BlogPosts
ICPA ’26 Abstract: Critical Fluctuations as an Early Warning Signal for Injuries in Baseball Pitchers
A preview of some exciting new research I will be presenting at #ICPA26 in a couple of weeks. https://icpa2026omaha.com/**Please reach out if you would like more details Critical Fluctuations as an Early Warning Signal for Injuries in Baseball Pitchers Rob Gray Introduction: Arm injuries in pitchers continue to be a serious problem in professional baseball1….
Read More
Practicing the “Wrong Way” Reduces Anxiety
Following up on my new paper that just came out today, showing the skill acquisition/performance benefits of deliberating practicing undesired outcomes, I wanted to share some data I collected that I did not include in the paper. For those that have not read it, in Experiment 2 of this study I compared baseball batting performance…
Read More
Is the batter’s eye in Seattle an Ames room? A perceptual analysis of the challenge of hitting in T-Mobile park
As documented in this great recent article by Mike Petriello, Seattle’s T Mobile Park is the most difficult place to hit in all of baseball. In fact, it is now right up there with Colorado as the most extreme ballpark in MLB – as much as Coors field’s altitude and large dimensions help hitters, T…
Read More
Practicing in Groups with Athletes with Different Individual Constraints & Action Capacities
This is an issue I have been asked a lot about lately. As I have emphasized in both of my books, individualized coaching is one of the central tenets of the ecological approach to skill. We need to consider an individual athlete’s organismic constraints and intrinsic dynamics. We need to create affordances in the practice…
Read More
Happy Halloween
Digging up a couple old scary episodes! 13A – Halloween Special: Superstitious Rituals in SportsHow prevalent are superstitious rituals in sports e.g., always wearing the same socks, eating the same meal or listening to the same music on game day? Do they serve actually serve a purpose? 39A – Halloween Special II: Effects of Fear…
Read More
NEW Paper: “Enskilment: an Ecological-Anthropological Worldview of Skill, Learning and Education in Sport”
Was very excited to be one of the co-authors on this new paper with Carl Woods, Keith Davids & James Rudd Open Access copy available here: https://sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40798-021-00326-6
Read More