Playoff Psychology

For teams that regularly make the playoffs and even fans used to seeing it, the playoffs in just about every major sport are materially more competitive and intense than the regular season. Perennial winners don't even draft for the regular season. The best teams draft to fill a need they have in the biggest games on the path to a championship.

We're seeing it now with this year's NFL playoffs. Upsets aren't surprises, because everyone is putting together their best football. Close competition is the norm.

As the games get bigger, the pressure gets more intense. So how do the best get ready to compete on the biggest stage?

Here's a look into some of the psychology of getting ready to win when it's win or go home.

Principle 1: Stay the course

Everyone knows the playoffs are different. One of the least effective things you can do is start treating it like a different game.

This doesn't mean denying the reality of the new consequences, or that it's bad to think about it as a "new season" where everyone is 0-0.

What it does mean is that introducing a new approach or changing the routine is more likely to hurt than help.

When people are put under pressure, they start looking for solutions. Often, those solutions seem like good ideas - people are drawn to novelty. The result is that you end up chasing a new strategy or process just because the time of the season has changed. Novelty is very taxing for the brain, and as a result, is less likely to be learned deeply and more likely to be botched in the game. 

By staying the course, you:

• Send a message to yourself and others that you're well-prepared for this phase of the season. This builds confidence and conviction in the team.

• Refine what you're already good at, without introducing additional taxing stress. 

• Keep a good perspective - playoff games have the same rules and challenges as the other games, which you know how to play and win. Though they require different levels of effort and focus, they don't necessarily require a whole new approach. 

Principle 2: Balance recovery with preparation 

Under pressure, the default you'll feel is to do more. As we saw with the last principle, more is not always better and can often be worse. 

More also interferes with recovery. 

Since playoff games happen at the end of the season, recovery is likely already an issue. This is one reason why playing for a first-round bye is so critical. It allows you to get much-needed recovery in, to heal up, and restore energy to an appropriate level.

But if you don't have a bye week, you still need to try to find ways to let recovery be a part of the protocol. 

Principle 3: Engage your stress-is-enhancing mindset

When you're under pressure, you see stress in one of two ways: a challenge or a threat.

Because the playoffs are win or go home, and because you're human, you're more likely to detect the threat. After all, the consequences of losing (you fail to reach your goal) are much greater than winning (you play another game). It's natural to look at the downsides and be tuned into what's at stake. 

The problem is, when we focus on what we could lose, we end up playing in a threat state (and playing not to lose, versus playing to win). That state narrows your focus, shrinks your range of effective behavior, and even impacts the way you show up as a teammate. You're less willing to take constructive risks, less prosocial, and less flexible in your behavior. At any point if the game takes a turn you're not expecting, you'll be less prepared to respond and less resilient in the process.

To flip that process on its head, you need to look for the challenge.

Seeing the game as a challenge - an opportunity to show what you're made of (or what the team is made of), to demonstrate how your hard work prepared you, and a chance to test yourself - will help you tap into the psychological and physiological benefits of the increased arousal associated with performing under pressure. You'll be more resilient in the face of setbacks, more determined when confronted with difficulty, and have a broader range of flexible behavior available to you in the toughest moments.

The toughest part of leveraging a challenge appraisal is to name and categorize your physiology effectively. In Western culture, we've normalized talking about and feeling anxiety to the point that it's (most) people's default to describe anything associated with an elevated heart rate, quicker thoughts, sweaty palms, and the nerves associated with competition. Instead, here are 4 more adaptive categories you could leverage to get into that stress-is-enhancing mindset:

1. This is a sign you care. If you can appraise your physiology as a sign that this is an important event and something you care about, you'll be more likely to use the increased energy effectively. After all, nobody feels increased arousal about something that isn't important to them. It doesn't have to be anxiety - it can just be a sign that this matters.

2. This is just your brain and body getting you ready to perform. Cortisol is released into your bloodstream - and the associated physiological effects come with it - when your brain is predicting a big metabolic expense soon. And that's good! We want our brain and body to be ready to give great effort during the playoffs. This increased physiology isn't a sign something is wrong, it's a sign your brain and body are working right.

3. This is excitement. In Kelly McGonigal's research on The Upside of Stress, she talks about framing your nervousness as excitement. It's physiologically identical, but the psychological categorization of excitement is much more expansive and adaptive. If you can see the nerves as excitement, you'll be ready to deliver great effort with your full arsenal.

4. This is determination. Finally, if you can see your stress as a sign of determination - a sign that you've worked hard and are ready and want to win - you can tap into the psychological and physiological benefits that come with that increased arousal. In studies of students who framed anxiety about a test as determination, they performed significantly better than their counterparts who focused on getting rid of the nerves.

Of course, there's more you could do to get ready, but keeping the formula simple makes it more likely you'll succeed. 

Stay the course, recover, and embrace the opportunity.