As my teammate received the ball on the baseline, I started my run in. I’d found a gap in the key, and I stuck my hand out to the right, indicating that I could receive the ball on that side. I hoped to evade my defender, but didn’t have a solid plan for what would happen next.
I didn’t know what would happen when I moved into that open space. But that’s the thing, there’s always a chance that something great will happen. That everything aligns just right, I get the ball and make the shot.
My teammate saw me, bounce-passed it into me underneath the ring, and in one motion I twisted my body to put it up off the backboard. It went in — so satisfying! — and I jogged my way back down the court.
Until recently, I haven’t considered sport to be a creative pursuit. Sport has strict rules, it usually requires a lot of strength and athleticism, and there are winners and losers. These traits do not usually describe creativity. But recently, I’ve been thinking about how sports players practice creativity during training and games.
What is creativity?
I define creativity as filtering inputs through your experience, point of view, and skills, then sharing an output back with the world. Creativity is therefore always unique—as unique as each individual person.
While it’s simpler to think about creativity in terms of art, the definition can be applied to other activities.
In sports, one input might be watching a professional sportsperson do an amazing move or score a beautiful goal. Another might be getting an introduction to the sport through school — learning the rules, trying it out, and discovering that you really like it.
Another teammate has a signature move. When she has the ball, she becomes nearly unstoppable. Skillfully dribbling into the key, beating defenders, before arriving at the basket and laying up with a smooth underhand flick into the basket. In practice and warmup sessions, I’ve been practicing a similar move, trying to get a feel for the right power and weight to put behind the ball for it to drop in.
These inputs are then filtered through who you are as a sportsperson — the skills you’ve developed through training and playing games, for example. The players you like and want to emulate. The experiences you’ve gained from trying things out.
Inputs and identity come together to form an output, which is the expression of engaging in the sport. This could be while practicing or while playing — alone, against an opponent, or in a team.
Sportspeople are often defined by their outputs, because that’s what people usually see, on display in a game — broadcast on TV, or displayed on the local sports field on Saturday morning. But as with artists who are defined by their work hanging in the gallery, there is much work that goes into this behind the scenes.
There are, of course, key differences between sports and art. Art is most often an individual pursuit (but not always!), and sports is just as likely to be in a team situation as an individual one. Also, while art is not typically competitive, creativity in sports usually leads to scoring points, goals, or baskets — and hopefully, a win.
But like art, there’s an element of decision-making in sports output. Your experience, skills, and who you are all have an effect on the decisions that you make. While painting, you mixed too many colours together and they became muddy. So next time, you’ll try fewer colours or a different combination. On the court, you tried beating the opposition on their left side, but they got a hand in and stole the ball. That added to your bank of experience, so next time you might try a fake.
Practice, experiment, adjust.
4 ways sport is creative
It’s a practice
I’m not sure if there is a notion of “sports practice” like there is “arts practice” or “yoga practice.” But of course, there is an activity called “practice” in sports, which is training, practicing skills, getting game-like experience.
Practice in sports is distinct from the game, the competition, the “performance.” Where decisions must be made under pressure, and often against an opponent whose tactics you aren’t privy to.
Practice is where muscle memory is built, and where sportspeople learn to fail as much as they learn to succeed.
That was my first time doing that particular move in a league basketball game. The exact conditions hadn’t lined up like that before. But I made a gamble, I saw an opportunity. There were a hundred things that could have gone wrong. I had no idea whether it would work out. I just tried something, experimented, and once I had the ball my body took over. It was a kind of muscle memory.
The practice can be just as creative as the game, in its own right, but it’s also a place to take inputs and gain experience and skills that you will then express in the output of the game.
Mindfulness and flow
Much like with yoga, you can’t multitask while playing sport. It’s a mindful activity that encourages being in a state of flow, in which you focus energy on realistic goals that match your skills. In doing so, the player forgets everything else, and becomes single-minded.
Sport can offer a mental reset, clearing the head and taking a break from the work mind so fresh ideas and energy can come in. For instance, as this article discusses, the flow of surfing not only helps surfers get into a creative mind, but also practice overcoming fears, and build respect for nature.
Improvisation
Like in art, sports requires improvisation. But that improvisation doesn’t come out of nowhere. Sportspeople, like artists, have built a foundation of skills and experience to draw from. There are boundaries, rules within which the improvisation takes place in order to be easier (more top of mind) and more successful. Creativity flourishes with constraints, and this is true in arts as well as in sports.
Parkour gives an opportunity to practice agility and flexibility. When jumping across the top of a building, the plan often has to change mid-air. This spirit of experimentation helps promote a mindset of doing things differently, even when not playing sport.
Decision-making
In this article, Peter Joffe uses an analogy of building blocks to discuss the necessity of decision-making practice in sports training. Decision-making involves using pre-existing “building material” in certain ways. In sports, it’s important to be unpredictable in order to beat the opponent. Otherwise, opponents may anticipate decisions and be in an easier position to block them.
Creativity, then, comes from using the existing bricks and building blocks in certain ways.
Sports is creative
I now consider sports to be a creative activity. Creativity means that inputs are filtered through a person’s unique combination of experiences, skills, and personality, then expressed into the world. And there are many ways sportspeople can express their creativity, both in practice and in the game.
For my basketball creativity, I’d watched other players do similar moves, and I’d worked on my skills until I could make the basket in training more than half the time. Then, I had an opportunity to try it out in a game. No matter whether the ball dropped or not, the experience added to my bank of basketball experience, increasing my confidence for the next opportunity.
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