Lee Waters: How Athletes Make Decisions? (Full Transcript)
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Ronen Ainbinder
Today's episode of the Halftime Snacks features an absolute legend of a human being!
Today, the man we'll be hosting is a Sport Psychology expert with over 10 years of experience working in various sports such as Football, Archery, Waterpolo, and Rugby, from amateurs to international professionals.
His research is focused on decision-making — he literally wants to understand why athletes do what they do in the field.
Currently, he is also investigating the mechanisms of decision making using eye-tracker technology and reflective techniques.
This guy will give us a complete lecture on sports psychology, and I can't wait to learn from him, so without further ado,
Allow me to introduce:
Welcome to the show, buddy!
Lee Waters
Thank you very much. I've never been called a legend before. And yeah, that's a very, very, very good introduction. Thank you very much.
Ronen Ainbinder
Lee, you're an absolute legend. I went over your profile. I went over your website, your research, everything you do; it all sounds amazing. But at the same time, I couldn't understand anything. So I'm grateful that you're here. So that you can, I can explain to us everything that you do. And I want to start off by talking a little bit about your background and your story and how you got to where you are. So how about you first tell us a little bit about that. How did you first get interested in the psychology side of sports? How did you ended up where you are today? Tell us a little bit about you.
Lee Waters
I guess. It started back in 92 really. I watched Linford Christie and the 100 meter final of the Barcelona Olympics. And I looked at how he approached the race. I looked at how he stayed so calm. There was a false start in the race. He still stayed so calm. He was just looking down the track. So focused, and he didn't have the best to start in that race either. He was he was behind. He didn't do too well to start with. But he just stays focused, kept it kept doing what he was doing. And he ended up going through and winning the gold medal. I remember talking to my late father about it. And I wanted to know what he thought of it. And he was saying he actually labeled it something called tunnel vision. And it's something I've used a phrase that I've used at certain points throughout my career. And it just got me interested in what that actually is, what tunnel vision is, and because I wondered how you train that. It also got me interested in athletics because I have participated in quite a lot, which I'm sure will go into a little later. But it made me pay attention to performance. It made me pay attention to performance in a sporting context and people's lives. And it made me realize that people don't actually perform to the best they can do in every scenario. Why are they not performing in everyday life? So it got me thinking, why why do people do that? Why do people not perform as well as what they can do at certain points? But also, why do people thrive in certain situations? And so it got me really thinking about that. And then, especially when I started competing, I started feeling all kinds of things when it was in big competitions, butterflies in my stomach, sweaty palms, heart racing, and I'd start doing things that weren't characteristic for me. So I wouldn't start to really make me think about those kinds of things. So yeah, I wanted to. It made me think why I asked that question a lot. Why? Why do people thrive in presentations? Why do people not thrive in presentations? Why do people shrink? Why do people not perform in certain situations? So? Yeah, it was got me thinking about the question; why?
Ronen Ainbinder
It reminds me of the presentation given by Simon Sinek. He talks about the 'why' and how the best companies and communicators always start with it.' So I can't go without asking you. What is your life's purpose, and how are you currently working towards your life's purpose?
Lee Waters
To be honest, I mean, you've labeled me a legend, which was very, very rich is very, very kind. So I don't know how I'm going to be able to match that. But I've been described as a scientist. I've been described as an academic. I've been employed, it describes an applied researcher in the past. And to be fair, to be fair, it's quite humbling. Because, to be perfectly honest, when I first started out within sport, I couldn't stand education. I couldn't stand learning. I couldn't stand research.
I mean, what was that? I mean, I just wanted to go out and kick a football; I've run around the track because I thought I was going to be the next professional footballer. I thought I was going to be a great Britain athlete. I didn't need education, as far as I was concerned at that point. But unfortunately, what I mean, I got injured. My hamstring blowout, which wasn't great for a sprinter, wasn't a good thing. But it wasn't only that I'm not, I'm not naive to say that, I would have made it just because, and I'm not naive enough to say that. I wasn't that I could hold my own. But I wasn't that good. So yeah, it made me change my path. It made me change my path. Because always after the sport was done. I stood there in Morrison's pie shop, thinking, What am I going to do with my life because I didn't want to work in Morrison's anymore with all due respect to me.
I didn't want to work there. So that was where I started to get involved with education. I went on and did my degree in sports science, and really started to enjoy the psychology side got to ask, started asking that question, why, again, got that into teaching. That started to spur me on higher education, doing my Masters (now my Ph.D.) and my research. And then, of course, within the applied work that I'm doing, I'm working with footballers, now I'm working with some archers, I have worked with water polo players in the past. What is my purpose? I'm trying to help people thrive.
Ronen Ainbinder
It's very inspiring, Lee. Thank you so much for sharing. And I want to ask you now about the whole stages and decision making. To be honest, I have zero knowledge about it. I think we made decisions based on instinct, but that's probably the most inaccurate way or inaccurate answer. So I would like you to explain to me and the listeners, explain to us like if we were five years old, through which mental stages of the process in which athletes and of course, people go and make decisions? How does it work?
Lee Waters
Fundamentally, if you actually think about it, decision making is one of the most important, if not the most important, thing that we do from a psychological basis. We make decisions every day, we make countless decisions every day, whether that be when we wake up, what are we going to have for breakfast? Through to? Should we cross the road when cars are coming through? When should we decide to pass the ball? So there's been a variety of different ways in trying to answer this question, from economics to marketing. It's been a really, really important question. From a sporting perspective, we typically look at it from an information processing perspective or from an ecological perspective. Now, information processing is a concept that theorists believe that we are like a computer in. We have input, a stimulus, the environment around us. We interpret those pieces of information, then go through a decision as to how we're going to react to those pieces of information and then act upon it. We have the output, the thing that we see, okay, so if you're going to put it in simple terms, you have input, decision making output, very, very simple, very simple terms. What the ecological perspective kind of suggests is that we get the information from the outside. So it assumes that individuals are already adapted to the environment that we're in. And it is information about the frequency of the offense. So in an applied setting, there should probably be more focus on how we are filtering this information through that should be the emphasis on how we are using this information to make our decision what relevant pieces of information are? And what are irrelevant pieces of information?
Ronen Ainbinder
That's very interesting. I wonder if, let's say, applied in a sports situation, for example, LeBron James is about to shoot a three. LeBron is already in the game in the environment where the rules apply, where there are points, there's time. There's the setting, there's an environment, then LeBron, in his mind, takes all these inputs, all these inputs, and then figures out through a system or a filter, if taking that three is the best shot to make, is that how we can interpret it in a very simple sports scenario?
Lee Waters
Yeah, if you summed up ecological perspective quite nicely, there is a sense that LeBron James is obviously a fantastic, fantastic basketball, absolutely fantastic. So he's going to have a much higher skill level than, say, you and me. And so in the situation that he's in, in that given situation, in that scenario, he would be able to shoot that three-pointer, we probably would. So it's a case of, then you're comparing the situation to your ability level. So are you able to actually do that? Yes or no. So then that would then start to influence the decisions that you potentially make. So that's where you kind of your knowledge starts to starts to play a part. That's where your memory starts to play a part in situations that you've been in the past?
Ronen Ainbinder
I wonder to what degree and in what ways does the process change? When there's pressure involved? Let's say LeBron has three seconds to make that shot. How does it change?
Lee Waters
Yeah, it's a very, it's a very interesting question once again, because the pressure is, is something that, from a sporting perspective, we deal with quite frequently. And it's something that athletes talk about quite a lot. Why didn't you do this in this certain situation is because I felt pressured. Now, the interesting thing about pressure is, in Put simply, it's something that athletes make up. Because it's not something, you can specifically say what pressure is this. Because you can give loads of examples of what pressure is, but not specifically what pressure is, if that makes any sort of sense whatsoever. So the situation, I would say, a situation is only considered to be a precious situation if you think it is if you attribute it to be a precious situation. So LeBron James, actually, he may, he may enjoy those situations. So he may not think that it think's pressure. He may think that's just part of the game. If someone's trying to face him, if he's trying to face him up or trying to take you down the line, he may love that. He may not see that as a pressure situation whatsoever. Go back into the day with Michael Jordan, who always used to thrive in those situations. What does happen, though, is that those people who do feel pressured are that potentially we start to become quite anxious, we start to become quite stressed. So then, all of a sudden, because of that, our skills start to start to maybe fail us. So we start to wind up we're not as fluent as movement, we're not as fluent as being able to, to pass the ball to ever to hold on to the ball in our basketball example that we seem to be using. So that may happen. So a pressure situation could cause someone to become anxious to become stressed. And that's something from a sports psychologist perspective, we try and address.
Ronen Ainbinder
I always interpret it or think about this example. And probably you, you will be able to tell me if I'm right, but when two people play chess, for example, and it's your time to move, your brain is thinking of 1000 moves per second that you can make. Now, if you reduce the number of seconds that you have available to think, you're not going to think about the X amount or y amount that you feel comfortable to find the best solution. So when you add pressure, that pressure can come both in time or in public, the noise. I'm sure there are other sources of pressure that I'm not thinking about right now. But time is a very simple one. When we were, We have less time. Our brain iterates over a fewer number of solutions that it can find. And so that's, that's why it feels pressured because it's limited. And I mean, I find that super fascinating. And that's why I say that playing chess, for example, with a one minute like Blitz games, one-minute chess games is the best way to improve because you pressure your brain to think faster. So that's a way to train your decision-making process. Am I right, though, Lee?
Lee Waters
No, absolutely. The interesting thing is decision-making because decision-making is done at the front of the brain, called the prefrontal lobe when someone becomes anxious or stressed. Actually, that part of the brain physically shrinks. So it's not a very big part of the brain, to begin with. So if it starts to shrink, it just loses its ability, it will be like if you are trying to do bicep curling 20 kg, and then suddenly, having half your bicep taken away from you, it doesn't have as much capacity. But that only lasts for about 20 seconds. So the idea from a sports psychologist, perspective, or a performance psychologist is to try and help with that pressure situation, that stress situation, recognize that you are feeling that, and then come up with a coping strategy to be able to, to be able to alleviate it as quickly as possible.
Ronen Ainbinder
I love that man. We'll talk a little bit about that later. I want to know the role of the athletes' senses, meaning what they smell, what they hear, what they see, particularly for your case, in the decision-making process, how they absorb these inputs and take them into consideration. Is there any also sort of ratio that we should know that people take more into account what they see from what the smell? Or are they the same? How do How could you explain that?
Lee Waters
The important thing to know about decision making, it is the absolute simplest, is that we need the information to be able to make decisions. More importantly, we need the right information. So in a sporting context, typically, that information comes from our eyes. Depending on the research, there's different research that states different figures. Some of the higher research is about 80 to 90% of that information comes through our eyes. So it's a large percentage of information that comes through our eyes. And that's why it's so important. Now, I will ask listeners if I've just said 80 to 90% of the information you gain to make a decision comes through your eyes. So, how much training is dedicated to AI training? And there are not many people, when I've asked that I've actually said, Oh, we dedicate quite a lot to it. The majority of training is geared towards physical attributes and some tactical issues and things like that, which is fine. It's an emerging field that's good that's coming through. But it's a really, really big thing. So the eyes are really, really important in picking up this information. Not only that, it's how people's eyes actually work. So in a basketball situation and a rugby situation, in a football or a soccer situation. We need to, or we should really be as what's known as binocular as possible. Both of our eyes should be working pretty much in equal ratios. One shouldn't be dominating, really. And that's important because that will make sure that you can judge distances to be more accurate as you start to become fatigued. If you imagine tracking a car, if tracking is slightly off, that is exactly the same as your eyes. If you're more dominant on your left eye or you are more dominant on your right eye, you will actually start to as you start to become more fatigued. And you are in a sport that is quite based on accuracy. So it could be darts, it could be archery, something like that. You may actually start to find that you drag more to that side. So if you're right on dominant, you may start to drag to the right-hand side as opposed to it being straight down the middle. And that typically happens because you're becoming fatigued, the brain can't work, it can't correct that issue at that time. And then you need to, and then there's come issues later on in games in certain scenarios. So it's really, really important. Not only are you picking up information, but as you become fatigued, if your eyesight is not optimum, there could be issues with accuracy later on, which ultimately hinders performance.
Ronen Ainbinder
I feel like trainers and coaches have teams underrate the power of actually training the vision. Can they just take it as a fact, or they take it as a given that athletes are just training their vision because they're training in the field? And they're not actually, as you mentioned, they do not understand the value of something as important as the eyes. And I feel like that's an important point of consideration, even for coaches who are listening and future potential trainers. That's something worth focusing on. And I suggest you guys read all about lead. But now I want to ask you, Lee, about three or four or five, actionable and practical pieces of advice that you could provide the listeners and the athletes that are listening to the episode, how can they improve their decision making, either on the field or off the field? Is there something practical that you think we can do?
Lee Waters
There are a few things that can be done. And there are a few things that are put in place, in certain sports that are supposedly meant to be improving decision making, but they're quite closed activities, they're quite they're not as dynamic as potentially as what they could be. So the important thing is to note that drills activities that are put in place for our athletes need to be progressive as it goes. So yes, work out a certain skill within the sport. So say passing within football. And do that in a closed environment, simple, simple person in front of you just passing it between you. But then quickly move that on to make sure that you are then into a more dynamic environment, which is similar to the environment they're going to be performing in. Because too often there are situations, there are scenarios that are happening. And large amounts of time are dedicated in training to scenarios that are just not representative of the scenarios they're faced with. in the given sports. And that's a shame. That's a shame. That's a shame to see. So something that I quite often see, I'm going to speak about football or soccer from your part of the world, is that there are a lot of coaches actually say, okay, you need to look you need to scan you need to need to do to search your area. And they're absolutely right, they do, they do need to search their area, they do need to scan because that's a really, really important skill for players to learn, by doing that they were picking up information. But unfortunately, the drill or the activity they may get them to do is something where they pass the ball between two people, and then they're looking behind them. And there's nothing behind them that is important to them to find out about what they then do with the next. So what I mean is that there should be scenarios that they're putting in where they're having to filter, they're having to scan, they're having to look at their situation where they then have to interact with that information to then do something about it. So if someone is running towards them, do they then have to step left or step, right? Do they have to pass quickly, do they have to turn backward, those kinds of things. So put in situations where scanning is really important because they're picking up information, and they have to activate it. It all also depends on the sport that you're in. But in sports like tennis, for example. There's some equipment called synoptic stroke goggles, and they effectively their glasses that you wear on your eyes. And they're like a strobe. So they filter information. So they've kind of vibrate in front of you in front of your eyes. So you're, you're kind of getting information intermittently into your eyes. That really helps, because you're then trying to value, say, you've got a ball coming towards you, you are then only intermittently getting where that ball is coming. Use that ball's information; where it's going to bounce, and then where you're going to intersect that with your racket. So that's unwanted. Someone could take it on board as well and use it using the stroke goggles. If you've got a little bit of money because they're not, they are a little bit pricey. But they are, they can be used,
Ronen Ainbinder
I thought you were going to suggest shooting a basketball with one eye closed like this. I guess that doesn't really work.
Lee Waters
Well, if you shoot, if you shoot with one up one eye closed, it's like, if you're driving, or if you try to be fair, even if you try to open it simply, a simple task is opening a door. If you've got one eye closed, you have very limited depth perception, which means you can't really judge distances. So it actually doesn't. That wouldn't really do all that good to you. Interestingly though, what Dennis Rodman used to do, is he used to throw the basketball against, against the rim. And then he used to try and work out where the ball was going to bounce. He would just randomly throw the ball, the ball against the rim, watch that he would watch the basketball, and then predict where it was going to bounce. They were trying to get there as much as possible. Why do they have so many rebounds in his career? He was. Yeah, it was. He was a legend.
Ronen Ainbinder
Yeah, I remember that from the Last Dance documentary, which was amazing. Lee, I'm sure you watched it. I wonder how the evolution of the human body changed or has changed. Or maybe it's not even it's not, it's not something we can even prove how it changed the game in the competitiveness of the game. I wonder if you have any insight into how the evolution of the body will change? How will we evolve as human beings due to either practices or things that work for the body, things that don't work for the body that might change the way we play the games, or the way people react or do things? Of course, we wouldn't be really talking about our generation, probably in a couple of 1000s of years, or something's there's some insight that you can relate to both evolution and how the game is the competitiveness of the game.
Lee Waters
For starters, depending on the sport you'd look at, things have improved, whether that be technological. So we use tennis again, you only have to look at the wooden tennis rackets that they used to use and compare them to what they use now. The golf clubs that they used to use in comparison to now, I think what fundamentally has happened in a lot of sports is that they've incorporated many disciplines within it. So if you look back at, if you look back at Tiger with Tiger Woods, for example, when he was dominating, he was typically the only one that was taking strength and conditioning as seriously as it should be. There he gained a significant advantage over his fellow competitors because he was hitting the gym. I mean, I know that's a very, very simplistic way of putting it, but Put simply, that's, that's why he dominated for so long, he looked at that. And he, he looked at that so-called marginal gain. If you look at GB cycling, they've looked at certain things into sleep patterns. So how important sleep is. And there's been a lot of information now that is generated that there's more orientated around the recovery of athletes and our sports or sportspeople, as opposed to preparing them for the actual performance. So can we make our athletes recover as quickly as possible? They can train then again and then gain improvements through the amount of training they're doing. Now, I was at, I was at a conference before lockdown and things like that. And what they were talking about is tracking technology in terms of things like GPS, things like heart rate, monitoring, recovery, refuge, recovery records, and things like that. And what they were actually saying was that their inspiration is an iPhone. And what I mean by that is that an iPhone is a camera, it's a computer, it's, it's a mobile phone, it's all kinds of things. So what they're trying to do is potentially trying to get one, I saw a piece of technology that can be implanted into us, and they're able to then track all of our human functions, all of our human bodily functions. Are we low on sugar? We need our nutritionist to start to come in, are we stressed, so then our psychologist needs to come in? We're not recovering enough. So then, our strength and conditioning coach needs to come in all of these kinds of things. I mean, there are obvious ethical issues with that, because when does it get switched off? When does the athlete stop becoming an athlete? When do they just become normal? Or when did that just become a normal person? And because if they're going out on a date, for example, do you really want? Do you really want your coaches knowing what you're doing that night? I mean, that's, that's not, that's not great. I guess I'm coming at it from a technology perspective instead of the evolution of the human body and how I think it's more our adaptation to that. So the human body is the greatest machine that we will ever own. I fundamentally believe that, and if we do enough things to it, if we give it enough time to adapt, it will adapt to any situation that we get it that we throw upon it. And it's just about learning the best way to help it in a given scenario. And obviously, I'm going to look at it from a visual perspective. How will we improve our athletes' eyesight and vision to pick up the most amount of information that will help them make the next best decision?
Ronen Ainbinder
Absolutely, absolutely. I wonder if after science, let's say in a few years, or in a few thousand years, science figures out all of this. With all the best practices and the most efficient ways of processing information, I wonder where talent will land, and if the talent is, will it be a differentiator in the game? Or if we'll be as talented because we know how to be the best, or the fastest, or how to have the fastest vision or the best decision-making process because we will be there. So, where are we going to see the difference? I wonder? I feel like that's a little bit.
Lee Waters
Yeah, it's a very, it's very, very good question. Because we, we have a, I have a debate with my students. And I'm not saying that I necessarily have an answer. But I have a debate with our students to say, Does talent actually exist? Is his talent actually a thing. And I guess, I guess we talk about more about abilities because you are working on abilities that people have. You are trying to improve the abilities that people have to make them the most rounded athlete that they possibly can be. So if you look at a variety of different sports, you can pick virtually every sport now. And they are more rounded athletes than they ever have been. And that's why sport today, typically, especially within team sports, is more dynamic. It's faster than ever before. Within rugby, the hits are harder than they've ever been before in terms of tackling. They're running longer distances. For example, referees within the world of soccer have to make upwards of 240 decisions per 90 minutes. And that's it's crazy. It's crazy. It's absolutely crazy how dynamic it is going. And that's just increasing every single season. And it's Yeah, everything started to escalate. And there's always that next thing, what's the next thing? Where's the next marginal game? And there's a lot of people out there looking for.
Ronen Ainbinder
I love it, man. And I feel like the beauty of sports is that it allows us to ask these questions and think about it because I'm not sure if, like in construction, you can think about those things. So I think that's sports. But, since we're running out of time, I want to ask you this one last question. And that's more a personal question about you, Lee, but what you live in how you live. So the question is, what's the quote you live by and why
Lee Waters
The last line of Ulysses by Tennyson; "To strive to seek to find and not to yield." That's typical because I am always striving to be the best that I can be. And I want my athletes to do that to be the best to strive to be the best they can be. They don't have to be the best. But as long as they're striving to be the best, they can be unhappy and seek the best ways to do that, whether through trading, whether that be through strength and conditioning, etc. To find it, and then not to yield because we know more than anything, and any other period of human history right now that we are having to yield a little because of the situation that we're faced with. But, but we won't, because we'll be we'll move forward. And we're in no better position, no better position in human history to be able to deal with it. But that quote really resonates with me in the scenarios around, so try and make sure that is something I stick to.
Ronen Ainbinder
Awesome, Lee Awesome, man, you're an absolute legend. I want to thank you so much for your time and insight. This was a complete lesson on sports psychology, decision making, ability, skill, talent. Everything was in this conversation. I'm sure you guys learned a lot as I did from Lee. If you want to reach out to Lee, the links are going to be in the description. And yeah, Lee, thank you so much for coming to the halftime snacks, man. I appreciate it!