Anger and Fighting in Competition

Editor’s Note: This blog has been a bit dormant for a while, but apparently some people are still discovering and finding it useful. I thank you for your kind comments. Despite our low activity, we were recently named among the “Top Martial Arts Sites” by The MMA Zone. I was grateful and honored by the recognition and thought I would try to revive the site - if only temporarily– until reality sets in again. So, here goes… Paddles…. CLEAR … BEEEEEEP…

Optimal arousal (heh, heh… you said “arousal”, heh, heh) is a key to performing effectively in competition. But what is “optimal”? Excellent question. Some of you might remember the old “Inverted U” hypothesis. In psychology books, it is known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law. The basic idea is that anxiety (or physiological arousal, more generally) in small to moderate doses tends to help competitive performance by accelerating your drive and energy. But at a certain point, arousal becomes too high and it begins to impair performance. When arousal is working for you, that’s being in “the zone.” Crank it up past that point, and the upward line in the upside down “U” begins to turn downward. Pretty basic.

But if you watch combat sport athletes, you’ve probably noticed an incredible range in emotional intensity – even among the winners. That seems to defy the idea that there is one optimal point for everyone.

An alternative to the Inverted U is the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning -or IZOF model. The IZOF model suggests that “the zone” of optimal emotional and physiological intensity varies for each individual athlete. One of the areas where I’ve seen this most clearly with fighters specifically is in how they handle or use anger.

Anger generally tends to charge your arousal level. Your thoughts are racing. Your body is revved up. And your emotions are running high. Is that a good thing? That depends. It depends on who you are and how you handle it. I remember chatting with one young fighter – a super nice guy who was not naturally aggressive - saying how he was trying to work himself up to “hate the guy” who he was opposing in the cage. He thought that he needed hate and anger to tap into his inner barbarian .. or something like that.

Anger can sometimes generate drive and energy. But it can also sometimes drain it. And it will often overshadow the part of your brain responsible for anticipation, planning and strategy. So there can be a steep cost as well.

Recently, researchers in Finland took a look at how anger affected the performance of 20 high-level (international) competitive karate athletes. They measured the athlete’s expression of anger and asked them to recall their best and worst competitive performance – before during and after. As the IZOF model would predict, responses were all over the map. Just over half had low anger in their best and their worst performances. For these competitors, anger was neither a handy tool nor an impediment.

Another group tended to notice a rise in anger intensity in their worst performances – more so in the pre- and post-fight situations than in the competition itself. What did seem to make a difference was the athlete’s ability to regulate or control his or her level of anger intensity and perceiving that he or she had enough coping resources to deal with the stress and frustrations of competitive adversity.

Here’s one way to look at these results: When you can selectively summon and carefully control your anger, you can use it as an energizing resource. But when anger is prompted by an opponent, it may signal to your brain that you are in trouble making it worry that you don’t have enough resources to cope. Becoming angry may be different than allowing an opponent to make you angry. When you react with anger you give up a measure self-control. You may get a boost of intensity, but you may also be more prone to tactical and strategic mistakes. Know yourself.

Ruiz, M., & Hanin, Y. (2011). Perceived impact of anger on performance of skilled karate athletes Psychology of Sport and Exercise DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2011.01.005

Touchstones: Honoring the Basics

The FAA has a helpful publication that wouldn’t hurt us to check out now and then, whatever our level of experience and skill: the Airplane Flying Handbook.
Sure, it may seem like plain vanilla...but where would hot fudge sundaes and banana splits be without good old dependable vanilla?
We pilots need to maintain our good airmanship foundation, no matter how big a hotshot we sometimes imagine ourselves to be.  Reviewing the essentials helps us recall those nuances we forget, or shortcut...and which, in a pinch, we may desperately need in our quiver of flying skills.
Once we start down that "I got this wired" slippery slope, the risk of incidents and accidents increases...and who needs that kind of education?

Criquet Storch SLSA

Case in point: FAA's Handbook section on porpoising.
I sometimes revisit a landing tendency that I've been working to correct: I will make a bigger-than-necessary pitch correction after bouncing a landing.
If I balloon up at a higher angle of attack then I want, I'll push the nose over -- too far.  Instructors invariably tell me, "Whoa, just let it settle or go around, don't go chasing it."
I picked up that habit from hang glider and ultralight flying, where ultra-slow landing speeds and draggy airframes sometimes let you get away with...and even require...dramatic last-second pitch-ups to keep you from making hard landings.
The problem with such pitchy exuberance in an LSA or traditional GA airplane is the cleaner airframe's tendency to let you get it into "porpoising" flight, by chasing an ever-growing up/down nose angle...until a hard impact becomes unavoidable.
Porpoising is a classic scenario for collapsed landing gear.  A local SportCruiser was recently destroyed when the pilot lost control after porpoising near the runway.
Rather than reprise in my own words how to avoid mimicking the happy undulations of our sea-going mammalian friends, I'll refer you to this excellent section (it's a PDF: go to page 8-31).
I know I picked up a few pointers I'd forgotten...and learned a couple things I'd never learned in the first place.  After all, no one CFI can cover it all, no matter how skilled.
A pilot's license is our ticket to continue lifelong learning...and self-teaching through study and practice is an important component of it.
Speaking of the SportCruiser, I started to porpoise one the first time I flew it.  The SLSA has a very sensitive pitch response, especially compared to its roll pressures.
I expected I would be easing the nose off the runway just fine on my first takeoff but we suddenly zoomed up to a 20-30 degree angle.  Instead of easing the stick forward, I pushed it just a bit too smartly forward -- and we were instantly looking back down at the runway.
My instructor said "Whoa cowboy, easy does it!" as he eased the stick back to establish a proper climb angle.  I became a pitchmeister with my pinkies in that airplane from then on.
The FAA Handbook's bottom line: if you get seriously out of sync in pitch inputs, just power up and go around.
We sometimes forget we usually have a choice.  Doing a go-around is always a good mindset to keep in your mental skillbag: it's too easy to slip into the "I gotta land now!" syndrome.
Give that Handbook a look: I bet you'll find something in there that will make you a better pilot.

Aviation Jobs, American Style

Good news from Allegro LSA’s head honcho Doug Hempstead, as he spoke with our publisher Mike McMann. 
Allegro, now a solely-American made, composite/aluminum S-LSA (my flight report is due out soon in the magazine) told Mike he expects to hire as many as 35 workers within the next year.   These are jobs that were formerly held by Czech Republic personnel.
Allegro is a Czech-designed airplane (Fantasy Air) that, like so many LSA, was built in Czech Republic and assembled, test flown and delivered in the States. 
Doug and his wife Betty bought the rights to produce the airplane here and production is now underway at the company's Sanford, NC plant.
More than 450 of the Kevlar-composite fuselage/aluminum wing Allegros have been sold since 1994, most overseas.  The Hempsteads hope to change that proportion...and employ more Americans in the process.
Three Allegro models are offered: Classic Trainer at $89,000 (also configurable as an IFR trainer), Voyager at $94,000 (adds things like MGL Voyager EFIS, Garmin radio and transponder and vertical card compass), and Executive at $99,000 (adds two Dynon Skyview Synthetic Vision panels and Garmin GPS 500).
Those are highly competitive prices for a composite ship with lots of high-tech extras.  It's an excellent airplane that fulfills a lot of missions from trainer to cross-country cruiser.

GB athletes pull out of wheelchair marathon

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/disability_sport/9381294.stm


30 January 2011

The final day of the World Paralympic Athletics Championships in Christchurch ended in chaos and confusion with top athletes refusing to r`ce on a marathon course they describe as unsafe.


Here are a number of issues . . . .

• By not closing roads off to traffic, are organisers forcing athletes to participate in a different sport- more like an ‘extreme’ version of wheelchair marathon racing with the added task of having to dodge cars- more of an achievement to finish rather than a sporting contest?

• Athlete withdrawals devalue the competition, and winning becomes less of an achievement.

• There are issues of fairness to athletes who have prepared for a contest under a specific set of terms and conditions to be given a new set of parameters and tests that arguably are not related to their sport.

• Compromising athlete safety and the de-valuing of a world championship event may also discourage potential sponsors or spectators from investing in the sport.

The Bigger Picture . . .

There is a popular belief that the Olympic games and the Paralympic games run equally beside each other. However, in many ways this is a misconception.

Separate but Equal?

For practical reasons, the Olympic Games and the Paralympics cannot be incorporated as one event. For instance, stadiums have certain capacities and cannot cater of spectators for both games. Additional problems include the necessary technological modifications in facilities and equipment and the unrealistic time scale that both games would require. For this reason the games are held separately whereby the Paralympic games run two weeks after the Olympics. Arguably this timescale subtracts the focus from the Paralympic games as an after-thought. A possible alternative is to hold the Paralympic games as its own event in a separate year.

Recent literature has also explored idea’s that separate cannot be equal. This is evident, for example, in the categorisation of events according to gender (baseball, softball, synchronized swimming, boxing). Nevertheless, there are also strong arguments for the view that maintaining the Paralympics will lead to a reduction in the inequalities between able bodied and disabled bodied competition.

Athlete Whereabouts & Professional Sport Unions

At the recent European Professional Sportspeople’s forum, FIFPro, the worldwide representative organisation that promotes the interests of over 50,000 footballers from 43 member unions raised their concerns over the current system of whereabouts.

• The main issue discussed was whether professional sportsmen and women are to be viewed primarily as employees and so subject first and foremost to European and National employment laws,
OR
• Due to the ‘specificity of sport’ they should be subject to governing body rules rather than general extra-judicial procedures implemented by WADA and IF’s.

Whilst vehemently taking an anti-doping stance, FIFPro raised the following concerns regarding the whereabouts system.

• The current system does not sufficiently consider the agency and liberties of athletes as human beings, often neglecting their fundamental rights as sportspeople. Interpreting full-time athletes as employees within sport suggests that testing outside of competition or training exploits a competitor’s privacy and rights as an individual.

• Implementation of the whereabouts system is not universal and is therefore not applied equally to all athletes.

• The outcome of failing to attend three doping tests creates the same punishment as a test that produces positive results. It could be argued that ‘strict liability’ produces too broad a spectrum for implementation of punishment and doesn’t cater for individual or specific cases.

• Current anti-doping laws shape sport, whereas it should realistically be reversed. Training and competition needs should take precedence over restrictions to an athlete’s training programme that may be the result of the whereabouts system.

• It can be argued that the punishment (up to 2 year ban) is too strict, especially when we consider that an athlete may be banned on the basis that they have demonstrated forgetfulness or disorganisation etc as opposed to a failed drugs test.

• For those that are part of a team sport, doping tests and the whereabouts system should be incorporated into training regimes as such demands already provide sufficient information on whereabouts.


Go to http://www.fifpro.org/ to see an example of how some athlete groups are starting to respond to governance issue in their sport

Graduate Study in the Philosophy of Sport

Philosophy of sport is alive and well, with numerous scholarly associations and individuals working in the field.  And yet for those who are interested in pursuing a graduate degree in the field, it can be difficult to ascertain where to go and who the potential graduate advisors/supervisors might be. After all, it's not like there are "Philosophy of Sport" departments, and many philosophers of sport aren't housed in philosophy departments. This can make the search difficult.

I asked this once a  couple of years ago, but am doing so again here for the sake of such potential students and for the sake of the field.  In the comments, tell us about philosophers of sport who work in graduate programs that are accepting students for this type of work. Thanks!

IAPS 2011 Conference Website

 For more information, see the link. Here's a bit from the site:

The 2011 conference promises to be a special one, as it signifies a homecoming for IAPS. The first full conference of the then Philosophical Society for the Study of Sport (PSSS) was hosted at Brockport in November of 1973. In addition, many PSSS and IAPS scholars, including some past presidents, have taught at the College and/or presented papers for its annual Sport Philosophy Lecture. At the head of this list is Dr. Warren P. Fraleigh, one of the Association’s founders, who will be honored during the 2011 conference.
We are also looking forward to honoring Dr. Jim Parry, who will deliver the 2011 Distinguished Scholar Lecture during the conference, and Dr. Cesar R. Torres, who will give his Presidential Address after completing his two-year term as IAPS President. We also anticipate an outstanding program of academic presentations and panels to be offered by IAPS members from around the world, including a keynote address by Dr. J. S. Russell.