We’ve all experienced it. There’s someone we should not lose to. Whether it’s an athlete you outrank, or a friend that you desperately want to beat, you’ve somehow gotten it stuck in your mind that losing to them will mean something about you. Something negative, terrible, or that you’re just not as good as they are.

So you step up to the line to serve. The normal, smooth, flowing racket-head speed that is usually present in your serve? Gone. Poof. Vanished. Instead, your serve is a shell of what it’s like in practice, and maybe even against other players. It flies over the net at a snail’s pace.

In your mind, you’re maybe muttering to yourself, “Just get the serve in.” “I hope this serve lands in the box.” Even though you’ve been working hard on making your serve a weapon, the shots you’re delivering are anything but weapon-like.

When the rally starts, you default to what works. Slow, weak shots through the middle. “I hope I don’t miss.” “I hope I don’t miss.” “Please, just go into the box.”

This is the reality of performance anxiety. It not only messes with our attention systems, but also impacts how we make decisions and what we revert to. So that’s what we’re going to cover today—along with information on how to avoid this type of performance.

I have discussed Attentional Control Theory (Eysenck et al., 2007) before, but it bears repeating. Under conditions of performance anxiety, our brain consistently switches its focus toward bottom up, threat-related stimuli, both internal and external. For example, your brain could consistently settle on the idea that, “Losing this match will mean that I will be judged harshly by my peers.” Or, it could also constantly guide your eyes and your focus toward your coach (or parent, if you are a junior player) who is watching from the sideline. “I don’t want to disappoint them.” Under conditions such as this… you basically are using up your brain’s limited bandwidth and spending it on non-task related worries.

No wonder you can’t perform how you normally do!

To add another layer to this discussion, and one I believe that is often overlooked, Nieuwenhuys & Oudejans (2017) argue that performance anxiety also impacts decision making. Namely, that individual athletes experiencing performance anxiety have a tendency to become more conservative with the athletic decisions that they make. They may revert to what’s more “comfortable,” or what they perceive as being “safe.”

This rings so true for so many of the athletes I speak with. What are some concrete examples?

One: imagine in practice your forehand has been dominating play; you’re bullying your opponents around or, perhaps, even more modestly, you’re swinging well and confidently. You’re running around and controlling the dynamics of the point. Under conditions of performance anxiety? Gone is your trustworthy forehand. All of a sudden it becomes a puff pastry, you’re scared to be as aggressive as you are when you have no worries, and now it just becomes a neutral stroke at best.

Two: In doubles, you are known to be an aggressive poacher. Anything through the middle lane, you’re there and putting it away. You make aggressive calls and back them up with execution. Under conditions of performance anxiety? A ball that you would have jumped at easily seems out of your reach. The ball goes back and forth, you watch your opportunities go by, until eventually your opponent poaches before you do. “What am I doing?” you think. “I get those balls all the time….”

Any of these examples sound familiar?

This is where sport and performance psychology becomes so important. So far I’ve highlighted the problem for you, but I’d like to also lay out some potential solutions.

Firstly, awareness. This really is the first step toward handling any problem that may be occurring in your performance life. If you’re not aware of what’s happening, you can hardly change it. Secondly, understanding what happens can also be helpful. In this piece I’ve laid out to you that there are positions in sport psychology research that say performance anxiety makes athletes more “scared” and “fearful” and create ultra conservative play.

Both of these are powerful, and are often skipped over by those who want to assign fixes immediately. Take some time here to reflect on past matches. Does this idea—that you made “safer” decisions because you were experiencing performance anxiety—ring true?

If they do… I want you to know that you’re not alone. I’ve spoken with tens to hundreds of players who’ve experienced this… heck, I’ve even experienced it myself. Here’s how to combat it from happening:

Understand how performance anxiety will impact you. Not only will it steal your attention, and have you place it on threat-related thoughts and stimuli in your environment, it will also make you revert to safer and more conservative decision-making. Understanding this is the first step toward managing it.

Next, contemplate how you want to play your match; really be specific about this before your match. How do you want to have competed? What do you want to have shown to yourself after you’ve walked off the court? Commitment? Diligence? Courage? Grit? These are all values that you can demonstrate while you’re competing on the court.

Have a think about which of these speak to you. Use a dictionary to find more!

And the final—and by far the most important—part: matching your values with process goals. If you don’t recall what process goals are, I recommend that you review the goal-setting framework. Just quickly: they are actions or intentions that you have almost full control over. Why is this the most important part? Because values can be a little vague and abstract if we don’t tie them to specific behaviors.

Here’s an example:

See how the value has to have behaviors and actions which show how you will adhere to them? An athlete who values courage on the other hand may decide to keep using their forehand as a weapon, or approach the net even though they are down a break point.

Performance anxiety impacts us all to some degree. Now that you understand how it can affect your decision-making, you can set in place values and process goals to combat and manage it. And remember, if you do find yourself becoming more conservative and scared, remind yourself of your process goals—and ask yourself, too, how do I want to feel as I walk off the court? Do I want to be happy with how aggressive and committed I was? Or do I want to be sad that I pushed and hoped that my opponent would miss?

Reference

Nieuwenhuys, A., & Oudejans, R. R. D. (2017). Anxiety and performance: Perceptual-motor behavior in high-pressure contexts. Current Opinion in Psychology, 16, 28–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.03.019