Four sports psychology strategies for performing under pressure | Canada Voices

When the great Kenyan marathoner Eliud Kipchoge was preparing for his first assault on the two-hour-marathon barrier, back in 2017, I asked him what he planned to do differently in order to slice more than three minutes off both his previous best and the existing world record.

His physical training would be exactly the same as previous years, he told me, “but my mind will be different.”

Performing under pressure is, indeed, more of a mental test than a physical one – and that’s true not only for athletes but also for the rest of us, whether we’re giving a presentation at work, writing an exam, or driving in a winter storm.

In a new report published by the journal Sports Medicine, a research team led by Matthew Schweickle of the University of Wollongong in Australia sifts through the evidence on the techniques used by athletes like Kipchoge to maximize their performance when the pressure is highest. Here are the four key approaches they recommend, which are applicable in sports and beyond.

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1. The Pre-Performance Routine

Before shooting a foul shot, a basketball player might bounce the ball three times, take a deep breath, then spin the ball twice. These aren’t just nervous tics. Following a familiar routine can help clear your mind of distractions and remind you that the task you’re about to perform is a familiar one.

This is important, because the essence of pressure is the feeling that the stakes are higher than usual. But for well-rehearsed actions like a foul shot – or, ideally, an important presentation – you want it to feel just like it did in practice.

Note that these routines shouldn’t be too rigid or superstition-driven. You don’t want your confidence to be shaken if you forget your lucky rabbit’s foot.

2. Implicit Attention

Here’s a seemingly puzzling finding. If you distract a novice golfer while they’re putting, they’ll sink fewer putts; but if you distract an expert golfer, they’ll sink more putts.

This is because we gradually shift tasks from explicit to implicit control as we master them. Once you know how to tie your shoes, you no longer need to think about the individual steps involved. In fact, forcing yourself to think about the steps will make you less adept at tying your shoes.

We choke under pressure in part because we care more about the outcome, so we tend to think extra-hard about our actions, putting them back under explicit rather than implicit control.

To fight this tendency, find ways of focusing your attention externally rather than internally. Soccer players, for example, hit more penalties when they focus on the corner of the net rather than the motion of their feet. More generally, it might mean listening to music before a big performance, or distracting yourself by counting backwards by twos.

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3. Psychological Skills Training

Sports psychologists teach athletes various mental skills to deploy in different situations.

Michael Phelps, for example, used extensive imagery training to prepare not just for success but for potential setbacks. At the 2008 Olympics, when his goggles began leaking during the 200-metre butterfly, he was still able to swim blind to a gold medal because he had imagined exactly that scenario so many times.

Self-talk is what Kipchoge is most famous for. “The difference only is thinking,” he told a skeptical reporter before his sub-two run. “You think it’s impossible; I think it’s possible.” Indeed, several studies have found that replacing negative thoughts (“This is too hard. I can’t do this”) with more positive ones (“I’ve trained for this and I’m ready”) improves performance.

4. Mindfulness

The key goal of mindfulness for athletes is “non-judgmental self-awareness.”

In a high-pressure situation, no matter how well prepared you are, you’ll likely experience some unpleasant feelings like fear and anxiety, along with their physical manifestations, such as a racing heart and sweaty palms.

Mindfulness training helps you acknowledge these feelings without overreacting to them. Better yet, it gives you the opportunity to reinterpret them, so that the butterflies in your stomach become signs of an exciting challenge rather than a scary threat.

All four of these techniques are skills that you can master, rather than traits you’re born with. Just ask Kipchoge, who struggled with sleepless nights and pre-race nausea early in his career but ended up running the first sub-two-hour exhibition marathon and winning two Olympic gold medals.