How to develop decision-making in sports?

In this article, you will learn how to develop decision-making skills in sports. Elite athletes have a vast collection of game situations stored in their explicit memory, which is also known as declarative memory. Explicit memory refers to conscious, long-term memory that can be easily and intentionally recalled. Furthermore, athletes have acquired numerous gaming situations unconsciously in their implicit memory, which enables them to react quickly and effectively.

What is the significance of memory in the performance of elite athletes?

When faced with a decision they must make, elite athletes respond quickly and appropriately, regardless of the sport they play. In team sports, expertise is based not only on technical skill but also on the ability to make appropriate decisions in a dynamic context where speed is a critical factor. Decision-making is based on comparing elements from the current situation with the knowledge stored in long-term memory. The amount of information stored and the speed of access to long-term memory are two crucial parameters of decision-making.

But how do you improve your decision-making skills? What distinguishes a good decision from a bad one? How do you make quick, informed decisions?

Research in neurobiology shows that decision-making involves three stages:

1. Your brain searches for similar decisions you have made in the past and analyzes the consequences of those decisions.

2. You then evaluate the potential gain or loss of the decision.

3. Finally, you assess whether the potential gain is worth the effort required to achieve it.

In summary, your quick decisions are always what your brain defines as the best expected result with the least effort.

So how can you use this process to make better and faster decisions?

The solution is broken down into three steps:

1. Set a goal for better decision making.

Your brain in a tense situation tries to maximize the result-to-effort ratio. It seeks the best solution available based on emotions, memories, available information, and efforts required. To do so, it must quickly scan a number of potential solutions, which can be difficult to compare. This can lead to hesitation and fatal errors. However, if you have a clear goal, your brain can consider solutions based on that goal, ranking them easily from the most to the least desirable.

It's crucial to define your objective clearly. Winning is not a sufficient objective in a game. You must also define your role in the play, what you must absolutely do. If you have clearly defined it beforehand, your brain will refer to your objective at each decision-making opportunity to analyze possible solutions and determine whether they meet your objective. Knowing your role well reduces the number of potential solutions and saves time in decision-making.

2. Foster quick decision-making: automate actions.

To make quick decisions, the right decisions must be easy to make. Automating the right decisions helps the brain find them quickly. Any action consumes energy for the brain, and it continually seeks to minimize energy expenditure. This is why it creates automatisms - actions that consume less energy than sequences constructed voluntarily.

To prioritize an effective solution in an emergency, you must have automated it beforehand. This is crucial in developing decision-making skills in sports.

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How to develop decision-making in sports?

In sports, certain situations tend to repeat themselves, or at least can be predicted to a certain extent. For instance, you might find yourself caught off guard by your opponent. To avoid making a hasty decision under such circumstances, it is advisable to plan one or two standard ways of reacting beforehand. Although these reactions may not be the most effective, they can limit the damage in the event of a quick reaction and prevent you from making a bad choice due to an adrenaline rush that might cloud your decision-making ability.

This highlights the importance of repeating certain sequences multiple times so that they become automatic and require less energy to initiate. The brain sees them as an efficient use of effort, which makes them more likely to be used.

3. Ensure effective decisions

An effective reaction is a well-thought-out reaction. Even if your brain has quickly analyzed the situation and determined the best course of action, it still needs to communicate this choice to you. One of the ways it can do this is through intuition. Intuition is the brain's ability to offer information without requiring conscious thought or reflection. It is important to listen to what your brain spontaneously offers you as an answer.

On the other hand, if you do not listen to your intuition, you may waste time trying to consciously develop a solution. The key to making quick decisions is to learn to listen to the responses, or spontaneous actions, of your brain.

Please note that the more spontaneous an action is, the more it will be linked to emotional states and therefore less rational. An intuition, contrary to popular belief, may be less "good" than a carefully considered decision. However, in an emergency, you can rely on these intuitions to aid your decision-making.

How to further develop decision-making in sports?

To further develop your decision-making skills, it is necessary to assess your results. This requires an analysis of your performance:

1. Identify the instances where you had to make a quick decision.

2. Evaluate the decision you made.

3. Consider whether it was consistent with your role, goal, and the game.

4. Think about alternative decisions that you could have made.

5. Analyze both good and bad decisions, with the goal of educating your brain on what works well and correcting what doesn't.

By regularly reviewing your games, you can improve your automatic reactions and internal communication, leading to a set of efficient and fast automatisms.

The key to making quick and effective decisions in sports is practice. It's up to you to put this into action: play, decide, analyze, correct, and repeat.

To learn more on how to develop decision-making in sports, read:

https://mentalaccelerator.com/resource/lucidity/modifying-consciousness-with-hypnosis