Obviously, there is an element of pressure in all sporting competitions. Given the magnitude of the FIFA World Cup currently taking place across North America, it would be reasonable to say that performing under pressure is arguably one of the most important criteria for the players and coaching staff currently battling for the biggest prize in men’s football/soccer.
Introduction
It’s important to start an article entitled ‘Performing under Pressure’ by clarifying the key terms. What do we mean by both performing and pressure?
In some circles, performing is regarded as almost any action. This can range from really obvious actions, like playing a sport, to less obvious ones, such as running a business. For others, the word performance is and should be much more limiting. It only applies to competitive sports and a few other areas, such as the performing arts.
At Condor Performance, we sit somewhere between these two extremes. For us, performing is essentially just the execution of skills. The majority of these skills are motor skills. So, of course, this covers all traditional sports. But our definition also includes the performing arts, military activity, and most medical and emergency procedures. And even competitive games such as chess and eSports, despite involving less human movement.
Practice vs Competition
Performing really includes both the preparation and competitive sides of the equation. This is important because in many sports, the word ‘performing’ is often used as a synonym for ‘competing’. For example, in a post-match press conference, a coach may say that she was happy with the performance. Or that the performance wasn’t quite what they were looking for. The issue with using the term “performance” as a synonym for on-the-day competitive outcomes is that it overlooks the performance element of preparation. As you’ll see below it is actually what you do in preparation that ultimately allows us to perform better under pressure.
In summary, “how well a person, machine, etc. does a piece of work or an activity”.
So What About This Thing Called Pressure?
In my work as a sport psychologist, I often simplify and separate everything into thoughts, feelings, and actions. Those who are familiar with my particular style will know that I am a big believer in predominantly learning to accept thoughts and feelings whilst still committing to our actions. When breaking down the human experience like this, it can be useful to try to consider if pressure is more of an emotion, a thought, or a combination.
For most performers, it will be a combination of thoughts and feelings. Consider the typical signs of experiencing extreme pressure. Emotionally, tensing up, muscle tightening, and nerve sensitivity might be common. The thoughts that often present themselves under pressure are predictive and negative. For example, cognitions such as “what if I mess up today” or “I just know I am going to play badly”.
Arguably, the most important starting point for helping performers be more consistent under pressure is for them to learn unequivocally that pressure is neither good nor bad. All too often, athletes and non-sporting performers will regard pressure as negative. They frame it as something that will get in the way of them performing at their best. Interestingly, a small percentage believe the exact opposite! This minority holds the view that they need some pressure to produce the goods! Neither is true.
The Pressure Is Real, Just Accept It
The mindset we are looking to help our clients develop is one in which pressure is just pressure. It’s neither good nor bad. It can be useful for you to consider the variations in pressure as similar to other variables. Such as the weather or the colour of the opposition’s kit (shirts). These are just natural variations common in sport. It’s unhelpful to think of warmer days as being good and cooler days as being bad, for example. The same applies to pressure vs. no pressure.
The most effective way to learn to perform better under pressure is to accept your thoughts and feelings rather than fight them. There are multiple ways to do this, but some of the most useful are these five mindfulness apps, which have been approved by psychologists.
Once the process of learning to observe thoughts and emotions is underway, we can move on to the next stage. That is, learning they needn’t affect your desired actions. In other words, the goal is to learn to execute your skills irrespective of the thoughts and emotions you may be experiencing at the time.
This is easier said than done, of course. Often, experiences of pressure are much less common in training. This reduces the opportunities to prove to ourselves that we can take a penalty under the most intense pressure imaginable. Anyone remember this one?
Mentally Harder Practice
The concept of mentally harder practice sometimes addresses this issue. MHP attempts to replicate pressure-related feelings and thoughts in training situations. The logic behind this is sound. Doing MHP in training will make it much easier to ride the pressure wave when it happens organically in competitive situations.
A nice analogy for mentally harder practice is lifting weights. If you want to flip a truck tyre over a dozen times, you’re gonna need to slowly build your muscle strength in practice.
The same logic applies to performing under pressure using mentally harder practice. You need to be able to gradually increase the mental demands of certain aspects of your training so that, when they arise in competitive situations, they are not so different from the training challenges you set up.
The weight-training analogy is so useful because it quickly helps you see the risks of overdoing it. So if you make your training psychologically too difficult, it will have the opposite effect and potentially cause some kind of psychological injury. By psychological injuries, we could be referring to genuine mental health impacts, such as a trigger for depression or anxiety.
Conclusion
As we have very little influence over who stumbles across our blog posts, we would urge anyone who feels they might want to reduce the risk of overdoing mentally harder practice to get in touch and be guided by one of our highly qualified and experienced sport or performance psychologists. The best way to get in touch is by completing one of the free, online Mental Toughness Questionnaires via this link here, and one of the crew will get back to you in less than 48 hours.
