– It’s a crisis! The reactions have come as a shot from the hip to Ola Lunde for several decades. He has seen everything; shooting at the wrong target, missing all shots and tears when it fails completely. – Suddenly it hits them. Then they are completely helpless, says Lunde. Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD / BILDBYRÅN Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen / NTB Photo: TOBIAS SCHWARZ / AFP Close to the drama over several decades, news’s stand-in expert has understood one thing. A lot sits between the ears. Often, those who are affected are unable to explain what happened to them. After all, they have practiced for thousands of hours. Is the explanation for this mystery found in the brain? Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB DEMANDING TASK – The pressure builds during a competition, explains Johannes Thingnes Bø (29). For the great loner and those chasing behind, five shots can separate success and failure every time they draw their weapon. Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD / BILDBYRÅN Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD / BILDBYRÅN You can see it for yourself: You can have a heart rate of around 170 when you slide in to shoot. Within a few seconds, you will gain control over your pulse, muscle tremors, breathing, hormones and substances that pump through your body. When everything is to be decided, from a distance of 50 metres, in a standing position, you must hit within an area of 11.5 centimetres. One part of the human body can prepare you for this task. It’s the brain. Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB This lump on the inside of our head can weigh up to 1.5 kilos. The interaction between 100 billion nerve cells in the brain can create masterpieces. But the brain can also mean trouble. The pressure in a relay is considered the toughest. You can destroy others. THE COLLAPSE – Perhaps the biggest challenge is trying to think about something completely different, says Thingnes Bø. He himself “disrupts” his head by thinking about one and one of the various tasks he has to go through before he has to shoot. The last shooting is the toughest. Much of the power has been used up. The thought of gold creeps up. Then the world’s best have also missed out completely. What went wrong? “Full of self-confidence” actually repeats itself in descriptions of the 29-year-old. In this WC race he also led by one minute and already had gold from the day before in his bag. Then came a boom, another boom and another boom. The gold was gone. – I don’t know if I could have adjusted my head or mindset in a different way, says Thingnes Bø four years later. Although he had the others on the fork in the joint start, he remembers it as a bad period. Now he has it in the back of his mind that there is always a danger that another collapse could happen. He is superior at the moment. Still, he knows he can suddenly ruin races with a series of penalty laps. Photo: LISA LEUTNER / Reuters Photo: LISA LEUTNER / Reuters – It’s a phenomenon. We are never safe, says Thingnes Bø. He received proof of this this week. Then he almost managed to destroy the pairs relay. After a series of bombings, he admitted that he was affected by stress. Nevertheless, he eventually secured another gold. To understand why the father lies, one must understand how the brain works. HJERNEN – There are many reasons for a collapse, says Tomas Myklebust. What happens in the brain is home ground for the specialist in clinical neuropsychology. – The good biathletes are extra good at using a special part of the brain, he explains. It is the boss in the brain he is referring to. It enables us to focus and do things in order. But the abilities in the front part of the brain, the so-called frontal lobe, must be trained. So what actually happens before the shot goes off? The frontal lobe takes control of breathing and body. It also focuses on the shooting. Signals are sent to an area that plans which other parts of the brain need to be involved. A center in the brain, the motor cortex, then converts the brain signals into a movement. The signals are sent out through the nerves to the muscles. This causes the index finger to pull the trigger. – If you compare them with the normal population, the biathletes are probably extremely good at controlling stress during certain exercises, says Myklebust. – But it is not certain that they are good at this in general in life, he adds. Nevertheless, the brain is affected more than previously thought. Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD / BILDBYRÅN Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD / BILDBYRÅN It turns out that an area in the brain can actually increase in size, as a result of spending a lot of time practicing something. And the biathletes’ ability to use their brains correctly can also be measured. ELECTRICAL ACTIVITY – I have zero clue. I just shoot, says Sturla Holm Lægreid (25). Two years ago, he became the new shooting star. Into his new existence at the top, he took meditation with him. It is something he still believes gives the desired effect. But how his brain actually works during shooting, he has no idea. Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD / BILDBYRÅN Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD / BILDBYRÅN – What I try to do when I shoot is to turn off my brain and not think, says Lægreid. Harri Luchsinger saw differences in how the brain works in practice, when he examined the brain activity of a group of biathletes and measured it against cross-country skiers, during training and shooting. Among other things, he fixed a cap with electrodes on the athletes’ heads. 32 points on the head recorded electrical activity in the brain. Then it was seen in particular how the activity in the front part of their brains changed during shooting. – We were able to measure a difference, says Luchsinger. Now he is news’s biathlon expert, but during the Olympics last winter, he was development manager at the Biathlon Union. Luchsinger’s measurements showed that the biathletes were able to focus better on what they were supposed to do than the cross-country skiers. The electrical activity in the front part of the brain was of a different caliber. Something was probably automated among the biathletes. Long-term experience with shooting produced an effect in the brain. Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB – It was also interesting that the activity in the frontal lobe of the brain did not decrease after hard intervals on the treadmill, says the sports researcher. The study thus indicated that neither the cross-country runners’ nor the biathletes’ ability to focus was greatly affected by tough physical stress. At the same time, he still believes there are gaps in our knowledge of the interaction between brain and body. It is when the pressure is greatest that this interaction is put to the ultimate test. EXHIBITION – When shooting standing it’s like you have a parasite in your head. Then you make the wrong decision, says Norway’s shooting coach Siegfried Mazet, Photo: THOMAS BACHUN / GEPA PICTURES The Frenchman has trained the sport’s greatest champions. He emphasizes that it is on the last shooting that you “get it” or not. The contrasts can be huge, especially on the last shot. It took Tarjei Bø (34) 7.5 seconds to get the five flashes down, during the very last World Cup shooting ten years ago. Rival Martin Fourcade was sent out of the gold match on the very last shot. In the book “Norske vinnerskaller”, Bø put into words what he thought during the gold race. He was going to show everyone, including the audience, how raw he could be at shooting. – I knew I had to shoot faster and fill all the flashes, to beat the others, because of the problems, says Bø. The problems were due to a serious twar bacteria before the season. However, the long break meant that he got a lot of training in rapid shooting. It meant everything that day. – Self-confidence is alpha and omega, he states. Doubt, on the other hand, is the threat. PSYCHE 12-13 seconds is the maximum time a human can shut out all other disturbances. That’s what Anders Meland says. The expert in sports psychology refers to findings in a recognized report from Microsoft. It looked at trends and how ordinary people are affected by hectic digital lives. Meland points out that the brain during shooting therefore becomes vulnerable to disturbances every ten seconds. Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD / BILDBYRÅN Photo: MATHIAS BERGELD / BILDBYRÅN – It is a vulnerable system in the first place. That’s why it’s fun when people are involved, says Meland. He has worked with, among other things, fighter pilots in the air force for a number of years. Now Norway’s Sports Academy, Olympiatoppen and the Oil Fund benefit from his experience. – The vast majority of golds are won with an extremely high number of emotions and thoughts. It’s about dealing with oneself with a lot of thoughts and disturbances, says Meland. Our attention is controlled by two systems. One, called the blue system, has the ability to keep thoughts and distractions at bay. It makes you stay focused on what you need to do. The other, called the red system, consists of a radar that is screwed on all the time. It picks up everything around us, including our thoughts. But a “third” system may now be about to be discovered by researchers. – I think we are on the track of two ways of using the blue system. Staying focused, without putting effort into doing it, can be a better solution over time, says Meland. They have tested it in studies on fighter pilots. – But in sports we have only tested this on individual athletes, says Meland. Photo: Matthias Schrader / AP Photo: Matthias Schrader / AP He has, among other things, worked with the biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid, to teach him methods outside the stand. – We spend a long time with the athletes to make them understand that thoughts will come under pressure. Then you have to have strategies to deal with them, says Meland. He points out that the more pressure the athletes experience, the more powerful the radar becomes. Those who have realized this and just keep shooting have an advantage. – Those who are very good at the blue system manage to mute the radar for a period when they are concentrating on something. Some can be absorbed by what they are doing and not be affected by anyone around them, says Meland. But planning that you will not be disturbed is considered a bad strategy. It is risky. Photo: THOMAS BACHUN / GEPA PICTURES Photo: THOMAS BACHUN / GEPA PICTURES To bring out the feeling that it is only you and the blinker that is emerging against a blurred background, is the most energy-demanding exercise the brain performs. When the brain shuts out everything else, there is little room for anything else. – If you let go of thoughts that disturb this, the blink can become almost blurry, says Meland. Then the fear center in the brain can also take over control. DESPAIR Sometimes she feels the pressure on her whole body. – There is no doubt that what happens between the ears can affect how you feel in your body, says Ingrid Landmark Tandrevold (26). Photo: LISA LEUTNER / Reuters Photo: LISA LEUTNER / Reuters One can still wonder if she has become as despondent as her Swedish competitor. Mona Brorsson (32) heard the cheers from the home crowd, where she entered the final shooting alone. She had never been on the podium before, but this March day four years ago she was going to shoot for WC gold. – The thoughts started racing, Brorsson explained to Expressen after the race. She thought of her family and friends in the stands. Thoughts revolved around everything but the shooting. It was simply impossible to stop it. – Ugh, Lunde stated and thought he saw a tear already in the stands. Four black flashes remained. The problem often comes from deep within the brain when it hits for driven competitive people. Where does the threat come from? Well protected in the brain is the small area called Amygdala. It can create so much unrest and anxiety that it takes over the body. Actually, it should signal that something is dangerous. After all, they have practiced this so much that the shooting itself is not really dangerous. Still, everything rational sometimes just has to give up. – Fear and emotions are the biggest threat to good performance, at least in exercises such as shooting where you have to be calm and focused, says Myklebust. There are, however, some people who are completely adamant about shutting everything out and suffocating their fear. THE RAWEST One in particular in the Norwegian team is immediately singled out. Sturla Holm Lægreid’s weapon is to imagine that ten different things can happen in advance. This should ensure that he is not put out of anything. – His capacity to reject stress and what is happening around him is the best. Johannes is good, but the best for this is Sturla, says shooting coach Mazet. Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB Photo: Javad Parsa / NTB Lægreid himself believes that it becomes much easier when you manage to shut out your thoughts. That you only think about hitting the mark. – But if you get those thoughts, biathlon becomes extremely difficult, says Lægreid.
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The brain mystery – what can explain a collapse – news Sport – Sports news, results and broadcasting schedule
