Choking under pressure is defined as diminishing our own abilities in circumstances where the pressure to perform well increases or, in other words, underperforming in high-pressure contexts.
“Pressure” is understood as the presence of a situation in which we experience a high incentive to perform. This pressure is perceived subjectively, being a potential stress generator. In the case of the athlete, to the perceived pressure is added the result of self-reward or self-punishment of his performance plus the presence of the public and other competitors, which increases it if he also determines his goal as very important and perhaps unrepeatable.
Choking under pressure could mean failing in a scenario in which achieving his best performance is important to the athlete. Most athletes experience physical, mental, and emotional stress in the moments leading up to and during a competition and, to avoid this, each one applies a coping strategy that, if it fails, will most likely lead to failure.
Pressure also appears when we, as recreational skiers, wish to perform well and achieve a good execution in contexts that demand a high level of performance. Despite the motivation to achieve the best execution, our performance may decrease and it is not due to an eventuality but to our response to a reality of demand and pressure.
In choking under pressure it is not that we don’t know what to do but don’t do what we know. This can occur when we are observed by the instructor and by the other members of the lesson, or in trainees evaluated by the examining board, but more precisely, it is a very common phenomenon in athletes under pressure of competition and public observation.
Choking, or blocking, usually occurs due to distraction of our attention. Our thoughts are oriented towards what once happened (past) or towards a possible outcome (future) instead of being oriented towards the process of our execution, that is, towards the present moment.
Another aspect that influences negatively is the propensity towards negative self-talk which produces anxiety. To avoid choking under pressure, or to diminish its effects, it is necessary to maintain anxiety at an optimal level: neither too high nor too low.
The factors that contribute to generate this blockage could be:
- Our own expectations.
- Responsibility
- Insufficient preparation.
- Low self-confidence.
- Technical errors.
- Wrong mental strategies.
- Inappropriate tactics.
- Fear of others’ evaluation.
- The observing public.
Theories on choking under pressure
There are several theories that explain why we suffer decreased performance in stressful situations under pressure and most of them are based on the effect of our attentional focus. Several studies agree that our focus of attention in the execution of well-learned motor tasks should be oriented towards the external, i.e., towards the effect of the performance.
Explicit monitoring theory or Self-focus theory posits that pressure for a good execution increases attention toward conscious ‘step-by-step’ control, which interrupts automatic procedural performance. It is assumed that the use of biomechanical analogies collaborates in the prevention of conscious control of movements when executing them under high pressure situations.
In the same direction, the Reinvestment theory postulates that the conscious processing of explicit knowledge of the execution (the ‘how’ to perform the movements that compose the technical action) affects our performance.
This cognitive situation applies in our early stages of motor learning but in advanced stages, where automation prevails, it is detrimental. It is supposed that, in this situation, we ‘reinvest’ our executive motor knowledge step by step from the control of the execution, interfering the automatic control of the movements. According to this approach, choking under pressure occurs because we process technical information, when we should focus on external aspects of our performance such as the terrain, the snow, or the course configuration.
It should be taken into account that our skill level for motor execution influences the orientation of our attentional focus. While performance improves when external attention (oriented towards the effect of the execution) is applied, in beginners, or in expert skiers executing less familiar motor tasks, internal attention (oriented towards the execution of the movements) is better utilized.
The Distraction theory suggests that pressure generates a dual task: our attention is diverted away from what we must do and, in turn, we orient it towards distracting stimuli such as worries, other people’s expectations, or our own level of anxiety.
The Efficient processing theory relates the quality of performance to the effort made and to the attentional resources. It argues that, in order to avoid a negative performance, we increase the effort in our performances when feeling under pressure. The increased effort tends to generate anxiety towards the consequences of our performance which decreases attentional resources. In parallel, by paying more attention, the efficiency (the ‘how’ to perform the motor execution) would be disturbed more than the efficacy (the result of the execution). In other words, from the attentional perspective, when under pressure we would use greater resources to execute the same motor goal.
Attentional control theory is an extension of the Efficient processing theory and proposes that, under pressure, our resource processing is disturbed by task-irrelevant stimuli, culminating in a decrease in processing efficiency. Both stress and pressure to perform well may cause to pay attention to salient stimuli instead of focusing on immediate goals.
The Attentional threshold theory posits that choking under pressure is a phenomenon involving emotional and attentional factors. According to this theory, which combines the self-focus and distraction theories, performance decreases due to our excessive threshold of attentional capacity.
Failure management as a strategy to avoid choking under pressure in athletes
Generally, the source of repetitive problems in high performance is determined by sports psychology on the grounds that athletes experience nervousness or focus on issues that may go wrong before, during, or after the competition. The traditional proposal is to learn to think positively, to stay calm in pressure situations, and to concentrate better.
According to Dr. Alan Goldberg, a high performance consultant, these superficial strategies do not work because the problem does not reside in the conscious mind of the athlete, so it cannot be consciously controlled. He argues that these difficulties are based on past physical and emotional incidents (injuries, emotionally disturbing events, negative experiences) which contribute to blocking under pressure being repeated.
This is due to the unconscious part of the mind, which accumulates and memorizes these events generating an internal state of threat and vulnerability when the athlete is performing, triggering survival and self-protection reflexes that interfere with those of performance. Since conscious strategies of positive thinking usually have no significant effect, then other solutions need to be implemented.
One of them, Goldberg suggests, is to focus on how we manage mistakes and failures. While hearing people say that we learn from mistakes, this is intellectually understandable but emotionally complicated because the athlete who does not do well feels embarrassed, disappointed, or frustrated and this generates fear of failing again in the next competition, which in turn causes lack of concentration and increased distractibility.
Changing the relationship with failures and considering them as events that provide information about what one did wrong, then making mistakes will provide the necessary feedback to correct what did not work and we will stop perceiving them as something negative but as part of the process towards our success.
Differences in performance in training and in competition
It is generally observed that the athlete performs better in training than in competition. This is because in practice he is focused on what he has to do, while in competition the emotional factor promotes distraction due to thoughts about what can go wrong, about the course, about the people watching, or about the result of his performance causing an increase in physical and mental tension.
These intrusive thoughts divert the concentration on what he has to do, so, to improve his performance in competition he must learn to maintain the same concentration he achieves in training and this is achieved by focusing on the process of the execution instead of thinking about the possible result.
