
I remember getting to the quarter finals of the British ABA finals and was boxing a lad called Smith. I knew he was a southpaw (led with the right hand) and was given instructions by my coach Ken Reynolds telling me basic moves to overcome the southpaw stance. "Straight right hands down the middle followed with left hooks and keep your left foot outside his leading right foot." I had never been past this stage of the championships before and was nervous but reasonably confident. I had trained hard and even was 'adopted' by my old friend 'Mac' who did all he could to ensure I was fully prepared for my fight. Mac was an elderly man who was mad on boxing, he used to come and watch me train and he wanted me to be in the best possible physical condition. He ensured I ate, slept and trained properly. Every night he would come and pick me up from work and take me back to his house in a village away from distractions. Mac fed me liver or steak each night and took me to work in the mornings, to training after and made sure I put in my roadwork, ensuring that I was properly prepared for my fight. I had never felt better, or been prepared better for any of my previous thirty plus fights. On the night of the fight I felt confident, right up until when the opening bell sounded. As soon as the bell had sounded I choked. I was trying to remember the instructions I had been told by Ken but my thought process was being constantly disrupted by my opponents punches landing in my face. I tried to keep my distance from him but found it difficult to throw any punches myself. Even my trusty left jab was slow and being countered. I could do nothing with any certainty. By the time the bell had sounded to end the first round I was a mile behind on points. Ken was giving me instructions for the next round but nothing was sinking in, nothing was making sense. I was the fittest I had ever been in my life yet had no energy, no speed and now no confidence. The bell went to start the next round and the only thing that was sinking in was Smiths punches. Part the way through the round I was cut above my eye and the referee stepped in and stopped the fight. It was not much of a cut but I think the referee could see I was never going to win this fight and pulled me out for my own safety. If a spectator had came to watch me for the first time that night they would have thought I had never boxed before. I was embarrassed. So many people had put their faith in me and I had let them and myself down but didn't no the reason.
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| Seddon Atkinson similar to what my dad taught me to drive in. What I remember most was NO POWER STEERING!! |
When I first started boxing I was taught how to stand, where to hold my hands, how to deliver punches including variations of straights, hooks uppercuts and how to avoid being punched using blocks parries,slips and lay-backs etc. As I got more experienced these conscious thoughts became unconscious and I did them as a natural reaction to being in a boxing ring. Choking happens when an occasion gets to you. Under pressure we can over think and 'strangle' our unconscious thoughts by relying on our conscious thoughts. So instead of doing what comes natural, what we had spent years perfecting we start questioning our unconscious thought and making mistakes. So when I fought Smith I was actually trying too hard when I looked like I wasn't trying at all. I was thinking of how to box instead of just boxing. When a golf misses fairway after fairway off the tee, it is not because he is not trying. It is often because he is trying too hard, instead of trusting in his ability he may be continuously thinking about each component of his swing, then missing one component out causing a huge deviation in his shot.
The way I dealt with this was by taking the importance away from the activity. I reminded myself "its only boxing" I later competed on the world stage as a full combat kick-boxer but never again suffered from freezing on the big occasion. I told myself it's only kick-boxing, if I lose my life will be no worse off. It is much easier to compete when you take away the fear of losing. I still expected to win because of the work I put in, but losing was no longer a fear. In four years I lost only twice as a full contact kick-boxer, once in the World Championships and a controversial loss on points for the British title. In almost every other fight I won by knockout or the referee stopped the fight. Eventually I decided I was too old too compete. This left a huge hole to be filled. Like I mentioned in a previous blog when Jonathon Edwards realised the sport was more important to his life than he realised, I also felt that there was a void in my life. I was no longer British kickboxing champion. Being a former champion did not sit as well as being a champion. I loved the fact that I was seen as the best in the country and one of the best kick-boxers in the world but that was all history now. Just plain old Dave Earle ...... So I started my own fitness classes and eventually got my own gym and boxing club, producing champions of my own. I feel lucky to have been given a second chance. I hear some of the boxers at my gym say they could never be a trainer, and they would have to fight, they would feel like they should be in the ring fighting not be training someone to fight. they ask me if I miss competing. My answer to that question is "I used to feel the same way. The thing I liked about boxing was being a boxer, competing in a sport that my father competed in and making him proud. I enjoyed the winning, the travelling around the world, the friends I made and the respect I got from friends and strangers. I loved being fit and taking my top off and feeling good about the way I looked. There are so many good things to take from doing well at your chosen sport and I would recommend it to everyone. But I have to say I didn't particularly like the training and making weight, the pre-fight nerves, I hated losing and feeling like I had let people down and can honestly say I get as much satisfaction out of giving youngsters the same benefits I got from training and competing. I love the fact that I can pass my knowledge on with no fear of being punched or letting anyone down. Boxing has been kind to me, helped give me confidence, kept me fit and allowed me the pleasure running my own business. Would I do it all again? You better beleve it.
The conclusion is Black and White, and I thought it was genetics
For years I believed that my colour was the reason I was faster than my white friends at school. That being black meant I had more fast twitch muscle fibers making me more of an explosive runner. I believed that, because all Ethiopians, Kenyans and Jamaicans seemed to be the best runners and all the most famous world champion boxers were black, that I was naturally going to have an advantage over my white counterparts. (Even though of course my mother was white) I was convinced that through the knowledge I had picked up over the years from friends and even some books I had read, that the fact I had the blood of my father coursing through my veins, I was a natural athlete! All of my family were athletes, my dad was a successful boxer, my sisters all ran for the school and the county and were in the netball and hockey teams. It must have been because we were black. I went to a boxing club where their were 5 Christie brothers, Simon, Andy, Errol, Michael and Wesley they were BLACK and they were all national champions at boxing, and they were all the best in the gym at running, even better than me, but they were Blacker... Actually, I could beat Simon he was a lot younger... and a bit chubby.
So imagine how I felt recently after finding out it is nothing to do with colour or genetics. Over the course of the last century many tests were carried out to find out why blacks did so well in sporting events. It had long been considered that it was down to genetics. Scientists travelled all over the world trying to find out the reasons why, taking swab tests from Kenyan athletes in remote villages because The Kenyans were winning all of the races over 5000 meters and dominated the world cross country events. I often used to watch marathons and see three Kenyans and an Ethiopian battling it out for the gold silver and bronze medals so naturally assumed it was a 'black thang' (Kenya and Ethiopia are in East Africa) But for all the tests carried out by the scientists genetics never came up as a reason for the black superiority in sports. Looking more closely at the Kenyan distance runners it is found that virtually all the top runners came from the very small Nandi region of Kenya. So it wasn't a black phenomenon or even a Kenyan Phenomenon it was a Nandi Phenomenon. Jamaicans were slaves from East Africa and produce an incredible amount of top sprinters from an island with a population of less than 3 million, That is less than half the population of Greater London. Before the Kenyans were so dominant it was the Ethiopians who ruled distance running and before them we had a time when Finish and Swedish runners were top distance runners and they were VERY white, so the question is firmly raised against genetics and even colour. One clever man discovered that we are all genetically the same and the colour of our skin does not affect our God given abilities. He said we are like computers, inside we are all the same it is only the cases that are different.
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| Ussain Bolt Olympic Champ & Jamaican World 100meters record holder |
Lets take the Kenyans from the Nandi Region where most of the elite Kenyan runners are from. The Nandi region is at altitude. All top athletes run at altitude for training as it expands left ventricle of the heart allowing us to perform better at ground level than someone without altitude training. This gives the Nandi people a natural advantage when it comes to distance running whether it is against black people or white people. So that is one advantage, but lets consider where they live, or should I say how where they live might influence their running ability. Running for East African people is a means of transport, as public transportation is virtually non existent. The school 'run' for Nandi athletes would be up 20 Kilometers each day at a speed of 15 kilometers per hour which adds up to eighty minutes per day and more than ninety hours per week five hundred hours per year, in excess of 6,000 hours b their 16th birthday With this information you might start to understand why the Nandi people are so good at running. So What about the Jamaicans? They are originally from West Africa Bought to America by the slave traders. They have no such altitude benefits and their school run doesn't compare with the Nandi people. Even if it did the distance they excel at is much shorter, only one hundred meters? The reason why Jamaicans do so well at sprinting is this: They are always running away from the police!! Only kidding (Check my profile picture I can make this joke) The real reason Jamaicans are so good at sprinting comes down to opportunities... or lack of opportunities. With no genetic explanation scientist focused on cultural forces underpinning Jamaican sprinting success. Jamaica has invested in an impressive infrastructure and training system required to identify and nurture elite track athletes. The effect this has had on a culture that idolizes local heroes, and the opportunity it gives to help people escape from poverty has helped Jamaica produce a plethora of top sprinters.
Without a genetic explanation researchers looked for cultural differences that may have been responsible reasons for the disproportionate success. So if we are all genetically the same how is it that a Small island like Jamaica can produce world beating sprinters. The explanation from may lie in a experiment carried out by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, two leading economists. They drafted five thousand CV's and placed typical black names such as Tyrone or Latoya on half of them and white names such as Brendon and Alison on the other half. They then divided the CV's into high and low quality and did the same with the black CV's.
A few weeks later the offers came rolling in from the employers, and guess what? The "black" candidates were 50% less likely to be invited to interview. Bertrand and Mullainathan also found that although high- quality whites were preferred to low-quality whites, the relative quality of black CV's made no difference whatsoever. It was as if the employers saw three categories: high-quality whites, low-quality whites and blacks. Is it any wonder that black children fail at school, given the success that is often ignored by employers? Is it any wonder why we, oops sorry, they end up going into sport instead ;0)
The last paragraph in Matthew Syed's book 'Bounce' reads "It is all to easy to assume that racial patterns of success and failure to be grounded in genetics, but the point of this chapter is to suggest that subtler and more elusive forces are at work. The tendency to see black and white as genetic types (which, to a large extent, underpins racial stereotyping)has long been contradicted by the findings of population genetics. If we could only tint our rose tinted spectacles, the world would not only look different, but it would soon become very different too. Great book Mr Syed I have learnt and shared lots.
This concludes the blog 'Be all you can... because you can' I hope this gives you the reader a reason to believe that nature plays little if any part in an athlete reaching the top at his/her chosen sport or indeed chosen profession. We are all equally able regardless of colour, of reaching our goals but should understand the harder we work the luckier we become, don't expect talent to get you to the top of the tree.
Stereotyping
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| Stereotyping is alive and well |
Between 2001 and 2005 Jeff Stone , a psychologist from the University of California and a colleague interviewed 1,500 students to uncover prevailing attitudes to race and sports. They unsurprisingly found that blacks were assumed to be naturally superior in sports rather than academia and whites were assumed to be naturally superior academically rather than athleticism. But the researchers wanted to check this further: Do these stereotypes really matter? Do they influence the way interact with each other, both in sports and beyond or do they not matter at all. To find out they took a group of white participants and asked them to listen to a radio broadcast of a basketball game to evaluate the performance of a particular player. In the first test, the participants were led to believe the player was black. After listening to the broadcast, the participants rated the player as high in athletic ability and as a superior player.
But in the second test the researchers reversed the experiment, telling the participants the player was white. What happened? You guessed it: they now considered the player to be of low in natural ability, and considered him an inferior player. Just to reiterate: these most contradictory viewpoints came in response from the same broadcast. Stereotyping can be harmful to both blacks and whites. Deterring blacks from studying and choosing sports as an alternative and deterring whites from competing at sports against the assumed superiority of blacks.
This concludes the blog 'Be all you can... because you can' I hope this gives you the reader a reason to believe that nature plays little if any part in an athlete reaching the top at his/her chosen sport or indeed chosen profession. We are all equally able regardless of colour, of reaching our goals but should understand the harder we work the luckier we become, don't expect talent to get you to the top of the tree.
