How Team GB cyclists peaked at the Olympics and owned the velodrome

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By Candice Lingam-Willgoss

To say that Team GB have dominated the Olympic cycling would be the biggest understatement of the games. British track cyclists seem to have made peaking in line with the Olympic cycle their speciality. They won seven of the ten gold medals on offer at both London 2012 and Beijing 2008, but this year in Rio, they have really surpassed themselves. Every member of the 15-strong squad has come away with a medal, taking the final tally to six golds, four silvers and one bronze.

This remarkable success has baffled their rivals. Michael Gané – the French sprint coach – must have echoed the thoughts of many teams when he remarked; “they don’t exist for four years, then at the Olympics they outclass the whole world”. So, how have Team GB managed, yet again, to peak at the optimum time?

Training for success

It all comes down to a technique called “periodised training” – a strategy which has long been used to prepare athletes for major events. The training year is divided and organised to ensure that peak performance is achieved at the optimum time – in this case, at the Olympic Games.

A multi-year programme involves a gradual increase in training intensity through the pre-competition period, followed by a reduction or tapering of training, as the competition period draws nearer.

When following a multi-year periodisation plan – such as the four-year Olympic cycle – the final year is the most important one. That’s when the amount of training (the distance covered or time spent) is reduced to prevent injury and fatigue, while the intensity of the workouts is increased to ensure athletes are in top form for the big event.

For Team GB’s cyclists, training will focus on muscular endurance, anaerobic endurance (ability to sustain high intensity exercise) and sprint power. But the real skill is to maintain the subtle balance between periods of work and recovery, which must be tailored to each rider’s individual capabilities.

The British Cycling team has clearly mastered this approach, having set the Olympic Games as their number one priority. This may also explain why the team are less visible on the podium at world championship events in the lead up to the games.

That said, while timing athletes’ training right will unquestionably give them an edge, there are still a few other factors to consider.

The price of gold

The winning streak of Team GB cyclists at successive games has brought about a significant increase in investment from UK Sport – the organisation which allocates public funds to elite-level sports – at the expense of many others. According to sports policy expert Dr Borja Garcia, the “brutal” regime is “as crude as it is effective”. Certainly, with a grant in the region of £30m every four years, lack of funding has not been an issue for Team GB’s cyclists.

GB gold medallist Jason Kenny, looking flash.
Javier Etxezarreta/EPA

And it’s clear that investment pays off: former Olympic gold medalist Chris Boardman said that “the British team have always been at the head of the technology race and we’ve seen that again [at Rio 2016]”. This level of funding has enabling the development of bikes worth in the region of £10,000, and skin suits so aerodynamic that they can produce up to a 5% performance gain, compared to those used at the world championships in London earlier this year.

In post-race interviews, many of the athletes have also praised the extensive sport science support network working behind the scenes; from nutritionists to data analysts.

Success breeds success

The old addage “success breeds success” clearly applies to the whole of Great Britain’s Olympic team. On the track the first cycling gold in the men’s team pursuit at Rio seems to have given the squad a level positivity and confidence which not only motivated them, but also potentially has intimidated their rivals.

This notion was echoed by Max Whitlock, when he reflectedon the huge success that Team GB gymnasts had experienced: “I’m a big believer in success breeding success. The results we’ve had have pushed us to get more, it’s made us all believe that it’s possible”.

British Cycling head coach Iain Dyer openly said that the whole squad have been focusing first and foremost on the Olympics:

While we peak athletically for the Olympics, we also peak in our research and innovation for the Olympics … we’ve got a really great team of people doing a fantastic job, who will go to the ends of the earth looking for that final marginal gain. It’s all about marginal gains, isn’t it?

While this approach has left some competitors scratching their heads, no one can question the success of Dyer’s strategy. It’s clear that British Cycling and Team GB have mastered the art of periodised training. But make no mistake – it takes more than good timing to be an Olympic champion.

The Conversation

Candice Lingam-Willgoss, Lecturer in Sport & Fitness, The Open University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Video: What sporting future? Risks and rewards

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So far in the 2016 Rio Olympics we have seen several world records (e.g. Ayana in the 10,000m, Peaty in 100m breaststroke, Wlodarczyk in the hammer,  Qingquan in weightlifting). In this video Michael Johnson, who yesterday lost his 400m world record to Wayde van Niekerk reflects on the future of sport in an age when technology is advancing rapidly.

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Note: This video is also available in the OpenLearn Chasing Perfection video collection

Why are Olympic athletes copping so much abuse? It all comes down to gender

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By Helen Owton

Every four years, the Olympic and Paralympic Games burst on to our screens, showcasing a rich variety of sports, athletes and cultures. For those not lucky enough to be in Rio this year, social media has made it possible to share jokes, news, triumphs and disappointments with other viewers from around the world. But with as many as 3.6bn people watching across the globe, it’s almost inevitable that some people won’t like what they see. Already, several athletes have been subject to abuse via mainstream and social media. In one disgraceful case, as the Team GB Rugby Sevens battled it out against Canada for bronze, tweets targeted Olympic athlete Heather Fisher, criticising her appearance. Fisher experiences alopecia – or hair loss – and works as an advocate for others with the same condition. Comments on twitter questioned her womanhood, saying they were “not convinced” that she is “female” and that she’s “the manliest woman I have ever seen”.


 
Sadly, these insults are nothing new to women athletes. All Olympic sports are competitions of skill, speed and strength. Yet when women run too fast, kick too hard, or look too muscular, they are subjected to abuse. At the same time as being world-class athletes, sportswomen are expected to be physically appealing – and even wear make up – while photographs of sportswomen in the media are generally more likely to be sexually suggestive. Those who defend this state of affairs often say it’s a way to attract fans and endorsements to women’s sports – yet women athletes are still paid less than men and their games are given less air time. Men are not immune from discrimination and abuse in sport either. In some ways, men face more limitations on what physical traits are deemed acceptable, thanks to society’s particularly narrow ideas about masculinity. For example, Team GB gymnast Louis Smith was subjected to Twitter trolling when he slipped off the pummel horse, with some claiming that his long hair was to blame, and Ethiopian swimmer Nobel Kiros Habte was publicly shamed over his body weight, and nicknamed “the whale”.

Generally speaking, men are also vulnerable to discrimination in sports which are traditionally “feminine”, such as synchronised swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, figure skating and netball. Indeed, at the Olympics, men are excluded from competing in synchronised swimming and rhythmic gymnastics altogether.

A challenging notion

This widespread sexism at the Olympics shows us that women and men who do not conform to expectations about their respective genders are often targets for abuse.

Caster Semenya leads the way. ABDELHAK SENNA/EPA

This is because they threaten traditional attitudes about the appropriate roles, rights and responsibilities of women and men in society. These traditional attitudes are based on a simple “binary” classification model – where people are classified as either male or female. This model is limited and fixed: it tells us that male and female are “opposite sexes”, that sex is determined biologically (according to chromosomes, reproductive organs, hormones) and that all men are naturally different to all women in terms of their feelings, thoughts and actions. As a result, women are expected to look and behave in a “feminine” way, while men are expected look and behave in a “masculine” way. So many people understand sex and gender in this way that it can be very difficult for us to think about and discuss different ways of understanding gender. Human beings can feel very uncomfortable when other people do not fit neatly into categories, because it challenges preconceived ideas about what it is to be “normal”. And this can lead them to lash out. This model has shaped society – and sporting organisations – for a very long time. It is often drawn on in sports competitions, which are typically organised into “men’s” and “women’s” events. As a result, transgender and intersex athletes such as Caster Semenya and Dutee Chand have to contend with large sporting organisations such as the International Association of Athletics Federations to even be allowed to compete.

All too simple

In reality, the simple binary model actually appears to reflect social and cultural ideas about gender, rather than biological facts. Evidence suggests that gender isn’t entirely binary on any level of physiology or psychology: men and women can both display huge variations in terms of chromosomes, hormones, brain structure, personality and roles in society. There are several good examples of this. Daphna Joel’s research challenges the idea of a “male” or “female” brain: in fact, most people’s brains display a mixture of features. And studies have shown that in marathon races, for example, not all of the men beat all of the women – in reality, some women will beat some men. As radical as this might sound now, it is possible that some point in the future, the fastest marathon runner will be a woman. In light of modern scientific evidence, it’s clear that traditional expectations about what men and women should look like – and how they should behave – are outdated. There is never a good justification for abuse. But the hate directed toward athletes who don’t fit neatly into our ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman is based on ignorant misconceptions about gender. And in some ways, that makes it even worse. Athletes who challenge the mainstream understanding of gender don’t deserve to be bullied – especially after all they have sacrificed to compete for their countries. Rather, they should be praised for showing the world that individual differences can lead to outstanding achievements. The Conversation Helen Owton, Lecturer in Sport & Fitness, The Open University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Medal Quest: Can you guide a promising young athlete to championship success?

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To celebrate the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics we have developed a new interactive game called Medal Quest to test your skills in mentoring a young performer towards Olympic success as a senior athlete.

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Click here to play the game

Please note that this game works best on Chrome, Firefox and Safari. It does not always work on Internet Explorer.

What do the Olympic medal tables say about your nation’s sporting priorities?

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By Ben Oakley and Simon Shibli

Each time the Olympic and Paralympic Games come around, a small minority of nations tend to do well. On average, only 25% of competing nations at the Olympics will win a gold medal – and they’re pretty much the same ones year in, year out.

Intrigued, we dug into data spanning back to 1948 – derived from our colleagues at Gracenote Sport – to unravel how different countries approach sport, and how that affects their chances of Olympic success.

Looking back over the last 20 years, we found that the top 20 nations have consistently won more than 70% of the medals at each games. Despite the fact that some progress has been made over the last five games, the figure below demonstrates that this trend has persisted throughout modern Olympic history.

It follows that if some nations consistently perform very well, others repeatedly do not. One group which appears to perform relatively poorly is Muslim nations – which we define as those nations where around 50% of the population is Muslim. We found 53 nations that meet this definition, which collectively account for 18% of the world’s population.

Econometric models have consistently shown that bigger populations and greater wealth are closely linked with medal success. But based on these trends, Muslim nations perform well below what we might expect. For instance, Muslim nations only won 61 (6.3%) of the medals awarded at London 2012. By comparison, the top-ranked nation at the games (the US) racked up 104 (10.8%) of the medals, with only 4.5% of the world’s population.

There are several reasons which could explain this relatively poor performance. For one thing, the Olympics largely features typically European sports, such as swimming, rowing and cycling. All of these require significant facilities and investment to develop medal winners. This doesn’t play to the strengths of many Muslim nations, which tend to be more successful in combat sports and weightlifting – events where there are comparatively fewer medals up for grabs.

The gender balance

All things being equal, you would expect nations to win medals in proportion to the medals available for each gender (47% women, 53% men). The fact that women won just 15 (25%) of the Muslim nations’ 61 medals at London 2012 indicates that Muslim nations under-perform in women’s events particularly.

When we considered the top ten nations in London 2012, we noticed that Korea and Italy also under-performed in women’s events, and over-relied on men for their overall success. By contrast, in recent years China has actively targeted success in women’s events. This has proved to be a highly successful strategy: 57% of the nation’s medals in 2012 were won by women, which led to second place in the medal table.

Other nations with strong contributions made by women include the US – where college sport provides a fruitful pathway to develop young talent – and Australia, which has targeted elite sport success for men and women since the 1980s, when it set up the Australian Institute of Sport. Meanwhile, with their successful equestrian programmes, Germany and Great Britain won nearly 10% of their medals in mixed or open events at London 2012.

Positive approaches to women’s sport will only become more significant, as the International Olympic Committee works towards its goal to achieve gender equity in the 2020s.

Paralympic power

As you might expect, there is a strong correlation between the nations which dominate the Olympics, and those which succeed at the Paralympics. But a few nations buck the trend: some perform better in the Paralympics than the Olympics, and others significantly worse.

To illustrate this point, the figure below shows the index scores of Paralympic success compared with Olympic success for London 2012. An index score simply enables us to make a like for like comparison between the two events. For example, the US won 6% of medals in the Paralympic Games and 12% in the Olympic Games. So, the US has an index score of 50 ([6% / 12%] x 100 = 50), which means that it achieved only half the success in the Paralympic Games, relative to the Olympic Games.

The higher the index, the greater the nation’s Paralympic success, relative to its performance in the Olympics. We did this calculation for all nations which won at least 15 Paralympic medals.

North African nations Algeria and Tunisia – which also happen to be Muslim nations – excelled at the Paralympics relative to the Olympics. Of the traditional Olympic powers, better performances were also seen by Ukraine, Australia, China, Canada and Spain – three of which have been recent hosts (Sydney in 2000, Beijing in 2008 and Barcelona in 1992).

By contrast, the US and Japan performed relatively poorly at the Paralympics, suggesting that elite disabled athletes may not be receiving the levels of support which are provided to elite able-bodied athletes.

Fuller explanations for these variations are complex, but social attitudes towards disability must play a part. For instance, British parliamentarian and multi-Paralympic medallist Tanni Grey-Thompson cited the role of television coverage as a key factor in the US’s modest Paralympic performance.

Bizarrely, in a country where you have Title IX about women’s entitlement to sport at university and they have had scholarship programmes for disabled athletes for 40 years … the public do not get to see it [on television].

As the Olympics and Paralympics play out in Rio throughout August and September, we’ll probably see the same old suspects dominating the medal tables. But dig beneath the surface, and you’ll find that the results can tell us a thing or two about each nation’s sporting priorities: especially when it comes to the success of their elite women and disabled athletes.

The Conversation

Ben Oakley, Head of Childhood, Youth and Sport, The Open University and Simon Shibli, Professor of Sport Management, Sheffield Hallam University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Skilled Performance at Wimbledon: Pimms, Strawberries and Movement Variability

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By Ben Langdown

Week 2 of Wimbledon is in full flow, as is my second week at The OU having taken on the position of lecturer in Sports Coaching within the Sport and Fitness team. As is customary at Wimbledon time, I am sat here typing this with a punnet of strawberries and cream and a glass of Pimms in hand, flicking my eyes left to right, and back again as a pressurised ball of yellow fluff gets whacked across a taut net and to within millimetres of a chalked line at the back of centre court! Murray is through to the quarter-finals for the 9th consecutive year after beating Nick Kyrgios comfortably in Monday’s last 16 match. This was despite Kyrgios achieving 90% accuracy on his first serve through the first set, 84% over the whole match and averaging 124mph! Murray wasn’t quite as accurate with a mere 64% of his first serves finding the service box, but did clock up an impressive 130mph fastest serve. So how are these top players able to serve the ball so fast but also be so consistently accurate?Sliced strawberries

First, let’s go back to my refreshments, the strawberries and Pimms are very relevant here I must add…Successfully picking up the glass of Pimms and guiding it to my mouth to have a swig without spilling any has resulted from me developing the ability to self-organise hand-to-glass and then glass-to-mouth movements when I was much, much younger! However, novice movements aren’t this smooth and successful. At first new movements are often robotic in nature, consciously controlled and performed using rigid coordination. This is the beginner’s attempt to simplify the skill as much as possible by freezing some of the possible movements in their joints. This is what we call, freezing degrees of freedom (the number of possible movements available at each joint involved in the movement) which allows a beginner to limit the amount of movement variability and achieve more success when first learning a skill. They may not use the most efficient or effective technique but they can achieve an outcome i.e. having a drink!

Whilst novice performances are characterised by this freezing of movements, dynamical systems theorists suggest that the variability in movements, in response to task goals, is an intrinsic part of skilled motor performance and as a result allows performers to adapt and be flexible in their dynamic sporting environment. Often there is a lot of ‘detrimental movement variability’ that impacts upon our success as a novice learner and this is why a lot of mistakes will be made (in my example – drinks spilt!). As we progress, we learn to “unfreeze” our joints’ degrees of freedom, allowing an increased number of movement combinations to be effectively self-organised in response to the goals of the task. So, in my example I can successfully drink from the glass by moving it from the table to my mouth on a variety of trajectories / movement paths, the glass may be at different angles each time, my hand may be holding the glass lower down or higher up, there is no set “motor programme” as was once thought, variability is a part of movement and as long as I am aware of how to adapt my movements to reach the end goal then I will get the glass to my mouth successfully. Through practise we are then able to use this ‘functional variability’ to become successful at performing the task in different environments and with varying constraints imposed on us as performers.

Tennis Serve

This also applies in tennis; the elite players we witness over the fortnight at SW19 are able to benefit from the practise they have put in to allow successful 1st serves to emerge from constraints in three interacting areas: the task, the environment and the player:

Task Constraints (the 1st serve): e.g. where they want to hit the serve, what spin do they want to place on the ball, the rules governing the service, how high has the ball been thrown etc.

Environmental Constraints (Centre Court): e.g. the crowd, the wind – irrelevant when the roof is closed on centre court!

Player Constraints: e.g. how much range of movement do they have in their shoulder, are they carrying a niggling injury that’s causing them pain, what state of mind are they currently in, are they focussed on the task in hand or have they just thrown away an easy point etc. The second set of Monday’s match demonstrated this point nicely where Kyrgios appeared to give up!

Figure 1.0 Dynamical Systems Theory adapted to the 1st serve in tennis: The serve emerges from the interacting constraints.

So how does a novice progress to the level of skill we see at Wimbledon? When attempting a serve, beginners may miss the ball, or hit into the net as they try to coordinate all the movements available at their shoulder, elbow, and wrist. Excluding the movements in the hand (which will be gripping the racket), there are 7 degrees of freedom in the arm:

  • 3 possible movements in the shoulder
  • 1 in the elbow
  • 3 in the wrist

Coordinating these can be a tricky task, hence why variability in the movements of these joints can lead to unsuccessful serves. It is also possible to see why beginners would freeze the lower body and even the wrist and elbow movements to make the serve easier to control (coaches often call this a frying pan service with just the arm moving and no turn of the hips!). In order to hit the ball like Murray and his peers at over 130mph the rest of the body also needs to be self-organised…for now though, we’ll freeze that discussion and just stick with the arm and racket!

Research (e.g. Bootsma, & Van Wieringen, 1990; Betzler, et al., 2012) has shown that when performing the same task over and over elite performers are able to “zero in” on contact with a ball and in this tennis example, serve the ball from the centre of the racket. This means that as the ball is tossed into the air the player can utilise functional movement variability to adjust the position of the racket as it moves towards the ball. Then, as they approach the critical moment of the serve (i.e. impact between the centre of the racket and ball) the amount of variability is reduced to produce consistency from serve to serve. Novice players do not demonstrate as much ‘funnelling’ of variability which is where the mistakes and unsuccessful serves emerge from. Ok, it’s easy for me to say this sat here at a desk munching on strawberries…but try achieving a 90% success rate at over 120mph for a whole set in front of a centre court crowd, the majority of whom want you to lose to their British hopeful!

I don’t want to fool anyone here, elite players do still suffer from detrimental variability in their movements and this is evident when double faults creep into their game, but let’s face it, it doesn’t happen as often as us mere mortals when on the court playing much slower serves!

So, back to my strawberries and Pimms…the constraints on the goal of getting them to my mouth are currently far less daunting than being out on centre court, racket in hand, with 15000 people watching on, and trying to serve at 135mph into a 283.5sqr.ft service box! I feel the environment and my own ‘performer’ constraints alone would be far too imposing, and that’s before I even consider the task!

Enjoy the rest of Wimbledon and look out for those service stats! Cheers!

Useful references:

Bartlett, R., Wheat, J., & Robins, M. (2007). Is movement variability important for sports biomechanists? Sports Biomechanics, 6(2), 224-243.

Betzler, N.F., Monk, S.A., Wallace, E.S., & Otto S.R. (2012). Variability in clubhead presentation characteristics and ball impact location for golfers’ drives. Journal of Sports Sciences, 30(5), 439-448.

Bootsma, R.J., & Van Wieringen, P.W.C. (1990). Timing an attacking forehand drive in table tennis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 16(1), 21-29.

Davids, K., Glazier, P.S., Araújo, D., & Bartlett, R.M. (2003). Movement systems as dynamical systems: The role of functional variability and its implications for sports medicine. Sports Medicine, 33, 245-260.

Gurfinkel, V.S. & Cordo, P.J. (1998). The scientific legacy of Nikolai Bernstein. In M.L. Latash, (Ed.), Progress in motor control: Volume one, Bernstein’s traditions in movement studies (pp. 1-20). Champaign: Human Kinetics.

Langdown, B.L., Bridge, M., & Li, F-X. (2012). Variability of movement in the golf swing. Sports Biomechanics, 11(2), 273-287.

Newell, K.M. (1986). Constraints on the development of coordination. In M.G. Wade & H.T.A. Whiting (Eds.), Motor development in children: Aspects of coordination and control (pp. 341-360). Boston: Martinus Nijhoff.

Making young children give everything to football is a bad idea – here’s why

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By Jess Pinchbeck 

Many of the players at Euro 2016 will have been recruited to football clubs as children. Football has become such a big business that top clubs are under great pressure to ensure they recruit the next Cristiano Ronaldo before their nearest rival. As a result, they are taking on players very young.

British clubs commonly take advantage of the fact that they can sign players on schoolboy terms from the age of nine. And the clubs invite even younger children to their development centres and have been known to scout five-year-olds.

When a youngster signs for a big club, they and their parents sometimes have to agree not to play other sports or play for other football teams for fear of injury. This helps explain why British players who go on to become professionals tend not to participate in other sports. Yet the average age of World Cup winning teams is as old as 27.5 years. So is this early specialisation necessary?

Many specialists like myself would say it looks more like a by-product of the current talent development system rather than the most effective route to expertise. Research suggests that in sports like football where players reach their peak well into adulthood, you needn’t specialise before the age of 13; and you’re more likely to keep playing and to become an elite performer if you take part in a range of activities between the ages of six and 12.

One of the main arguments in favour of early specialisation is the hypothetical positive relationship between the amounts of time you spend practising a sport and the level of achievement you go on to attain – the idea that 10,000 hours of practice makes perfect. But this has been widely contested within sports research – and, even if this is true, it’s not necessarily an argument for concentrating on one sport.

Jack Butland.
PA/David Davies

For example the Stoke City and England goalkeeper Jack Butland, who is missing Euro 2016 through injury, played rugby alongside football until he was 16. He strongly believes the rugby helped him develop as a goalkeeper. The research evidence suggests that related team sports with similar rules, movement, dimensions and strategies to football have the most transferable benefits. Playing darts may not be quite as beneficial, in other words.

The impact of specialising early

At top UK football clubs, only one in 200 of those under nine make it to the senior team. There are obvious psychological effects on young footballers having to cope with not only the time demands and pressure of being part of a professional club but often the brutal rejection following years of commitment.

It also takes its toll on the body by subjecting young players to more frequent and intensive loads. Between 10% and 40% of football injuries among children and adolescents are from playing too much. Players under 14 incur more training injuries than older players and they develop growth-related disorders linked to overplaying because their skeletons and tissue are still growing. The evidence indicates that children are better off not training intensively, yet the UK has recently adopted an Elite Player Performance Plan that focuses on early specialisation and increases the number of on-pitch hours for youngsters per week.

For all these reasons, the compromise for numerous continental European football clubs is to engage players at a young age but not to make them overspecialise. For example FC Barcelona is Europe’s largest multi-sports club. It has four professional sections besides football – basketball, handball, roller hockey and futsal (a variant of five-a-side football). There are also six amateur sections – athletics, rugby, volleyball, field hockey, ice hockey and figure skating. Another example of this approach is Sporting Clube de Portugal, home to Sporting Lisbon.

Messi need not apply.
OK Fotos, CC BY-SA

Then there are clubs such as Belgium’s Standard Liége, which are not multi-sports clubs but do provide coaching support that develops general skills and abilities, such as agility and coordination, that can be transferable to numerous sports.

These clubs approach youth football in these ways because the reality is that early specialisation is not the most effective route to the top. Countries whose clubs operate in this way are surely more likely to end up with the better players in the long run. The UK has long had a reputation for producing very few top players from club academies. If Euro 2016 ends up being another campaign where England falls short, it needs to take this into account.

 

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Penalty Pressure Potential at Euro 2016

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By Caroline Heaney

As Euro 2016 moves into the knockout stages football fans will be preparing themselves for the prospect of a penalty shoot-out or two. Penalty shoot-outs are rarely missing from a major tournament and are a source of great stress and excitement.

England fans have a love-hate relationship with the penalty shoot-out. The excitement of a penalty shoot-out is unquestionable, but England teams are not renowned for their success in penalty shoot-outs. The men’s team have had several exits from major tournaments at the hands of a penalty shoot-out (e.g. 2006 World Cup, Euro 2012) and the women’s team exited the 2011 World Cup after losing to France on penalties in the quarter final stages. So what is it about the penalty shoot-out that makes it so intense?

The penalty shoot-out in a major tournament is probably one the most highly pressured situations in football; the stakes are high and the margins for error are small. Additionally, the personal accountability of individual players is probably higher than in any other situation in football, where normally responsibility is collectively shared. No-one wants to be the player responsible for their team exiting a major tournament, and history shows that unsuccessful penalty takers are often ‘scapegoated’ and ostracised by their national media. Interestingly it appears to be the penalty takers rather than the goal-keepers who tend to fall victim to this negative media attention, perhaps due to the expectations of a penalty shoot-out: penalty takers are expected to score and goal-keepers are expected not to stop them. Obviously when a goal-keeper makes a winning save they become a hero in the eyes of the media, but rarely are they subjected to the same media condemnation as a player who misses a penalty when they fail to save a penalty.

As a result of this teams often focus a significant amount of effort on preparing for the possibility of a penalty shoot-out. The Welsh team, for example, have reportedly been practicing penalties in preparation for the knockout stages of Euro 2016 . Psychology is certainly a significant factor in the penalty shoot-out. As a sport psychologist I like to watch a player prepare to take a penalty and predict whether they will be successful – there are certain psychological cues that are indicative of the outcome. Researchers have investigated these and have identified various factors that can influence the success of the penalty shoot-out. Some of these are explored in our penalty shoot-out game below.

Penalty Shootout Game

Penalty Shootout Game

Click here to play our penalty shoot-out game

As with most tasks, confidence is key. A player who is confident and believes that they will score is more likely to do so. There is no room for doubt in a penalty shoot-out. Confidence can be seen through visual cues such as eye contact. A player who lacks confidence may avoid making eye contact with the goal keeper. Good goal keepers recognise these signals and will draw strength from an opponent who won’t make eye contact. Additionally, a successful penalty taker will normally take their time and not rush. Rushing can be seen as a sign of panic, whereas someone who waits is giving themselves time to compose themselves before executing the skill, perhaps utilising psychological techniques like imagery and positive self-talk before taking the penalty kick. A player may use imagery to rehearse taking a successful penalty in their head before taking it and may use positive self-talk to enhance their confidence and focus.

Experience is obviously an important factor for penalty takers. Players who have previously successfully taken penalties and won penalty shoot-outs are more likely to be confident in their ability to take a successful penalty. The reverse of that, however, is that those who have had bad experiences are less likely to be confident, which goes some way to explaining the serial penalty shoot-out defeats seen in teams such as the England and Holland men’s teams – the culture of expecting to lose a penalty shoot-out perpetuates. Research has revealed that success rates in penalty shoot-outs are considerably higher for teams who have won their last two penalty shoot-outs compared to those who have lost their last two shoot-outs, even if the team membership is changed. Interestingly ‘higher status’ players, whilst likely having more experience to draw on, are sometimes less successful in penalty shoot-out situations; perhaps because the pressure of expectation is far greater for them than for players of lower status. Try our penalty shoot-out game to see these factors in action.

This shows that the successful penalty taker is one who is highly confident and copes well with pressure. Next time you watch a penalty shoot-out, watch the players prepare and see if you can predict whether or not they will be successful.

For more coverage of Euro 2016 visit the OpenLearn Euro 2016 Hub

Under Pressure again: Can the England team bring football home?

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By Candice Lingam-Willgoss

Tonight sees England’s first fixture of this year’s UEFA Euro 2016. Roll back 2 years and 2014 saw the country gearing up for the biggest event in the football calendar, the World Cup. The 2014 World Cup saw huge amounts of pressure and expectation placed on Hodgson’s 23 man England squad. This pressure and expectation came from representing their country, the public and their manager who openly stated before the tournament that he felt he had a winning squad. Roll forward to 2016 and exactly 50 years since England’s iconic 1966 World Cup win, could this finally be England’s chance to shine?

So what could make the difference? Perhaps remarkably England still have Hodgson at the helm, although often following a poor tournament result the first person to go is the coach/manager. Just look at Stuart Lancaster’s departure following England’s disastrous Rugby World Cup performance of 2015 and football is often managed in the same unforgiving way. However, despite a contract due to run till after the France based tournament it seems that this isn’t the only reason Hodgson is still in place. He not only has the backing of the FA with Greg Dyke openly saying they would back Hodgson but also he appears respected and supported by his players, ‘we are proud to play for Roy Hodgson. He’s a great Manager.’ Match this with the fact that the team have some phenomenally talented players.  Where the 2014 World Cup squad could have been deemed a young squad, short on tournament experience, four years down the line a stronger team is most definitely evident with some new superstars emerging. Vardy has recently been termed ‘the most electric attacker in England’ with Kane called the ‘unconventional superstar’ and these are two players who were instrumental in stirring a comeback from 2-0 down to win 3-2 against Germany in March . Finally much has been made of new kid on the block Dele Alli, Hodgson himself has been quoted as saying he can do  ‘anything in midfield’. He is a player who in the England vs Germany game played in March was billed  ‘potentially the best young English midfielder for a generation left even the arch-technocrats of Germany envious of his talent’.

So while the team is stable and highly promising this doesn’t take away from the fact that any international football event carries with it huge amounts of pressure which generates an increase in anxiety and stress.  These are terms commonly discussed within all spheres of sport from school level to the global stage.  The competitive environment is designed to elevate the arousal levels of not just the players but the fans as well. Anxiety at its most basic level can lead to co-ordination difficulties, and problems with attention to detail, all of which can prove debilitating to performance. The need for the athletes to control their emotions will be greater than ever as the team will have something to prove following their early 2014 tournament exit.

However, with some solid performances behind the team in recent months and players who have faced some highly pressurized situations within the domestic game there is a hope that the team as a whole will be able to manage their anxiety and cope with the unique pressure that international events generate. Hodgson’s 2016 team is a stronger, more resilient and more experienced squad that the one that lost out in 2014 and one can surmise that such a significant defeat will have made them even more determined to lay to rest the ghosts of the last 50 years.