The Psychology behind Automatisms

Why brushing your teeth in the morning hold’s the key to understanding modern football.

In biology, evolution is the change in the characteristics of a species over several generations.

Now, this is applied to living species. But can it be applied to a inanimate object, a frame of mind, basically a thought? Can it be applied to sports? How about football?

The dictionary meaning of evolution can in fact be applied to the sport of football. The characteristics that have defined football have kept on changing throughout generations. When once, the idea of freedom and emphasis on players finding solutions for themselves prevailed, its now been replaced by a systems of predetermined actions, (fancy word alert) automatisms.

The dictionary meaning of an automatism goes as

The performance of actions without conscious thought or intention.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, the increasing use of terms such as “patterns of play” , “system” or even the practice of playing in “circuits” must not be anything new to you. All these point to the existence of automatisms in a teams play, and that existence has a root in the science of psychology.

Why is this? Lets start from the beginning.

Football is an energy intensive sport. The various phases of play, from defense to attacking transition to attack to defensive transition, all require the expense of energy. This plus the impact of pressing in this so called current “pressing age” has had a hand in exhausting a player so much more than usual.

What is the end result of this? Very tired players. Duh.

So what exactly happens when a mind is tired?

Our regular brain activity is a complex system of impulses that help us create solutions in real time. Whenever we see a problem, our brains start working furiously in order to find a solution. However, when a brain is tired, the brain signals weaken/slow down and the ability to make decisions within a split second is gone. Fatigue restricts people from making decisions off the cuff.

The decisions that we make when tired are more often than not, habits.

Next question, what are habits?

Let us create a situation. When you wake up in the morning, what was the first thing you did? I suppose brushing your teeth. (Unless of course you’re one of those weird people that brushes in the shower, but hey, I’m not judging). Whether be it brushing your teeth, or getting into the shower, or even both simultaneously, all of this is dictated by our habits. We don’t think of doing it. We don’t contemplate on different things we could do. We just do something, and that something is subconsciously/unknowingly done. A research published by Duke University in 2006 said that 40% of the actions that people perform in their daily lives weren’t even decisions, they were just habits.

Now, how does the science of habits fit into the new vision of automatized possession play in football? (Hey, look at me using big words of which I hardly know the meaning).

Let us take the example of one of the most famous academies in European football, La Masala. Ummmmmm, La Masia (Go away Joe, I told you that you can’t write here). Sorry about that.

Anyway, quoting a line from SkillSkoolSoccer *whataname*

“It is said that FC Barcelona does not directly teach tactics to young players at La Masia, and instead they focus on automatisms.

Now, saying that tactics are not taught would seem like kind of a crass oversimplification. However, The overarching idea behind the statement was that there is greater emphasis on teaching players about actions that may help them in the event of wanting something to fall back on. The ideas of football, what to do in and out of possession, and the transitions between the 2 events are the things that the academy hopes to instill, or habituate into the kids.

So how exactly do you start the process of habituation?

The basis of habit formation, is based on 3 things that repeat itself continuously to form a loop. The 3 components in question are a cue, a routine and a reward.

A cue is what starts/elicits the routine or the action. That action leads to a reward. This cycle continues throughout our lives. Let us take an example with regard to football.

While attacking, whenever a player sees a certain teammate carrying the ball forward, (depending on the position of the player in question) he realizes that he has to move wider in order to stretch the opposition backline horizontally and hence, facilitate better play.

The concept of positional rotations also have a basis in this. A player notices a cue, which sends him a signal. The player is drilled to elicit a certain response when noticing the cue, and subconsciously performs the routine (positional rotation) which leads to the reward, (better ball progression).

Players need a framework to fall back on when regular ideas don’t work. That framework is dictated by our habits. Those habits are drilled into the players. That is what, in my opinion, is coaching.

All of these principles, also known as “The golden rule of habit change” were used by coach Tony Dungy for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and later the Indianapolis Colts. In doing so he revolutionized the sport of football (American football, damn you, you Americans).

Here I would like to point out what in my opinion is the optimal combination for success in team sports. To do this, the concept of differential learning is to be understood.

“It’s a really modern and dynamic coaching method that encourages players to think within a system.”

- Calvin Betton (Sports coach)

Players should ideally be able to figure out solutions for most problems by themselves. The concept of differential learning aims to combine that with putting the player in the best possible position to make decisions for themselves. However, when players become too accustomed to a particular system, they lose the ability to think for themselves, leading to them losing control in high pressure situations.

This was one of the problems with Dungy’s coaching methods. Due to the intense coaching and predictable patterns, his teams often played tight games. The main point of his methods was to minimize decision making, thus allowing for quicker actions. The basic principle was :- “You don’t need more variation, you just need to be faster with what you do.”

The problem, as stated above lead to his teams often losing the deciding games in a season. Whenever they came to the closing stage of the season, they would ‘choke’ or ‘bottle’ their chance to go to the Super Bowl.

Why? Because as soon as they were put in a high pressure situation, they would start losing their habits and start thinking too much. That was primarily because they did not have full faith in his methods. They did not fully believe in him or themselves.

Humans are creatures that need motivation. I personally believe that humans work around a system of reinforcement and/or punishment. Motivation is what guides us, but what gives us motivation is what is the ultimate deciding factor.

Let me give you the example based off Alcoholics Anonymous. Even though it has been widely criticized for the lack of a ‘scientific approach’ in its treatment stages, it still is very effective. Why is that? Because, AA gives people something to believe in (in this case, god) in addition to the change in habit routines. The principle of habit change works better when people have something to believe in, something that provides them comfort in the sense that it would guide them across difficult times. In sports, this can be simplified to a single term: Man-management.

“If you have limited tactical knowledge, you can still be a successful coach. On the other hand, if you’ve great tactical qualities, but you’re not good with man management, you’ll never be successful.”

- Julian Nagelsmann

Thus, I believe that sports management constitutes 3 major components: Tactics, coaching and man-management.

The idea of what you want to do in theory, the application of it in a practical sense and the ability to have your player buy into your ideas. In my opinion, all of these principles/ideas work in tandem to give a team the best chance of winning.

The idea for this was taken from a book called “The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg”.

Any sort of feedback on this piece is greatly appreciated.

Hope you enjoyed reading this.

Harsh.