Domino Effect in Sport

Many believe in the ‘domino effect’ as a natural force in life and subsequently, sport. It’s often referred to as the concept of ‘momentum’. The domino effect is best explained as looking at life, or sport, as a series of somehow connected events or situations. When one domino is pushed, the others all fall until the inevitable end result occurs and a thousand dominos are all lying flat.

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Why it’s more helpful to believe that moments are unconnected.

Many believe in the ‘domino effect’ as a natural force in life and subsequently, sport. It’s often referred to as the concept of ‘momentum’. The domino effect is best explained as looking at life, or sport, as a series of somehow connected events or situations. When one domino is pushed, the others all fall until the inevitable end result occurs and a thousand dominos are all lying flat.

‘Momentum’ is created in this concept – when we do one good act or make one successful play, it naturally leads to another and another and soon enough the game is won. This belief in the domino effect and momentum can no doubt be helpful. It can have us believe that our team is on a roll and success is just a matter of time. It can also have the complete opposite effect.

Here’s a recent video I recorded on this topic:

Believing in momentum makes it almost impossible to arrest a poor start or to quickly recover from a mistake. Belief in the domino effect can mean a team turns up feeling as though a great start is all that’s required to secure a win, or worse, believing that a great week of practice or previous success over an opposition, will naturally lead to today’s success. Either way, the domino effect and belief in momentum are just beliefs, neither true nor false, just beliefs. The only important question is whether believing in these two concepts is going to help you or hurt you. My personal belief is that it’s far healthier for our performance NOT to believe in the domino effect or momentum concept.

 

My belief is that we must push each individual domino over with intentional effort and focused technical execution. The next successful event is not going to happen because we just had a successful event now. We have to consciously recreate our success, one domino at a time. It also means that a one poor event does not signal the onset of other events with poor outcomes. There is no relationship between what just happened and what may happen.

A game of sport may contain a thousand small events which all require our attention and execution for the end result to be the result we want. When I rowed, the challenge was to lose yourself in the act of ‘now’. One stroke at a time. In every other sport, the challenge is the same. The best races I had are very detailed in my mind. I can recall individual moments, what I did to create a great outcome. This is because my attention was tuned to what I was doing in every moment.

Being present in every moment also gave me the opportunity to correct any errors, big or small, the instant that they occurred. I could recover and the crew could move on to the next successful stroke. As a result of my belief that each moment is unconnected, I didn’t dwell on mistakes, I didn’t miss one moment because I was dwelling on the previous. Nor did I just hope that the next event or domino would naturally fall and lead to the next stroke being as great as the previous stroke.

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Bo Hanson

Senior Consultant & Director

Bo Hanson’s career within the sport and the business sector spans over 25 years, delivering leadership, management, and coach development. In addition to his own athletic career comprising of four Olympic appearances and including three Olympic medals, Bo has worked for many years with coaches and athletes from over 40 different sports across the globe. Bo was also the winner of the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) 2023 Award for L&D Professional of the Year, for his dedication to L&D and transformational work across various industries.

After a successful career in sport including four Olympics and three Olympic Medals, Bo co-founded and developed Athlete Assessments in 2007. Bo now focuses on working with clients to achieve their own success on and off ‘the field’ and has attained an unmatched track-record in doing exactly this.

Headshot Bo Hanson
BoRowing-Atlanta Olympics Bronze Medal Presentation

Now, watch us interrupt him for a round of quick fire questions.