As a kid who grew up in Mason, Ohio, I have always eagerly and impatiently waited for the month of August to approach — a time of year when the Cincinnati suburb fills with energy and excitement as the world’s top tennis professionals flock to the area for the ATP World Tour event. I have had the privilege of watching these elite athletes perform on court for numerous years at the Western and Southern Open tournament, which is hosted within just a five-mile radius of my house. As a young, novice tennis player sitting in the stands, I remember watching in awe hoping to acquire their skills, strokes, and strategy — it was not until my more recent years that I realized it was actually their mentality that I should have been striving for.  

Every sport has its unique physical challenges, but there is one challenge that all athletes face: the mental game of sports. This sports psychology component is critical, and it became evident to me when I signed to play Division I college tennis. I had entered a playing field where everyone’s skill set had mostly leveled out and it was an athlete’s mentality that prevailed to be the differentiating factor. I learned that the mind could serve as a hindrance or a competitive edge and make the difference between a win and a loss.

Unfortunately, the mental aspect of sports is often overlooked by the technical, tactical, and physical side. In addition to the importance of training one’s body, it is essential to train one’s mind to obtain optimal performance. Achieving inner excellence is a process — building mental muscle, just like acquiring any other skill, requires time, effort, and commitment. The more an athlete works on their mental skills and inner processes, the more it will show in their outside performance, given that the way one thinks affects how one acts (Mack & Casstevens, 2002). Athletes can take their game to the next level by choice by learning to control and use their minds to their advantage rather than letting their minds control them and serve as a disadvantage. 

Understanding the importance of the mind as a weapon was not achieved solely on my own — it was catalyzed by my coaches and mentors who not only helped me rebound from defeat, but also provided me with the mental skills and strategies necessary to enhance my performance on a daily basis. Over the years, I have learned, developed, and applied several of these sport psychology skills and strategies in aims to optimize my athletic success and assist others. As a recently retired collegiate tennis player looking back at the mental skills I added to my repertoire, I found that “playing to progress” and “playing in the present” were vital mentalities to embrace in reaching peak performance. 

One of the most common questions an athlete comes across is “Did you win?” It is undeniable that we live in a society where athletes are defined by numbers — performance stats, rankings, wins, and losses. Societal pressure creates a tendency for athletes to be outcome-oriented rather than process-oriented. Outcome goals are the results people would like to achieve and are not in an individual’s control, while process goals are the action steps that are taken to help reach the desired result and are in an individual’s control (Taylor & Wilson, 2005). Outcome goals are important in recognizing one’s desired destination, but focusing on the processes day in and day out is what will lead to reaching that destination.   

Athletes are inclined to have an outcome focus over a process focus for two main reasons: people are wired to be discontent with the present and have a desire for a better future, and because results are easier to measure and evaluate (Taylor & Wilson, 2005). This human tendency in culmination with societal pressures leaves athletes susceptible to direct their focus on outcomes such as beating an opponent, winning a tournament, or attaining a ranking as opposed to focusing on the process that will get them there. Having an outcome focus interferes with reaching the outcome by diverting focus from the actions that will encourage peak performance and lead to the desired results. There is no denying that good results are necessary for being a successful athlete, but it is important to recognize that the best way to attain those results is by not focusing on results and focusing on the continuous process that will enable performance and progress instead. 

Novak Djokavic, a top-ranked ATP player stated, “We don’t know how much we can really achieve until we have this kind of mindset of wanting always to evolve and improve.” Players on the pro tour will rarely speak of their desire to win a tournament or attain a certain ranking, but rather, they talk about wanting to continuously progress and improve their game. This process-oriented over outcome-oriented mindset is what gives these professional athletes their best chance to reach their desired results. In order to achieve a process-oriented mentality that fosters the idea of “playing to progress,” it is important to embrace the mindset of “playing in the present.”

No one is usually harder on athletes than the athletes themselves — often dwelling on past failures and future results. It is easy to linger over a lost match, a missed shot, or a careless error and to feel pressure to please a coach or parent, earn a scholarship, or win a title. But sports psychology tells us that this is a detrimental mindset to performing one’s best. If a player comes to the court thinking “If I don’t win this match my coach is going to take me out of the lineup,” their focus isn’t on the task at hand, which is where it needs to be. 

The overwhelming thoughts revolving around past mistakes and future outcomes deter focus from the present moment. The present moment is where athletes perform their best because there is no pressure in the present moment. Pressure stems from anxieties about the future and remembered setbacks from the past (Mack & Casstevens, 2002). Athletes are also more likely to have optimal performance when they are in the present because they have a sense of control, whereas an athlete has no control over past or future occurrences.  Athletes often find it difficult to focus on the present due to ideals promoting perfectionism and high expectations (Taylor & Wilson, 2005). In order to counteract a poorly focused state, athletes should direct their minds towards one essential question: “What do I need to do now to perform my best?” 

When the Western and Southern Open tournament begins, the players aren’t at the Roger’s Cup tournament that just finished or at the US Open tournament which shortly proceeds, they are within the perimeters of the Lindahl Family Tennis Center in Mason, Ohio on their respective courts. These professional players often talk about not only playing it “one match a time,” but “one point at a time” — they are playing in the present. 

As I go back home to Mason this August and the countless years to come for the ATP event, I will continue to watch with the same excitement as I did growing up, but this time with an appreciation and awareness for the distinguishing factor that brought these world-renowned athletes to the center stage — not their strokes and skills, but their mentality. 

 

References

Mack, G., & Casstevens, D. (2002). Mind gym an athlete’s guide to inner excellence.

Lincolnwood, IL: Contemporary.

Taylor, J., & Wilson, G. (2005). Applying sport psychology: Four perspectives. Champaign, IL:

Human Kinetics.

 

 

 

 

As athletes, we’ve all experienced a high-pressure situation at some point in our careers. For some, the stress of the situation has no effect on their performance. But for most people, these situations can lead to athletes choking under the pressure.

One type of situation that specifically leads to athletes choking is when there is a significant amount of time leading up to a routine play, shot, or throw that gives the athlete time to think. It may be a birdie putt to stay alive in a golf match, a serve on game point, or maybe a game-winning field goal attempt after the other coach attempted to ice your kicker with a time out. 

Whatever the sport, there are always going to be situations where things slow down and you can start to think about the upcoming situation. 

Time to think, you may say, is a good thing to have. The pressure is on, and your performance in the upcoming moment matters a lot, so you want to make sure you get it right. However, modern sports psychology research has revealed that time to think is actually detrimental to optimal athletic performance in these situations, and here’s why. 

In Sian Beilock’s revolutionary book Choke, she outlines what her research on performing under pressure has revealed about humans in these high-stakes situations. In short, athletes choke because they try to over-control. And they over-control because they worry about a host of different things like how important the game is, what others will think, and even how it could go wrong. They worry about these things because their performance is either important to them or because something is at stake. 

As humans, this is natural. We are hardwired to be wary of threats in our environment, and a high-pressure situation is exactly that. Our worries trigger our conscious brain to take control of the muscle movement because we perceive the situation as highly important to us and therefore we want to exercise control. This is exactly why we choke.“Paralysis by analysis occurs when you attend too much to activities that normally operate outside conscious awareness,” or in other words, you attempt to consciously control a task that is best performed via subconscious processes. 

When we start to learn a new skill, we need to devote our brain’s working memory to the task. Our working memory can be thought of as the cognitive horsepower needed to carry out the action we are trying to learn. Taking golf, for example, a beginner golfer may hear from her instructor, “Okay good, now keep your shoulders square on the backswing” followed by “Okay you got that, now make sure you rotate your back foot as you swing through.” 

There are dozens or even hundreds of little pieces of skill that must be learned one at a time in order to perform the full movement correctly. Each additional aspect requires your working memory and conscious awareness to implement the new piece. 

As time (and practice) goes on, however, the movement becomes more grooved into our brain’s internal process for performing the skill and our working memory is no longer needed to execute it correctly. In sports psychology, we know that those complex motor skills are driven by procedural memory – knowledge that resides in brain networks such as the basal ganglia and motor systems. These regions operate outside of the prefrontal cortex, the conscious area of our brain that contains our working memory. This motor learning process explains why most adults do not need to think about how to walk or how to ride a bike, because they just do it. These skills are ingrained in our subconscious memory systems and do not require attention or working memory to perform. 

 So, what makes conscious control over learned movements detrimental to our performance? As Dr. Beilock explains, “people attempt to control execution in order to ensure success, but this can disrupt normally fluid movement patterns, making them more rigid, coupled together, and error-prone.” Increasing our awareness to the task at hand actually leads to the opposite intended effect — choking under pressure. 

There is a wealth of data to support this claim. Inside Beilock’s Human Performance Lab in Chicago, Illinois, she ran a study in 2002 assessing highly skilled soccer players’ dribbling performance under two conditions. In one, they were instructed to pay attention to the side of their foot that was making contact with the ball. Normally, a highly skilled soccer player would not be consciously aware of their foot as they dribble, so this instruction effectively caused the group to become aware of their movements. In the other, they were given no instruction at all. 

The result: When the players were told to be aware of their foot, they dribbled slower and made more errors than when they were given no instructions. As Beilock puts it, “paying attention to specific steps of what you are doing can be detrimental if, under normal conditions, these steps are not under your conscious control.” 

In a similar sports psychology study, Division I baseball players were instructed to be aware of whether their bat was moving upwards or downwards during batting practice in a hitting simulator. Much like the soccer players, they did significantly worse than when they were given no instruction at all. When the researchers looked back at the study, their analysis of swing biomechanics revealed that the timing of different swing components was off because of the players’ attention to their movements. 

So how can sports psychologists prevent athletes from choking under pressure? There are many strategies that athletes can implement to improve performance under stress. All of these outlined by Beilock have a common goal in mind: preventing the prefrontal cortex from regulating previously learned movements. The key for you as an individual is to find the one(s) that work best for you. Try some out, modify them, change them — do whatever you feel helps you to remain fluid in your movement. 

One of our favorite strategies at Premier Sport Psychology is to distract my attention away from trying to control my movements by focusing my consciousness on something productive or neutral. At the free throw line in basketball, I’ve had success by counting numbers in my head to allow my muscle movements to flow naturally. “8, 6(dribble), 9, 2 (spin), 7 (shot)!” 

For a soccer, softball, or baseball player, perhaps focusing your attention on the spot you want to place the ball would be the best way to distract you from thinking about your movements. Again, it’s important to find what works best for you.

Another tip Beilock offers is “Don’t slow down.” As Nike’s motto puts it, Just Do It. You’ve practiced the skill thousands of times, so there’s no need to think about how you’re doing it to get it right. Speeding up your approach to the movement can be very effective in eliminating that self-questioning. You can also get used to the stress of a high-pressure situation by actively trying to replicate that pressure in a practice setting. Similar to traditional exposure therapy, exposing yourself to stressful situations before they arise in competition increases your ability to deal with them. You can do this by self-imposing a certain negative outcome for a practice activity. For example, a tennis player may mandate that she has to run a one-court suicide if her next serve goes out in a training session. Of course, for this to work, you would need to consistently adhere to your training plan in order to truly feel the pressure. 

An alternative way to busy your prefrontal cortex during a movement is to come up with a short mantra that you can say to yourself as you perform the skill. If you’re a golfer, you may say “smooth” as you hit the ball, which allows your focus to be on the spoken words and not the mechanics of the stroke. 

A final, more general strategy sports psychologists recommend is to focus on the positives and let go of the negatives of your performance. A lot of times, the outcomes we think about as athletes are often exactly the outcomes that transpire. If you’re taking a penalty kick and think about all the different ways you could miss it instead of thinking about all the different ways you could make it, you’re most likely going to miss because that is the signal your brain is sending to your body. 

To reiterate, these strategies are helpful for situations in your sport when you’re performing a highly practiced skill and there are time and pressure. Keep in mind that these tips would most likely be detrimental to performance in live play, fast-paced situations where quick thinking is critically important to your success. Try out some of these strategies and see what works best for you! For further mindset training skills and sport psychology tips, check out mindsetprogram.com.

 

Citations:

Banjari, I., Vukoje, I., and Mandić, M. (2014). Brain food: How nutrition alters our mood and behaviour. Hrana u zdravlju i bolesti, 3.  

Beilock, S. L. (2010) Choke: What the secrets of the brain reveal about getting it right when you have it. New York, New York. Free Press.  

Beilock, S.L., Carr, T.H.,  MacMahon, C., Starkes, J.L. (2002). When paying attention becomes counterproductive: Impact of divided versus skill-focused attention of novice and experienced performance of sensorimotor skills. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 8, 6-16.

Gray, R. (2004). Attending to the execution of a complex sensorimotor skill: Expertise differences, choking, and slumps. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 10, 42-54

 

 

 

Premier Staff discussed staying in the present moment and building a support system in this article at Swimming World Magazine.

Four Tips From Sports Psychologists For Fall 2020