Amit Katwala - Sport on the Brain : How Neuroscience Is Revolutionising Sport.

CONTENTS

To my parents, for a home full of books

And to Sara, for building one with me

Behind every action there must be a thought

Dennis Bergkamp

W ayne Rooney is lying unconscious on the kitchen floor. In March 2015, footage emerged online of the England and Manchester United striker appearing to be knocked out in a light-hearted boxing match with a friend in his Cheshire home. It wasnt the first time Rooneys head has made headlines. There are stories about whether its in the right place whenever his form drops, and there were plenty of puzzled takes on the hair transplant he revealed in June 2011.

But few reports paused to acknowledge the role played by Rooneys head in one of the biggest on -pitch stories of his career. On 12 February 2011, he scored the winner in a tight 2-1 win over Manchester City which played a vital role in securing Uniteds 19th top-flight English title. Late in the game, a deflected cross from the right-hand side looped up, just behind where Rooney was waiting in the area. He turned and, with his back to goal, elected to try the audacious launching himself into the air to pull off a stunning overhead kick into the top corner.

In 2012, it was voted the greatest goal in the first 20 years of the Premier League, with over a quarter of the vote. The goal was a triumph of quick thinking and improvisation a goal that owed as much to Rooneys brain as it did to his body. Rooney told ESPN magazine, when asked to describe the decision-making process that led him to opt for the out-of-this-world.

Youre asking yourself six questions in a split second. Maybe youve got time to bring it down on the chest and shoot, or you have to head it first time. If the defender is there, youve obviously got to hit it first time. If hes farther back, youve got space to take a touch. You get the decision made. Then its obviously about the execution.

This is a book about decision-making.

Rooney isnt the quickest or the tallest hes relatively short, stocky and has frequently been accused of carrying too much weight. He left school at 16 with no qualifications, as the tongue-in-cheek tattoo on his arm that references the Stereophonics album Just Enough Education to Perform attests to. However, Rooneys mind is active, sharp and agile; this is what gives him the edge over those who might be more physically capable.

Rooney did get an education on patches of grass on the council estate in Croxteth, Liverpool, where he grew up, despite the signs prohibiting ball games, and in his grandmothers back garden, despite her frustration at him ruining the pebbledash walls. All that experience changed him and made him the player he is today.

As much as their muscles, it is their incredibly specialised brains that make elite athletes different. The differences may not be as easy to spot as the chunky thigh muscles of sprint cyclists or the cauliflower ears of rugby players, but look closely enough and they are there.

This is a book about how practice changes the brain.

In Outliers , Malcolm Gladwell popularised the 10,000-hour rule the idea that it takes 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become an expert in any field, including sport. Spectacular goals dont come from nowhere. They are the result of years of practice and hard work. Rooney first came on to Manchester Uniteds radar playing against them at under-9s level, a 12-2 Everton win in which he scored six goals. overhead kick, the perfect bicycle kick, which for a kid of eight or nine years old was really something special.

Rooney has supplemented all that physical practice by training his brain. Before every game, he visualises himself performing well against the upcoming opponents. I lie in bed the night before the game and visualise myself scoring goals or doing well, he has said. Youre trying to put yourself in that moment and trying to prepare yourself, to have a memory before the game. I dont know if youd call it visualising or dreaming, but Ive always done it, my whole life.

Hes not alone. Psychologists and neuroscientists are unlocking the secrets of the athletic brain, and using that knowledge to develop new training tools that can help amateurs become better, and push elite athletes to new peaks of performance.

This is a book about breaking the 10,000-hour rule.

Its about why athletes choke and how to stop them. Its about scouting for innate sporting talent and decision-making under pressure. Its about pushing the limits of endurance, hacking our way into the zone, and revealing the damage caused by sporting concussions. Its about finding out what makes the best athletes different, and then figuring out how to close the gap.

This is a book about unleashing the endless potential of the human brain, and changing sport forever.

But it starts with a clumsy robot on a crooked pitch.

I n a sweltering arena on the north-east coast of Brazil, the competition is heating up. Its the summer of 2014. , arcs his run to open up an angle for the shot... and scuffs it horribly. In fact, its such a bad effort that the ball starts to roll backwards on the uneven pitch, away from the goal, to anguished shouts from the crowd. Undeterred, the tireless forward turns as his software calculates a new course towards the ball. His motors whir in pursuit, but its too late. The final whistle sounds, and Englands hopes are extinguished.

Its the World Cup, but not as you know it.

The English striker in this game doesnt bear much resemblance to your usual international footballer, although he has clocked up similar mileage travelling around the world to competitions. Mustachio is not very good in the air, his first touch isnt great, and hes wearing a miniature top hat and a monocle. He is a 40-centimetre (16-inch) tall humanoid robot, part of the University of Plymouth team competing at the 2014 RoboCup.

He does have a bit more in common with the likes of Wayne Rooney than it seems at first glance. The robots software is designed to tackle the same problems that Rooneys brain has to handle when he is on the pitch. Its designed to use similar strategies, starting with working out where the ball is, and where its going to be next.

Mustachio, and his Plymouth teammates Pixel, Gears, Amps and Flux, use identical webcams to collect the visual information they need. Like humans, they can then use that data to work out the trajectory and path of the ball, and make decisions based on its movements. Despite the high technology on display, the game is excruciatingly slow. Thats mainly down to the lumbering gait of the robots, though a major stumbling block according to Dr Phil Culverhouse, one of Mustachios creators. He seems genuinely delighted as he reports that none of Plymouths players fell over during the competition in Brazil.

Sport is a deceptively difficult thing for the brain to do. The simplest of movements requires precise calculations of the speed and trajectory of objects, and of our own position in space. There is more computational power in picking up a chess piece and moving it than there is in deciding the chess move, says Dr Vincent Walsh of University College London, one of the worlds leading cognitive neuroscientists. I dont think sport gets the respect it deserves in terms of brain processing power. It is a form of intelligence.

Thats why the robots remain so far behind. Our brains are still much quicker and more complex. The human system is incredibly complicated, says Culverhouse, from his office at Plymouths Centre for Robotics and Neural Science. Humans have the benefit of some absolutely amazing real-time processing going on in the brain, so were a long way from being able to do things like them.