We face pressure in our daily lives in various areas. It happens at work, on the road, in school, from family members and friends.
Sporting athletes are under immense pressure going into competition or during the event itself. When performing under pressure some athletes are crushed, while others rise to the challenge.
Every athlete feels some pressure when performing, the less prepared you are, the more pressure you’re going to feel. No athlete, just like the regular person, is immune to pressure. Their heart rate rises, they breathe quicker, depending on how well prepared and confident they are pressure can make them perform better or worse.
Pressure creates tension and can cause an athlete to panic, when athletes panic they want to get their task over and done with as quickly as they can, the more you rush the more mistakes you’ll make, mistakes lead to more pressure, which leads to more panic, more mistakes, more pressure and more panicking.
When we’re under pressure we can make poor judgement calls, make mistakes and the game plan gets thrown out the window. When under pressure most athletes perform below their capabilities, while others handle it well and seem to thrive on pressure. Very few athletes think about how they’re going to handle high-pressure situations until it’s too late and they’re in the thick of it. Most will simply model what they’ve noticed others doing and hope it works, sometimes it does, most often it doesn’t.
The term ‘choke’ is commonly used to describe when an athlete’s performance suffers greatly under pressure, their well-planned strategy goes out the door, they struggle to do things they’ve practised hundreds or thousands of times before, sometimes their mind just goes blank when they most need to think on their feet.
One way to avoid choking is to tell yourself you are in full control. No matter what the context, people who believe they have the ability to influence what happens to them (called “control beliefs”) tend to perform better at a given task. In a study in which football players were asked to take penalty kicks, participants with high control beliefs about their ability to score managed to aim their shots more optimally than those with low control beliefs.
It might seem simplistic to say that changing your outlook will change your performance, but it’s a well-known psychological technique called cognitive reframing, and it’s been shown to be effective in reducing emotions like anxiety or frustration that lead to choking, says psychologist Marc Jones, a professor at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK.
Changing the way you talk to yourself can change your performance as well. Ever noticed tennis players muttering to themselves before serving, or a batsman also talking to himself while awaiting the bowler's delivery?
Researchers have hypothesised that negative internal thoughts, like a fear of losing or deep shame, can provoke physiological responses in the body: an increase in muscle tension, respiration, and heart rate. These things, in turn, lead to performance-killing symptoms like loss of muscle coordination, loss of fine motor skills, and fatigue.
The first time Michael Jordan reached the NBA Finals, his nerves got the better of him.“We came into the first game as nervous as can be, and we lost the first game,” said Phil Jackson, of the 1991 Finals.
Jackson told ESPN that Jordan had allowed his adrenalin and the pressure he felt to exhaust him. Jordan drove into double and triple-teams and failed to pass the ball to open players. But a simple question from Jackson—“Who’s open?”— prompted Jordan to revert to the routines the Bulls had relied on to make it to the Finals.
Jordan started sharing the ball and took the game moment-by-moment.
“I would tell players to relax and never think about what’s at stake,” said Jordan. “If you start to think about who is going to win the championship, you’ve lost your focus.” His team went on to win the 1991 NBA Finals—their first of six titles spread throughout the ’90s.
So you see it happens to the best of them but there are little steps that we can take to avoid "choking".
Pressure is a word that is often regularly misused in our vocabulary. Even sport psychologists and coaches regularly make the mistake of informing athletes about “managing pressure”, when pressure is nothing more than a product of our imagination and a self-imposed experience that we create for ourselves (Beilock, 2010).
If an athlete is experiencing ‘pressure’, it is more than likely because we perceive that there are expectations placed upon us. However, similar to pressure, expectations are imaginary projections into the future.
"Pressure does buss pipe," they say, but remember you can control that pressure. The other side of pressure is that it keeps you paying attention, it keeps you sharp. If we feel too little pressure we can lose focus and go through the motions. If we’re feeling too much pressure then we can tense up and overtry. Recognise that pressure can be positive if you are able to control it.
Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Media. He was a FIFA Media Officer at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FIFA U-20 World Cup in Turkey. The views expressed are solely his and not a representation of any organisation. shaunfuentes@yahoo.com
