ddidididid wrote:
She went out there and things were not OK. Seems like you would be have to be pretty stupid to try again when the risk is dying...
As people have pointed out this happens in coordination sports. Golfers get the yipps and cant putt. Catchers cant through back to the pitchers, and so on. Most of the time things are minor and you just get comments like the person is fighting themselves. You rarely get the extremes of seeing pros look like 7 year olds.
The part that is weird is calling it mental health. This is more of a neurologic condition and not what most people think of as mental health. I am not sure sport psych is quite right either but it isnt like we have a great understanding of coordination. Maybe she cracked inder the pressure but plenty of people in nonPressure sports get the yips also.
Yes and I acknowledged these points. My thought/question/concept was quite simple - for an athlete as good and as experienced as Biles, had she been able get out there and compete, would her primary motor cortex (I referred to this incorrectly in my other post, I take this back) have taken over and would she have been able to do the things she needed to.
A comparable situation (let's continue to use golf as an example) would be a pro golfer prior to the final round of a major tournament they are doing well in, having anxiety over let's say, forgetting how to swing the golf club. No the outcome of this isn't potential death (maybe for the gallery) but extreme embarrassment etc which nobody wants to feel. I would venture to say these kinds of thoughts, doubts, anxieties are more common than we think for many sportspeople - including our example here of a golfer. Yet, the golfer no matter how nervous they are, will usually find that instinct/M1 part of the brain to be enough to maybe not hit the best shot of their life, but one that is more than satisfactory enough for them to get the round underway and then usually the anxieties and doubts subside.
I think we are forgetting here that this a component of sport which everybody, cra@ppy amateur, top elite, GOAT level athlete has to encounter and understand that they will be okay. Let me repeat - it doesn't bother me that she did what she did - it's her life. But I don't like the "it's mental health"/"she could have died"/"athletes should only compete at 100%" narratives because these are very misleading.