The media is generally reporting Simone Biles withdrew from the Olympics for "mental health," but that's not exactly right.
I'm not even in the same galaxy as elite athletes, but at age 20 I suffered from a similar problem as Biles, and I never fully recovered.
A thread. 1/
I'm not even in the same galaxy as elite athletes, but at age 20 I suffered from a similar problem as Biles, and I never fully recovered.
A thread. 1/
This problem has many names in many different sports. In golf it's called "the yips," in baseball it's called "Mark Wohlers disease," "Rick Ankiel disease" or similar, and in gymnastics it's called "the twisties."
There are other names in other sports as well.
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There are other names in other sports as well.
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What these problems in these different sports all share in common is that a repetitive task requiring great precision and based on muscle memory suddenly becomes not just hard, but basically impossible.
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There is a lot of misunderstanding of this problem by people who have never experienced it first hand. Some people argue it is a neurological issue based on aging or repetitive stress. Many others associate it with mental fatigue, stress, fear, or pressure to succeed.
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Based on my own personal experience and closely reading the accounts of athletes who went through this, it is none of these things.
It seems to strike at completely random times, to people of all ages, in both stressful and non-stressful situations.
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It seems to strike at completely random times, to people of all ages, in both stressful and non-stressful situations.
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In my case, it started out of curiosity.
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I had been playing baseball my entire life. I always had a strong arm. I had even been a pitcher for a while. I had thrown baseballs literally tens of thousands of times.
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One day, while I was in the park playing catch with a friend (catch of all things!), I got curious about how the ball physically released off my fingers, and mentally observed this as I threw the ball—something I had previously done thousands of times without thinking.
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That was all it took. The next time I threw the ball, I thought about it again, and the ball sailed 15 feet over my friend's head. Then, when I tried to adjust mentally, I spiked the ball into the ground three feet in front of me.
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That was more than 20 years ago, and ever since then, I have never again been able to throw a baseball hard without wildly overthrowing or underthrowing.
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Something I had done thousands of times without thinking, I can't do at all anymore, simply because I can't. help. thinking. about. it.
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I even tried not throwing a baseball at all for about 5 years, but as soon as I tried again, the problem was still there!
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Now, when I play catch with my kids, I can only do so if I lob the ball super softly, or else I actually have to throw a sort of mild curveball.
Snapping my wrist to throw a curveball somehow allows me to throw hard without overthrowing or underthrowing.
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Snapping my wrist to throw a curveball somehow allows me to throw hard without overthrowing or underthrowing.
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Now it's true there is a mental component to this problem. It is indeed "all in my head."
But!
It's not really at all a "mental health" issue! I felt no stress at all from playing catch with a friend. Like many professional athletes, it struck at a completely random time.
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But!
It's not really at all a "mental health" issue! I felt no stress at all from playing catch with a friend. Like many professional athletes, it struck at a completely random time.
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Again, not remotely comparing myself to Simone Biles in athletic ability, but from my own experience I highly doubt this has anything to do with "mental health" in a conventional sense. Biles has shown she's a total pro at handling pressure.
This is something else entirely.
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This is something else entirely.
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If this is really the "twisties," Biles simply can no longer do something she has been doing since almost before she can remember. Even she herself may not fully understand why or how.
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But the one thing she knows is that if she even tries, she will be putting herself in terrible danger.
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If I spike a baseball into the ground or throw it a mile over someone's head, nobody really gets hurt (except maybe the ball gets scuffed).
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But if Biles can't do insanely complicated flips and twists exactly right because the pathways of her brain's unconscious mental patterns (what we call "muscle memory") is getting disrupted in some slight way by her conscious mind, she could literally kill herself.
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If this is really "the twisties," there is no chance Biles can do any of her events safely any time soon. She might need a few weeks or even months to recover. Some athletes even take years or don't recover at all.
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But in any case, the constant reporting of this as a "mental health" issue and the frequent discussion of "pressure," "fear," and "stress" is in my view inaccurate, and also, unfair to Biles.
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I honestly see this as more akin to a sudden physical injury, like tearing an ACL. We don't really understand exactly why it happens when and where it does. We just have to try to deal with it.
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