Daniel Peterson's Blog

What Elite Coaches Look For In Their Recruits

When my sons played grade school basketball, they would line up across from the other team’s starting five with their coaches rearranging them by height. Our team’s shortest player would be across from his counterpart and so on up the line. The logic, of course, was to match physical size for m...

The Playmaker's Decisions - The Science of Clutch Plays, Mental Mistakes and Athlete Cognition

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to The Playmaker’s Decisions , now available at http://geni.us/theplaymakersdecisions
© copyright 2020 Daniel R. Peterson and Leonard Zaichkowsky

As the confetti floated down from the top of Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Nick Saban stopped Tom Rinaldi in his tracks. The veteran ESPN reporter had his opening question queued until the Alabama football head coach patted his chest with a wry grin to declare, “I’m asking the questions.” Rinaldi yield...

Building a Cognitive Fitness Framework for Athletes

Cognitive Fitness Framework (CF2) by Dr. Eugene Aidman (click image for source paper)

While we wait patiently for sports to return to our TVs, there is a new realization that world-class athletes are humans, too. Like us, they have the same vulnerabilities to not only ...

Running Helps Motor Skill Learning

A group of midbrain neurons expressing acetylcholine (blue) are made to express another type of neurotransmitter, glutamate (yellow). photo: UCSD

Because we all need one more reason to get off the couch and on the treadmill or the empty trail while we work from home, researchers at the University of California, Davis have found that the neurotransmitters in our brains actually switch into a hyper-learning mode after aerobic exercise. Their new study was just published in Nature...

Clemson's Justyn Ross Has The Playmaker's Advantage

In the 2019 College Football Playoff National Championship game, two true freshmen, quarterback Trevor Lawrence and wide receiver Justyn Ross, made a startling statement as they dominated the defending champion Alabama Crimson Tide. The Lawrence to Ross connection produced 6 catches for 153 yards, including a game-breaking 74-yard touchdown pass and a one-handed circus catch for a late, crucial first down. Two 19-year-olds, one 6 feet, 6 inches and the other 6’ 4”, outplayed one of the best d...

The Number 10 Jersey and Christian Pulisic

With the news of Christian Pulisic’s announced transfer to Chelsea, here is an excerpt from The Playmaker’s Advantage featuring the rise of the 20-year-old American and his #10 USMNT jersey. To read more from the book, please visit: http://a.co/d/34n2gBz , including a new paperback version being released on 1/29/19.
© 2018-19 Leonard Zaichkowsky and Daniel Peterson

Photo by Logan Bowles-USA TODAY Sports

If ever there was a flashing beacon to highlight a team’s top playmaker, it is wearing the...

For Mookie Betts, Its Brains Over Brawn For Hitting Success

Getty Images

See the ball, hit the ball.

For those baseball hitters who can do the former, the latter comes much easier. Seeing, identifying and selecting which pitch to swing at is a combination of visual perception, brain processing and motor skill execution. Sure, the physics of hitting a baseball, measured by things called launch angle and exit velocity, determine the trajectory and distance of a batted ball. But it’s that pre-contact decision making process that gets hitters on base so...

Mason Crosby And The Cognitive Roller Coaster Of Kicking In The NFL

Getty Images

“I’ve done this a long time and I’ve never had a game like that. This is uncharted territory.” To be sure, it was one of Mason Crosby’s worse games of his 12-year NFL kicking career, missing four out of five field goals and an extra point. In his last five full seasons, the Green Bay Packers kicker has made an average of 85% of his field goals, so his week 5 game, a 31-23 loss to the Detroit Lions, was more than a statistical anomaly. Missing wide from 42, 41, 38 and 56 yards, C...

Why Warm-ups Before A Game Wake Up Both The Body And The Brain

While other fans linger in the parking lot before a game, I’ve always liked heading into the stadium early to watch the players warm-up. To see them taking batting practice, practicing shots or passing the ball around makes them seem more accessible or mortal to me before the chaos of competition starts and I see how good they really are.

These pre-game preparations are certainly important for warming up the arms and legs, getting the heart rate up and loosening up muscles. But maybe more imp...

The Playmaker's Advantage - Introduction

Here is an excerpt from the introduction to our new book, The Playmaker's Advantage, available now online or at your favorite local bookstore.

© 2018 by Leonard Zaichkowsky and Daniel Peterson

How hard could it be? I was an adult, a dad no less, with a reasonable understanding of the game despite never having played soccer. They were a pack of nine-year-olds, veterans of at least two to three seasons of battle on fields with reduced dimensions and shrunken goals. Besides the color of their j...