Sport as a model of life

Sport is a model of life. It is like a mirror, reflecting the society’s ills and triumphs and often amplifying them, like a lens. Like any other model, sport is also a tool: it is a means to an end. And hence, its virtues tend to be coloured - and often confused - with the “ends” themselves.

The commercialisation of sport has replaced its politicisation during the Cold War era - but the resulting hyper-pressures remain and keep distorting its original core values. The ever-increasing premium on winning keeps raising the temptation to violate the principles of fair play.

As a result, the public may hear about a string of doping scandals and conclude “all is rotten” in this field of human endeavour. Or we may learn about less than dignified conduct of a sporting luminary - and jump into superficial moralising along the lines of “these are a bunch of spoilt brats - how can they possibly be role models?” This is where it’s important to keep things in perspective.

Apart from being a reflection of fluctuating social practices, sport has its own, quite stable intrinsic properties that keep me optimistic about its core virtues. And true sporting heroes do represent these virtues, I believe, rather well. By and large, they occupy their limelight position on merit. Their strength, endurance and agility are unmistakingly the fruits of dedicated effort and certainly not a “lottery win”.

I will argue that it’s not what meets the eye in their physical excellence that matters (though impressive it might be!). The spoils that such excellence affords are another matter altogether. Far more important is what brings it about - the inner strength and dedication stemming from boundless love for what they do. And that’s a good enough model to follow. After all, it’s up to us which models we choose to derive from the stories of our sporting heroes - the cynical, regurgitating their weaknesses, or constructive, focusing on the core virtues that are “bound to be found” in each of those stories if you read them well.

For example, it is hard to reconcile - especially for the inexperienced - the astronomical earnings most sporting stars enjoy with their love for their sport. Remuneration in professional sport is a big issue. When I hear, as a sport psychologist, an envious remark from a budding champ along the lines of, “If only I earned THAT much, it’d be so easy to be the best!”, I can’t help but remind them that the only way to “earn THAT much” is to enjoy doing it for nothing.

Psychologists and educators have known all along that no amount of incentives can match intrinsic interest in breeding excellence. This intrinsic interest - “for the love of it” - is what makes you practice mega-hours with no respect for any external evaluation or reward. And these mega-hours get overlooked by too many of the general public. Practice doesn’t make for a good media story, and it takes retirement for our superstars like Andrew Gaze (see "The Gaze plan for success" in Diners Club Spring 2005 Newsletter) to admit that there is no substitute for it. An average Jo Bloggs’ lack of first-hand experience with regular training makes athletic success all too easy in his eyes.

On the other hand, let’s assume that we’ve convinced our Jo Bloggs that massive practice is a requirement - and you can’t achieve it without the love for what you practice. How do you cultivate this love? It doesn’t materialise out of thin air: it requires multiple opportunities and a licence to fail or opportunities to switch sports at the initial stages (our widely differing talents take trial-and-error to discover). This discovery is, by and large, left to individuals and families. A culture of optional PE in schools and “user pays” attitudes to community sport both disadvantage all but the already dedicated. In this context, abandoning compulsory school PE and state-sponsored community sport seems like throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Let’s turn to the positives though. Sport is widely acknowledged as a strong character builder. And that includes being conducive to the development of adaptive skills, sound values and positive attitudes and dispositions. Ample evidence exists linking committed sport participation to growth in motivation, self-discipline and self-respect. Developing physical prowess becomes secondary - a natural medium for character development.

This original, undistorted idea of sport as a meaningful, dignified pursuit of physical excellence can be traced back to the ancient Olympics and to the various traditions of martial arts. In this form, sport is meant to trigger the best in every person who cares to take it up, to elicit “their best” to the maximum, and to encourage it to grow further.

Consider the influence of soccer on generations of underprivileged youth in Brazil, or that of basketball in the US or distance running in Kenya. The massive positive impact these sports have in their respective countries can never be matched, I believe, by any government intervention.

So what is it that makes sport a positive influence? First, it teaches you to value learning and to appreciate the slow growth of strength and competence, i.e. “earning your stripes”, rather than “demanding you rights”. It also teaches you that strength and competence are tools to be used wisely, and their growth depends emphatically on your own effort and commitment. Attributing this growth - as well as most other "happenings” in your life - to your own effort is well known to psychologists as a key personal quality - “locus of control” that lies at the very foundation of responsibility as a character trait.

Second, sport is one of the most positive transformers of spare time and energy. Consider an all too familiar observation: when schooling becomes too easy for a child, they start “looking for trouble”: unless, of course, they have other meaningful commitments to occupy their spare time to the brim. And sport is one of the best candidates for this time-filling role, along with various artistic pursuits (and beating them in terms of health benefits).

Educators of all ages know that spare time means trouble - especially with children and adolescents. It leads the young person, almost invariably, to travelling down the path of least resistance. And modern society offers no shortage of such paths, laced with consumerism and a culture of inflated egos and self-entitlement. In fact, modern adults are not immune to this temptation either. “Paths of least resistance” all too often lead away from their own long-term goals and values to what’s immediately more pleasurable, such as consumerism. “Having” is seen by many as more important in life than “being”, and instant “having” as better than delayed “having”.

In this regard, sport is much more than a simple time-filler. It offers, perhaps, the most natural opportunity to discover the pleasures of one’s own constructive effort. And this opportunity works at both physical and psychological levels.

First, the physical side of sport - rigorous exercising - is immediately rewarding through a range of neuro-chemical brain responses (such as endorphins). It also leads, through recovery, to increased fitness and feelings of confidence, which act as longer-term rewards.

Second, sport offers feedback opportunities that are, arguably, as immediate, transparent and fair as they get in human affairs. Through this feedback we learn, very quickly, the pleasures of growing mastery - fair praise, opportunities to recover from mistakes and setbacks, and encouragement for getting better next time. Fortunately sport, at its grassroots at least, is not infested with false praise and unearned promotions. And this breeds persistence and dedication: the only way to recover from getting beaten in an athletic contest at any level is to take it on the chin, learn from it and ask for more challenge. And yes - to sweat through what is usually a protracted journey of self-improvement.

Incidentally, sport psychologists have known for a long time that the hallmarks of a true champion - a sporting star - have nothing to do with strings of easy wins but everything to do with an ability to recover from errors, regroup and rebound from setbacks.

In summary, sport is a rare human endeavour that provides an opportunity - even for the uninitiated - to enjoy both its results (a win, a well executed movement, or the growing physical competence in the long run) and its process (the effort). With regards to effort, some sports are more novice-friendly than others - for example, tennis requires a far more advanced level of skill for a useful cardio work-out than, say, basketball or jogging. While a “tennis dummy” may stay “cold” for the most part of their first few training sessions (simply because their lack of skill prevents them from exerting much effort), basketball and jogging starters are assured of a good sweating workout “from the word go”.

Sweating, literally, is required to reap the physical benefits of exercising and this is what your doctor would recommend. Sweating, figuratively, through difficulties, temptations and setbacks towards your long-term goals, is a far less popular endeavour in the modern culture of instant gratification.

The good news is it can be learned by extension from physical sweating, which is a natural, intrinsically pleasurable process - our body has physiological mechanisms that reward physical exertion yielding sweat (if your personal experience disagrees, you must have had a bad run with your first PE instructor). Any youth coach knows that until kids learn to “enjoy sweating through effort” they stand little chance of making progress in their sport. And this learning implicitly teaches a much bigger idea - that getting tired as a result of sustained, deliberate effort is “good” in itself, quite in addition to all the good things it leads to (such as, better skill, improved fitness or greater chance of winning).

So, instead of tolerating discomfort, sport teaches you to embrace it. Hard work ceases to be a curse, it becomes a blessing, even before yielding its fruit. From that grows a natural interest in extending your comfort zone, you begin to enjoy pushing and trespassing its boundaries, actively exploring your own weaknesses and aiming to overcome them - in sum, being able and willing to improve and transcend yourself.

True sporting heroes epitomise these types of scenarios and personal qualities. They are not flawless, nor should we expect them to be. But they show us how the willingness to learn from own failings gives you much more than an absence of a flaw, it gives the ability to overcome different flaws, now and in the future, as well as lifting yourself from wherever you are to becoming an even better human being. And that’s a real good model to strive for.