How does momentum change games, if at all?

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This article was published 15/06/2024 (518 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ask a physicist to define momentum and they’ll tell you it’s the mass times velocity of an object.

Listen to a sports broadcaster and they often use the term to explain why a team is on a scoring run or enjoying a successful stretch.

We hear it all the time, this idea one team has “momentum,” and the other is effectively helpless. Until, suddenly, the other team snatches it away. This process repeats to the point you almost have to wonder if it means anything.

Perspectives on this topic, one of a handful the Sun discussed with myriad counsellors, sport psychologists and elite-level coaches, were more divided than any other.

Mount Royal University men’s volleyball coach Shawn Sky doesn’t think momentum exists the way it’s described in sports.

“From a pure statistical standpoint, no, I don’t believe in momentum, especially because we play a game where it’s one point [at a time],” said Sky, who has taught sport psychology at the Calgary school for more than a decade.

Sky said most situations explained as “momentum” occur when one team stays in the present moment and doesn’t overthink. The team on the wrong end struggles because they are thinking about a past error or what could go wrong in the future.

In volleyball, that lack of focus on the present equates to forgetting the game plan to handle a certain opposing player or being afraid to commit an error and rolling an easily returnable ball over the net.

Sky employs his sport psychology learnings with his U Sports volleyball team with a simple mental note: The Three Rs.

“React, relax, refocus,” he tells the Cougars every season.

“We play an emotional game, so it’s human nature to react to that situation, which might mean a fist pump … Hopefully it’s not but it might mean a four-letter word. But it’s going to be a positive or negative reaction, that’s human nature. It’s actually good to release that. You only get a couple of seconds to do that,” Sky said.

“Then you have some sort of a trigger mechanism, breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth using your diaphragm … elongating your exhale. As you’re doing that, you need to get refocused on this rally.”

There’s a school of thought that every volleyball point hinges on a mistake, so the team that limits mental errors best has a much higher chance of winning.

Most sets are determined by serving runs, which some consider momentum shifts but are often the result of talented servers forcing weak passes leading to predictable sets and low-percentage attacks.

If teams view scoring runs through this lens, rather than uncontrollable momentum swings, they can take control and prevent them much more effectively.

WHEN MOMENTUM MATTERS

The Three Rs are easily applied to stop-and-start sports such as golf, football and any racket sport.

In sports like soccer, hockey and basketball with more flow, it’s easier for one team to take control.

“We play an emotional game, so it’s human nature to react to that situation, which might mean a fist pump … Hopefully it’s not but it might mean a four-letter word. But it’s going to be a positive or negative reaction, that’s human nature. It’s actually good to release that. You only get a couple of seconds to do that.”– Shawn Sky

Justine Fredette, a former NCAA Division I hockey player who now works as a counsellor, feels momentum plays a big role on the ice.

“I think it’s 100 per cent real,” Fredette said. “Hockey’s a game built off of making mistakes and luck and who can capitalize off that in any given moment.

“How to keep it or how to create that for yourself is a couple of different things, like setting smaller goals rather than big lofty ones … being able to stay calm under pressure, also the way you’re organizing with your team in those moments. What your team chemistry is like is really important as well.”

Fredette sees momentum as a parallel to confidence. When a team is able to create and prevent scoring chances with ease after figuring out their opponent’s game plan, it’s easy to build confidence.

Since she says hockey is about mistakes, it’s important to understand why they happen and how to recover from them.

“People don’t actually want to look at the mistake and ‘How I feel when I make mistakes,’ which just in that alone is so much more information that we lose because people want to move on so fast that we don’t actually get to analyze the body when we’re making mistakes, to learn how to come out of it,” Fredette said.

“People just avoid, avoid, avoid, because they want to feel better but sometimes staying in the thick of it is actually what makes us better in the long run.”

The key is to change perspective from mistakes being “bad” to “learning.”

Taking it a step further, Fredette says one of the most overlooked parts of elite sport is breaking down good performances, not just bad ones.

She learned about the “ideal performance state” from her now boss Adrienne Leslie-Toogood when she was in college.

Basically, it’s about sitting down after a good game or practice and analyzing how you felt mentally and physically in the moment.

“How do I know when I’m playing my best so I actually have something to chase,” Fredette said, “rather than this broad concept of, ‘I wish I was playing better today?’”

HOW TO BREAK IT

A lot of sports have an element of luck.

People in endurance sports like long-distance running or triathlon don’t discuss momentum in a psychological sense because their sport comes down to how hard they train and how fit they are entering their race.

But many team and individual sports — any involving points — include good shots that don’t hit their target. Golf is one of the best examples, as the PGA Tour average on eight-foot putts is just 50 per cent.

Manitoba golf coach Derek Ingram, who has written two sport psychology books on golf and works with PGA Tour winners Corey Conners and Taylor Pendrith, talks to his players about handling momentum swings.

“One of the most important questions I ask my athletes after a round … even though I’m a technical and skill coach, is ‘Was there a negative momentum shift out there? If there was a shot or putt you want over, what was it?’” Ingram said.

“Momentum works both ways. During a round, there’s lots of positive and negative momentum. It’s just a matter of not letting the negative momentum snowball.”

Ingram has his players build a game plan to maximize their skill set and stick to it whether holes go well or poorly. In golf, negative momentum is far more likely than positive because the average player makes far more bogeys than birdies.

The snowball effect typically happens when someone tries to make up for a missed putt with an excessively hard drive or an ill-advised aggressive approach shot at a tough pin location.

In basketball, the snowball effect could be when a player misses a few shots and hesitates on their next opportunity, breaking their typical rhythm or losing the scoring chance entirely.

The point is nothing good happens when athletes let the past or future impact their ability to stay in the present.

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

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