8 Mental Skills to Prevent Athletes from Choking Under Pressure
To prevent choking under pressure, athletes must train 8 mental skills. These mental skills are: 1) acceptance, 2) mindfulness, 3) reframing, 4) visualization, 5) focus, 6) neutral thinking, 7) inhibitory control, and 8) goal orientation.
1) Acceptance
One of the most misunderstood mental failures in sports is the act of choking. There is nothing more pitiful than an athlete who is a superstar 99% of the time, but then chokes under pressure 1% of the time. Unfortunately, that 1% represents those critical moments that will define the athlete’s legacy.
From the outside looking in, it’s impossible to understand an athlete’s mental state when they choke. However, the late sports psychologist and bestselling author of the classic book Mind Gym, Gary Mack, provides a simple definition of choking that explains perfectly why some athlete’s choke.
Mack writes:
Choking is nothing more than paying attention to your physiology when you should be focusing on your opponent and the task.
In other words, as Mack explains, “Athletes who choke start to become nervous about being nervous. Anxious about being anxious.” Therefore, to prevent the act of choking the first mental skill an athlete must train is the mindset of acceptance.
This requires an athlete to first accept that it’s just fine to be nervous and anxious. These are normal emotional responses to threats and challenges. Secondly, athletes must have a premeditated routine to deal with these emotions. This routine is a product of practicing the other 7 mental skills below.
2) Mindfulness
Mindfulness and meditation are two sides of the same coin. In a Runner’s World Magazine article titled The Research-Supported Benefits of Meditation for Runners the author shares a fantastic explanation of the connection between the two:
Mindfulness and meditation are sometimes used interchangeably, though the two boil down into more specific descriptions: meditation is the practice, while mindfulness is a state of being. Practicing meditation trains your mind to pay attention mindfully.
Mindfulness training uses meditation exercises in combination with informal practices, such as running, to incorporate mindfulness into daily life. Together, these practices train your mind to focus less on negative thoughts, emotions, and memories, and instead makes space for it to concentrate on the present, without getting ahead of itself.
Practically, the process of mindfulness is the act of taking deep inhales and exhales of breath using a ratio of around 1:2. For example, inhale for a count of 5 and exhale for a count of 10. Often, finding a quiet place, sitting with erect posture, closing one’s eyes, counting each breath, and counting the time between inhales and exhales improves mindfulness during this process.
3) Reframing
Reframing is a mental skill that helps athletes change their perception of a situation. When an athlete changes their perception of a situation, they can change their emotions. Perception is how we process our thoughts to create our reality. Although perception is not reality and instead is one’s interpretation of reality, perception does still create one’s reality.
The cliché of viewing the glass half empty or half full is the classic example of perception creating one’s reality. The reality of the person who views the glass half full is one of abundance. While the reality of the person who views the glass half empty is one of scarcity. In short, perception is one of the 5 critical elements of mindset that profoundly affects the way you lead your life.
Perceptions turn into emotions. In turn, emotions cause physiological changes. For example, fear may cause your heart rate to go up, feeling pressure may cause you to sweat, and disappointment may make you cry. Each of these physiological changes then leads to helping or hurting an athlete’s performance.
Correspondingly, the ultimate goal of reframing is to change emotions that have a negative impact to emotions that have a positive impact.
Billie Jean King’s idea of reframing pressure from a negative to a positive by perceiving it as a privilege is the most popular example of reframing in sports history. King’s example of reframing pressure as something that one earns, and therefore it is something to wear like a badge of honor is something athletes can use as part of a routine or daily mantra. An athlete who learns to reframe pressure like this will have far more helpful emotions than emotions that hurt.
4) Visualization
Visualization is the act of using one’s mind to imagine a new experience by recalling or creating a similar experience and then shaping that experience into a positive memory. These imagined positive memories can then be used to rehearse how the details of future events will unfold.
Sometimes a visualization practice is a factual re-creation of a previous success, other times it’s a fictional re-imagining of a mistake done correctly, or it could even be a completely fictional performance that the athlete is working to make real in the future. All three of these types of visualizations are beneficial, and all three follow the same process.
This process requires following these 5 steps:
- Start by moving the mind into a deep state of relaxation through a meditation or breathing practice.
- Incorporate sounds and smells of a real performance situation to engage the senses.
- Use a premeditated script with vivid and realistic details to talk yourself into and through the re-creation of the moment of performance you are visualizing.
- Spend no more than 15 minutes in any given visualization session (i.e., five minutes to relax, 10 minutes to visualize).
- Immediately follow the visualization session with either a video review session or physical practice (or both) incorporating the skills visualized.
These process steps must be repeated routinely to be effective. Doing this once or twice a season will have little to no impact on getting better. Comparatively, lifting weights once or twice a season doesn’t make you stronger and visualization is no different. Consistency is the key.
5) Focus
There are three zones of focus an athlete must train. Zone 1 is when you have the highest level of focus and are most intense. However, you can stay in this zone for the shortest amount of time due to the intensity it requires. Zone 2 is a medium level of focus right in between Zone 1 and Zone 3. To put it another way, it is a transitional zone. Zone 3 is the lowest level of focus so, only a tiny bit of focus still does exist. Athletes can be in this zone the longest amount of time; however, performance is the least effective in this zone.
The key is for athletes to learn triggers to quickly move between zones to help them be at their optimal level of intensity for the situation, for the right amount of time so they don’t burn themselves out or underperform.
6) Neutral Thinking
Neutral thinking is the mindset of focusing only on the facts of the situation. Facts that are not positive or negative, they just are. This allows athletes to focus on the reality of what they must do next without letting the negativity of the past or what they can’t control impact the reality of what they can control.
Neutral thinking is a better approach to positive thinking. The problem with positive thinking is that sometimes you have to fake it to truly be positive. Your inner-self knows when you’re faking it and this can minimize the benefits of positive thinking. On the other hand, neutral thinking is more about being positive about the reality of the situation. It’s being a realist without letting the negativity of what you can’t control impact the reality of what you can control.
Trevor Moawad coined this idea of neutral thinking. Last year, I was deeply saddened by the news of his untimely passing as he was one of the people I admired most in the field of sports performance and mental conditioning. Through Moawad’s work with NFL quarterback Russel Wilson, he provides a great example of neutral thinking as quoted from ESPN below:
One of Moawad’s go-to examples of neutral behavior is Wilson’s language in the 2015 NFC Championship Game. The Seahawks trailed Green Bay 16-0 in the second quarter and 19-7 late in the fourth after four interceptions by Wilson. They scored 15 points in the final two-plus minutes to force overtime, in which Wilson threw the winning touchdown to cap an improbable comeback.
“If Russell is positive in that situation, he’s constantly talking — ‘We’re going to beat Green Bay. We’re going to beat Green Bay’ — because much of positive thinking is connected to outcomes,” Moawad said. “Neutral thinking is truth-based thinking focused on behaviors, and Russell’s language is all about competing. There’s time. He’s not pretending that he didn’t throw four picks. But what he’s being very clear of is there’s still five minutes left. And that’s the truth, and even the most skeptical people recognize that that five minutes has not happened yet, so how are we going to play those five minutes? And we don’t have to concede those five minutes because of the first 55 minutes.”
7) Goal Orientation
Goal orientation is the process of learning to set goals without the ego. When goals are set with the ego then those goals focus on comparing oneself to others instead of focusing on personal improvement and learning. For example, measuring personal success against the accomplishments of peers or when an athlete’s primary source of happiness comes from outperforming others.
Instead, athletes must learn to orient their goals to focus on process and task goals that require proficient execution, effort, discipline, and persistence for success.
Correct goal orientation supports neutral thinking, which in turn leads to the self-talk one needs for reframing. So, this one mental skill is the building block for two others.
8) Inhibitory Control
Inhibitory control is the ability to keep oneself from choosing their default behavior when a better behavior is available. An athlete who learns how to apply inhibitory control will choose a better, non-obvious course of action even though they are accustomed to doing it another obvious, less effective way.
When an athlete is under pressure, the temptation to select default behavior when a better behavior is available is highest. Competitors can game plan for this and force an athlete to error by tricking them to use their default behavior as a tactic to setup a counter move. Especially when an athlete is known for doing something a certain way multiple times in the past. Therefore, learning how to exhibit inhibitory control is the hardest of all the mental skills to master and takes the most amount of practice.