Ruminations-Metrics AND Instincts

My exploration of a simple quote from Tadej Pogačar. It may be more overthinking.

From my Facebook posting in 2021

I heard this while watching the Tour de France coverage. The announcer spoke of the answer that Tadej Pogačar, who blew up all of his competitors today in the first mountain stage. He completely destroyed them. "I train with the metrics, but I race with my instincts."

Tadej Pogačar is a Slovenian professional cyclist who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam UAE Team Emirates. He won the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Tour de France, and he is presently leading the 2024 edition of the Tour de France. He is the bright star in the cycling world post doping era. (

https://tadejpogacar.com/

)

Pogačar’s quote resonated with me because he was able to bring together many ideas in one short statement. It divided the focus of all the activity into two subjects: training and racing, an all too neat division when the reality isn’t so easily segregated, but the separation gives us a chance to consider the organic whole of bicycle racing into halves that we can understand.

Training is internally focused: what does the rider need to do to obtain optimal fitness physically, psychologically, and emotionally prior to racing?

Racing is externally focused: what can the rider do with the optimal physical, psychological, and emotional conditions achieved during training when they are faced with racing conditions that do not replicate training conditions? Racing conditions that cannot be modelled nor predicted.

Training is engaged for the long-term development of each athlete in preparation for competition without replicating racing conditions. The goal is to develop and prepare the rider’s mind and body in training conditions to perform while under racing conditions.  Training uses the mind and body’s adaptability to improve the rider’s intrinsic mental, emotional, and physical system development.

Racing is where rubber meets the road. It is the short-term pay off to the long-term training by being in competition. Racing competitions are short-term as compared to training.  Racing situations can happen in split seconds while training takes weeks and months. Racing does not allow time to experiment with mind and bodies because those conditions are set in stone at the beginning of competition, they cannot be changed instantaneously during the race.

Training is based on known scientific models for human performance, all executed in a closed loop configuration. The open loop is the execution of the planned training, the feedback involves using metrics to fine tune and optimize the training. There are many metrics, key metrics are: peak energy production output, average energy production output, sensitivity of the output to the controlled input variables, etc. 

Racing is based on how the rider makes decisions in response to race conditions and circumstances. Even though a feedback mechanism is used to make decisions, it does not exist in the same time frame as during training, the feedback mechanism in decision-making is instantaneous and unconscious, not deliberate and planned. This ability to resolve unexpected problems extemporaneously is what Pogačar calls instinct.

Training is dependent on metrics as feedback, giving the rider a solid reference to frame their training process. The process is quantitative.

Racing is dependent on instincts as feedback, giving the rider an amorphous and ambiguous reference to frame their decision-making. The process is qualitative.

Training relies upon well planned a priori training plans. The variations present in the designed training is deliberately limited to avoid including too many independent variables, which may serve to complicate the predictability of the model. Only restricted and measurable inputs are allowed into the training. This is to avoid introducing unidentifiable, unmeasurable, and uncontrolled variables to confound the responses to the independent variables. The output response metric can and are used to gain a direct input/output mapping between the controlled input and resulting output.

The training environment is deliberately manipulated to be kind and certain.

Racing strategies and tactics can be planned a priori but will always be subject to race conditions and external factors, which is to say that nothing follows as planned or predicted. Race conditions, even under the least chaotic conditions, will always be uncertain and chaotic.

The racing environment will always be wicked and uncertain.

Turning the attention to the tools being used in the training and racing environment,

Metrics are tangible, analytic, deterministic, measurable, and immutable.

Instincts are intangible, probabilistic, variable , not measurable, and mutable.

Metrics can serve multiple identifiable purposes:

·       An instantaneous snapshot of the results during the training: a monitor of the rider’s existing state and their progress during the long-term training period.

·       As data used to calibrate an existing predictive model: Metrics are used to verify the physical models created by using physical and biological laws. 

·       This calibrated training model can be used during racing to evaluate the rider’s racing metrics versus the model calibrated by training metrics. The racing metrics gives the riders and team an instantaneous and deterministic assessment of the rider’s physical state as compared to the rider’s training model — assuming that the measurement errors are minimal.

·       The comparison can also be used to predict the rider’s physical condition through the model.

For example, the time-honored tradition of the teams sitting around a table snarfing down massive platefuls of pasta in the guise of carbo loading are over. Everything each rider puts into their mouths is on an allowed nutrition list, each list is individually customized, the portions are precisely measured and controlled. The riders and the riding team rely on this kind of granularity to finetune the caloric and nutrition intake. https://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/articles/cxxx568grlwo

Instinct is a broad term. As defined by Merriam Webster,

Instinct is

1: a natural or inherent aptitude, impulse, or capacity

2a: a largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason.

2b: behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level.

Instinct is what separates the experienced competitor from the novice competitor. Instinct is not just a natural gift, nor a serendipitous collection of experiences that are collected randomly.  The part of the definition that stands out is: specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason”, combining with the other part of the definition: “behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level” describes instinct as a natural reaction that is engaged without the benefit of cognitive consciousness or active reasoning: don’t think about it just do it.

Instincts will never be identifiable, i.e. the rider will make decisions by instinct without knowing where that instinct came from, nor how that instinct became a part of their memory and decision-making, and most frustratingly, how they can consciously replicate or improve their instincts.

Where the training metrics can be usefully applied in a derived model, instinct not only is  impossible to quantify into metrics, since there is not a functional neurological model for instincts. Instincts are also personalized, based on the amount and quality of each rider’s experiences.

Metrics are easy to implement and execute because they are tangible, analytic, deterministic, measurable, and immutable.

Instincts are impossible to teach didactically because the concept is so slippery, as instincts are intangible, probabilistic, variable , not measurable, and mutable.

A key factor that enters into instinct building is the disparity between the expert and the novice rider. Tadej Pogačar is a decorated cyclist, having an impressive list of successes and credentials. He is obviously supremely confident about his instincts, having garnered valuable experiences and supreme skills as a cyclist while also having successes in the competitive environment through deploying his formidable instincts that leads to his successes. His successes are not surprising because there is a distinct advantage that the expert has over the novice. It is presented in the paper on the challenge point framework, by Mark A. Guadagnoli and Timothy D. Lee (Guadagnoli, 2004).

From Wikipedia

The challenge point framework provides a theoretical basis to conceptualize the effects of various practice conditions in motor learning. This framework relates practice variables to the skill level of the individual, task difficulty, and information theory concepts. The fundamental idea is that “motor tasks represent different challenges for performers of different abilities” from this task difficulty level will differ based on the:

·       skill level of the performer

·       task complexity

·       task environment

Guadagnoli and Lee’s paper explain why Pogačar can be so confident in his “instincts”, it is because he has valuable experiences from his training and racing and he has been exposed to numerous situations, conditions, contexts, and environments, and they explain why novices struggles with performing the same way when they leverage their “instincts” because they don’t have the same basis of experiences. Not all the valuable experiences come from successes however, many times failures are more valuable in forming and molding instincts because the penalty of not solving a problem is more motivational than solving a problem.

Extrapolating an idea from the challenge point framework: in order to develop better instincts novices need to gain more experiences, learn how to resolve problems by using those experiences, and develop their decision-making abilities based on all the new experiences; this is  all to be done subconsciously because conscious decision-making processing is take too much time to be useful in sports.

The reasonable and burning question is: how does someone learn or teach instincts effectively and in a timely manner?

Unlike physical training, instinct training happens every time a rider climbs on a bike, whether it is for training or for competition. Anytime there are external factors disrupting their riding, they are developing their instincts. By the time a rider reaches the pinnacle of their craft, the amount of disruptions that can be developed as instincts during a casual ride becomes minimal, but not zero. Riders are gaining experiences about challenges that will arise and more importantly, they are also gaining experiences with their own solutions. The effectiveness of the attempted solutions is inconsequential because failed solutions are valuable for the rider to consider, as what not to attempt if the situation arises again.

In a way, Pogačar is slightly in error because in training one’s instincts, one cannot use metrics, one needs to use the totality of their consciousness. Physical training uses metrics as feedback for the rider to finetune their training. What does the rider use as feedback for their instincts training? Everything, interpolating from their own experiences; extrapolating from other’s experiences as guidelines, whether they are observed or communicated; analyzing visual feedback from recorded media; analyzing coach’s feedback; they are all valuable. Ultimately, the most valuable aspect of developing instincts is what the rider does with the qualitative, amorphous, conditional, and ambiguous information that they have gathered: they must intuitively be asking critical questions about the values and potential solutions to the experiences while the experiences are fresh in their working memory before storing them in their longer-term memory for future reference. This is how one trains instincts, because instincts are developed all the time, the question is whether the developed instincts are relevant and whether they are effective in meeting the challenges of the moment during competition. The quality of instinct is wholly dependent on the variety of experiences and what the rider does with the developed instincts.

'I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.' Joan Didion

This article is an exploration of a simple quote by Tadej Pogačar on his milieu: bicycle racing. This is an exercise in sussing out my thinking about a simple quote. A simple quote can carry a lot of thoughts, or the alternative interpretation is that someone like me can overthink a simple thought. Regardless, I enjoyed my over analysis, I hope it served a purpose for you as well.

References

Guadagnoli, M. a. (2004, June). Challenge Point: a Framework for Conceptualizing the Effects of Various Practice Conditions in Motor Learning. Journal of Motor Behavior, pp. 212-224.