[In his latest book, What the Dog Saw, author Malcolm Gladwell recounts the story
of Czech tennis player Jana Novotna's last-minute choke against American Steffi Graf in the 1993 Wimbledon final. (America! Eff yeah!) Afterward Novotna was consoled by the Duchess of Kent. Photo credit USA Today.]
As anyone who has played a sport knows, there are plenty of
ways to lose. The most excruciating among them, in my opinion, are the ones
after which you are acutely aware — as is everyone witnessing the event –
that you should have won. It’s one thing when you feel outmatched, outplayed or
outmuscled by an opponent who is simply better
than you on the day (or every day); quite another to have very nearly held
victory in the palm of your hand only to, at the last minute, watch it slip
quietly, despairingly out of your grasp.
In other words, second place sucks when you feel like you couldn’t have altered
the outcome that day, regardless of your actions — but it sucks quite a bit more
when the locus of control is internal and you’re left thinking, “I could have done something about that.“
IN 2003, MY THEN RUGBY TEAM, the Minnesota Valkries, faced
off in the women’s club national championship game against the Berkeley All-Blues. At the
time, the All-Blues had never been beaten. Not in a friendly, not in a league
match, not in a playoff game, not in a national championship game. They simply
never, ever lost. (Or if they had, it was so far in the past not a single soul could remember it.) And they didn’t lose that game, either. It was a bona fide
routing, ending with a rather appalling score along the lines of 55-0. Late in the
game, I remember watching as their players streamed through our line of defense
at will and thinking, “I hope this ends
soon.” Afterward, the loss didn’t sting the way it could have — they were, quite simply, a better team that year.
once again playing for the national championship. Only this time, we were
winning. We had done an incredible amount of physical work to prepare ourselves for that
moment, that game, and we believed.
That is, until the final minutes of the game, when our
decision-making broke down, our plays started clunking and even our basic rugby
skills went to hell in a handbasket — our kicks were going awry, we missed tackles and threw errant passes. I could see the alarm and confusion in my
teammates’ eyes, and felt it myself. Suddenly, it felt like 2003 all over again. Which didn’t make sense — we had come so far — but we
continued to make mistake after mistake, and Berkeley tied the game as the
final whistle blew. The game went into overtime.
At that point, we were no longer trying to win — we were
just trying not to lose. And it didn’t work. But what happened? And why?
IN MALCOLM GLADWELL’S BOOK What the Dog Saw, his essay “The Art of
Failure: Why Some People Choke and Others Panic” dealt with two types
of controllable losses: choking and
panicking.
Essentially, he categorizes choking as overthinking — reaching a point in the
game, bout or match where, under stress, once-implicit, unconscious motor
patterns suddenly revert to the deliberate, too-aware patterns of a beginner.
Panic, on the other hand, Gladwell describes as, essentially, underthinking — being suddenly unable to
evaluate your environment and come up with more than one possible solution.
Choking:
-Overthinking: The slow, deliberate learning patterns of a novice overtake the skilled,
unconscious patterns you developed.
-Loss of instinct and intuition: You mentally break down the situation or
movement into too many parts, unintentionally eradicating fluidity and ease in
the process.
make sense, as it can happen to even highly experienced athletes.
Panicking:
-Underthinking: The stress of the situation wipes out any existing short-term
memory of what to do, and you simply react.
-”Perceptual narrowing”: You tend to focus or obsess over
one thing, and lose the ability to identify other options.
-Can be overcome with experience: After enough repetitions,
you reach for the right reaction to the situation, so even if it’s the only solution that occurs to you, that’s A-OK.
OUR 2005 CHAMPIONSHIP GAME was a cut-and-dried case of choking, which, as Gladwell
points out, “is a central part of the drama of athletic competition.”
In other words, that %*^& makes for good sports. But that doesn’t mean you
have to cooperate — let someone else play the role of the almost-winner.
Since choking can be chalked up to overthinking, you have to
approach developing the mental skills to short-circuit the phenomenon in a
specific way. That is, if you’re not careful, you’ll just worsen the situation
by thinking yourself even deeper into a losing situation.
Remember, when it comes to choking, you’re trying to return
to instinct and intuition, so it helps to focus on something other than the particular
mechanics of the task at hand.
WHEN YOU START TO CHOKE — and you know when it’s happening — Linda Keeler,
sports psychology counselor and assistant professor of kinesiology at Chico
State University in California, recommends using a “three-point refocus
routine” to reset your mind and your instincts.
1. First take a deep, diaphragmatic breath (just a fancy way
to say breathe from your belly).
2. Next, do something you can focus on physically — such as
snapping your fingers or clapping your hands a certain number of times — and
then imagine yourself successfully completing your goal, whether it’s a dead
lift PR or hoisting a championship trophy. Pick whatever appeals to you — the
important thing is to picture every detail of the environment: the sights,
sounds and smells. Imagine the field or the gym, feel the sweat drying on your body
and practice transporting yourself there mentally. In your mind, make winning –
or your equivalent of winning — part of your culture; a foregone conclusion.
3. Lastly, utter a phrase aloud (but quietly, so you don’t seem
crazy) such as “Just do” or “Just breathe” to
remind yourself to let your ingrained skill set take over.
Any time you
start to falter, complete this routine. It can take some trial and error to figure
out exactly what works best for you, but once you do, you’ll be able to teach your
mind and body to cooperate on command. This still may not guarantee you the gold, of course, but at least it will put you on a level playing field.
Read Gladwell’s entire essay here.
