GAME INTELLIGENCE - DAN ABRAHAMS

All sports contain 4 co-actives being psychological, physical, technical and tactical and they are all entwined where the decision you make to solve a particular problem via 1 specific co-active, is dependant on where the other 3 are at at that point in time, and this is an ever changing landscape throughout 4 quarters of football.

These next tweets from Dan Abrahams will cover a variety of aspects of sport which I bunched together to form this game intelligence post.

GAME INTELLIGENCE – footballers with desire, passion and character will always win the ball back...footballers with intelligence, knowledge and mental skill will rarely give it away

SEEING – is helped/hindered by attention/intent, intensity/confidence, thoughts/feelings, sensations/emotions and mood/motivation meaning everything you see on the ground is influenced from within

GAMES – comprises of motor behaviour, decision making, feelings of pressure and interpersonal support so have every activity at training involve as many of these as possible by creating tough activities that stretch these demands on your players 

SMART SOLUTION v HARDER WORK – have specific goals/training session...accept that mistakes/failure will happen...striving for internal motivation...develop performance/mindset feedback loops

MASTERY – search, decide, execute and engage repeated over and over will develop mastery..practice so much that your execution becomes automated...play so much that your decisions are made in an instant...commit fully to visually searching

NOT FOLLOWING GAME MODEL – if players aren't following the game model then some useful mental markers to watch for include what are the players paying attention to, have they dropped in intensity, are they overly activated and are they executing with inhibition

TACTIAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL – players don’t react, they predict, which is quicker...tactical execution is driven mentally via your capacity to execute the cognitive cycle (search-decide-execute) with speed and accuracy and this is mediated by affect (feelings of pleaseantness to unpleasantness and feelings of idleness to activated)...football is a game of feeling

TRAINING DECISION MAKING – ask your players to take the time after training to reflect on their decision making, asking what experiences led you to make the decisions you made and what were you seeing/sensing at that time, which can help develop skilled anticipation

PREDICTIVE BRAIN – is mediated by experiences/expectations (refer to some posts above)

DECISION MAKING – in 1  study they had 1 group solving puzzles for money and the other solving them for nothing but the money group finished up as soon as the time limit was reached, where the group recieving continued until they were finished...this shows that engaging in an activity for the sake of engagement (interestm enjoyment and/or challenge) is a more powerful motivator than engaging in an activity for a reward/means to an end...this is a form of self determination theory...intrinisic motivation (or extrinsic motivation that is deeply integrated into values/identity) offers higher quality motivation than extrinsic motivation alone, so help more players identify with and, enjoy games/activities, they are interested in because they'll be far more motivated to engage in them

META ACTIVITIES COGNITION – create an activity with problems that earn players rewards when solved but only if they can explain how they’ve solved the problem to help them think of themselves as thinkers/learners