What Happens When You Choke? — SS #58

Why can’t I get a serve into the court?

Why do I always start so slow? I feel so tight and tense.

Why am I sweating so much already? I haven’t been able to have a long rally at all.

If you’re reading my newsletter, there’s a strong chance you’ve experienced some form of choking in your tennis or performance life. I know choking is defined in many different ways in the tennis world, but for the purpose of today, think about it as a loss of normal motor functioning to the point where you cannot even execute shots that you would make comfortably in other scenarios.

Case in point: being able to serve 9 out of 10 kick-serves in from a basket but shanking, double-faulting, or generally being unable to get a similar number into the court under conditions of match or score pressure.

You might get the advice to practice more: “Practice more! Practice more so that your serve is better when it counts.” While this advice would receive a 5 out of 10 for quality, better advice would be to practice more under realistic conditions. Simulate match pressure. Play with only second serves. Place real stakes that you care about on the win and the loss of the competition.

I’d rate this advice a solid 7.5 out of 10 (it is advice that I have given before). In fact, a study by Hanton et al. (2008) found that one of the ways elite athletes differ from the rest of the population is that they consistently engage in the simulation of high-pressure scenarios.

But if that still leads to a breakdown under pressure, contrary to the beliefs of armchair commentators and generally negative coaching figures, you don’t have a “mental problem.” Nor is it that you, “Don’t have the mental fortitude to play this game at a high level.”

According to one model in the sport psychology literature, you just have an arousal problem.

Welcome to Cusp Catastrophe Theory

Developed by Hardy and colleagues in the early 90s, this model stipulates that an athlete must be aware that there are two independent variables (IV) that impact the important dependent variable (DV) of performance. The two IVs are cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal.

In less academic terms, you, as the athlete, need to be aware of your cognitive anxiety and also the level of your physiological arousal. Why? Because, according to the Cusp Catastrophe Theory (Hardy & Parfitt, 1991), having cognitive anxiety while also experiencing extremely high arousal will lead to a performance catastrophe. Put another way, your motor system will struggle to function.

See the graph I’ve made for you below! Notice how once physiological arousal crosses a certain threshold, performance drops catastrophically?

Let me give you a tangible example. Imagine a player who steps up to the line to serve at 4–5 down in the second set. It’s been a tough, hard-fought, yet tense match. They’ve already experienced a lot of tension and anxiety.

As they start to bounce the ball their heart rate jumps higher. Sweat starts pouring out of their body—even though they may not be aware and mark it down to just the regularities of competition. They’ve got a death grip on their racket handle. Physiologically, they’re highly aroused.

Then the unhelpful thoughts kick in.

“I can’t lose to this guy. Seriously?”

“If I lose here, Mom/Dad is going to get angry again at me and lecture me about how I’m not mentally tough.”

“All the program donors and the athletic director is watching me here.”

This is the important interaction predicted by the Cusp Catastrophe model: high cognitive anxiety and high physiological arousal will lead to a breakdown.

The player in this hypothetical scenario doesn’t just miss; they might lose total motor control. They might be unable to toss the ball, rush through the motion, shank, or even forget simple cues that they normally perform automatically. Nothing works.

The catch, though, is that high arousal without cognitive anxiety doesn’t necessarily lead to poor performance. Depending on your IZOF, you might need to be a little more pumped up than someone else. The problem evolves when cognitive anxiety enters the picture.

Here’s the Remedy

So what to do? We can’t eliminate pressure or anxiety fully. That’s not realistic. Instead, sport psychology advocates for a few different methods to combat this scenario from occurring.

The first is to learn to manage cognitive anxiety through learning reframing techniques, practicing disputations, or addressing core beliefs. In fact, sport psychology draws far and wide from CBT, REBT, Mindfulness, and ACT to encourage athletes to better manage their cognitive anxiety.

But the most tangible and powerful way I’ve found of helping athletes manage this high arousal is to teach them relaxation and arousal control skills. They directly impact the body and can reduce how hyped up you are so that you don’t experience a performance catastrophe.

The most effective of these is a pre-match or night-before skill called progressive muscle relaxation. It entails scanning through your body, tensing and relaxing certain areas of it, all the while letting your breath come and go. This is, in fact, one of the favorite skills that I love to teach.

The second is body scanning. This is a method from mindfulness where athletes are taught to shift their attention to the sensations experienced in different parts of their body while receiving the breath.

Both of these work to reduce physiological arousal and cognitive anxiety.

“But,” you might say, “Malhar, I don’t have time to do a 15-minute breathing exercise in the middle of the match! Don’t be ridiculous!”

And I hear you. Which is why I recommend learning box-breathing as a strategy and also the 5–4–3–2-1. I have covered both of these strategies in depth before, so I’ll just cover the 5–4–3–2-1 again. Here’s a really simple rundown:

When you’re feeling hyper-aroused, anxious, or nervous, just look around your environment and:

• Name 5 things you can see

• Name 4 things you can touch

• Name 3 things you can hear

• 2 things you can smell

• 1 thing you can taste

To summarize: choking is not your fault. Stop beating yourself up about it and trashing your potential. According to Cusp Catastrophe Theory, your brain struggles to operate its motor system under those conditions.

The solution isn’t quitting, convincing yourself that you’ll never have the killer instinct, or some bullshit like that. It’s simply about learning a mental skill—that of modulating your physiological arousal. You got this!

References

Hardy, L., & Parfitt, G. (1991). A catastrophe model of anxiety and performance. British Journal of Psychology, 82( 2), 163–178. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1991.tb02391.x 

Hanton, S., Wadey, R., & Mellalieu, S. D. (2008). Advanced psychological strategies and anxiety responses in sport. The Sport Psychologist, 22(4), 472-490.

Disclaimer: I am not an Association of Applied Sports Psychology CMPC, certified sports psychology practitioner, nor am I a licensed mental health counselor, PsyD, or clinical PhD. I am pursuing a master’s in sports, exercise, and performance psychology, and I am a sport psychology practitioner-in-training. I have over 20 years of experience in tennis, including playing, coaching collegiately and with professional players, along with club management experience as a director of programs. I am certified by the Professional Tennis Registry and am a member of Tennis Australia. My aim is to bring the best information to tennis players around the world so that you can apply it for long-term improvement—but sometimes I will make mistakes. If this is your area of research or expertise, and you feel I’ve misunderstood something, please get in touch with me and if required I will happily issue a correction.