[HN Gopher] For soccer players, the less brain they use, the bet...
___________________________________________________________________
For soccer players, the less brain they use, the better for penalty
kicks
Author : pseudolus
Score : 96 points
Date : 2021-05-23 11:00 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| mrfusion wrote:
| On the other hand, would you want to involve as much brain as
| possible during practice?
| klyrs wrote:
| Perfect practice makes perfect. It _is_ important to think and
| analyze, to correct bad habits. But once you 've got the basics
| down, you then need to learn to let go and trust muscle memory.
| If you jump straight into "don't overthink it" while you're
| still making newbie mistakes, then practice is actually harmful
| and will impede further skill development
| jollybean wrote:
| This is known I think.
|
| If you 'think' about how you 'walk across the room' - you don't
| do it naturally.
|
| You don't 'win' during the 'game' - you 'win' during practice,
| when you are teaching your body all of the skills, and how to
| score like a walk across the room.
|
| There's nothing you can do at 'game time' but to literally let
| your subconscious use what it's learned.
|
| Golf is I think the game with the most subtle and minute aspects
| to that, and you can see the players are so keen on ritual,
| consistency, routine. 'Everything in it's right place' before the
| match and you're thinking is calm.
| Thorentis wrote:
| I think this is one of those "when you start thinking about it,
| you mess up" scenarios that I encounter with plenty of things.
| Like when playing a piece of piano music from memory - as soon as
| I start trying to think about which notes come next, I make
| mistakes and sometimes even have mental blanks and need to take a
| break before "remembering" again.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| Is it possible that the causality is reversed? Maybe you start
| thinking because your subconscious brain doesn't know what to
| do next.
| taneq wrote:
| If that were so then putting someone else off their game by
| drawing their attention to a particular aspect of their game
| and making them self conscious would be less effective.
| mbreese wrote:
| Not the parent, but no. Once you're playing music from
| memory, your brain already knows the notes/fingering/etc.
| It's that when you start thinking, you get out of the "flow".
| Too much thinking will pull you right out and then you need
| to work to get back in it.
| dnh44 wrote:
| A few years ago a replayed an old video game that I hadn't
| played since childhood. There are a few parts of the game
| that were quite difficult and involved a fairly complicated
| sequence of events, one of them being the final boss
| battle.
|
| When I got to the boss I remembered the battle being quite
| complicated and intense but I couldn't remember where to
| move, when to jump, or when to attack. But after a few
| tries as if by magic my fingers took over and executed the
| sequence of buttons flawlessly. It was amazing because I
| didn't consciously know what came next but my fingers did.
| I also felt a sense of euphoria as the memory came back to
| me; it was a really interesting thing to experience.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Yep, I get this with guitar and signing too. If I think about
| it too much my voice tightens up and I'll start missing notes.
| The same thing with dancing. I realised long ago that I'm not
| naturally good at these things because I find it impossible to
| switch off my brain. When I dance I'm thinking "which direction
| should I move in" when should I spin my partner" etc. Ask
| anyone who dances how they know the answers to these questions
| and they can't tell you. They just don't think about it.
| Glide wrote:
| This is so true.
|
| It's especially true when a dance floor is crowded or it's
| harder to listen to the music. It's harder to "cut loose" if
| one or two restrictions are going on.
|
| For dancing, a couple things helped me out. Repetition and
| practice. Practicing whole movements together, e.g. footwork
| with the lead, there is a strong relationship between
| footwork and your ability to gently exert force and
| direction. Sure I learned a tuck turn to counts, but I never
| think about the count of it when leading it, it is engrained
| into the overall movement I want to execute.
|
| There's an interesting phenomenon that happens at dance
| events with a heavy teaching component. The first night of
| dancing is pretty good and when lessons go underway the level
| of the room slightly drops because people are trying new
| things. Incorporating new things would do that and it
| happens, albeit awkwardly.
| acituan wrote:
| Misleading title, the study didn't demonstrate anything about the
| _amount_ of brain activity, but the locale of brain activity.
| From the study;
|
| > Players who were successful under pressure showed most of their
| activity in the motor cortex of the brain. This is the part of
| the brain active during movement.
|
| > Players who were unsuccessful showed elevated activity in the
| pre-frontal cortex and left temporal cortex areas of the brain.
|
| If anything, this demonstrates the difference between
| "computational cognition" vs "embodied cognition", latter being
| more adaptive in this particular task.
|
| That said, I find the explanation of the researchers dubious; we
| don't know if doing prefrontal computation is _hampering_ motor
| performance or it is simply trying to _compensate_ a deficiency
| in the _procedural knowledge_ of the player. Considering the fact
| that half of the participants were selected from inexperienced
| players, and the average participant age was around 22, the
| latter is the more likely explanation.
| h0nd wrote:
| It does not only apply for penalty kicks. I encountered this
| situation on the pitch regularly, especially when I had time
| instead of pressure. Same in table tennis. I tend to make
| unforced errors the more time I got.
| iamben wrote:
| If you haven't read it, "The Inner Game of Tennis" by W. Timothy
| Gallway (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inner-Game-Tennis-ultimate-
| performa...) is worth a go.
|
| Whilst it's _technically_ a tennis coaching book, the tennis is
| really just an example to explain bigger things.
|
| Anyway, there's a great story in that book where he says
| something like "if you want to put someone off their game,
| compliment them on how strong their backhand [or whatever] is
| today. From then on they'll think about it before every stroke
| and destroy their own performance."
| finiteseries wrote:
| Soccer/football coach Thomas Tuchel, previously at BVB & PSG
| and now at Chelsea is pretty well known for handing out copies
| of that book to his players.
| coupdejarnac wrote:
| I heard this a long time ago, and it has always struck me as
| nonsense. Sure, mindgames are useful, but for elite athletes
| technique is second nature. In soccer, you're better off
| telling someone their sister is a whore (ie Materazzi to
| Zidane), kicking them in the heels, or exaggerating contact.
| Maybe complementing someone works better in individual sports
| like golf or tennis, but even then I think it would only work
| on the naive. I've gotten compliments in the middle of soccer
| games, and I usually laugh them off. I can't imagine being
| fooled with that sort of amateurish tactic.
| dmoy wrote:
| My coach for a sport that is completely unrelated to tennis has
| me read that book. It is generally applicable, I agree.
| muzani wrote:
| This is a golden recommendation, exactly what I was looking
| for. Thanks so much!
| stephenhuey wrote:
| That definitely happens to me. Additional thoughts go through a
| pro player's head during penalty kicks. 11 years ago I was
| fascinated by a short Freakonomics podcast. The data shows that
| the best chance of scoring is to kick it straight down the
| center to the keeper. However, most people won't do this even
| though their odds are better since the pain of kicking it to a
| keeper who does not dive to the side and instead catches your
| ball is far greater than not scoring!
|
| https://freakonomics.com/2010/06/14/what-to-do-with-your-pen...
| im3w1l wrote:
| Scientific studies also show that "rock" is the best throw in
| rock-paper-scissor*. Always shooting center is as ridiculous
| as always throwing "rock".
|
| * Rock and scissor are both thrown at 35%, with paper at
| 29.6%. The article suggests throwing paper to exploit that,
| but that makes no sense, since you will win 35% lose 35% and
| draw 29.6%. Rock on the other hand wins at 35%, draw 35% and
| lose 29.6% https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-blame-
| game/20150...
| schaefer wrote:
| In a one time throw against a complete stranger, okay. But
| your friends will notice that you always throw rock, and
| you start to lose 100% of the time.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Also, if people started doing that, soon it would work no
| more
| ajuc wrote:
| > the best chance of scoring is to kick it straight down the
| center to the keeper.
|
| it's called "panenka" after a player that used to do this in
| high-stakes games to rub it in. You have to fake your run-up
| well - otherwise good keepers will notice the difference in
| run-up and make you look like an idiot [1]
|
| I don't think it's the best chance. Panenkas are about 50-50
| and normal penalties are about 70%-30%. And most of that 30%
| is missing the goal completely. If you go hard either side
| and don't miss the goal it's almost 100% no matter if the
| keeper dives the right way.
|
| Then there are strikers like Lewandowski who wait for keeper
| to decide and go the other way [2]. This is all about
| developing a subconscious routine and doing it mechanically
| without thinking. You have no time to consciously process the
| data and choose the other side.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWBBlpyDfUI [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrXoQKmZui8
| sk0g wrote:
| While I don't have the stats to back the latter part up,
| the expected goal (xG) from a penalty kick is .76 - 76% of
| penalties end up being scored. Keepers quite often will
| guess right, and at that point both the placement and power
| have to be perfect. If they are, it's a goal practically
| every time, but most players will compromise on either
| placement or power.
|
| This may be different in recreational contexts, as
| professional keepers dive frighteningly quickly, and are
| very good at reading the body language of the PK taker.
| jogjayr wrote:
| A Panenka is a specific type of penalty through the center.
| It's a sort of chip/scoop shot and it goes really slow. It
| makes the keeper look foolish if it comes off. But it's
| slow enough that even a keeper diving to one side has a
| chance to recover, as seen in the video you shared.
|
| But there's also the option of taking a normal run-up and
| blasting it straight down the middle. No keeper is going to
| be able read that since there's nothing to disguise. And if
| they dive, it's going too fast for the keeper to recover
| and save.
|
| The keeper is biased toward action. If they just stand in
| the center and don't dive they'll be blamed for not even
| trying. So a hard, fast penalty down the center has pretty
| good odds of succeeding.
| paul_f wrote:
| Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this in his brilliant essay - The
| Art of Failure. "When Jana Novotna faltered at Wimbledon, it
| was because she began thinking about her shots again. She lost
| her fluidity, her touch."
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/08/21/the-art-of-fai...
| caenorst wrote:
| and is there any advices in this book to avoid focusing on the
| technique in important moment? I used to play foosball
| competitively and this used to eat me when I started to doubt
| about my technique.
| iamben wrote:
| Yeah, the whole book is pretty much about learning to _do_
| instinctively. You can pick up a second hand copy for very
| little. It 's worth a read!
| fnord77 wrote:
| this seems like "Zen and the art of Archery" stuff
| vagrantJin wrote:
| I'm going to press X to doubt since this looks like a load. Too
| many variables missing up to and including a player just not
| being good at spot kicks despite their obvious technical ability.
| solids wrote:
| This kind of experiments always make me think why we experience
| consciousness, and where is the evolutionary advantage of having
| it at all.
| finiteseries wrote:
| Blindsight by Peter Watts for a fun book in this direction.
| Bayart wrote:
| To put it in computer terms : it's the same reason why we have
| task-specific hardware _and_ general purpose hardware and
| software. The more a task reoccurs, the more you benefit from a
| _device_ dedicated to the task. And the more heterogeneous your
| workload is, the more you benefit from broadly defined non-
| specialized capabilities.
|
| In that respect, the beauty of the human brain is that it can
| go from one to the other depending on your habits.
| xyzelement wrote:
| There are some things you can do better on instinct and some
| things you need to be conscious.
|
| Shooting penalty kicks falls into the former. Organizing the
| soccer match into the later :)
|
| Even on the instinctual level, you need consciousness to hone
| your instincts. For example things like physical therapy or
| even athletic training are conscious interventions to reshape
| your instinct. The best penalty kickers in the world likely
| made a conscious choice at some point to practice these kicks
| until their good form became habitual.
| drumhead wrote:
| The best penalty taker I ever saw was Alan Shearer(English
| Footballer). He's just pick his spot and smash it as hard as he
| could. He was very successful.
| vxNsr wrote:
| A great book on this subject is Chatter[0] by Ethan Kross, he
| talks about how our inner voice can often be our own worst enemy
| and also suggests ways to combat it.
|
| https://smile.amazon.com/Chatter-Voice-Head-Matters-Harness-...
| mrbonner wrote:
| Anybody remember the "last samurai"? : "too many minds" when they
| parry.
| Ologn wrote:
| There was a paper in Nature where scientists did magnetic imaging
| of the brain of grandmaster chess players, as well as of advanced
| amateur players.
|
| They found that when evaluating a move, for grandmasters the
| frontal and parietal cortices had gamma bursts, whereas for
| amateurs the medial temporal lobe had gamma bursts. This tends to
| indicate that when grandmasters evaluate a move they are
| accessing their memory, whereas an amateur evaluating a move is
| reasoning about it.
|
| I would guess that the same holds true in soccer.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/35088119
| snvzz wrote:
| Random obvious statement: For the same task and results, the less
| brain used the better.
|
| It means your brain is more efficient. More headroom.
|
| I take the story's just an example of what this means in
| practice.
| SnowProblem wrote:
| A slight tangent, but it's amazing what the human mind can do in
| the background. We've all had this experience driving - an
| amazingly complex task - where you get to your destination you
| forget how you got there. Well, the best freestyle rapper in the
| world right now is similar and on YouTube: Harry Mack. Before
| going on with your day, I promise it's worth your time to check
| him out: https://youtu.be/U6dbmuCfdyk?t=753. He's amazing. In
| other videos, he breaks down how he does what he does, and so
| much of his rap is automatic. This is the only way. He's thinking
| 2 or 3 bars ahead at all times while speaking what's been
| decided. He's trying to remember key words and string together
| stories and structure, while at the same time letting his
| background processes create the rhythm and specifics. What
| talent.
| binbag wrote:
| Trying so hard not to make a quip about footballers finding
| "thinking less" very easy...
| eplanit wrote:
| Humor aside, it does raise a legitimate question regarding
| stereotypes -- there may be very good (biological,
| psychological) reasons that correlate athleticism with not-so-
| impressive cognitive skills.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Unfortunately PK takers are human too so they can get psych'd out
| by the goalkeeper who steps towards them to delay the time to
| take the PK. Probably a more important stat is how many PKs are
| scored the longer the ball sits on the penalty circle? As the
| feeling is that the longer it is the more likely the PK taker
| will bottle it and hit it over the bar.
| [deleted]
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| It is the same principle for tennis players when they do a down
| the line forehand passing shot from running, it is all muscle
| memory, it is one of the shots that has higher chances of missing
| if the player gets too much time to think about it.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I guess every musician knows this as well: You are in the perfect
| flow, groovin' along, you know what I mean, and then the moment
| you start thinking... you mess up.
|
| Sometimes I like to believe the mastery of consciously shifting
| attention to some part while not disturbing the other tracks that
| run subconsciously in your head is one distinguishing feature of
| the real virtuoso.
| tgv wrote:
| In music, "conscious" thinking deteriorates performance,
| because you'll be too late. It adds at least 100ms, but often
| more (note: there are explanations that model the delay as
| extra processing, or as interference, or as inhibition), so
| you'll drop out of the rhythm in no time. It also messes up
| fast fingering, so you'll be out of tune as well. Motor
| functions are really time sensitive. Try to write a word while
| thinking what your fingers have to do to move the pen...
|
| I'm not sure this study shows this, though. Lesser activity may
| be caused by other effects, e.g. because they're better
| trained, they can set up the motor program (which is often
| ballistic) in less time. There's also an account where accuracy
| is linked to larger ensembles of neurons firing simultaneously,
| so inaccuracy might look the same as prolonged activity.
| commiepatrol wrote:
| So this man is a genius? https://youtu.be/o8cZmeZnmc4
| squarefoot wrote:
| Hardly surprising since penalties are very easy to score if the
| player hits the ball properly and the keeper doesn't move before
| the kick (which would trigger a penalty repeat).
|
| There's one rule to score a penalty 100% of times: keep the ball
| ground level and aim near one of the goal posts base. If the
| kicker doesn't screw up, then it's a goal, no matter how good and
| well trained is the keeper: there's just not enough time to go
| there, that's why the secret is keeping the ball low: you can
| fight gravity with a strong high or lateral jump, but you can't
| help gravity by adding more force to the gravity pulling you
| down. Once this has become automatic, the player only has to keep
| cold and ignore the keeper, which naturally will do anything to
| distract him, therefore it's only a matter of making the thing
| automatic and don't think about it. Mental coaching, which
| recently has become a thing in football too, can help with this.
| notahacker wrote:
| The flip side of this is that some of the best elite penalty
| takers essentially outthink the opposing goalkeeper. The safest
| penalty is placed slightly to the opposite side to the one the
| keeper dives to, which has plenty of margin for error (and if the
| keeper doesn't move early they're not saving anything that isn't
| down the middle)
|
| Smashing a ball into the top corner [without needing to think
| about it] is also unsaveable and popular with elite penalty
| takers, but the margin for error in how you actually kick the
| ball is smaller: a slight miscue and your penalty is off target
| (or a "nice height" for a keeper that reads where you're
| shooting).
| allendoerfer wrote:
| > Smashing a ball into the top corner [without needing to think
| about it] is also unsaveable and popular with elite penalty
| takers, but the margin for error in how you actually kick the
| ball is smaller: a slight miscue and your penalty is off target
| (or a "nice height" for a keeper that reads where you're
| shooting).
|
| I like the fact, that penalties on the sides of the goal above
| a height of about 1,5m are unsaveable (you do not even have to
| hit the corner), but still world-class players miss, because
| they get nervous, so they often do not dare to just do that. It
| should be a game like tic tac toe: Totally solved, the keeper
| should lose every round, but yet he does not. Makes the game
| human.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| In fact, don't "down the middle" kicks succeed more often?
| canuckintime wrote:
| > and if the keeper doesn't move early they're not saving
| anything that isn't down the middle
|
| Most penalties are poorly taken. I hate seeing a keeper dive
| early to a random side only to be beaten by a weak shot down
| the middle. I assume that keepers don't have faith in their
| nerves/reactions and thus have to force their bodies to dive
| before the shot is taken. Otherwise the best strategy for the
| keeper is to wait for the shot
| daleharvey wrote:
| Have you considered that the few people who have managed to
| rise to the top of one of the most competitive fields in the
| world, as well as the clubs who have have many millions of
| pounds depending on the result of a penalty kick ... may
| possibly be better at taking penalty kicks, and are more
| aware of the best strategy than yourself?
| hogFeast wrote:
| Welcome to HN. You see these kind of posts on every topic
| (I have had first-hand knowledge of a certain event, and
| you come on here and someone will tell you with authority
| that you are wrong...and actually X/Y/Z happened...this
| place is very unique).
|
| What people also underestimate is how hard professionals
| hit the ball, without looking like they are hitting it
| hard. I had a relatively hard shot, I have injured GKs in
| pens, I trained with a guy who was once a reserve keeper
| for a lower division professional side (retired a few
| years)...I didn't come close to scoring because my shots
| were nowhere near hard enough. Free kicks are the same, you
| see the shot in slow-mo, it looks like they are swatting
| the ball softly...in reality, their technique is so
| good/efficient that they are crushing it whilst aiming it
| carefully.
|
| Most professional clubs employ people who just look at
| penalties. They look at techniques, they look at
| strategies...saying that the keeper should wait for the
| ball when it is going 70mph and you have under 100ms to
| decide is...ludicrous.
| canuckintime wrote:
| C'mon, I literally said the same conclusion that keeper's
| reactions aren't good enough.
|
| > I assume that keepers don't have faith in their
| nerves/reactions and thus have to force their bodies to
| dive before the shot is taken.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Yes, and I am saying no-one has reactions that fast.
| Professionals hit the ball 70-80mph...up the chain
| someone said that keepers should just wait and see where
| it is going: this isn't humanly possible, there isn't
| enough time.
|
| What they do is: statistical analysis of every penalty
| taker to see what preference they have (what corner, what
| they do home/away, what they do when they are facing a
| goal at a certain end, etc.) and most professional
| goalkeepers are pretty much experts in watching how
| players run up to the ball, how the taker's eyes move,
| how they position their body, how they position their
| non-striking leg (and strikers counter this: you will
| notice that most professional takers will look at the
| ball when they put it down, turn away from the keeper
| when they walk back, usually keep looking at the ball or
| directly at the keeper before they start running, and not
| look away from the ball when running up...there are
| reasons for this). And clubs will analyse videos of taker
| tendencies, and keeper tendencies.
| canuckintime wrote:
| We're talking at cross purposes. See here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27256085
|
| Also fwiw just because > Most professional clubs employ
| people who just look at penalties. They look at
| techniques, they look at strategies < doesn't always
| result in professionals choosing the best technique or
| strategy. Here's an example:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/sports/ncaabasketball/
| und...
| arcturus17 wrote:
| You and the parent you are replying to are right - pro
| clubs know the ins and outs of penalties and select and
| train players (keepers and takers) accordingly.
|
| You are being distracted from the meat and bones of the
| argument though - the whole premise that most penalties
| are poorly taken is blatantly wrong. Most penalties end
| up in goals - which is how it's intended to be.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Yes, goal frequency is 75-85% in professional play.
| Amazing but it shows how much skill takers have (players
| like Baines, Henry, and more recently Fernandes are over
| 90%...which is just crazy).
| canuckintime wrote:
| By poorly taken, I mean aesthetics not effectiveness. See
| here:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27256085
| daleharvey wrote:
| If the goals were smaller and most penalties did not
| result in goal that would not mean they are poorly taken.
|
| These people are obviously the best in the world at what
| they do, they are picked specifically and paid generously
| in order to be able to kick a ball into a net. Discussing
| casually how they could improve without any apparent
| indepth knowledge is a level of hubris that hackers news
| is known for breeding.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| > If the goals were smaller and most penalties did not
| result in goal
|
| Then they arguably wouldn't be penalties.
|
| But there's no need to argue with me, I've been watching
| football for some odd 30 years and playing for a good
| subset of that. It has never occurred to me that
| penalties are taken poorly at the pro level - I've seen
| absolute dross at the amateur level, but I concur that
| most pro penalty takers are phenomenal, both from a
| statistical and aesthetical perspective. Not that I think
| there is that much value in the latter - by design, a
| penalty kick is the most aesthetically boring of all set
| pieces. A penalty kick ensues higher emotions due to the
| odds at play, but from a purely aesthetical point of
| view, I'd argue that even a corner kick has a much higher
| potential (a volley, a bicycle kick, a header, a fine-
| tuned "chess play" that cracks the defense open, etc.)
|
| And a penalty kick doesn't compare to the myriad other
| open plays in football which have infinitely more
| aesthetic appeal. A penalty kick is about creating a
| certain balance of odds, simple as. Every other
| consideration is secondary.
| canuckintime wrote:
| The underhand free throw is a counterpoint to your appeal
| to authority:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/sports/ncaabasketball/un
| d...
| daleharvey wrote:
| That seems like it would be an irrelevant conclusion if
| we were to be playing hacker news bingo.
| leemailll wrote:
| Yeah, wait for the shot and always late for a save. They do
| this for a living, they move before ball rolling for a
| reason: human not fast enough for a shot from pro.
| canuckintime wrote:
| Not fast enough for a shot from a pro, a good shot to the
| top right corner sure. But a penalty shot straight down the
| middle? A keeper isn't fast enough to catch that?
| ummonk wrote:
| Most kickers aren't going to do a penalty shot straight
| down the middle if the keeper is just standing still in
| the middle.
| canuckintime wrote:
| which is what I want:
|
| > I hate seeing a keeper dive early to a random side only
| to be beaten by a weak shot down the middle
| ummonk wrote:
| So you want a keeper to just stand in the middle and
| never save anything while everyone shoots to the side?
| sk0g wrote:
| The average penalty kick crosses the line in about 700
| milliseconds.
|
| Doesn't sound humanly possible to assess the flight of the
| ball, prepare your footing, and then finally dive up to 3.5
| meters to get to the ball.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| > Most penalties are poorly taken.
|
| According to a study of over 100,000 penalties by InStat,
| about 75% end up in goal [1]
|
| It's easy to argue therefore that they fulfill their
| objective within the rules of football: to concede
| significantly positive scoring odds to an opponent who has
| otherwise been denied the opportunity to do so.
|
| From what perspective are _most_ penalties poorly taken?
| Classical mechanics, aesthetics...?
|
| [1] https://instatsport.com/football/article/penalty_research
| canuckintime wrote:
| Aesthetics wise. It's a 'penalty' shot, it'd be pretty
| ineffective penalty i.e. punishment if the shot wasn't
| often successful.
|
| So I'm unhappy with the Aesthetics because keepers know
| it's largely successful and just guess and jump the gun (or
| study the stats of the takers and then... just guess) which
| in turn let's the the takers focus on faking out the keeper
| with stutter steps and weird run ups. I prefer to see
| penalties where the kicker focuses on the skill of putting
| it in a spot nd the keeper responds to that.
|
| They instituted (or started enforcing) the rule that
| keepers can't jump off the line before the kick is taken.
| For purely aesthetic reasons, I'd like something similar so
| they react to the ball instead of guessing
| arcturus17 wrote:
| The rule revision you're alluding to is merely focused on
| the statistical outcomes and advantage distributions, and
| not aesthetics.
|
| > I prefer to see penalties where the kicker focuses on
| the skill of putting it in a spot nd the keeper responds
| to that
|
| It's fine that you prefer this, but this isn't what the
| penalty rule is about. The rule is balanced so that you
| create a sufficient advantage for the taker. If you pile
| requirements on the taker, you probably need to
| compensate with other advantages (ex: take the penalty
| from 10m instead of 11m). I can see why this is not
| something that FIFA would want to touch, ever.
| canuckintime wrote:
| > If you pile requirements on the taker,
|
| The requirement is actually for the keeper not the
| tacker. But yes, I know I'm tilting at windmills
| yk wrote:
| If you look at the numbers, a decently hard shot has the ball
| travel faster than 20 m/s, so the ball is at the goal line
| 0.5 seconds after the shot. Now, that means the goalie has to
| travel at something like 7 m/s. For comparison, the long jump
| world record traveled at 10 m/s, but not from a running
| start. [0] So allowing for reaction time and some delay
| because the ball need to travel a bit distance before one can
| see which direction it travels, it is simply not possible to
| react to a well shot penalty.
|
| However, that is numbers for professional sports. In amateur,
| the ball will be shot at a somewhat lower velocity, and
| importantly, amateurs are a lot less likely to actually shoot
| a well placed penalty. So in lower leagues, it is a more
| reasonable strategy to try to react to the ball.
|
| [0] https://www.wired.com/2012/08/long-jump-air-density/
| notahacker wrote:
| Most weak shots down the middle (by competent penalty takers
| that aren't a bag of nerves) are a conscious reaction to the
| keeper moving to the side the player hoped to slot his
| penalty.
|
| If the keeper doesn't move, the ball is comfortably
| stroked/smashed past him on that side.
| DevX101 wrote:
| Expert athletes are able to offload much of the mental processing
| of their game to the subconscious. We all do this to some degree
| (most of us aren't solving differential equations in real time to
| catch a ball), but great athletes are able to do this for many
| more sport specific tasks than casual players.
|
| Here's a mindblowing video of Ronaldo making a goal in complete
| darkness after only seeing the first few milliseconds of the ball
| path: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t03LHpeWnpA&t=330s
| mettamage wrote:
| Definitely a good example of Kahneman
| elgenie wrote:
| A reasonable and forum-appropriate analogy might be touch-
| typing.
|
| In the nanosecond at which the lights go out, Ronaldo's brain
| has finished (the equivalent of) considering the concept of
| "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and engaged the
| autopilot for reifying that into keystrokes while at the same
| point the amateur soccer player is still doing (the equivalent
| of) a hunt-and-peck for the "T" key.
| abcanthur wrote:
| I've always wanted to see an experiment to see if free kicks
| (or teed golf shots, or a teed football) performance went down
| if the athlete was not allowed to set or tee the ball
| themselves. Soccer players will always give the ball a gentle
| toss onto the ground and watch it settle; do world class
| athletes "see" the millimeter differences in the ball position
| and subconsciously take into account before striking??
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The line between experts and non-experts is how they manage.
|
| I'm a little league coach, currently with 9-10 year olds. Once
| the kids get comfortable with basic mechanics, the real
| challenge of the game is _not_ thinking about mechanics,
| _while_ thinking about the tactical picture.
|
| It's difficult - in our case right now, working with a talented
| pitcher who starts to panic and throws wild when she gets
| rattled in the game (by a walk, hit, etc).
|
| The joyous part as a coach is that with repetition and support,
| the kids figure it out! That cycle continues.
| clusterhacks wrote:
| I loved coaching baseball for that age group. For our local
| rec league levels that is the first entry to kid-pitch.
|
| It was really off-putting how outcome focused some of our
| other coaches were. I am a player development nerd (Driveline
| youth certified now - highly recommended - and love their
| philosophy shaped to rec players) and hated playing teams
| with coaches that tried to manipulate our player draft
| process to vacuum up all the better athletes. Those were the
| teams that would max out their two pitchers' pitch counts
| every game and cycle all the non-starters on their team
| through right field.
|
| I moved onto softball coaching at our local middle school and
| enjoy player development and coaching at that level too. We
| lost this year to pandemic closures but I am looking forward
| to going full-on gamified tech next year (Blast sensors,
| pocket radar, lots of quick fun drills to keep things
| moving).
| Cyril_HN wrote:
| I think a lot of amateur pool players will feel that. They
| get into a rhythm and start potting everything. Then they
| either beak the rhythm, get a difficult shot, or notice their
| success, over think it all and mess up the mechanics.
|
| This analogy doesn't go particular far, but it works to
| explain the difference between conscious and subconscious
| mechanical focus.
| bps4484 wrote:
| I have a theory that how good someone is at something (soccer,
| the piano, programming) is directly tied to what they can put
| into their subconscious brain. The more that you can do
| subconsciously the better you are.
|
| I realized this after thinking about skills like dribbling in
| basketball where first you get plain dribbling into your
| subconscious, then more complex dribbling, then entire moves.
|
| Athletes always talk about when "the game started slowing down"
| and I always wondered if this was pushing a lot of faculties
| into their subconscious so they could operate at that speed.
| justicezyx wrote:
| Wow very nice video. I have been drinking too much ML koolade
| and gradually disenchanted about human capabilities. This is an
| example that human capabilities are still something one don't
| need to feel inferior to machine. I.e., I think the current ML
| tech can predict trajectory equally well. But there is nothing
| super human.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| See Moravec's paradox. We can easily build a human-
| performance image classifiers, but don't have robots that can
| hear humans at football.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec's_paradox
| iamben wrote:
| That's a wonderful video. What a talent. Reminded me of a
| product I read about a while ago -
| https://www.bernell.com/product/STROBE/Vision_Therapy_BestSe...
| - the glasses flicker between clear and not so you learn to
| interpret the motion of the ball rather than relying on vision
| alone. Very cool!
| allenu wrote:
| Not quite the same, but this is like me walking down the stairs
| and becoming conscious of my walking. I end up overthinking my
| steps and have to go more slowly otherwise I risk missing a step
| and falling.
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