Breaking the Momentum Chain
Watching the 6th ranked Golden Bears get blown out by the Ducks on Saturday left me shaking my head. What happened?How 
can such a competent team suddenly look so incompetent?
Broadcasters talk about the “Big Mo” in sports. Momentum. Athletes can feel it on both sides of a big play, teams feel it when they come back late in a game and fans feel it when their team catches fire or goes cold as ice. I sure felt it on Saturday.
There are a lot of opinions in the sports science literature about the existence of momentum. It’s a difficult phenomenon to nail down cause it’s difficult to measure. As a coach, I’m much more interested in what to do about it than I am in its measurement.
I like the Multidimensional Model of Momentum proposed by Jim Taylor and Andrew Demick. They define psychological momentum as “a positive or negative change in cognition, affect, physiology, and behavior caused by an event or series of events that will result in a commensurate shift in performance and competitive outcome”. They go on to talk about the six key elements to what they call the “momentum chain”.
- Precipitating Event. Examples include an interception or a fumble. The impact of these events on athletes varies depending on how they perceive it and their level of self-confidence.
- The precipitating event leads to “changes in cognition, physiology and affect.”
- A “change in behavior” stems from these internal perceptions of the athletes.
- Next comes a “change in performance”.
- Momentum is a two-way street and needs a “contiguous and opposing change for the opponent.” In other words, if after a fumble, the recovering team celebrates and increases their psychological momentum, but the opposing team does not experience an equal negative psychological momentum shift then the immediate flow of the game should remain unchanged.
- Finally, if momentum gets this far, there will be “an immediate outcome change”.
My question is how do we break the “momentum chain”? Well stuff happens in sports so there’s no stopping “precipitating events”. It appears to me that the key to breaking the chain lies in step 2. It’s the old stimulus – response phenomenon. The brief moment between a stimulus and our response to it is the key to maintaining one’s Game Face under pressure. Top performers learn to control their reaction in the moment no matter what’s just happened.
Part of our coaching responsibility is to train our athletes not only in the “X’s” and “O’s,” but also in how to adapt, shift, and respond to stimulus or game-time situations. The window of training time between stimulus and response is short but there are a multitude of training opportunities through out the day – on and off the playing field. We must be vigilant with our athletes and train them to respond to all potential negative stimuli (mistakes, comments, grades, teachers, parents, weather etc) as challenges not problems.
The more we can get our athletes to respond to “life’s stuff” with their Game Face, the easier it will be for them to handle the ups and downs of competition.
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Momentum…is a real flow of energy that is difficult to defend unless you the recepient of the
‘negative’ energy is first aware of this momentum and have the ability to think and act creatively. To defend against momentum one must break/disrupt/distract the timing patterns. Self control and the ability to trigger positive energy at a moments notice is critical and essential to avoid big long lasting turnarounds. One must commit to the ‘act’ and remain focused on the process not the outcome. Mental training can help you prepare and respond to those times where momentum against is unavoidable…you can always choose to respond in a way to reduce or even turn the momentum in your favor only after consistent and continuous practice.
Momentum has much to do with confidence in your ability – which is related to #2 – but it is that level of confidence you have in your abilities (or your team’s capabilities) to overcome any situation in a game… really the pre-game “mental conditioning” you need. The coach plays a big role in instilling this in his players, but the players must believe in themselves as individuals and as a team.
I have been on teams when the “momentum” takes over – withing games and for extended win streaks. I experienced it as each teammate having a high level of confidence in each other to get the job done, no matter what our opponents did in the way of those big plays. We give up 2 runs in the first inning, so what. We give up the go ahead run in the top of the 9th, so what. Someone on our team was going to come through; and invariably that happened.
When you get on that kind of roll with “Big Mo” behind you, there is no better feeling as a sports participant.
I love the line “Top performers learn to control their reaction in the moment no matter what’s just happened.” IN THE MOMENT is key. Catching yourself and not allowing a negative psychological reaction, you lessen the chances for a negative momentum shift.