Research teams such as Associate Professor Ken Takiyama and Researcher Keishi Ota of the Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have found that playing against weak opponents in sports can improve athletic performance.The research team emphasizes that it is important to incorporate a match against a weak opponent at the stage of preparing a practice plan.
According to Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, in order to improve athletic performance in sports, it is essential to take a play and strategy that is commensurate with one's ability.The research team focused on the possibility of exploring exercise strategies while competing with others, and quantified where the subjects were aiming by referring to cases of aiming at the line or post in tennis or soccer.
As a result, there were many cases in which the risk of failure was high when the opponent was strong or when practicing alone.On the contrary, when the opponent was weak, such a tendency did not appear, and it turned out that he was constructing a strategy commensurate with his athletic ability.
A computer simulation of the winning percentage against the opponent also revealed that the strategy taken when the opponent was weak was a measure to maximize the winning percentage.
It is known that human behavioral characteristics exceed one's own ability and prefer strategies with a high risk of failure, but the research team has a high-risk strategy that is difficult to modify when practicing alone. I think it will be possible to fix it by playing against a weak opponent.
Paper information:[Scientific Reports] Optimizing motor decision-making through competition with opponents
