We all can think back to a time when we were practicing in the backyard, counting down the seconds to make the game-winning play “3, 2, 1, ERRR.” We come up short, but it’s okay because we just go back and try again, and again, and again, until finally “Oh my god! What a play! They win the championship!” These are the moments every athlete dreams of, but unfortunately they only come around so often, and being able to execute on them can completely transform a season, a program, or even a career.

If you have ever been in a high-pressure situation, you can attest to the fact that it feels NOTHING like it did in your backyard. Your heart is pounding, breathing is heavy, you have trouble focusing, the butterflies in your stomach are out of control, and skills you have performed thousands of times suddenly feel awkward. These are the effects of pressure, and is a signal that the outcome of this situation is important to you. Being able to mitigate these effects, and even use them to your advantage, is how athletes like Michael Jordan, Christiano Ronaldo, and Tom Brady are able to consistently execute during crunch time. Like anything else, this is a skill that can be trained, but in order to properly develop it you must first learn why athletes choke under pressure in the first place.

Why Athletes Choke Under Pressure

Broadly speaking, choking refers to “a failure to perform up to whatever level of skill and ability the person has at that time” and pressure has been defined as “any factor or combination of factors that increases the importance of performing well on a particular occasion”. With that being said, it is not the pressure itself that causes choking or the stress that it induces, but it is the way this stress is perceived, and how it affects our attentional/visuomotor system that does.

How Do You Perceive Stress – Challenge or Threat?

The most clutch athletes in the world are able to perceive pressure situations as a challenge, meaning they feel that they have prepared effectively and have sufficient resources to rise to the occasion. This has both a mental (psychological) and physiological effect.

• Mental – The individual is confident in their abilities

• Physiological – They have optimal levels of arousal that is felt as excitement and used as energy

If the stress is perceived as a threat, the individual does not feel that they are prepared with sufficient resources and evaluates the situation as a potential harm to their self-esteem. 

• Mental – The individual is worried about potentially making a mistake

• Physiological – They are overly aroused leading to feelings of anxiety

Effects on Attention/Visuomotor Control

How you perceive this pressure then influences where you place your attention, which plays a major role in performance. The negative effects of stress has an adverse effect on performance because it shifts attention away from task-relevant information that is critical for optimal performance, and then places it on task-irrelevant information (either internally or externally) that is unrelated to performance. When attention is shifted to irrelevant internal information, the individual can either be overly focused on their own psychological state (i.e. stuck in their head), or become overly conscious of their motor-movements (i.e. overthinking the skill) instead of trusting their unconscious “muscle memory.” In turn, they miss the critical task-relevant information going on around them (where the ball is, open space, defender, etc.). When attention is shifted to irrelevant external information, the individual becomes increasingly distractible by things like the crowd or the appearance of others, where again important task-relevant information is missed.

How Can I Improve My Performance Under Pressure?

So how do I develop this “clutch gene” that helps the best athletes in the world be focused, decisive, and composed under pressure? The first step is to understand how pressure affects performance (listed above) and learn how to leverage this to utilize its power. There’s a popular quote that says, “Nobody performs better under pressure; there are just some people who are able to mitigate its negative effects.” There is some truth to this, pressure has many debilitating effects, but when perceived as a challenge it can also be a great source of energy. This gives rise to the processing efficiency theory, which explains that while stress may lead to increased self-consciousness and impaired cognitive processing, this can be compensated for by a second stream of processes that leads to enhanced mental effort.  

The second step is NOT to try to get rid of or ignore the pressure, but it’s to expose yourself to it as much as possible so you can become ACCLIMATED to it. Michael Jordan has said that he felt nervous before basically every game, but since he saw it as a challenge and exposed himself to that environment so much, he was able to become comfortable with it. While the best way to do this is would be to experience hundreds of real high-pressure game situations, these only come around once in a blue moon, so finding ways to replicate this pressure in a training environment is key to being prepared when your time comes. Here are 3 training strategies that you can do by yourself to help you improve your performance under pressure:

1. Do Skill Training Under Fatigue: Ray Allen, the greatest 3-point shooter of all time with multiple iconic clutch shots, is known for doing this by running sprints before practicing his jump shot because it replicates the physiological symptoms that you experience when under pressure (heavy breathing, butterflies in your stomach, heavy limbs, etc.). By doing some sort of cardiovascular exercise to exhaustion (burpees, sprints, etc.) before skill training (shooting, dribbling, etc.) you can train your brain and body to become acclimated to having these feelings of stress while performing during crunch time.

2. Visualization or Mental Imagery: This technique involves imagining yourself performing your sport through your mind’s eye without actually performing any of the motor movements. This is widely adopted by some of the best athletes in the world, and can be useful for improving performance under pressure because:

   1. It allows you to imagine your performance in a stress-induced environment to acclimate to it.

   2. It can improve attention by activating overlapping brain regions (visual cortex & pre-frontal cortex).

   3. It can reduce anxiety and muscle tension.

3. Cognitive-Motor Training (CMT): This technique forces you to perceive an external stimulus (color, number, arrow, etc.), process that information to make a decision, and then react as quickly and efficiently as possible. This can help improve performance under pressure because:

   1. It forces you to focus your attention on external task-relevant information (and ignore task-irrelevant information).

   2. It induces a cognitive load into your training that replicates the decision-making process during games.

   3. The unpredictability and reactive nature of the training creates a sense of competition that can better prepare you for games.

   4. It allows you to practice adopting a challenge mindset when placed under stress.

You can perform cognitive-motor training (CMT) by yourself by using the free SwitchedOn® Training app (link below)!

Pressure is a part of sports that is never going to go away, and is what makes it so exciting in the first place! If you want to become great at your sport, one of the best things you can do is learn how to deal with pressure because every team needs a player who can execute when it's needed most.

References

• Baumeister, R. F. (1984). Choking under pressure: Self-consciousness and paradoxiacal effects of incentives on skillful performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 610-620.

• Beilock, S. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). On the fragility of skilled performance: What governs choking under pressure? Journal of Experiemental Psychology: General, 130, 701-725.

• Eysenck, M. W., Derakshan, N., Santos, R., & Calvo, M. G. (2007). Anxiety and cognitive performance: Attentional control theory. Emotion, 7, 336-353.

• Kosslyn, S. M., Thompson, W. L., & Ganis, G. (2006). The case for mental imagery. New York: Oxford University Press.

• Lewis, B. P., & Linder, D. E. (1997). Thinking about choking? Attentional processes and paradoxical performance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 937-944.

• Mullen, R., Hardy, L., & Tattersall, A. (2005). The effects of anxiety on motor performance: A test of the conscious processing hypothesis. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 27, 212-225.

• Oudejans R. D., & Pijpers, J. R. (2009). Training with anxiety has a positive effect on expert perceptual-motor performance under pressure. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62, 1631-1647.

• Thompson, W. L., Hsiao, Y., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2011). Dissociation between visual attention and visual mental imagery. Journal of Cognitive Psychology. 23, 256-263.

• Vine, J. S., Moore, J. L., & Wilson, R. M. (2016). An Integrative Framework of Stress, Attention, and Visuomotor Performance. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 64-78

• Weisinger, H. & Pawliw-Fry, J. P. (2015) Performing Under Pressure.

• Youngshin, K. (2008). The effect of improvisation-assisted desensitization, and music-related progressive muscle relaxation and imagery on reducing pianists’ music performance anxiety. Journal of Music Therapy, 2, 165-191.