Why Athletes Choke

Every two years, we have the chance to watch the world's best performers in men's and women's soccer compete on a global stage for the chance to be crowned the best soccer (football) country in the world.

And inevitably, every year, we see a critical game come down to one of the most high-stakes performance situations in any sport: the penalty kick.

Most fans watching the penalty kick experience an uptick in their own anxiety, in part because they're invested in the game but in part because they empathize with the kick-taker - this situation is bigger than what almost any of us prepare for. And we know that anything less than a goal is likely to result in national scrutiny, criticism, and all too often, much worse.

In a recent World Cup, I still remember Marcus Rashford missing a penalty - at age 22 or something like that - and being derided for not rising to the occasion. The commentators, fans, and media blasted this young man, simply because he didn't quite meet performance expectations.

He choked.

These situations can define and rewrite the careers of athletes and in some cases, entire teams.

We still look back on the 1986 World Series each year and remember Bill Buckner, the unfortunate chap who made an error late in a game that ultimately cost Boston the series.

In fact, the New York Mets hold 2 spots in the top 50 chokes of all time as rated by Bleacher Report - a curse of sorts that seems to linger over the franchise decades later (sorry Mets fans, nothing personal here).

Since these moments loom so large, it behooves us to figure out how we can limit them (if not eliminate them altogether). 

What's In a Choke

A group of professional sport psychologists defined a choke as a situation where an athlete "perceives that their resources are insufficient to meet the demands of the situation, and concludes with a significant drop in performance - a choke" (Hill, Hanton, Fleming, & Matthews, 2009).

How do we explain why this happens, and perhaps more importantly, how do we prevent it from happening to the athletes we coach?

Theories of Choking

Psychologists know that as pressure in a given situation rises, anxiety rises. That increase in anxiety causes us to shift our attention, often to ineffective or irrelevant cues that ultimately undermine our performance.

These shifts in attention have led to two emerging theories that may explain the reason athletes choke.

The first, which was the focus of Sian Beilock's excellent book Choke, is what's called self-focus: paying too much attention to a skill that has been trained to be executed automatically.

The main premise of the choke here is that the increase in pressure shifts our attention internally, where it's of course very hard to find relevant information for performance at the moment. As a performance psychologist, I don't want you thinking about the way your body feels while you run up and down the court, for example. I want you to focus externally, on the movement of the opponents and the ball. Too much time in your own mind makes you miss things.

Research suggests that this internal shift disrupts our performance.

At first, researchers believed that this internal shift leads us to start overthinking how a skill should be performed, termed the "explicit monitoring hypothesis", or even worse, trying to consciously control how they're executed, the "conscious processing hypothesis." This is akin to asking someone to try and explain how to walk while walking. It's actually very hard because we've taken an automatic skill deeply encoded in our minds and consciously interfered with its execution. The end result is clumsy movement, which, under pressure, would lead to a choke.

But the other thing that an internal shift does is bring attention to our thoughts and physiology. The second set of theories aligns around the experience of anxiety, which tends to be heightened when we turn inward.

There are two predominant theories of attention here that have to do with performance anxiety. The first is processing efficiency theory (PET) and the second is attentional control theory (ACT). Each suggests that the shift inward takes athletes’ attention to their worries and "distractions," and away from task-relevant cues.

If we want to prevent athletes from choking, then, we have to understand which of the two above theories is true. If athletes were to break down because they became fixated on skill, it would suggest coaches need to stay away from pressure moments from focusing on form. If athletes break down because they're experiencing performance anxiety, it suggests coaches need to steer athletes toward external, controllable cues that would allow them to execute.

What the athletes have to say

Oudejans, Kuijpers, Kooijman, and Bakker asked 70 athletes what they think about and feel when they're performing under pressure.

It turns out that what causes athletes to choke, from their perspective, stems from two places:

• Worries

• External factors

The best athletes, it turns out, don't break down because they focus on something they've trained to do repeatedly. It's not a matter of not "trusting your training."

It's a matter of falling victim to the same things we all fall victim to when we're under duress.

Things like focusing on what we can't control, or how other people perceive us, or the noises in the stands.

In fact, take a look at what athletes reported was most impactful on their performance in pressure moments:

How to coach around a choke

Under pressure, it seems high performers start to focus not on the skills they need to execute, but on external factors they can't control - the audience, a TV presence, the opponent - and internal distractions like self-criticism, negative self-talk, and thinking about downstream consequences.

Both paths likely lead to performance disaster.

In these moments, it's crucial that coaches avoid drawing attention to these things, and instead help athletes focus on what matters most.

That includes things like:

• Tactics and strategy

• Managing the game clock

• Affirming their strengths

And avoiding things like:

• Evaluation during the moment (including your own judgments of performance)

• Drawing attention to uncontrollables like the referee (when has your arguing ever led to a different call anyway?)

This doesn't mean you have to sugarcoat or lie about things going well, either. It just means that, in pressure-packed moments, your athletes are already going to be engaging in some thinking that's unhelpful. Rather than doubling down on that, your job is to refocus them on controllables, their own execution, and more helpful thinking.

If you want to prevent a choke in your own performance under pressure, the same rules apply.

Focus on what you can control.

Emphasize the work you've put in and how you're ready.

Consciously increase effort.

Focus on a target.

This simple formula helps the best perform under pressure and can elevate anyone's game when the lights are brightest.

References

Hill, D. M., Hanton, S., Fleming, S., & Matthews, N. (2009). A re-examination of choking in sport. European Journal of Sport Science, 9(4), 203-212.

Beilock, S. (2010). Choke: What the secrets of the brain reveal about getting it right when you have to. Simon and Schuster.

Oudejans, R. R., Kuijpers, W., Kooijman, C. C., & Bakker, F. C. (2011). Thoughts and attention of athletes under pressure: skill-focus or performance worries?. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 24(1), 59-73.