Brain Vs Tennis

The author of this article basically asserts that whether a person be playing chess or tennis, the brain is utilized in a similar manner between aspects that require knowledge and the ones that seemingly don’t. In the article, elite athletes are used as examples to show how they easily use just as much brain power as the champion for professional checkers does. In athletics, the players need to be able to keep their A game, and get in the “zone”; in entering their zones, the brain manipulates a part of the brain to form the motions an athlete would normally do. People may think that sports require no brain activity, when in fact the brain is extremely active throughout an event, just using a different part of the wonderful brain. The author also discusses how athletes use the mirror system
to mimic the actions of other pro athletes.
The topic is practically about the way humans respond to the actuality of competition and athleticism.
It, too, is a matter of what the athlete is feeling or thinking: a person’s emotional state can reflect the way he or she may play on the court, simply because of one’s ability to think over time or to over think the aspects of the game. Even though it may seem like the elite athletes have nothing going on upstairs, the brain is still in its active state and controls the way people respond, mimic, play sports.
Nick Bascom states, “Superstar athletes are revered for their physical prowess, not for what goes on between their ears. And most postgame interviews do little to challenge the notion that athletes have more brawn than brains.” This means that whether on the court, field or course, the body depends on the brain for direction. But the brain is a busy taskmaster with duties beyond guiding motion, making it difficult to focus on that particular job.
By examining how such brain processes lead to excellence in sports, as well as what goes wrong when athletes blow it in the big game, scientists think they can enhance training techniques and improve performance under
pressure. In The Zone
The experience of “being in the zone” could simply be what happens when the brain regions making athletes conscious of their movements are finally quieted and motor centers get free rein to guide the players to victory.
Players with less noise gumming up their sensorimotor systems are predisposed to athletic glory. With fewer disruptions, these athletes are able to elicit strong, fast muscle contractions that are incredibly accurate, cheating what scientists call the speed- accuracy, or energy-accuracy, trade-off. Unlike most people, expert athletes don’t have to slow down to improve their execution.
The Value of Reflection
When a person watches someone else performing an action, the same neurons that would fire if the observer were replicating that action become active — even if that observer is standing completely still. This neural activity is the brain’s way of simulating the motion being witnessed, and can help an athlete reproduce those movements. The mirror system may also mediate another important function in the athlete’s brain — anticipation. If mirror neurons are already simulating the motions of an opponent, an observing athlete might use information from those neurons to chart out the full course of the adversary’s motion. In sports where time is of the essence, the ability to predict a movement offers a major leg up.
A model plan for the future The brain’s predictive machinery is constantly being updated with new sensory information as it executes a motion, a feedback loop that helps the body maintain control over its movement, Todorov says. “Given your goal, given where you currently are, the optimal feedback loop posits the best way to get there,” he says.
Todorov and other scientists are finding that athletes’ brains calibrate forward models in a manner consistent with Bayesian decision theory, a statistical approach that combines a continual stream of new information with previous beliefs. Because there is a level of uncertainty associated with sensory input, the brain has to decide whether it is going to rely more on the new data (which could be misleading) or on more credible (albeit potentially outdated) priors. Elite athletes, who have acquired more priors through frequent competition and practice and who have less noise in their sensory input and motor output, will have the edge, Todorov suggests.
Buckling under pressure When athletes think about mechanics too intensely, the pool cue, golf club or tennis racket can start to feel like a foreign and unwieldy instrument. Golfers prompted to weigh in on Tiger Woods’ struggles following his personal problems and hiatus from playing in tournaments seemed to recognize the influence of thinking too much. Bubba Watson publicly suggested that Woods was too mental with his swing, saying Woods should drop his swing coach and “just go out there and play golf.”
Though athletes can’t avoid stressful situations altogether, being aware of the effect of stress on brain-body communication and coordination can help enhance training sessions, Beilock suggests. By putting players in high-stress, gamelike scenarios in practice, coaches can help athletes stay cool during competition.
After all this has been said yes I do agree with the author because I always think of professional athletes as people who just play sports and never do anything that requires intellect. However, they are just as intelligent as anyone else, just in a different way.