Here is another excerpt from our book Coach Your Brains Out: Lessons On The Art And Science Of Coaching Volleyball. This one comes from the Mindset chapter. The “Fields of Grass” brain lesson comes from Lorraine Davies, and I’ve included her slides at the bottom of the article.
Hope you enjoy and check out the full book later this month!
Your Brain Is A Field of Grass
A powerful way to begin each season is to teach our athletes a basic brain lesson. This will help them understand why there’s no skateboarding or volleyball gene, and why it takes a massive amount of time and effort to develop these skills.
Lorraine Davies created this powerful lesson on some basic neuroscience.
Think of your brain as an open field of tall grass. You make pathways from one place to another by trampling the grass down.
Sometimes the grass is thin, and it is easy to create a path.
Sometimes the grass is tall and thick and you have to work hard to get through it.
When you have walked along the pathway lots of times, it becomes clear and easy to follow.
But if you don’t revisit a path regularly, the grass starts to grow back and it becomes hard to follow.
When your brain learns, it makes connections between neurons. When you practice something, you make the pathway through the brain easier to follow.
When we walk the path, neurons fire together. When we no longer walk the path, neurons no longer fire together.
Imagine John was learning a new skill, like the bagpipes. He would have to cut through some thick bamboo-level grass to start forming the new pathways. With enough practice he would clear a path and his early lessons would grow easier. If he stopped practicing for a few months because his wife was complaining of the noise, the grass would begin to grow back, covering the path. If, five years later, he dusted off his old set of bagpipes and tried to play, well…it might not sound so pretty.
In the field of grass analogy, the paths of grass represent linked pathways formed in our brain. These pathways form when the axon terminals on one neuron make connections with the dendrites on another. When you practice something, you make the pathway in the brain easier to follow. This happens because a special fat called myelin, which covers the axon, allows for the signal to be sent more quickly. The more you practice the skill, the more the myelin covers the new pathway, which creates a more established neural connection. This allows the skill to become a habit.
And…we lost Billy.
Luckily for coaches and athletes, it’s more important to understand the concepts than it is to memorize the actual terminology. Once the athletes understand this fields of grass concept, you can refer to it often in the learning process. When a learner is frustrated and struggling with a skill, you can bring up how the weeds they are chopping through today must be really thick, and that if they stay persistent, they will eventually form a more clean, fluid pathway.
Learning new skills can be incredibly frustrating, especially when you feel as if you aren’t making any progress. Giving your athletes a deeper understanding of what the brain experiences when learning new skills allows them to be patient with the process and empowers them to feel in control of their learning journey.
Frustration and challenges now become a gift because we know we are forming new pathways. This is a huge change in perspective and one that will lead to deeper learning.
What a gift! A gift we can all be reminded of often.
How We Learn Anything: Creating A Neural Pathway.
Thank you to Lorraine Davies for the slides. Check out CYBO the book, coming soon!