What did the world class athletes have throughout their formation years/developmental years (ages 6-16) that formed an addiction to wanting to play & train with such a high volume.
DOPAMINE
Dopamine is the neurochemical that gives us a feel good high, that we are in a high pleasured state, motivated and feel fulfilled.
Over time if dopamine is high throughout a specific activity that is done (shooting a basketball in a hoop, playing with friends in 3v3, 4v4, 5v5, racing others in sprints and run, etc), there is a high chance the person WANTS to revisit that activity again to obtain that dopamine up regulation they had throughout doing the activity.
So what type of hacks can we use to unleash the dopamine chemical in the first place to create this addiction to play and train?
The 21st century is a large testimonial of how children and adolescents have become addicted to a screen, spending over 4-5 hours a day scrolling through or chasing a new score on a specific PlayStation game.
The concept of gamification used by the largest companies on social media and gaming fits the mould of dopamine delivery to a task.
An example of this in sports is giving the athlete a gamified task throughout their training or gameplay. Gameplay does this naturally as the athlete is attempting to overcome the opponent or opposing team in a goal or scoring tally, the target being a specific number or over a period of time.
Gameplay will always give a dopamine high to the athlete as long as it doesn't become a highly externally pressured by a coach, parent and/or team mate, where the dopamine high that brought on motivation and pleasure has now been subsided with fear of making errors or "mistakes", consequences of failing.
This is prevented by not getting the athlete to produce too much of the chemical adrenaline/norepinephrine.
Adrenaline at the right levels promotes faster nerve to muscle signalling, greater muscle contractions and amplified coordination by signalling sympathetic nervous system drive.
Our fight or flight of the central nervous system.
When adrenaline is too high we see anxiety, panic, fear in the athlete, self inflicting negative thought process
This can cause a cascade of the opposite of what was set out to accomplish, where the athlete doesn't want to turn up anymore to gameplay or training, they begin to lose their freedom on the field of play, nervousness will become common pre event and they eventually will get to the point of quitting the sport, due to not having a positive dopamine high attached to the activity.. this occurs in normal human behaviour in any endeavour we do. We as humans want to continually keep feeling good while we do an activity - this should be logic, right?
Sometimes logic is forgotten and we tend to get to emotional when delivering a message, causing the person on the receiving end to get emotionally unstable and causing a perception of fear, causing the overload release of adrenaline.
Now to prevent this from occurring when communicating to the athlete we need to ensure we do not cause an emotional attachment to the information that was given.
We need to develop a strategy and method to how we deliver the message.
The delivery of the message should be in a way that it highlights the positives of the athlete first. An example of this is "Son - your stepover is unbelievably good, have fun with it. The message did not have a segment where there was a directly telling of what to do when they go out on the field of play.
Also the message had a hype/praise segment "your stepover is unbelievably good".
This segment of the message created the dopamine pleasure pathway to be activated, now you have the athlete feeling good and confident.
This also allows the athlete to be open to a objective segment to the message.
The message now with an objective/task segment is: (saying the limiting factor/bottleneck of the player is they don't push the ball hard enough in the dribble or lack aggression with the ball)
"Son - your stepover is unbelievably good, have fun with it. (player is now open for delivery of objective due to being in a high pleasured state due to praise delivery)
You know what can try before you do your really good stepover? When doing your unbelievable stepover, push the ball harder than you have before, lets see what happens.
You've given a task/objective in a playful way. "lets see what happens" gives a curious feeling to the athlete without pressure or consequence attached to it.
Not only have you highlighted what they are really good at TWICE before delivering the task, you delivered the task in a non pressured way.
You've given a dopamine high by praising, then delivered timely with a post pleasure state the athlete got into from the praise you gave.
Feedback will be the gameplay that is viewed post message delivery. You try this 3 times and see if there is an progress in the objective set out.
Back to the dopamine pathway;
To bring out dopamine that gives pleasure, reward feeling, addiction and brings the athlete back again tomorrow in a high aroused state there should be no pressure by external individuals.
The main goal is to have fun and you will see the athlete flourish and be free, as freedom allows the athlete to access their creative thought process - where they interchange what they already know and showcase that without any fear, or feeling of negative consequence.
This is how proper gamification has been showcased in the developmental years of world class athletes.
Praise/hype abilities of athlete
Proper message from someone with more experience and possibly understanding- older sibling, father/mother, coach
Athlete can out and play, with no pressure and no negative consequence that has been attached
Praise and hype of the athletes strength and ability is very prominent in street basketball culture, street football in Brazil.
Throughout my time in as a footballer in Jamaica this occurred on a daily basis.
As used in my example above - we know now this upregulates the athletes fulfilment and pleasure dopamine pathway.
The bonuses and long term benefits overtime are increasing confidence and self belief snowballing to the athlete envisioning and creating larger goals for themselves due to the higher levels of self belief.
This is the snow ball phenomenon that has been showcased in 100s of world class athletes across all sports since the beginning of televised sports.
The biological process:
Our brain is very plastic and adaptable in youth years, where whatever feelings and experiences we are put through we adapt to and it becomes habitual, not just actions but also thought process.
So the importance of hyping and praising the abilities of youth athletes and your children is paramount in the long term success in anything they choose to do.
Praise and social rewards have been demonstrated in research also to improve motor skill (what sport consists of), an example of this is the study attached below:
My theory behind the motor skill improvement goes back to the dopamine process after praise has been offered.
The increase of dopamine attached to the activity when revisiting the following day, week etc, leads to an increase of coordination (dopamine directly amplifies coordinative ability) and confidence in motor skill. Also elevating the higher freedom feeling and self belief, leading to larger amount expression of the motor skill without any internal inhibition or "freeze" moments.
We can possibly classify this as a sporting trait itself: the ability to move without any internal inhibition/"freeze" moments. This can be the transability of self belief and confidence to carry out of motor skill.
This process will also have a snowballing effect to trying new skills or the athlete putting themselves in new scenarios. This can be also why world class athletes are well developed in multiple scenarios, they were not fearful to try or attempt throughout their formation/developmental years.
So to cap off this article, we need to really take into the action and the importance of dopamine attachment to an activity.
Process:
Praise, hype and celebration (celebrating teammate goals as this is contagious, a form of physical praise)
Gamify through score/target
Strategy of message delivery to athlete
Re praise and hype strengths as feedback of performance, followed by playful teaching
Rinse and Repeat
Expectations:
Habitual addiction to activity (high volume obtained)
Fast tracked and Increased motor skill development
High confident athlete trying and performing whatever their creative thought process envisions (free athlete)
Highly developed motor skills, obtained from high volume free play with no fear attempt of the athletes unknown (world class)