As we slowly develop the holisticness of what Game Intelligence is after parts 1 and 2 earlier this week we look at part 3 which discusses a little about scanning and the visual system.
Performing scanning of the field requires a higher functioning mind to decode, which is fundamental to on-field awareness, we looked at in part 1.
Rather than lose time and attempt to scan only once you take possession of the ball, it's best to scan your surroundings when you don’t have the ball, where you take mental pictures of your teammates, the opposition, whatever space/congestion you see and where all those things are on the ground.
This then enables you to create 3 dimensional map of what’s around you and when you can supplement that with what you've rehearsed in training, knowledge of your teams game model and the opposition report, then you can develop "memory chunks" of information that you will see during the game and can therefore react immediately to.
Every millisecond players are scanning up to 9 bits of essential information - called multiple object tracking - and they’re also taking snapshots for the brain to simulate what might happen next.
Tracking an object requires you to 1st move the head/eyes to the target, which results in a slight overshoot, then you quickly flick the eyes back to the target (get the target centered on the optic nerve) and again elite players beat us novices again here as they can move their heads quicker/with more accuracy and for a slightly greater distance than us = greater accuracy in hitting a target.
Moving to the visual system, it is located at the back of the brain in the occipital lobe and it takes in the information and feeds it to the amygdale and the limbic system, which are our emotional centers.
It's at this time that we then we decide, without conscious thought, do I pass or do I maintain possession, because the picture has changed and it now feels unsafe.
Anxiety/danger involve the amygdale which is part of the basal ganglia while planning ahead/realising the consequences of your actions/interference lie in the frontal lobe, and they both communicate via the cingulated cortex which is connected to memory/emotion.
So there's a ball up and you do a quick scan of what's in front, behind and lateral to you and you know that your fat wingman is free if you can just get the ball out there, except once you get the ball then now you see that a player was a bit late picking them up and they are not as open as they just were before the ball up.
What seemed an easy and safe option if got possession of the ball has now become a much harder and less safe option and now what you're going through emotionally can affect what you decide to do.
If you're feeling "on" or have had pretty good success making that same play before then you still might try and pick off that fat wingman option, knowing that although the risk is high, so too is the pay off.
On the other hand if you're having an off day and have messed this play up before resulting ina turnover and goal, then you'd probably err on the side of caution and keep the ball in more safer area's in this particular instance.
Elite and experienced players don’t have a 3rd eye but the 2 they do have are exceptional with vision far surpassing novice level players in regards to clarity (seeing detail at a distance), contrast sensitivity (being able to detect an object against a background) and near-far quickness (being able to change eye gaze/attention between near and far distances).
Just from this post alone it's clear that what the coach see's from their angle is not what the player with the ball see's from their angle and is not what a player trying receive the ball see's from there angle.
As a coach you need to ask many different questions, and many different types of questions, when you have player/s who can't seem to solve a problem at training or in games.
Come back tomorrow for the final part of this series.
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