Has sport psychology influenced sport reporting

Dennis O’Donnell is the Sports Director at CBS 5. He appears Sunday through Thursday on KPIX 5 News. O’Donnell has been a fixture in Bay Area sports broadcasting since 1982. Prior to CBS 5, O’Donnell was executive sports producer at KRON-TV. O’Donnell is the pre-season voice of the San Francisco 49er’s, calling the play-by-play on CBS 5 and has called play-by-play for over 100 sporting events since 1999, including Stanford and USF basketball for Fox Sports and Bay TV. In addition to a daily sportscast on CBS 5 Eyewitness News, O’Donnell hosts or has hosted CBS 5’s
post-game show, “The 5th Quarter,” “49er’s Preview,” “Last Honest Sports Show,” and the number-one rated Sunday night sports show, “Gameday.”

SZ: What sports did you play growing up?

O’Donnell: I played baseball, basketball and wrestled all up to and through high school.

SZ: As an athlete growing up what memories do you have around the subject of sport psychology? Did parents/coaches talk about sport psychology and performance?

O’Donnell: Sport psychology was discussed in rudimentary terms. For example, “Imagine yourself being in a situation, what would you do? How would you act? How would you prepare yourself mentally so you are prepared physically?”

SZ: Coaches you worked with were talking about visualization techniques?

O’Donnell: Absolutely, but not to the extent that they are today. The old cliche, “Golf is 90% mental.” I think that was true when I was growing up. I’m not so old where sport psychology had not yet entered the realm of youth sports. (laughing). But it wasn’t very deep. Things like, imagine being mentally prepared before walking up to the plate with the bases loaded, notice the positioning of the infielders, and the outfielders. Notice where you are going to find a hole, that sort of thing. The discussion of sport psychology was definitely on a secondary level. It was never the priority of the practice. We didn’t start with that type of thing but it was definitely part of the conversation.

SZ: Today coaches/athletes talk freely about “the mental game.” What does this term mean to you as a sports reporter? 

O’Donnell: I think a lot of the questions we as reporters ask pertain to the mental aspect of the game. Both in the preparation of the game and post game. For instance I may ask a coach, “What was your thought process when you called a time out leaving you without one at the end of the game?” That’s sort of the mental aspect of the game. A question to a quarterback might be, “What did you see at the line of scrimmage that made you decide to call the audible?” In baseball, a question to a coach may be, “Was there any thought to making a pitching change since the batter has had so much success against this pitcher in the past?” So much of competition I think of as a chess match. Often football coaches sort of use that term. The mental game is fairly significant in terms of analyzing what went right or what went wrong in a game. The mental strategy in most cases precedes the physical strategy. A lot of post game questions will pertain to that.

SZ: Is that different from the types of questions that sport reporters asked before? In the last several years have you noticed a shift into more sport psychology type questions?

O’Donnell: I wouldn’t say so. If a play doesn’t work. Or if a team loses a game the questions are going to be, “Well why did you do this? Or why did you try that?  Or why didn’t you change the pitcher? Why didn’t you have a pinch hitter in that situation?” All those questions really revolve around a strategical approach that in my opinion is the mental aspect of the game. But I don’t think, speaking from my perspective personally, that there’s been a dramatic shift in the last twenty years. It’s still what it was about then and what it’s about now.

SZ: Pete Carroll, coach of the Seattle Seahawks, is building a team culture and drafting players who fit into his sport psychology methodology. For example, they have a hands on high performance coach who engages the players in meditation and coaches are being retrained in their communication style with players. If teams like the Seahawks who are quite enthusiastic about the benefits of sport psychology, win the Super Bowl, will winning influence the focus on media reporting and the impact of sport psychology on other team cultures? Is there a ripple effect?

O’Donnell: I think the NFL is a copy cat league. If you look at the read options strategy by the 49er’s for instance, several other teams tried some version of the read option or drafted player’s with abilities that would fit that system. It also forced virtually every team in the NFL to spend the off season figuring out how to defend the read option play. Consequently if Seattle wins the Super Bowl you can bet other teams will scrutinize every aspect of that organization and figure out how to copy it.

However I think psychology is a bit tricky because it’s more difficult to see tangible effects. For example, you can see how Colin Kaepernick’s skill sets for the 49er’s compliment the read option strategy. But I think it would be more of a challenge to see how a psychological approach helps a team win a football game.

SZ: The impact it has on the overall team performance.

O’Donnell: To me what comes to light are issues you have inside the locker room. Of course the Richie Incognito and Jonathan Martin situation in Miami is the obvious one that comes to mind. If there is a sport psychologist like there is in Seattle embedded in this locker room with fifty-three guys and the fifty-three guys trust this person enough to speak to him about issues that are going on in the locker room that they are uncomfortable enough with then I think there’s a huge benefit to that. You could argue that had that person been in the Miami locker room that perhaps the whole situation could possibly been avoided.

If you look at the 49er’s when I first started reporting, even the S.F. Giants, the Giants had a fellow named Dr. Joel Kirsch working with the team. The Giants were one of the first teams that I recall that had an actual sport psychologist. He was more performance related for example, “How do you maximize your potential as a baseball player?” The 49er’s had Dr. Harry Edwards, a sociologist. I know that during the 1980’s the 49er’s had some issues among the player’s in the locker room that Dr. Edwards worked with and assisted with. Dr. Edwards may still be associated with the 49er’s. There is a definite value to having a sport psychologist associated with a team. You’ve got fifty-three guys in a locker room and they’re not all going to get along. They come from different socioeconomic backgrounds and academic backgrounds. When you put fifty-three men in a locker room, this sort of melting pot, they aren’t all going to get along. There are instances I know of where a sport psychologist has sort of calmed the waters between players.

As a reporter when it comes to issues in the locker room and you’re trying to find out why a player is having trouble assimilating, it’s difficult to find out what happened behind the walls of an organization. The coaches aren’t going to be very forthcoming obviously and the player’s aren’t going to be very forthcoming. It’s difficult finding out what’s going on inside the locker room because as a reporter you’re not inside it. When it comes to a sport psychologist solving issues in the locker room it’s hard to get that information. Sometimes you get it years later. In the case of Jonathan Martin and Richie Incognito, there’s been such a dogged pursuit of what really happened. Everyone has been working on that one and we’re slowly getting layers and layers unfolded to find out what happened but we still don’t know.

SZ: Because of the locker room code.

O’Donnell: Absolutely. No player’s want to talk about the dirty laundry to a sports reporter.

SZ: I see more information in the media around mental preparation and information about sport psychology.

O’Donnell: In terms of how I prepare for an interview, be it a pre-game interview or a post-game interview, during pre-game interviews there is more time to analyze the questions and what you’ve looking for. During post-game interviews as a reporter, you’re reacting to what happened in a particular game. I think I’ve always been cognizant of the mental aspect of a game. The “why” questions usually pertain to the mental aspects of the game not the physical. I can’t distinguish the difference between how I asked reporting questions thirty years ago as to how I do it today based on a psychological approach. You might find a difference in other media. I would guess that today’s athlete’s see a much greater difference in the psychological approach than they did thirty years ago, right?

SZ: Yes, definitely.

O’Donnell: I think the team investment in the athlete is so great today. The economic structure of a player’s contract is so significantly different today than it was thirty years ago. Teams want to and look to use every possible benefit that they can to keep the player engaged. To keep the player healthy both physically and mentally. The investment is too big not to. So definitely from an outsiders perspective I clearly see that and that has definitely changed in the last thirty years. Does it affect the way I report the news? No.

SZ: Dennis thank you so very much for talking with me today and sharing your views of sports reporting and it’s relationship to sport psychology.


*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*This article can also be read @ examiner.
*Photo KPIX media

Biofeedback for athletic performance

Dr. Leah Lagos, Psy.D. B.C.B. specializes in sport psychology and is board certified in biofeedback. As a licensed clinical psychologist she maintains a private practice in Manhattan where she works with children, adults, business executives and athletes of all ages and competitive levels to help boost individual health and performance. Highlights of her work include conducting interviews for NFL teams, as part of Professional Sports Consultants for more than seven years, Dr. Lagos has served as a consultant to PGA tour players to provide on-site support at tournaments such as the Masters’ Tournament in Augusta, GA. Dr. Lagos has served as a consultant to US Olympians providing consultation and on-site support at venues such as the London Olympics. Dr. Lagos is also a lecturer, author of published studies, and Chair of the Optimal Performance Section of the Association for Applied Physiology and Biofeedback. Her research interests are in the implementation of heart rate variability biofeedback with golfers. Through a combination of traditional psychological approaches and biofeedback, Dr. Lagos works with clients to improve mood, reduce anxiety, decrease muscle tension and improve focus.

SZ: Did you participate in a competitive sport growing up?

Dr. Lagos: I did. As a high school athlete I was on the track team as well as the cross country team. In college at the University of Florida I rowed with the crew team.

SZ: Do you compete competitively now?
Dr. Lagos: I am an avid weekend warrior. I play golf, tennis, run and some dancing.

SZ: When did you become interested in biofeedback and the uses of biofeedback to help athletes?

Dr. Lagos: During graduate school at Rutgers University, I worked with Dr. Paul Lehrer who is well known for his work in heart rate variability biofeedback particularly to treat anxiety and health conditions related to anxiety. I approached him during graduate school because as a specialist in sport psychology I noted that about 90% of my athlete clients were coming to me struggling with, “How do I manage anxiety in sport?” I posed the question, “Do you think this could be helpful for enhancing performance?” That question was for the next seven years of my research and work with athletes using biofeedback to help reduce anxiety.

I began working with Dr. Lehrer and Dr. Evgeny Vaschillo, who had been the Russian physiologist for the Russian Olympic team many years ago. For two years I worked with the Rutgers golf team using biofeedback to enhance health and performance. We found that biofeedback had specific health benefits including, improving mood, reducing anxiety as well as some important performance benefits. Athletes who used to be affected by their anxiety could now perform at their peak during moments of challenge.

SZ: A sixteen year old golfer who has played for about four years currently plays and/or practices about two to three times a week. His goal is to play on the golf team at school but hasn’t made it yet. One area holding back his progress is that he has difficulty getting his momentum/focus going in the early rounds. It takes about two or three holes before he feel he settles into his game. How could biofeedback be useful to this player?

Dr. Lagos: It can be useful in the sense that anxiety and stress actually change how our body functions. It increases muscle tension, it changes our mood and it can impact our ability to focus. What we found with biofeedback is that as athletes improve their control over their autonomic nervous system they gain control over how their body responds to stress. One area that it impacts is gaining momentum or focus. His ability to manage stress would be significantly stronger after the biofeedback allowing him to have stronger focus, more effective focus, more efficient focus that happens more quickly as well as for a longer duration.

SZ: Over time this builds confidence in the athletes abilities.

Dr. Lagos: Absolutely.

SZ: What is an assessment of mental/emotional strengths? What does an assessment involve?

Dr. Lagos: The mental assessment usually occurs in the initial meetings in the office. I ask questions about their history of sport, their ability to manage stress and how they’ve coped with stress. I often times conduct a physiological assessment, called a Stress Profile. The Stress Profile has several different tasks such as counting backwards by seven, a Stroop Test, or when the client isn’t expecting it I clap my hands to create an unexpected scare. It allows me to see how their body actually reacts to the stressor. While the athlete is taking the test there are different physiological modalities that are being monitored including, galvanic skin response, brain activity, heart rate variability, respiration, and muscle tension. I look at how all of these areas respond during these different activities to see if there’s a particular area that we need to target and the areas that the athlete is particular strong in. Included in the assessment is having the athlete just talk to me about their perceived mental/emotional strengths and how they utilize these on the golf course. With all their physical training athletes tend to be very aware of their strengths.

Depending on the age of the golfer and with their permission, I may include the parent or a significant other in the assessment phase. What I’ve found is that parents, and significant others have a lot of specialized insight about the athlete that can expand the assessment of the athletes mental/emotional strengths.

SZ: Would you invite a coach in?

Dr. Lagos: In the very beginning just because the focus really is on the athlete and because the sessions are a confidential relationship, the parent knows, the significant other knows I don’t always bring the coach in.

SZ: A coach has such a powerful influence, the way that they deliver their verbal messages can influence the stress level of the athlete.

Dr. Lagos: Absolutely and what you’re saying is a very interesting point. There are certain types of athletes who I call physiologically gifted who have specialized responses to how coaches speak to them. In those cases I will bring a coach in, of course with the athletes approval, to help the coach learn about how their athlete actually has a physiological response to how they are being coached.

SZ: When a client begins a biofeedback training program how much time is spent in the office? How much if any time would be spent with the client on the golf course?

Dr. Lagos: The actual biofeedback training program requires meeting with me once a week for ten weeks in the office. The first year I worked with the Rutgers golf team I only met with the athletes in the office. At the end of our first year working together I asked them as a team about the process and how they liked it. They all loved it and asked me to work with them again the following year. This time though they asked for more training on how to actually use the skills on the golf course. So I implemented some virtual reality training sessions during week one, four, seven and ten at a virtual reality golf center. Being out on the golf course would have been just as effective but it was snowing at the time so this was the next best option.

SZ: Biofeedback is a process in that with low-tech, high-tech, or no-tech tools the client becomes aware of the interrelationship between the psychological and physiological processes of their body’s communication which is dynamic and bidirectional. With awareness and training clients can over time voluntarily learn how to change physiological activity. Biofeedback requires that the client practice at home. Generally how much individualized homework will the client be required to do on his/her own?
What type of equipment would a client expect to use?

Dr. Lagos: Initially the client learns to voluntarily change their physiological activity but the aim of this is that after ten weeks where the client meets with me once per week and practices breathing exercises at home twice a day for twenty minutes they gain the ability to regulate how their body responds to stress involuntarily. The goal of this is that they are training a muscle, the heart, how to respond on its own automatically during moments of stress. If an athlete before a meet or a tournament feels tremendous anxiety there is going to be a need to voluntarily change the physiological activity but there’s also moments during let’s say a basketball game where the athlete doesn’t have much time to voluntarily change it and that’s why we’re doing the training because the stress response becomes moderated by the improved autonomic control that’s garnered by the biofeedback. Over time it becomes an involuntary response. We’ve studied and documented it to see if we could make this a shorter or faster training. Every athlete wants to be able to come in here and do it after two sessions. It does not work like that. Ten sessions tends to be the rule of thumb that produces the greatest effect. We do see changes begin to start happening as soon as week four but the maximum changes tend to occur around or after week ten. I’ve had athletes that continue doing this after the ten weeks and we continue to see gains in most of these athletes.

SZ: In there any drop off after a certain amount of time?

Dr. Lagos: What we found is that they don’t have to continue practice the breathing exercises twice a day for twenty minutes a day after the initial ten weeks. After the initial training breathing can be practiced once a day for twenty minutes to maintain the same level. Some athletes during their sport season practice twice a day and in the off season drop off to once a day practices.

The only equipment the athlete needs at home is a Breath Pacer. It’s a pacer you can get for the i-phone or for your computer. There are several applications out where you can actually set the breathing pacer to what’s called resonance frequency. That’s the rate of breathing identified in here by me or another biofeedback practitioner. Resonance frequency produces optimal heart rate oscillation. Everyone has a different rate of breathing that produces optimal heart rate. Oscillation, meaning as you inhale your heart rate goes up and as you exhale your heart rate goes down. These changes reflect important changes in autonomic control.

SZ: If there are not any issues such as technical flaws, impeding performance how much time will it typically take before an athlete begins to notice improvement in their mental game? How is that level of improvement measured?

Dr. Lagos: If the athlete has been practicing at a hundred percent and meeting with me once a week we begin to notice improvements in their ability to focus, their mood, and reductions in anxiety at week four. Those changes tend to increase and amplify through week ten and beyond. We measure the level of improvement certainly in sport performance comparing it at week one, four, seven and ten. I also have them fill out a questionnaire regarding mood, regarding anxiety, and regarding muscle tension at those intervals. I have them complete a before and after Stress Profile that looks at the physiological modalities that I spoke about earlier, galvanic skin response, respiration rate, heart rate and we look at how the athlete is performing under stress, at week one versus week ten.

SZ: You were the lead author of “Virtual Reality Assisted Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback: A Strategy to Enhance Golf Performance,” published in AAPB’s Biofeedback Magazine in 2011. Explain in layman’s terms what virtual reality assisted heart rate variability biofeedback is and how would a player access this method of biofeedback?

Dr. Lagos: The golfers are playing golf through a program and what it allows us to do is to bring biofeedback into the golf setting. At the virtual reality center you can recreate specific courses that the athlete may play. You can also recreate sounds such as applause, which some golfers are sensitive to. The golfer in this setting can learn to access their breathing and through biofeedback mitigate their stress response. The virtual reality is a method to bring biofeedback breathing to the golf course so that it isn’t just a procedure the athlete learns in the office.

SZ: Do you hook the athlete you are working with up to a portable biofeedback monitoring system such as the NeXus?

Dr. Lagos: We used Polar devices. Watches and heart rate monitors strapped around the athlete’s chest. It was a way for us to collect data about the heart rate responses during stress. If you use the Thought Technology portable device you can now collect more data than through the Polar devices, which tracks heart rate.

SZ: Moving away from the topic of golf for a moment you have been doing research on the impact of ten weeks of heart rate variability biofeedback training on the post concussion symptoms of young athletes who have experienced mild traumatic brain injuries. What are some of the findings you have discovered through this research?

Dr. Lagos: In terms of post concussion syndrome as we know both in the news and research there is an increasing problem not only with professional athletes but athletes who make up the largest population, youth athletes. Post concussion is defined as having symptoms related to concussion for three weeks or longer. It means that some athletes are not healing within the normal time frame. Traditional therapies have included such things as cognitive behavioral therapy as well as anti-depressants and they’ve had limited effectiveness in actually treating post concussion syndrome.

About seven years ago I was at the University of Miami and a neurologist called me and said, “Dr. Lagos I have an athlete here who has had her second concussion. Medicine isn’t working, therapy isn’t working. Do you think your biofeedback can help her.” I said that there is no evidence at this time that heart rate variability biofeedback can improve brain functioning but I told him the if she is experiencing depression, anxiety, and problems focusing, biofeedback is likely to help her. He then referred the athlete to me.

This athlete has given me permission to discuss her case. In fact this athlete has created a non-profit organization for athletes who are suffering from post concussion syndrome. She came to me and her mood improved by about week six. Her anxiety reduced and around week seven she came in and said, “Dr. Lagos I can read again. I haven’t been able to read past three sentences in over six months. It’s due to biofeedback.” I said there’s really not a ton of research in this area, it’s an interesting concept but let’s not be too hasty, although we will continue doing it.

I told this story to a sport medicine doctor who was treating high school athletes with post concussion syndrome in New Jersey. He said, “Well if you can tell me you can improve the mood, reduce the anxiety and enhance the focus of kids who are simply not able to attend school because they are laying in bed and don’t have any other alternative, I think it’s a great option.” In the past three years this doctor has sent me over thirty high school athletes with this debilitating condition. What I began finding is that at week seven they are reporting the same types of results as my athlete at the University of Miami. Biofeedback treatment was not only improving mood, reducing anxiety and enhancing focus this was impacting their cognitive functioning. So I published my first case study in this area. It was the first and only research in this area about the potential for this to help athletes who are suffering from post concussion syndrome.

We found in this case study and reported that several symptoms of the concussion had reduced. Not just anxiety but headaches had decreased and then there was also some shifts in cognitive functioning that prior to working with biofeedback hadn’t changed. We need further studies and I’ve recommended along with my colleagues who co-authored the article with me that further studies be conducted in a randomized controlled trial.

SZ: Biofeedback requires a state of self reflection and inner connection which is sometimes a challenge for young athletes to access within themselves. What advice do you have that works to keeps these kids using biofeedback long enough so they understand they do have the capability to manage their mind/body connection?

Dr. Lagos: After about two weeks the athletes I work with see, feel and embrace the changes of being able to control their stress response and it’s only the beginning. It becomes self reinforcing. The first two weeks I say to them, “Let’s set some clear goals. What do you want out of this process? Let’s stay very focused on these goals and keep checking in with these goals every three weeks and see how you are doing with your progress.” I tell them upfront that they are not going to feel much of a change except it’ll be slightly more relaxing and they may sleep a little bit better. After about four weeks they will notice some difference. It takes about a month, although after two weeks there’s enough change and it’s reinforcing.

SZ: How do you monitor the quality of the practices?

Dr. Lagos: It’s generally self report. I ask them to fill out a training card for each of their practices. The cards have fields to write in the time they start, the time they finish and their mood on the scale of one to four. For example recording their level of anxiety, level four would be the highest and level one the lowest level of anxiety. We track those changes over time and we have data for each of their breathing sessions for the ten weeks.

SZ: Do you have an upcoming appearances, or research coming out that you would like the public to be aware of?

Dr. Lagos:  I will be speaking at the University of Florida, Nov. 15th with their academic and athletic faculty about, “Optimizing Health and Performance for Collegiate Students and Athletes.”

SZ: Dr. Lagos thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to share how you utilize biofeedback with athletic performance.

*Featured guests are not current nor former clients of Susan Zaro
*The article may also be read @ Examiner