Performing Under Pressure

Psychological Strategies for Sporting Success

Josephine Perry

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000145106
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

Performing Under Pressure is an essential resource on improving sporting performance in high-pressure situations. Perry's work guides coaches and athletes through nine key elements of the sporting mindset to help athletes to perform at the highest standards, even under the most pressurized of situations.

This valuable read includes empirically-based advice on areas such as embracing competition; building confidence, concentration and focus; maintaining emotional control; learning from and coping with failure or injury; being braver; and being able to push harder. Perry also provides 64 strategies to support each sporting mindset, offering not just the evidence as to why they work but exactly how to implement them.

This book uniquely offers those supporting athletes a toolkit of sport psychology strategies and interventions in a way that is evidence-based, accessible and engaging, whether you are starting out studying sport psychology, on a sports science course, or are a coach of many years' standing, for both elite and amateur athletes.

Embracing competition

Focus on the challenge – not the trophy

The Latin root of ‘compete’ comes from ‘com’ and ‘petere’ meaning ‘together’ and ‘seeking’ suggesting that competing was not originally about beating others but working together to create something better. This is lost in most sport today where everything comes down to scores, results and trophies. And with those scores, results and trophies, comes lots and lots of pressure.

Some athletes love competing. But many don’t. Enjoying the sport and the training but fearing competition is remarkably common. The score, speed, distance or height achieved can feel very final, very judgemental and very personal. Whether it is a weekly football match in the local league or a once in a lifetime Ironman challenge, the build up to and time within competition can see common sense decision-making and rational thought processes go out of the window, replaced with an athlete who is a bundle of nerves; withdrawn, grumpy and nauseous.

In these cases athletes are mentally assessing the competition as a threat rather than a challenge.

The sweet spot of nerves: turning a threat into a challenge

On competition day the nerves that take up residence in an athlete’s stomach can feel consuming. They often talk about them as butterflies in their tummy but the more scientific term is ‘increased arousal’. Athletes benefit from this arousal as it influences their performance by physically affecting their muscle tension, fatigue and coordination, raises their heart rate, adrenaline and cortisol levels and changes their attention, concentration and visual search patterns. This arousal gets the athlete psyched up, focused on what they are about to do, makes them fully aware of their surroundings and gets adrenaline pumping round their body.

It makes them alert and primed for action. Studies have found that athletes without any nerves perform poorly. One study asked basketball players to think about their mortality to increase their nerves and it worked – it improved their results.¹ The key though is getting the balance right so they only have nerves, not anxiety. Where the pre-competition nerves start to harm the athlete is when they move too far towards anxiety, making their muscles tight and their coordination and concentration poorer. This anxiety can cause headaches, nausea, a strong negative inner voice and pushes us to focus on tasks that are not related to the competition ahead of us. None of these are helpful to performance.

We want our athletes to be talking about these nerves as being butterflies gently fluttering about with excitement and anticipation rather than butterflies armed and ready for a full-on battle. The ideal level of arousal is different for each of us. We all have our own zone of optimal functioning where we can extract our best performance but either side of that, with too few nerves or too much anxiety, we will not be able to perform so well. To find their zone athletes need to become more conscious of how they are feeling before each event and to reflect afterwards how this impacted their performance. Once they spot some positive correlations they can incorporate these into their preparations.

The nerves we feel come about because when we are about to compete we unconsciously evaluate the demands and stressors of that event. The transactional theory of stress² suggests that it is not the actual demands and stressors which cause problems, it is how we each appraise them and the decision we then make as to whether we have the resources (ability, previous experience, skills or support) to meet them.

There are things that some athletes may see as a destructive stressor which would not even occur to others. Trying to capture every single potential stressor would be too huge a task as there are just too many, with too many variations, for coaches and athletes to realistically evaluate their potential impact. A 2012 study identified 339 distinct stressors³ and many others will be unique to the individual athlete due to their own perceptions and expectations. Stressors can include the worry we will be judged, uncertainty about how we are doing or will do, the level of importance we or others have given to the competition ahead or when we have set high expectations for ourselves. Rather than trying to concentrate on every single stressor and counter it can be helpful for athletes to take an overarching approach to their competition and to any combination of stressors by focusing on preparation for each competition. Then, when they are evaluating the stressors they are able to appraise that they do have the resources to cope. This will put them into a challenge state; able to engage with the competition, focus well on their personal requirements and to employ positive and effective coping strategies for the elements which worry them. Instead of the nerves causing anxiety, they actually help the athlete to see that they really care about the challenge ahead and are excited about it.

If the athlete looks at the stressors, considers what they would need in place to deal with those stressors and appraises that they don’t have the resources to deal with what they are confronting, they will find themselves in a threat state. This makes them feel as if they are putting themselves in some type of danger⁴ and negatively impacts their sporting performance⁵ as they start to feel anxious and question their abilities.

A stressor may be identical for two people (or a whole team) but the skills or techniques or preparation of each individual will impact whether they see it as a threat or a challenge. Take two athletes sitting next to each other in the changing room of a local derby football match on an unusually hot day. The established player who has just been training hard overseas in a hot country, feels safe surrounded by friendly teammates and feels like an important player in the team and so is able to see that match as an exciting challenge to be involved with. Sitting next to them is the new member of the team who has heard lots of scary stories about the abuse given by their rivals’ fans, feels out of shape and is unprepared for the heat. They are going to interpret the demands of that match very differently. It is likely the new player sees the match as far more threatening. They are playing the same match, in the same venue, wearing the same kit, but yet one sees a threat and the other a challenge.

The interpretation we give though does not just come from skills, techniques and training. As shown in Figure 1.1 it is also based on our personality and mental approach. Studies have found that self-confidence, perceptions of control, levels of mental toughness or personality traits like extraversion, neuroticism and perfectionism can influence whether we are likely to perceive a situation as offering us a challenge or becoming a threat. Those habitually finding they have a threat mindset will often have lower self-belief, feel they lack control over their environment, focus on avoidance and find reasons not to compete. They will display poor focus, low self-confidence and no feelings of control. Their focus is on what can go wrong. The ‘challenge’ athletes are confident, approach their goals actively, feel in control of the situation⁶ and have higher mental toughness.⁷

Having sifted each situation through their personal filters the state the athlete finds themselves in will influence their emotions, behaviours and the quality and speed of their cognitive functioning.

Figure 1.1 How potential stressors can be interpreted

To move towards seeing each event as a challenge rather than a threat, athletes need to be using problem-focused coping (trying to resolve the problem itself) rather than the more negatively charged emotion-focused (such as venting) or avoidance (removing yourself mentally or physically) coping mechanisms that can become our go-to tools if we feel under threat. An athlete can also increase their perception of whether they can cope with the demands and stressors being thrown at them by building up their confidence, developing higher levels of mental toughness, aiming to be more goal-focused and being fully prepared. These tactics help them feel more in control. And control is something we will come back to regularly.

If the danger is physical, such as a steep and twisty downhill cycling or skiing course and the athlete feels they have weak handling skills then it is clear that additional physical and skill-driven preparation is required before the competition for the athlete to feel comfortable and able to enter a challenge state. More often though the danger is not a physical risk, but a threat to their ego, particularly those situations where athletes are worried they will be rejected by others or feel they have failed. They may fear being judged for poor performance, beaten by someone ranked lower than them or worried about missing publicly stated goals. In addition, the more an athlete’s self-identity is built around their sport, the more their ego may feel at risk.

When the anxiety doesn’t subside this sets off an uncontrollable feeling that overwhelms the athlete. Our brains were designed to cope with fairly rare, mainly physical threats which required physical responses, such as the release of chemicals that help us escape; cortisol and adrenaline. As humans though we are pretty poor at distinguishing a real physical threat from an ego threat so any strong physiological arousal will see our sympathetic nervous system send us into fight, flight or freeze mode. As society has developed and become mentally as well as physically competitive, threats arise more often and we are flooding our bodies with cortisol and adrenaline on a regular basis. Over time this has a negative impact on our health as high levels of cortisol suppress our immune system.

A great way to explain the process of what happens to us when under threat that has resonated very well with athletes is what Professor Steve Peters has called the Chimp Philosophy.⁸

Chimp philosophy

Chimp philosophy is a way of explaining the neuroscience behind our brain’s response to threat. Peters, in giving it a visual identity, helps athletes to develop a clear comprehension of what is going on in their brain and what each part does so they can become more aware and better able to make different choices.

Peters’ model highlights that we have three key areas in our brains which are used in emotional regulation and decision-making, all with different needs. They are labelled as the ‘Human brain’, the ‘Chimp brain’ and the ‘Computer brain’. In understanding the agenda and needs of each element we can work with them to develop more positive behaviours.

At our core we have a ‘Computer’. Sitting in the parietal region of our brain it behaves as a storage library for memories, values, automatic behaviours, experiences and habits so we can use them for future reference. Most of the time it works automatically using pre-programmed thoughts and behaviours (basically habits). This is essential as we are thought to need to make up to 35,000 decisions a day.

The more we can rely on our Computer the better we are able to perform as our Computer will make sub-conscious decisions helping us perform automatically. If we are able to let our Computer work away in the background then we are left with more mental bandwidth for other things; such as strategic thinking in a match or noticing what is going on around us in a competition. Trained behaviour helps actions become automatic. Athletes can think of it as: not doing something till they get it right. Doing it until they can’t get it wrong. When we do this and also find ways to reduce our opportunities to feel under threat then we have more mental bandwidth when we compete to focus on doing well.

When something threatens us though, either physically or mentally, our emotions get ignited and our Chimp leaps into action. Our Chimp sits in the limbic region of our brain. It can be thought of as our base driver; following instinct, jumping to conclusions, getting paranoid and irrational. It is emotional and impulsive with decisions made incredibly quickly based not on logic or facts but on thoughts and feelings. Under physical threat our Chimp is very helpful – it prompts us to escape or fight. Under ego-driven threat we are more likely to make poor decisions and go into a self-destruct mode.

Alongside our Chimp we also have our Human. This sits in our pre-frontal cortex and is the rational, analytical part of our brain which searches for facts and context in order to make logical decisions. When under threat the Human and Chimp work alongside each other and battle for dominance. The Chimp works five times faster than the Human though so will often win.

If we are able to teach athletes strategies t...