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Sport Psychology Blog

CHoke on this...

31/1/2017

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Many of you may have watched or heard about Jordan Spieth’s collapse at the Masters golf tournament last year. Spieth was on target to win with a 5 shot lead with 9 holes to play. This meant all he had to do was play the same golf he’d played for the last three days and stay consistent on the way back in. Nothing special. He even could have made a few bogies and been fine. What eventually happened was an illustration of how important the mental aspect of sport is and how crucial a focused mind is, particularly in sports like golf. Spieth hit a seven on a par three which, even at a hard course like Augusta, was pretty extraordinary. Extraordinarily bad for a player of his quality.
So what happens to the human brain under pressure and why do people have a tendency to fail when it matters most?
Performance failure under pressure, or choking as its often called, can happen in any situation both on the sports field and off it. It could be that kick to win the match in the dying seconds of a rugby game or a three foot putt to win the Masters. Likewise it can happen in other parts of life, that important driving test, the crucial job interview or that vital sales pitch. Whatever it is, the situation obviously involves pressure because the outcome is highly valued and usually the cost of failure is significant.
So how come we have a brain so developed but yet has a tendency to let us down when it matters most? Like anything to do with the human brain there is no easy answer, but psychology researchers have developed several theories that help make sense of it all. As Sian Beilock, one of the leading researchers on choking under pressure puts it: We choke because we worry. Worrying about the outcome is thought to act as a distraction so that our skill execution and decision making under pressure is affected. This worry, might be accompanied by significant physiological symptoms of anxiety (think sweaty palms, racing heart, etc). All these take the athlete away from the moment they are in, and often their attention might be directed into controlling that anxiety or worry – rather than executing the particular skill or making the right decision! When this is happening, the ability to make a correct decision is likely to be affected.
The other side of it, which stems from excess worry, is the tendency for us to focus too much on what we are doing – especially when the skill is already a well-learned skill. As we learn a skill, it becomes automatic i.e. we do it without thinking about it while we do it: Have a think about how you tie your shoelaces, drive a car or even how you walk. This type of memory is called procedural memory, its implicit, which means we don’t have to monitor it at all, we just do it.
Because the execution of a skill is so important under high amounts of perceived pressure, the worry of failure may try force us to try and control and monitor our skill execution. We go back to explicitly monitoring how we do things and direct our focus toward executing a skill which normally we’d do on auto pilot. To put it simply it is, as they say: “paralysis by analysis.” The explicit monitoring happens in the pre-frontal cortex and this monitoring and conscious processing of a skill that is firmly locked in our procedural memory creates havoc with the execution.
Think about tying your shoelaces again, and now imagine yourself in a shoelace tying competition and having to do it with hundreds of people watching your technique. You could bet that some would slip up, freeze or take a lot longer than normal in that situation. Suddenly you start to think about how your fingers are moving, how big a loop to make and where you need to thread each bow.
The short golf putt is always a good example of a skill that golfers should be able to do without thinking. Ernie Els may have had too much self-focus thoughts as he messed up several incredibly short putts on the first hole at Augusta.  This scenario also offers a paradox for the “process focus” talk we hear a lot these days. Focusing on the process is definitely important, but TOO much focus on the process, i.e. if we are over focusing on our technique of executing a relatively simple skill that we could normally do when drunk or half asleep, then we are in for trouble.  As the late Yogi Berra, a baseball player famous for his bizarre and often amusing “yogi-isms” puts it: “ How can you think and hit at the same time?” Maybe he was on to something if what he meant was that we can’t think about hitting and hit at the same time?
So although this is by no means the whole story in regard to choking under pressure, what we can learn from this is that when we worry we have a tendency to want to exert even more control over our performance and this will cause problems when performing something already locked into our procedural memory.
So if you’re a basketball player on the free-throw line, a golfer lining up that crucial putt or even if you’re just someone who’s entered into an annual shoelace tying competition….what does this mean for you? One technique could be to actually distract the mind and the pre-frontal cortex, this might be singing a song in your head, reciting a poem or doing something that occupies your conscious thoughts. Another is to test yourself under stress. Exposing yourself to a pressure situation might decrease your anxiety reaction to it in the future, but most importantly, it’ll give you the chance to reflect on it, and learn about yourself. In saying this, everyone is different, which is why working with a qualified practitioner at FlowSport can help people overcome these embarrassing failures over time!  
And lastly, for the coach, parent or support team…. advice such as “focus on your technique” and “Stay process-orientated” although well intentioned might not be the most beneficial at crucial times. I remember coaching kids rugby and during a potential match-winning conversion attempt, hearing parents on the sideline telling kids to “slow down and think about it!” Again, this is well-intentioned, but over thinking it can actually create even more problems! 
The best advice might be to emphasise trust, they need to trust their ability to execute the skill and let the execution take care of itself. ​
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Achieving your goals

4/1/2017

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January is often time for reflection and refocus. But if you’ve been through a few January’s in your life time you’ve probably begun to understand that making significant changes and achieving big goals is not as easy as it sounds when we initially make those ambitious New Year Resolutions. Whether it’s some of the typical: losing weight, giving up smoking, cutting the booze or anything really. People are still wired to fall back into old habits – and often it’s sooner rather than later. January is always busy in the gym, but February not so much! That’s because there is a lot of BS around goal setting. Partly due to the misleading and harmful positive psychology movement that surrounds us.

What we tend to do is to fantasize and dream about what it would be like to achieve a goal. We do this and it makes us feel good about it. We feel like we can do it! and we like ourselves for wanting to do it! We believe in ourselves! We are radiating positivity and everything is possible  Happy Days. ​But…If this approach worked then everybody would be achieving everything they ever wanted. When we do this we create an illusion that achieving this goal will be easy. More importantly we almost kid ourselves into thinking that it’s going to feel good, it’s going to make us feel good the whole time and that as long as we focus on what we desire, we will get it. In doing this, we neglect to create a strategy for the hard times. The times when our willpower is tested, our emotions are unstable or our stress levels are through the roof. ​Think about the great Sir Edmund Hillary who was the first to climb Mount Everest. That was a monumental goal, and those the sorts of goals we love to help people with at FlowSport! But he didn’t achieve this goal by just looking at the top and hoping to get there. He got there by focusing intently on each step, or crevice, or ice cliff in front of him. The overall goal, the dream goal – of getting to the top – was no doubt on his mind but it didn’t distract him from the task at hand.  I am sure when there were obstacles or tough periods, he didn’t keep looking at the top and longing to get there, he focused on the DIRECTION he needed to go and he made the goal the immediate path in front of him.

If we measure our success at the end, and only on that lofty, huge, dream goal – our Everest, we are not going to gain much confidence until we achieve it, and if it is easy to achieve then it’s probably not a great goal! After all, we want to challenge ourselves because that is how we grow and get better. So how do we measure our success? We need to set ourselves small steps/targets that focus on the DIRECTION not on the DESTINATION. We have lot’s of ways to determine the right direction for you to head in and you’ll see in our online course we have a whole week’s worth of material to help you identify daily actions in the direction of you goals. Also of HUGE importance. We need to talk about when we’re not going to be feeling good, Those times when we’re going to struggle. All the stresses and anxieties that might come up. All the excuses and procrastinations that might arise. Good goal setters acknowledge all of these things, they write down the obstacles that they are going to need to overcome. Both external and internal. So, we could go on and on about goal setting theory all day. But if you have any questions, the best thing to do is email us back and we’d be happy to help.

Below are some steps to help your goal setting process for 2017!!!

The 6 goal setting steps that will ensure that you head in the right direction

1. Write down your ultimate goal for this year

2. Write down the reason this is important to you, why you value this…(if you don’t – then go back to step one) 

3. Write down the reasons why this is going to be difficult, what are the big obstacles for you? Remember, you’re the expert on yourself here! You can divide this list into INTERNAL and EXTERNAL. Internal is all the emotional stuff, the stress, anxiety etc. External is all the stuff outside of your own head – obstacles created by the world around you.

4. Write down the difficult thoughts (e.g. self-doubts, procrastination, negative thinking) and the difficult emotions (e.g loneliness, sadness, stress, anxiety, fear etc) that you will have to experience if you pursue this goal. It is a myth that you will feel good all the time!

5. Write down a plan to take daily, weekly and monthly steps towards your target. Remember this is where you plan the focus on the next moment rather than continuing to think about the big dream.

6. Reflect and reassess regularly.  Be Flexible and willing to change tack, if that’s needed. Most important when reflecting: take note of your successes. Nothing will build confidence more than you achieving the small steps towards your big goals and being aware of success and confidence you’re heading in the right direction makes a big difference.



Enjoy smashing your goals and have a kickass 2017! 

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    Zane Winslade

    Mental Performance Coach
    FlowSport 

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