Too Smart for Our Knees
I have a bunch of back-logged posts, I know, but I’m going to skip to something quick. Among the handful of blogs I follow on the topics of cognition, bodywork and brain stuff, Madam Fathom’s post on intelligence and knee injuries stood out as exceptional.
Reason being: I have a very clear memory from my college varsity volleyball days of my teammate Erin Ford move from the middle to a perfect right-side swing attack, hit past slow blockers for the kill down the line, then keep falling to the floor with a torn-up knee. In the middle of a perfectly executed fake-out attack, away from any other players or obstacles, Erin tore one of the major ligaments in her knee.
It has bothered me since. As we sat together on the bench, two* injured middle hitters watching the season go on without us, I kept replaying Erin’s attack in my head, looking for the tweak to her knee while she was in the air. It never made sense. So you can imagine my cheer to find Madam Fathom’s piece on cognitive activity and ACL tears. Women disproportionately suffer through ACL tears, and ACL tears are often due to unanticipated events rather than collisions or contact.
I remember Erin Ford was a fraction of a second behind the right-side attack, but made up for it with a line shot for a point. Being late on the attack could mean she didn’t expect KDA would set that attack out of the options available (it’s not a common attack), or just about anything else…say the 6 players hollering on the other side of the net, a yelling crowd and a fast-moving ball to jump and hit in a irregular sneak-attack play. There’s an endless list of possible causes of an “off guard” moment to push the body over its limits.
The twist added by Madam Fathom—or at least the way to get my attention and admiration—is that she cites an unusual source for academic-types: David Foster Wallace’s essay “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart”, from the excellent book Consider the Lobster. DFW’s essay covers his bewilderment about why a brilliant athlete like Tracy Austin could write an awful memoir, one that describes none of the intense, instinctual cognitive immersion athletes develop for their chosen sports, nor even strategy observations during the game. To DFW, Ms. Austin’s memior might as well not have been about tennis, at least not playing it at an exceptional level. He argues that exceptional athletes might have a unique, pre-cognitive focus, that overrules what could be damaging second-guessing and doubt.
Ms. Fathom’s analysis of DFW’s point is worth a read, specifically. But her main conclusion is that “if the rest of us were under such circumstances [as intensive athletics], we would founder and crumple and fail precisely because we think too much”.
So there ya go, Erin Ford, 8 years after the fact. Cognition experts to DFW to you.
* I’d sprained both ankles (not simultaneously) just a few weeks before
picayune | permalink | comments (0)
