Working Memory — SS #59

I’m sorry I’ve not sent The Short Set for the past few weeks. I recently received approval from my institution’s review board for my research to go ahead. Exciting times—and most of my mental resources have turned towards it.

I’m recruiting ATP/WTA ranked players (or players of equivalent UTRs) for 8 weeks of free sport psychology. If you know any players who might fit the criteria, or if you know coaches who work with players who might fit the criteria, please have them get in touch with me. I’ve already enrolled 2 individuals in the top 500 but I’m looking for at least 2 more. The sessions aim to build emotional resilience, anxiety control, and improve concentration through the novel combination of mindfulness and cognitive-behavioral components. See below!

What do you think about when you’re playing tennis?

I mean during the actual point in a tournament

What’s preoccupying the bandwidth of your brain?

Are you focusing on step-by-step, technical instructions that your coach gave you?

Make sure you do the unit turn by the time the ball crosses the net, then you separate your hands, and then my hand has to take the racket head high-low-high, but I also have to make sure to get the racket head nice and low. And, oh yeah, let me finish nice and high as well.

Or is your brain taking you to the future? Worries about the outcome? Winning and losing?

If I win this break point now, then I just have to serve it out and the first set will be mine.

Or, perhaps:

I have to win this match. I have to win this match. I have to win this match.

Let me stop you right here.

And introduce to you a concept that I hope will be quite instructive and helpful.

Welcome to Working Memory

Think of working memory as your brain’s mental bandwidth or even a “whiteboard.” It’s the limited space where we humans hold and use information to perform tasks—like playing tennis points.

It’s not where long-term skills live or where automatic habits or reactions live. It’s more like a notepad/scratchpad that our brain uses in the moment to keep track of what’s important right now.

But here’s the thing. That space is pretty limited. Tiny, even.

Researchers in sport psychology posit that someone can store about 3–5 chunks of information in their brain (Furley & Memmert, 2010). Now when you’re completely “locked in” and focused, most bandwidth goes toward things that help you perform and execute. Attention is normally diverted toward external cues (a la Gabriele Wulf). Things like tracking the ball, reading your opponent’s racket face, executing patterns, etc.

That’s what this first chart shows (see below). A high-performance state, where at least 80% of your working memory is devoted to task and goal-oriented foci.

(N.B. working memory is not “limited” necessarily as is depicted in this chart, but for demonstration and understanding purposes I find it helpful to explain it this way to players.)

Now look at the second pie-chart down below. When you’re threat-focused—caught up in negative thoughts, internal tension, or worrying about the outcome and unable to stay present—your extremely limited working memory capacity gets hijacked and overrun. These intrusive thoughts or even somatic experiences that you over-identify with start competing your brain’s resources.

This is also a reason why I don’t advocate focusing on technical and internal cues when trying to play competitive tennis. I assume a lot of tennis coaches would be unhappy about that recommendation. But keep in mind the information that we’ve covered so far: working memory capacity is limited at particular moments in time, do you want to devote your limited whiteboard space to heavy technical cues, or to more useful ones like ball tracking etc.

Now, the really interesting part to keep track of is that stress and anxiety (or other conditions of cognitive load) are known to reduce working memory capacity. Put another way, during times of competition or anxiety, our whiteboard “shrinks” a little bit.

What to Do… What to Do?

So, if you’re constantly finding your attention hijacked by negative thoughts, anxiety, worries about winning or losing, or somatic tension, you might feel that hope is lost.

Fear not, though, dear reader, because it is not. Because this is where applied sport psychology comes in. We have several ways of helping you divert your attention back to where it needs to be and we have several approaches to helping you.

Approach #1: Cognitive-Behavioral

Our fears and emotional reactions regarding matches; fears of needing to win, thinking that wins and losses define us, and our general beliefs about competition and being judged are some of the root drivers of anxiety and stress when performing. If we’re getting technical, here’s what happens:

You subconsciously appraise a situation as “threatening” in some way. Maybe you perceive winning a tennis match (or losing) as catastrophic to your self-worth, scholarship hopes, or your identity or reputation in your social circles.

In response your hypothalamus activates the sympathetic nervous system—which floods your bloodstream with adrenaline and cortisol. This is the well-known fight or flight response. Your thoughts start to race, your heart rate spikes, breathing quickens, and your body prepares for survival. Not playing… tennis.

Now think about it through the lens of working memory. These symptoms, sweaty palms, tightness, and racing thoughts, start crowding your limited working memory. Your personal whiteboard is now filled with fear-based reactions and thoughts instead of performance-relevant cues.

Cognitive-Behavioral tools help to stop this cycle in numerous ways.

The first step is by bringing these distorted thoughts to light. Thoughts like, “If I lose, I’m a failure,” or “winning and losing a tennis match is a direct measure of my worth.”

The second step is by challenging their logic rationally and dispassionately; a practitioner will use often Socratic questioning in this step. “Let’s break down this belief; is it actually true?” “How do you think believing this is impacting your performance?”

And the final step is to replace them with more flexible thoughts and interpretations of events. “The results of tennis matches don’t define me… I have a loving family and a beautiful life to be thankful for,” or “I’m defined by many other things than just by winning tennis matches.” The trick, here, if there is one, is that belief change is often experiential. A skilled practitioner will take you through the appropriate methods to encourage this more flexible approach.

This process is called cognitive restructuring and it’s one of the most evidence-based methods from psychology that sport psychology relies on for reducing cognitive anxiety (and thereby allowing you to use your attention appropriately).

Approach #2: Mindfulness-Based Approaches

Some players scratch their heads when I mention to them that mindfulness concepts have decent effectiveness with helping athletes with improving their tennis. I can imagine that statement is often a head scratcher.

But think about all the information that we’ve covered so far:

First is that working memory is limited—and it gets overloaded by outcome-based thoughts, technical monitoring, or performance anxiety.

Next, stress shrinks that bandwith some more, making it harder to focus on the ball, tactics or your opponent’s strikes.

And because of all of this, your attentional system (or the system that allows you to divert your attention to specific things) can get hijacked by worries, self-judgments, or other internal or external distractions.

This is where mindfulness-based training swoops in to save the day. Mindfulness teaches us how to notice distractions without getting thrown off course by them. Most importantly it encourages us to redirect our attention back to the present moment, again and again.

It’s not a skill about being “zen.” The way I explain it to players is that it’s about attentional control and about being able to consistently redirect your attention to the task at-hand.

A sport psychology professional will ask you to translate this attentional control skill onto on-court cues and points of focus—such as diverting all of your attention to ball tracking.

Mindfulness is not some magic cure that fixes performance ailments. It just helps you to respond to it appropriately—even when the chips are stacked against you. And over time, it leads to better emotional regulation, less reactive behavior. This means more working memory left for what matters most: playing the best point possible now.

To summarize, your working memory is your brain’s whiteboard. And in high-pressure and stressful moments, that bandwidth is easily maxed. Whether it’s crowded by fear, technical micromanagement, or fearful and anxious predictions about what will happen next, what you fill that space with matters.

In my opinion, the goal of applied sport psychology is simple; help you protect and use that space your best, so that you can focus on what helps you play your best.

Reference

Furley, P., & Memmert, D. (2010). The role of working memory in sport. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 3(2), 171–194. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984X.2010.526238

Disclaimer: I am not an Association of Applied Sport Psychology CMPC, certified sport 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.