How to Stay Calm Under Pressure
TedEd-23

Your favorite athlete closes in for a victorious win. The crowd holds its breath, and, at the crucial
moment, she misses the shot. That competitor just experienced the phenomenon known as"choking,"where despite months, even years, of practice, a person fails right when it matters most.
Choking is common in sports, where performance often occurs under intense pressure and depends
on key moments. And yet, performance anxiety also haunts public speakers, contestants in spelling
bees, and even world-famous musicians. Most people intuitively blame it on their nerves, but why
does being nervous undermine expert performance?
There are two sets of theories, which both say that primarily, choking under pressure boils down tofocus. First, there are the distraction theories. These suggest that performance suffers when themind is preoccupied with worries, doubts, or fears, instead of focusing its attention on performing

TedEd-23

How to Stay Calm Under Pressure

the task at hand. When relevant and irrelevant thoughts compete for the same attention, something
has to give. The brain can only process so much information at once. Tasks that challenge working
memory, the mental “scratch pad” we use to temporarily store phone numbers and grocery lists, areespecially vulnerable to pressure.
In a 2004 study, a group of university students were asked to perform math problems, some easy,
others more complex and memory-intensive. Half the students completed both problem types withnothing at stake, while the others completed them when calm and under pressure. While everyone
did well on the easy problems, those who were stressed performed worse on the more difficult,memory-intensive tasks. Explicit monitoring theories make up the second group of explanations forchoking under pressure. They’re concerned with how pressure can cause people to overanalyze thetask at hand. Here, the logic goes that once a skill becomes automatic, thinking about its precise
mechanics interferes with your ability to do it. Tasks we do unconsciously seem to be mostvulnerable to this kind of choking.
A study on competitive golfers compared their performance when instructed to simply focus on
putting as accurately as possible, versus when they were primed to be acutely aware of themechanics of their putting stroke. Golfers usually perform this action subconsciously, so those who
suddenly tuned in to the precise details of their own moves also became worse at making accurate
shots.
Choking may not be inevitable for everyone though. Research suggests that some are more
susceptible than others, especially those who are self-conscious, anxious, and afraid of being
judged negatively by others.

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How to Stay Calm Under Pressure

So, how can we avoid choking when it really counts? First, it helps to practice under stressfulconditions. In a study on expert dart players, researchers found that those who hadn’t practiced
under stress performed worse when anxious, compared to those who had become accustomed topressure. Secondly, many performers extol the virtues of a pre-performance routine, whether it’s
taking a few deep breaths, repeating a cue word, or doing a rhythmic sequence of movements.
Studies on golfing, bowling, and water polo find that short rituals can lead to more consistent andaccurate performance under pressure. And thirdly, researchers have shown that having an external
focus on the ultimate goal works better than an internal focus, where someone is tuned into themechanics of what they’re doing. A study of experienced golfers revealed that those who hit chipshots while focused on the flight of the ball performed significantly better than those who focused on
the motion of their arms.
So, perhaps we can modify that age-old saying: practice, under pressure, with focus, and with thatglorious end goal in sight, makes perfect.